Anxiety is how our body indicates that there’s something going on under the surface that needs our attention.
Learning to recognize what our feelings of anxiety are communicating about our current circumstances helps us know what steps we can take to experience relief and freedom.
So friends if you’re feeling anxious, I encourage you to take some time to reflect:
👉 What might your anxiety be telling you?
👉 What are some practical steps you can take to care for your soul and receive more of God’s peace and comfort for your distress? (e.g., setting boundaries, receiving empathy from a friend, abandoning outcomes to God, etc.)
1. Most of us say we should pray more than we do
Why don’t we?
Maybe we don’t appreciate how God designed prayer to work.
Or maybe we’ve compartmentalized our prayer life as something that we only do in church or in our private devotions rather than integrating it into our whole life with God.
True prayer is a God-adventure!
That’s what we’re doing when we pray: we’re stepping out into a God-adventure, joining what God is doing and participating in the Kingdom of Light.
We don’t have to say the right words or follow the right “formula.” We don’t have to make anything happen.
Our part is to watch and listen, then to follow and join in with God.
True prayer yields excitement to see how God will surprise us with new opportunities, direct our conversations, teach us new lessons, and provide for those we’re interceding for.
“Enjoy being with me and talking with me, even as I do with my Abba,” Jesus says, “and then you will have the strength and ability to do great work” (paraphrased from John 15:5-9). That’s the power of prayer!
So as you go about your day, try offering a God-adventure prayer like this one:
Jesus, I love you! Father, I adore you! Holy Spirit, I rely on you! Lord Jesus, I seek to live as your apprentice in all that I do today. My life is your school for teaching me. I relinquish my agenda for this day and I submit myself to you and your kingdom purposes. In all situations today I pray, “Your will, your way, your time.”
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: emotions are a source of wisdom!
Our emotions tell us what we need and want. They also help us understand, connect, and communicate in our relationships with ourselves, other people, and God.
Each of our emotions have a unique invitation for us. If we become aware of what we’re feeling and listen to what the emotions are communicating about our current situation and needs, we can look to God for comfort, guidance, and strength.
To help you get started, we’ve identified some of the underlying needs for the 4 basic emotional postures: fear, anger, sadness, and shame. Many of our “negative” (or painful) emotions point back to one (or more) of these 4.
As you read this, take some time to pray and reflect:
What are you feeling?
Which distressed emotion do you most need help with?
What do you need right now?
To love that emotional part of yourself, try sharing your feelings with God or a tender-hearted friend who is good at listening. Asking for the empathy you need helps you to receive it and be encouraged!
Learning to discern God’s voice is vital to our life. But hearing God speak is not like using a vending machine! It’s part of growing in a conversational relationship with Him.
The main purpose of praying and listening for the Lord’s voice is not about getting directive messages from God when we need them.
And actually, if we obsess about getting clarity from God on a decision we may end up using Him as a device for securing our own safety and comfort rather than worshiping Him as Divine. It can take our focus away from the greatest blessing of all: God’s presence with us!
Of course, it’s a great blessing when God gives us clarity. But in many cases He doesn’t give it to us. Does this mean God’s abandoning us? No!
It’s like God is handing us the keys to the car and saying, “Go ahead and take it for a drive!”
God is inviting us to take responsibility to make a good choice and to trust that His hand of grace will be with us as we make decisions and carry them out.
In other words, as we mature in Christ God gives us opportunities to be responsible adults. Of course, He’s still with us as we proceed and we are wise to rely on Him and keep interacting with Him as we do.
But even when we don’t hear God’s specific guidance we don’t need to worry or be upset because God loves us and He is with us — even if we’re not feeling this at the moment.
As the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, “God will never leave us or forsake us” (13:5). God’s presence is the greatest blessing of all (and it’s way better than having detailed directions for our daily life decisions).
The risen Christ is in our midst right now, wonderfully at work, and we can join his work, learning from him and loving the people around us in his name.
As we do this, we’ll learn to hear God’s voice and learn to trust His gracious presence with us even when we don’t get directive words from Him.
