Anxiety

Understanding Anxiety | Strategies for Managing Anxiety

This is a summarized version of the content presented in the Understanding Anxiety course. To dive deeper into this topic, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.
Hey,

In Understanding Anxiety Part 1, we talked about what anxiety is, and why we experience it. Now, let’s take a look at what you can do if you’re struggling with anxiety.

Here are healthy coping mechanisms you can try to ease anxiety and identify the story you’re telling yourself:
  • Step Back & Breathe: Find a place where you can step away and calm your mind. Take deep, stomach-filling breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. As you do this, your brain signals to your body that it doesn’t need to be on high alert, and your body begins to calm down.
  • Ask Questions: By asking reflective questions, we can bring to our awareness those unconscious stories we’re telling ourselves. That can look like this:
    • Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify what’s going on in your heart.
    • Ask questions like these:
      • What am I feeling?
      • What are the facts? 
      • What did I see or hear immediately prior to feeling what I’m feeling?
  • Question Your Story: Remember how your brain tells you a story about what’s happening, base on your past experiences? We have the power to interrupt this story-assigning reflex by considering an alternative story. In doing so, we interrupt the emotional reaction that the default story was producing, and are able to change our perspective. That may look like considering:
    • Is it possible there are other explanations for this situation? What might they be?
    • Hypothetically speaking, why might a reasonable, rationale, and decent human being respond the way this person is?
  • Decatastrophize: Some things we experience are catastrophic, and others are not. The labels we place on situations in our story matter. Change the label, change the emotional response. This starts by identifying the intense label you have applied to a situation, and choose to replace it with a less intense label that is more accurate to the situation, and consistent with the Truth of God’s Word.

 

Developing healthy coping mechanisms is so important to mastering anxiety. However, the effectiveness of these tips at eliminating anxiety will vary depending on the person. How we experience anxiety is influenced by our genetics. Some people are biologically predisposed to be more sensitive to anxiety while others are less. Depending on how severe the anxiety and how much biology is influencing, medication may be the only way to bring anxiety into normal ranges.

 

To dive deeper into this topic of anxiety, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.

There can also be a spiritual component to our anxiety.

The enemy uses shame to make us feel condemned and separated from God, trying to convince us that we are unacceptable to God and unworthy to live in His Kingdom. When we believe this, we put on a mask, and disengage from life with God.

On the other hand, the Holy Spirit uses conviction to bring us to repentance and growth.

How can we tell the difference between the work of the enemy and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

The voice of the enemy will try to bring feelings of rejection that result in isolation. For example:
  • You will never be worthy.
  • If your Christian friends knew how you struggle with sin, they would reject you.
  • God is so disappointed with you. You disgust Him.
  • You can’t do this Christian life, you are just too broken.
On the other hand, the Holy Spirit will always convict us in love, grace, and with an open invitation to Him. For example:
  • Hey, cut it out. I like you and this is going to hurt you.
  • You were created for better than this and you can live up to it.
  • Yes, you failed – I still love you. Let’s get up and keep going.
  • My grace is sufficient for you. You can’t fail bigger than I can fix.

Are you struggling with Anxiety?

If so, I encourage you to take the knowledge you’ve learned here, and put it into practice.

Maybe try deep breathing and asking reflective questions. Or really question what story you’re telling yourself, and work on decatastrophizing it if needed.

Maybe you should reach out to a Christian Counselor, who can help you really get to the root of your anxiety, and offer specific advice for your specific situation, including referring you to a medical doctor if there could be a biological component at play.

Cheering you on!

Josh Spurlock, MA, LPC, CST

Founder & Director of MyCounselor.Online

To dive deeper into this topic of anxiety, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.

More Resources on Anxiety:

Understanding Anxiety | What is Anxiety, and Why Do We Experience It?

This is a summarized version of the content presented in the Understanding Anxiety course. To dive deeper into this topic, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.

 

Hey,

In today’s culture of nearly constant stress, anxiety has become a pandemic. It looks different for everyone; for some it’s constant worry and fear, or racing thoughts and knots in the stomach, or even panic attacks and difficulty breathing.

But however anxiety hits you, almost all of us can relate to the burden that it brings. How can we ease the weight of anxiety? Let’s start by understanding what exactly anxiety is.

When God created us, He made us with a nervous system that responds to what’s around us, helping us navigate the world and respond to danger.

For example, imagine you’re on a hike in the woods. All of the sudden, a bear jumps out and starts running towards you. Thanks to the anxiety response in your nervous system, you respond by getting to safety as quickly as possible. In situations like these, we want that anxiety response to kick in and make us hyper-alert.

But what happens when the anxiety response kicks in when there isn’t a real threat? That’s when anxiety becomes a problem, and the symptoms that I mentioned earlier begin to interfere with your life.

To dive deeper into this topic of anxiety, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.

What exactly is happening when these symptoms show themselves? To understand that, let’s take a look at neuroscience.

God designed us to take in data from the world around us through our five senses; sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Once our senses take in the outside information, our brain then assigns meaning to it, based on what we’ve learned from past experiences.

That’s why 30 people can observe an incident and walk away with very different ideas about what happened and why; we all have different life experiences, and therefore interpret new experiences differently.

Throughout the day, your senses are constantly taking in data from the outside world, and your brain is interpreting it. If your brain determines something as unimportant, then it subconsciously discards the data.

Your brain, by God’s incredible design, handles most of the information for you and only brings to your conscious awareness the things it thinks you need to focus on. This information gets relayed to your prefrontal cortex for your conscious consideration.

These thoughts then get filtered through stories that you tell yourself, based on your previous life experiences. Once attributed to a specific story, you then experience the emotions that are produced from that story. While you may not notice the story you’re telling yourself, you tend to notice the feelings created by the stories.

Feelings are a product of our glands and nerves. Glands do not make their own decisions; they do what the brain tells them to do. The brain tells them the interpreted story of what is happening, and your glands produce the emotions that go with that.

For example, imagine you’re driving down the road. All of the sudden, you see flashing red and blue lights in the rear-view mirror. Your brain very quickly recognizes this as bad, and that you’re in trouble. So your brain alerts the adrenal glands that you’re in trouble, and your adrenal glands then send a dose of stress hormones through your blood.

And the result?

You feel anxious.

Your heart’s pumping, hands are sweating, and muscles are tense, as the cop approaches your vehicle.

These emotions that our body produces tend to spur us towards action. If something doesn’t feel good, we do things to try to feel better. These are often referred to as coping mechanisms. There are healthy coping mechanisms such as praying or processing with a friend, and there are unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as binge eating or looking at porn.

We all have negative emotional experiences that produce anxiety. The key to mastering this anxiety, rather than allowing it to master you, is twofold. First, you need to learn healthy coping mechanisms that help you manage your reactions to anxiety producing situations. Next, you learn how to trace your path to anxiety backwards to identify the story that’s driving the anxiety. That’s what we’ll look at in Understanding Anxiety Part Two.

 

Cheering you on!

Josh Spurlock, MA, LPC, CST
Founder & Director of MyCounselor.Online

 

To dive deeper into this topic of anxiety, check out the full Understanding Anxiety course.

More Resources on Anxiety: