Anxiety Podcast Episode

And so, I knew in my heart, I wanted to share this with the prayer group. But I’m really scared to share this with the prayer group. And on the other hand, because I’m the minister counselor that should be able to handle this. That’s what I was feeling. But eventually, I was like, you know what, I need the prayers, and I would not want somebody else to suffer in silence.

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Today I have. Ted Witzig Jr. in the studio today. We’re going to talk about anxiety, Ted. Yes. This I think is a household term. Sure is. But I think putting some fences around it and providing some definition, some clarity, is warranted.

Oftentimes, when we think of anxiety, we actually are blending a couple of things. One is we worry about what happens, and we do cognitively. That’s our thinking. We’re thinking about something that is unknown, potentially threatening, something that causes us some kind of alarm. And so, our mind focuses on that and mulls it over.

And oftentimes with anxiety, it tends to think about those what ifs and to extrapolate out to really bad things. Catastrophizing? Yes. Is that another, is that a word that we use? Catastrophizing is often when it goes in leaps and bounds. Right. My child is having a temper tantrum right now and he’s seven. He’s probably going to be a delinquent and I’m a horrible parent. Right. You know, that’s catastrophizing. Okay.

So, when we talk about anxiety, there’s also a physical component to anxiety. When we have anxious thoughts and feelings, our body also reacts as well. And that’s a really important part of this because God put two systems in our body, an alarm system and a calm system.

And when we’ve experienced anxiety, whether it’s. Because of an actual physical situation, such as you see a rattlesnake by your leg, or whether it is a mental or a cognitive thing like, oh no, what if this occurs? You know, I can’t find my child. You know, I don’t know. Where are they at? Our body reacts by shooting adrenaline and cortisol into our bloodstream, which causes our heartbeat to quicken, causes our breathing to upregulate, and our attention to focus and those kinds of things.

And to our body, our physical body, it treats all anxiety the same. It doesn’t differentiate between those two examples. You would be wrong for not being anxious. That’s right. And that brings up a really important part about anxiety is people are constantly going is anxiety right? Or is anxiety wrong? And at the end of the day, there are different kinds of anxiety, and in fact, I’m going to go as far as to say in those two examples, a rattlesnake by your leg and a child that’s missing and feeling anxious about that, that’s a God-given response to something that’s a potential danger and by upregulating our system, it puts us into problem solving mode that says I either have to go fight or flight, and I’m going to do something to try to protect.

Okay, I would still like to crystallize a little bit of a definition down to a few words at the most general level. Anxiety is a response to a threat. It might be real, or it might be unreal. It can be real or imagined. Fabricated or it might be founded on prior experience. That’s correct, or it might not be. So, we’ve got all kinds of nuances here. And that’s why as we look at somebody who is dealing with anxiety or even ourselves, understanding context oftentimes matters.

Would there be another element to it? Not only just a response to a threat, but a frightful response to a threat. Yes. Anxiety is, oh no, there’s that threat. There’s something wrong. Okay. There’s potential danger. It is either actual or potential danger. So, I appreciate the narrowing of a definition. I think that’s really critical that we say, all right, this is what we mean when we’re saying anxiety.

Yeah. So, let’s go a little bit deeper. No doubt there are different places when anxiety surfaces in one’s life. One of the ways that I like to think about is to put anxiety into three different buckets, and those three buckets are spiritual anxiety, situational anxiety, and anxiety disorders. And I’ll just go into those three buckets.

Let’s start with spiritual. Sure. The Bible specifically addresses spiritual anxiety and there are a number of passages that say things like, be anxious for nothing. And Jesus talks about how you’re much more than the flowers or the sparrows. And they don’t worry.

Take no thought for the morrow. The word thought comes in a number of times because he’s talking about where our thinking is going. And the way I think about spiritual anxiety is when our thinking about the what ifs and about the future really gets focused on the situation and the circumstances, and it moves away from the confidence that God is going to take care of us in those things. So, there’s a shift there, and it seems to your point that the shift of thinking goes a long way in helping us manage anxiety. Our real challenge is that our mind will naturally go to the circumstances. And our job as Christian people is to keep taking that circumstance and leaning into our relationship with Christ.

Think about a couple who drop their kids off at grandma or grandpa’s house or a babysitter’s house and is planning to go out for a date. Let’s say, you know, Junior, he is a little guy, and he freaks out because mom and dad are leaving. Okay. Tons of anxiety. Through his child’s eye perspective, I’m being left.

So, the thing about it is, mom and dad don’t have that perspective. They’re going to be back in a couple of hours. And when they come back and Junior sees mom and dad, he runs to them and clings onto them like you’ve returned for me. And mom and dad have this perspective. They’re glad to see Junior, but in their minds, there was no reason for you to doubt. Junior couldn’t see that, and I think about it when Jesus sees this whole thing and the disciples are fearing going down with the ship. We’re going to perish. And he says, wherefore did you doubt? He’s got this perspective that God has you. Yeah, case in point.