We strain and stress. We hurry and worry. We think it’s normal. We say, “It’s hard to be a Christian!”
But Jesus says, “Come to me… My yoke is easy.” Easy? Yes, easy!
Many of the people we talk to are wearing a heavy yoke. They’re working all the time. Or they’re worried about money or their health or their kids. Or they’re tired of trying to please an impossible-to-please spouse. Or they’re depending on alcohol to relax.
What burden are you carrying? Listen to Jesus’ invitation:
Come to me...
Lay down your heavy burdens...
Receive my gentle love...
Rest deeply...
Be easy as you work in my power…
That’s a God-blessed life — and it’s available to you right now! In your daily life challenges and opportunities, you really can relax and rejoice in Jesus’ easy yoke.
Like a spiritual psychotherapist, the Psalmist helps us to feel our emotions, own them, and vent them to God.
This is the godly way to deal with our emotions. This is the way that the Psalmist is at peace in the midst of distressing circumstances.
By opening our heart to God in this way we discover that He listens, empathizes, validates, and responds. Our Loving Lord comes to our aid to comfort us, strengthen us, and give us peace.
What a gift it is to be at peace! And true peace—God’s kind of peace—is demonstrated in the midst of conflict and stress.
So friends, whatever emotions you’re feeling today, I encourage you to bring them to God in an emotionally honest prayer.
To help you get started, I’ve listed some Psalms below. Choose one that stands out to you and let it guide you in conversation with your Heavenly Father ❤️
👉 Psalm 3: The model lament: crying out to the Lord and putting confidence in Him
👉 Psalm 4: In distress you can be filled with God’s love, joy, peace
👉 Psalm 6: Pour out your tears and questions to God
👉 Psalm 13: When God’s face is hidden learn to trust Him in your heart
👉 Psalm 31: In distress put your trust in God’s presence
👉 Psalm 64: When verbally attacked hide in God and rely on His justice
👉 Psalm 88: When you’re in a dark pit and God seems angry cry out to Him
👉 Psalm 102: In depression cry out to God and recall His power and care
👉 Psalm 109: When betrayed vent anger to God and rely on His love
👉 Psalm 142: Cry and complain to God and find that He’s your portion
2. What does it sound like inside your head?
What kinds of things do you say to yourself?
If your inner critic is active then shame, discouragement, fear, and self-hatred can come on you like an avalanche.
This voice inside your head tells you that you’re not enough, your future is hopeless, you’re unlovable, and you’ll never be safe.
Even worse, your inner critic tries to project these things onto God — causing you to believe that the Lord’s voice is loud, angry, pressuring, or condemning.
Ultimately, this blocks you from fully receiving and responding to the unfailing love of the Lord.
But God’s voice sounds nothing like your inner critic.
The voice of the Lord comes to us in lovely feelings and thoughts that are from heaven and have distinct qualities.
Jesus’ little brother, James, describes God’s voice as: pure, peace loving, gentle, not pushy but willing to yield, merciful (to you and others), fair (it doesn’t play favorites), challenging (if stubborn), and sincere (James 3:17).
This is God’s loving tone of voice. It’s what we see throughout the Bible.
So how can we stop listening to our inner critic and instead tune into the voice of the Lord?
Here are two practices that will help:
1️⃣ Renew your mind in Scripture
2️⃣ Engage in living personal relationships with Christ’s Ambassadors
The two go together in that we need to experience the truth of God’s Word in our relationships with one another in the Body of Christ.
We need to have Biblical images of God’s love in our minds and we need loving relationships with people who mediate Christ’s love to us.
God’s Word washes our minds of the harmful images we may have internalized in childhood or from culture (Eph. 5:26).
This occurs best in the context of our intimate relationships — when someone we’re close to shares Scripture with us, not just verbally but also by mediating it through loving relationship.
PS. If you want more help learning how to better listen for and discern God’s voice, we’ve put together a free PDF resource that walks you through how to listen for God’s voice. Click the link in our bio to download it for free! 😊
Many of us have been taught that faith in God is only cognitive. That it’s just about believing and doing the right things.
And while that’s an important aspect of faith, it’s not the full picture. There are more dynamics involved in human faith and flourishing than having head knowledge about the Bible and making commitments to serve God.
Diminishing faith to just be about thoughts, beliefs, or ideas neglects emotion, heart motivation, and other personal dynamics.
Of course, good thinking is essential to life and it’s a problem if we so empower our feelings and desires that we just do as we please. But dismissing and disrespecting emotions is a widespread problem and it’s a main reason for unwise thinking and stalled spiritual growth.
Healthy faith involves our whole person: heart, soul, body, emotions, thoughts, and relationships. (These are the six foundational dynamics of our person.)
Our soul is designed by God to integrate and enliven all the dynamics of our person into one unifying personality or flow of being.
So a healthy faith in God integrates all of these dynamics of our person and submits them in relationship to the Lord.
It’s from this place of deeper emotional and spiritual wholeness that we discover new vitality, peace, creativity, and capacity to love God and others.
Jesus, the Son of God and our Savior, became fully human. He was the most authentic, holy, and healthy person — the perfection of a human being.
And in his humanity, he has real emotions. In fact, Jesus demonstrates the full range of positive and negative human emotions in the Bible and he expresses them in perfect love. (See some examples in the image above.)
When we observe and relate to each of Jesus’ emotions we’ll learn how to feel our own emotions too.
Jesus’ emotions will become like a mirror that helps us understand and express our own feelings in prayer or in conversation with a friend who gives us empathy.
Feeling our emotions, desires, and needs and conversing with Jesus about them is the heart of intimacy with God.
What challenges are you facing today? What’s making you feel anxious, discouraged, irritated, or insecure? What’s tempting you to sin?
Look into the mirror of Jesus. Share your heart with him. See him empathizing with your feelings and thoughts.
As you do, you’ll discover that there’s freedom, healing, and joy in becoming aware of your emotions and befriending them in relationship with Jesus ❤️
Our God-given intelligence includes our thinking AND our feeling.
But many of us have been taught to only value and rely on our thoughts.
“Believe and do what’s right” is the typical message for how to grow spiritually. “Emotions can’t be trusted.”
Yes, some people have the problem that they empower their feelings and desires and just do as they please.
Yes, our thoughts are important in helping us make wise decisions and practice self-control.
But we need to be careful not to diminish emotion. Because when we do, it drains our energy, gives us anxiety, hinders our ability to have empathy for others, and distances us from God.
It’s damaging to pit faith and feelings against one another or to elevate the thinking side of faith as more important than the feeling side of faith.
Healthy faith integrates our thoughts and our feelings.
It doesn’t mean we’re controlled by our emotions, nor does it mean that we repress our emotions.
Instead, it means:
👉 We’re emotionally honest like the Psalmist.
👉 We seek empathy from God and soul friends who can mister Jesus’ love to us.
👉 We take responsibility for our emotions and ask Jesus, “Lord, what would you do if you were me?”
In the images above I’ve expanded on why our emotions are so important and how we can respond to and care for them in healthy ways.
I pray that as you read this, you’ll learn to befriend your emotions as a gift from God and respond to them in ways that are healthy and loving ❤️
Here’s a gentle reminder for you today ❤️
Many of us feel lonely at times. But in reality we are never alone, never without the companionship and love that we need.
The whole Bible is filled with God’s promises of comfort for our loneliness.
God promises never to abandon us: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Deut. 31:6, Heb. 13:5).
God is with us in difficulty: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4).
We can be honest with God and He will be near to us: “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth” (Ps. 145:18; See also James 4:8).
These are just a few of the many words of comfort that God offers to us, reminding us that we are not alone.
So friend if you’re feeling lonely, left out, or hurt today, I remember this:
Your true self is accepted, just as you are, in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. He is with you, helping you, and working all things together for your good so you can be happy in Christ no matter what!
Stress is part of life. Pains and problems, decisions, discords, and demands are all examples of stress. The more responsibility we have the more stress we experience.