He’s able to sleep. It’s a storm. Yes. You know? And I think that’s a challenge for us, that he wants us to remember he really, really has us. And Ted, you really have pushed open a door. How does Jesus view anxiety? Okay. That’s what’s raised in these examples. Yes. Which I think is a critical question.

It is. And I’ll make the disclaimer for both of us that God knows. Right? Exactly. We’re not going to necessarily speak conclusively and say this is what God thinks. Yep. But we do have indicators such as the stories that you’ve shared, but I would like to hear you speak to that prompt. Yep.

What does Jesus make of our anxiety? This is probably one of the pivotal questions about anxiety, and Christians fall all over the spectrum on this. Some people look at anxiety and say, anxiety is a sin, period, always, end of story. Other people say anxiety is not a sin, period, end of story. And so, I think the thing we have to do is take a nuanced look at it.

First of all, there are plenty of things in Scripture that encourage us to put our faith and trust in God both for him as Savior, but also for our circumstances. So, let’s go to that one pull that it is saying, right? Place your finger on that nature. So when it says, be anxious for nothing, that’s Philippians 4.

And so from that standpoint, people will look at that and say, this command applies to all situations, et cetera. We always have to lean into the fact that our faith in him needs to be strengthened and sharpened. And so, yes, I mean, sometimes I look to my own abilities to figure things out rather than trusting in him.

Our difficulty to do that certainly needs to be sharpened and strengthened. And I have no problem with saying, yeah, you know what? Sometimes I just really doubt, and I get so anxious. And then the Lord chases me and says, Ted, I’m here. Yeah. I think you’ve done a nice job of painting that reality.

So, let’s now go to the other side of the spectrum and say, okay, it’s not sin at all. Right. And certainly there must be a grain of truth there as well. And maybe articulate that. So, I would say there are two buckets on this side, the situational bucket is one that most people would understand. If you were at Six Flags and all of a sudden you couldn’t find Junior again, he’s gone, and there’s a crowd of people, your anxiety is gonna go up.

I agree in that exact situation. And what happens? Oh, my goodness. Yes, you’re so focused on it and attentive to that particular threat. Absolutely. That’s situational anxiety. That I would say is a God-given response to handle the things that occur in this world. The next bucket, though, is when that alarm system goes overboard.

Okay, and that’s anxiety disorders. We call them disorders because either the anxiety system is turning on when it shouldn’t turn on or it’s turning on to a degree or magnitude that it shouldn’t turn on to or it doesn’t shut off when it should shut off.

For example, a panic attack is when somebody’s body responds like there is an all-out threat. Yeah. Responding like they were on train tracks when there was a train coming, except there’s no train coming. Okay. And so their body goes into acceleration, rapid heart rate. They might be sweating. They might hyperventilate and all those things, and they might not even know why it started. So, I think one of the things in that case is you have a situation where the feared situation shouldn’t cause that much anxiety, and it causes a magnitude of anxiety that’s way over the top.

So how should we think about anxiety disorders? Anxiety disorder is a type of affliction, okay? And it’s important to see it as affliction because when we do, we can say, okay, how does God feel towards those who are afflicted. Okay. And God and Jesus were always kind to the afflicted. He wanted to heal their heart spiritually, but then he would sometimes touch their body as well.

Yeah. All right. So, I love it that you’ve answered the question that I forgot I asked. So let me say it for the listener again, they may have forgotten as well. And that is, what does God think of anxiety? Right. And part of that answer you’ve just provided is that he views it as an affliction, in some cases.

Again, this is very nuanced here. Yes, absolutely. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things about God putting us in families and in church families, is because he doesn’t want us to be alone as we’re going through times of affliction, we’re supposed to be there to minister to one another. And this is where, on that spiritual side of things, being able to encourage one another is such a beautiful thing.

The fact is that somebody going through a time of anxiety does need to be encouraged to focus on the Lord and to focus on his provision for them. I believe that with such a common experience of anxiety, I believe that it’s really important for Christian people to be able to care for one another in that.

It’s a little bit like grief. Because grief is such a common experience, when somebody passes away and that family is there in a visitation line, the church comes around them to grieve with them and express their sympathy because we’re all touched by it. We all get that, oh, they’re sad. And I would be sad too, if so and so passed away.

The reality is oftentimes we miss the opportunity to comfort one another in anxiety for two main reasons. One is people feeling anxiety oftentimes feel shame and they feel shame because I’m not supposed to feel it. Okay. That’s where the shame comes from. And because I feel shame, I hold it inside and I feel bad about how I’m feeling, but I don’t tell anybody.

The other thing is where it says, you that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. One of the things is when we’re strong, we sometimes have the tendency to give flippant responses. Okay. You know, oh, hey, you’re dealing with anxiety. Oh, hey, you know, keep looking up and hey, you know what, pray a little harder and it’ll be better.