But we get ourselves into trouble when we internalize our stress. We begin to feel it in our bodies and emotions. It causes health problems. It changes the way we think. It affects the way we act and relate to others.
These kinds of stress reactions show that we’re overloaded and probably denying our troubled emotions. Our personality has gotten off kilter.
3. So what’s the solution?
How can we calm down our stress reactions?
Follow the example of the Psalmist. Talk to God and safe friends about your feelings regularly. Receive empathy. This is the biblical prescription for stress, fear, and anxiety.
(Of course there are many other ways to de-stress, but many of these solutions won’t be helpful in the long term if they aren’t also paired with regularly verbalizing emotions and receiving empathy.)
Sharing feelings with a listener is cathartic or relieving of tension when you “let go” of what’s troubling you by letting someone else feel what you feel and help to carry your load. The turmoil becomes less intense and more manageable.
Putting words to what you’re feeling gives you perspective on your struggle, helping you to understand your situation more clearly and to think through any decisions. It helps you to realize that your feelings are valid, real, and understandable.
Realizing that someone cares enough to listen and to understand and to struggle with you is comfort for your hurt and encouragement for getting through your problem. In time you realize that you feel more peace.
How do you respond when someone asks “how are you?”
Probably most of us instinctively respond by saying things like “I’m fine!” or “I’m good. How are you?”
It’s natural to respond this way, especially when you see someone in passing or you’re greeting a stranger.
But these kinds of surface-level (maybe even inauthentic) responses cause us to miss out on the opportunity for deeper connection and conversation.
Don’t you long for more heart-to-heart conversations and deeper friendships? Of course you do! “The heart is the wellspring of life” and “a person of understanding draws it out” (Prov. 4:23, 20:25 paraphrased).
We grow in our aliveness as we share deeply and honestly with a friend.
We all need “deep-spirited friendships” where we know, love, and support one another in the ups and downs of life (Phil. 2:1-2).
Person-to-person bonding and heart-to-heart connections are the stuff of life. Without this we become depressed and anxious.
But when one soul touches another in authentic, caring conversation we can experience the warmth of God’s loving presence!
So next time someone asks “how are you?” try saying, “I’m thankful because _______.” And then watch their face light up as they share in your joy!
Or if you’re struggling try saying, “Actually this has been a hard day for me. Do you have a minute to listen?”
I’ve done this many times. Not only does it help me feel known and connected to others, but it also gives me an opportunity to love my friends by asking “how are you?” in return.
I find that when I lead with vulnerability and authenticity it gives others the space to do so in return.
I’m intentional to have soul talks like these every day, and often it ends up being one of the highlights of my day!
You probably know Jesus’ parable about the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep to find the one that’s lost (Luke 15:1-7). But have you ever put yourself in that story? Not only when you trusted in Christ for salvation, but also in your life today?
Today Jesus wants to shepherd you in this story.
We all get lost at times. We can’t find our way forward or don’t know what to do because we don’t know where we are.
The Lord Jesus describes our location as being like sheep without a shepherd, scattered, lost, wandering about aimlessly (Matthew 9:36).
Our Shepherd offers his tender heart to help us grow in self-awareness:
“What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:36 and 51).
“Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).
“Ask and keep asking and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7).
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me…” (Matthew 11:28, MSG).
“Are you thirsty? I have living waters for you!” (John 4:10, paraphrased).
These are questions of empathy. Christ Jesus is putting himself in our skin. (That’s his incarnation; John 1:14.)
He cares about how you’re feeling. He wants to know you personally. He delights to find and care for whatever emotions or longings are lost (or unconscious) inside of you.
Here are some practical ideas to receive Jesus’ ministry of finding and feeling your lost emotions:
👉 Get together with a “gentle shepherd” friend and take turns listening and caring for one another’s raw and real stuff. (Or talk with one of our Soul Shepherding Spiritual Directors or Coaches.)
👉 Pray the Psalms which feature the whole range of human emotions.
What’s really going on for people is not always obvious on the surface.
We may see a smile on someone’s face or observe how calm and collected they are in the face of a stressful situation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing okay.
External behaviors, expressions, body language, and interactions are just the tip of the iceberg of our soul.
Underneath that there’s a lot that can’t be seen on a surface level: thoughts, feelings, losses, regrets, pains, traumas, hopes, and prayers.
This is why it’s so important that we treat each other with empathy and seek to understand, validate, and love the parts of ourselves or others that are underneath the surface (instead of making assumptions).
Empathy ministers emotional presence. It calms our distress with an embrace of God’s compassion that enables us to open our hearts to other people.
To receive empathy is to be validated for what you feel and how big it is for you. It’s to feel understood and to receive patient listening and gentle compassion; it’s to be emotionally held.
4. Empathy provides you with necessary soul nourishment and encouragement.
So friends, here are two invitations for you today:
1️⃣ Talk to a safe person about what’s going on under the surface of your soul and receive empathy.
2️⃣ Listen to a friend share about what’s going on in their life and pay attention for ways you can offer empathy and gentle care.
There is HOPE for mental health.
While the journey to freedom is not always easy or immediate, it is possible to get help and experience real and lasting relief from your mental-emotional turmoil.
Allow yourself the time, space, patience, support, and grace that you need. Look to Jesus, safe friends, and trained professionals to come alongside you and love you as you navigate this.
God cares and He’ll be with you, strengthening and guiding you through the ups and downs ❤️
PS. We are SO blessed to follow Jesus with you. It’s a joy to share our passion for mental, emotional, and spiritual health with you. We pray that each of our posts blesses you and draws you closer to Jesus.
If you’d like further support for your mental health and relationship with Jesus, we have a team of Spiritual Directors or Coaches who are available to support you. Additionally, you can access helpful tools, content, and connections through the Soul Shepherding Network. (Link in bio for more info about each.)
Paul says, “Don’t be anxious about anything.” We may put a period there, but Paul does not!
If we tell ourselves or others not to feel worried or anxious we’re denying our emotions, pretending that we don’t have them. This is self-deception.
Ironically, repressing feelings like fear, anger, or sadness puts these stress responses into our bodies and eventually causes anxiety!
Denial of emotion drains our energy and hinders our ability to have empathy for others.
The Apostle Paul is not telling us to deny our emotions. He’s not shaming us!
He’s empathizing with our anxiousness.
Paul is helping us admit to and work through our anxious feelings, which are probably caused either by an overwhelming situation or a pattern of repressing primary emotions like fear, anger, or sadness.
This is an emotionally honest and healthy faith, which we see modeled throughout the Bible, including by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he cried out to God as his Abba because his soul was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34, 36).
No one would say to Jesus there, “Do not be anxious!” — and neither is it loving for you or someone else to say that to you in your hour of distress.
Instead, the invitation is to rely upon God’s care when we start to worry.
The comforting truth in this passage is that God is near to us when we’re anxious. He offers us His peace, a peace that will protect our soul and body from continual anxiety.
Our part in experiencing God’s peace is to ask God for what we need and to thank Him for the good things He provides.
A second step to help with anxiety is to participate in emotionally honest relationships. Many Bible students miss this, but it’s Paul’s implication in this passage. (Did you notice that Paul isn’t talking to you as an individual but to a community of people?)
So the bottom line is: God is near. He’s the Sovereign Lord of all things and as we trust Him, we will experience His peace.
Faith and mental-emotional health are meant to go together.
But many of us have grown up in families or church traditions that don’t emphasize the importance of our mental-emotional health.
Instead, we’ve heard messages like “just have faith and eventually your feelings will follow.”
But it doesn’t work — at least not the way it’s normally understood. Good beliefs or right thinking do not reliably generate healthy emotions or resolve mental health struggles.
To feel and experience hope, trust, love, joy, or peace healthy thoughts are important, but not sufficient. We also need:
👉 Care for emotions
👉 Loving relational engagements
👉 Godly habits
👉 A heart that trust Jesus as the true image of God
Fruitful faith in God includes each of these human dynamics. Look carefully and you’ll see this throughout the Bible, most obviously in Jesus’ greatest commandment (Mark 12:30-31) and the Psalms.
When you’re anxious it’s like swimming in a dirty pool filled with worries, guilt trips, frustrations, judgments, and pressures.
You’re submerged in negative messages from other people and your own self. Stressors keep pushing out the peace of Christ that you need.
Over time these things accumulate in your body, causing you to feel incredibly anxious.
You see, anxiety is cumulative. It gets into your body through various stressors over time. So to get free of anxiety, to grow in God’s peace, you need to incorporate a variety of relaxation strategies over time.
It’s a process of training (or re-training) your body and mind to submit to God and receive His peace.
To help you get started, we’ve listed some helpful suggestions in the image above ❤️
I grew up with anxiety.
And actually, I think every member of my family has had problems with anxiety.
In my family people worried. Intense discussions, continually analyzing problems, complaining about what’s wrong, and obsessing about possible solutions to fix things were frequent.
As a child I took in too much stress by listening to and being concerned about the things that upset my parents and others. I took on too much responsibility and expectation and burdened myself. And I didn’t release these pressures and pains because I didn’t talk about my feelings.
5. Usually I didn’t even feel my feelings.
Instead I worried and I worked to solve my problems, and everyone else’s too!
By the time I was a young adult I developed what I later learned is called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This means I experienced persistent anxiety and worry about stressful situations. I spent a lot of time worrying intensely and my worry was out of proportion to what was realistic for the situation.
It took me a number of years as an adult to learn helpful ways of dealing with anxiety and to experience inner peace. I used psychotherapy, educating myself, relaxation exercises, physical exercise, lifestyle changes, prayer, and other things to find relief.
Today I don’t struggle much with anxiety anymore. I have better boundaries to limit the stress I intake. And I’ve learned how to process my feelings with my wife (Kristi) or a caring friend. I thank God for the experience of his peace!
Friends, my prayer is that you too will experience this same peace and freedom for your anxiety! Here are a couple resources that will help:
1️⃣ Register for my FREE webinar: How to Calm Stress & Anxiety
Kristi and I will talk about how anxiety problems develop, practical ways to experience freedom, and answer your questions. Join us live next Tuesday, May 31st at 11am pacific (or you can watch the recording afterwards).
2️⃣ Read my book, “Your Best Life In Jesus’ Easy Yoke”
In it I help you understand these symptoms of anxiety and how you can experience greater peace and power through following Jesus in new and deeper ways.
There are many unhealthy beliefs that we may carry around about our mental health.
But in most cases these are messages of shame that bullies us into hiding, taking us away from the love and care that we’re desperate for.
To thrive in our mental health we need to understand the truth behind these lies:
👉 Our emotions are not a sign of weakness. They are a source of our God-given intelligence that helps us understand and respond to what we’re experiencing. Denying our emotions and perceiving them as weak is damaging to our mental health. Instead, we can care for our painful emotions by processing them with safe people and receiving empathy.
👉 Faith in God is important and helpful for our mental health. But we also need to understand that mental health issues aren’t typically caused by a lack of faith. So finding help often requires additional steps alongside cultivating a healthy faith-trust in God.
👉 Struggling with anxiety and/or depression is not something to be ashamed about. In fact, shame is likely to amplify anxiety/depression. Instead, it’s important to accept this as part of us that needs love, empathy, and care.
👉 God never wants us to feel bad about ourselves, even when we’re struggling with our mental health. God’s heart for us is full of love and compassion. He invites us to receive that love by agreeing with it.
👉 We were designed to be in relationships with one another and God. Because of this, we all have needs that can only be met though healthy, loving, and supportive relationships.
👉 There is always help for us. We can look to God, caring friends, and trained professionals to help us navigate our mental health struggles and experience freedom.
👉 God’s love for us is not dependent on our circumstances. God knows what is best for us and sometimes, though we may not understand it at the time, God doesn’t answer our prayer how or when we want him to. Even though this doesn’t feel good, we can still trust that God is good to us and will ultimately work through our situation.
👉 We aren’t meant to bear our burdens alone. It’s important to seek support from people who love us and have the capacity to care for us.
What’s the difference between stress and anxiety? We get asked this question a lot.
Stress and anxiety are often confused and used interchangeably. And while some of the characteristics and symptoms can be similar, there are some important differences between the two.
Stress is part of life. The more responsibility we have the more stress we experience. In general, stress is a normal and proportional reaction to a stressful situation or external pressure. However, the stress usually goes away when the situation is resolved.
Anxiety is a persistent condition of worry or fear that can disrupt our day-to-day functioning. Unlike stress, it often seems to come out of nowhere, perhaps triggered by something little, or maybe there is no apparent stressor.
However, stress can turn into anxiety when it gets inside us.
When we take stress into our bodies we feel general anxiousness, worries, obsessive thoughts, panic attacks, irritability, anger outbursts, tiredness, or depression.
If the anxiety is intense or chronic then it will begin to cause problems in our health and relationships. We may develop an an anxiety disorder.
The key principle to understand is that stress by itself isn’t likely to create an anxiety disorder. The source of the problem is denying our emotions and not seeking empathy and encouragement from God and safe people.
There’s so much more to anxiety than “worrying too much” or experiencing a panic attack. But sometimes people think that’s all it involves.
Having a clearer understanding of what anxiety looks and feels like helps us to (1) recognize it when we or someone we love is experiencing anxiety and (2) offer empathy and loving support in response to people’s anxiety.
To help you get a better understanding of what anxiety involves, we’ve shared a few examples in the image above.
What other things do you wish people understood about anxiety? Let us know in the comments below ❤️
Many people we talk to are anxious, discouraged, and weary.
They’re working all the time. Or they’re anxious about money or their health or their kids. Or they’re tired of trying to please an impossible-to-please spouse. Or they’re depending on alcohol to relax.
They’re wearing a heavy yoke… Can you relate?
If so, I have good news: Jesus offers you a life of freedom.
Listen to his invitation 👇
“Are you tired from carrying a heavy burden? Are you worn out from pulling a heavy load all by yourself?
Come to me. Look – right now – my arms are open wide to you. See my smile. My heart is for you, to give you my rest, my peace, my life.
Come to me. Don’t try so hard to make that situation work out like you want. Slow down and take a deep breath. Open your heart to me – submit to me as I submit to the Father and you’ll enjoy his love with me, you’ll experience my rest of soul.
Come to me. I want to help you to carry your burdens. Don’t pull that heavy load in your own strength – enter into the harness with me. Let me show you how to pull the plow across the field and get the work done in a good and relaxed way.
Walk with me and work with me. Look straight ahead and keep in cadence with me. We’ll step together easily and lightly. We’ll smile in the Father’s love as we bless people in need.”
(Matthew 11:28-30, my paraphrase).
So friends, if you’re feeling anxious, discouraged, and/or weary today, remember that Jesus is near. He’s the Sovereign Lord of all things. Look to him to help you carry your burdens and give you peace ❤️
“Why do I feel so anxious?” We get asked this a lot.
We’d love to give a simple answer with a “quick-fix” solution, but anxiety is more complicated than that. The reality is, there isn’t just one thing that causes anxiety; there are always at least a few.
Anxiety is cumulative. It’s considered a “secondary emotion” because it gets into your body through various triggers over time.
It usually goes back to years of trying to control situations and people, not respecting your limits, repressing fear, anger, or other emotions, and not receiving sufficient empathy and soothing for emotional distress.
Each additional pressure or injury that is not responded to with care exacerbates previous unresolved stress and lodges itself in your body and soul.
So undoing the negative effects of chronic build-up of anxiety takes time, not time alone, but time with treatment that includes care from others, God, and yourself, setting boundaries, and using relaxation techniques.
A helpful first step is to become aware of some of the things that are triggering your anxiety. Then you can begin taking steps in the opposite direction to help calm your anxiety and experience God’s peace. (We’ve shared some examples of each in the images above.)