I’m not disparaging prayer, but as a flippant response, like, hey, just get over it, buddy. Yeah. And what we do in that moment is we really demean their experience. That’s correct. Which in their perception is their reality as well. I have had experience of living and help doing life with people with anxiety and I find it to challenge me at the core of empathy.

Does that make sense? Yeah. If I cannot relate to being afraid of getting cancer, I have a hard time listening to a person that says, I am so gripped with fear that I might have cancer. Perfectly healthy specimen here. Does that make sense? And I can weave so many arguments on why they should not be worried as such.

It’s just not that easy. And it can be exasperating to be a helper in that case. That makes sense. I find that I’m pretty quickly out of tools because I just explained it in the most logical sense that I possibly could. Yeah. And it didn’t hit. It’s a challenge. And I think that’s where it’s so important to understand what actually are we comforting.

Because somebody who is needing to be encouraged to refocus themselves onto God’s promises and that’s really what they need. The person whose mind is spinning in such a way that they’re not able to internalize those promises because their mind is spinning in such a way. They would even affirm that those promises are true, but they would also feel like I can’t grab onto it.

And so that’s an indicator. There’s a time and a place to give encouragement. There’s a time and a place to just listen. And there’s a time and a place also to say, wow, you know what? This seems to be stuck for you. You know what? I wonder if there aren’t some resources we could look at that would give you some tools to help to get that unstuck.

Okay. In my reality, in working with an anxious person, my first responses have been very trite in some of the examples like prayer and read more of the Bible and that type of thing, and as I’ve watched that situation, I’m afraid that I am breeding a twisted view of reading and praying for that person.

Does that make sense? As if to say, they now are not thinking rightly about those two beautiful activities. Does that make sense? Yeah, because it has now been so tied with their stuckness. Yes. Yeah, and that actually has caused me to look at this differently because that’s a tragic thing and I think what is happening is it’s a little bit like this if you would read and pray, you won’t feel anxious, That’s the underlying message that some people hear.

And so, if I read and pray, it turns into a formula, A plus B equals C. That’s where a lot of times Christian people come to counseling, oftentimes way later than we wish they would come. We’re glad that they come anytime, but it’s interesting because we rarely have people come right away. And again, I’m not trying to say that counseling needs to be the first resort, but I think a little bit of that misunderstanding that says, because I’m a Christian, I shouldn’t have these thoughts and feelings.

I have these thoughts and feelings, therefore I’m bad. I don’t want people to think I’m bad. I don’t want God to think I’m bad, so now I feel more shamed, and of course our adversary Satan just beats the whatever out of people. And so, then they just delay, as opposed to saying, whoa, I’m a Christian. I’m not getting the kind of victory I want in this area of my life. And I think if we could look at this together in a sense of, how do we gain victory, instead of looking at it from a perspective of just saying, it’s black and white, good Christians don’t worry, bad Christians do worry, and then go on.

Ted, some of our listeners know, I’m sure, that in the last year, year and a half, you’ve had some major health hurdles. Yes. Okay? Open heart surgery. Yes. And with that, I would presume, came a great deal of anxiety. So if you would want to share a little bit out of your own personal example and maybe highlight some of the things we’ve talked about today.

Yes. In October of 2017, I had an echocardiogram, and it was a follow up. My doctor, a cardiologist, had been following my mitral valve to see how it was functioning and in October they were able to say, yeah, you know what, it’s gotten much worse, and you need to see a surgeon. What was interesting about that is in going to see the surgeon and going and thinking about the options for having the surgery, I had the worst anxiety that I’ve experienced in 20 years going into a big surgery, especially one where they’re going to stop your heart and put you in a heart lung machine for that.

That makes you think. I was thinking about that from the moment I woke up in the morning all day long until I went to sleep at night. And I was thinking about all the different options for the ways to have the surgery and where to have the surgery and is this right and that right. And it was affecting my sleep.

It was affecting my ability to concentrate. It was affecting my ability to trust. The thing about it was, I felt incredible shame that I felt this much anxiety. I felt shame because as a Christian and as a minister, I know God is in control. I know that he is trustworthy with whatever happens. I know, I know.

And I kept reading the Scripture and pouring over it, and I kept praying and praying and worrying and worrying and praying and praying. And I had support people in my life and my family who were supporting me. It wasn’t that I was alone going through this. But then I had such professional shame about that.

I’m an anxiety disorder specialist, okay? That’s what I do. I treat anxiety. I knew a couple of things that I needed to do. In Morton Church, we have a prayer group that meets from 9:00 to 9:30 on Sunday mornings. And there’s about 20 or 30 of us that meet and pray together about whatever the needs are.

And so, I knew in my heart, I wanted to share this with the prayer group, but I’m really scared to share this with the prayer group on the other hand because I’m the minister counselor that should be able to handle this. That’s what I was feeling. But I was afraid people would see that irony and take it lightly and stuff like that.

But eventually, I was like, you know what, I want to share, I need the prayers. Yeah. And I would not want somebody else to suffer. And so, I shared with the prayer group, and I said, I need to have surgery and I’m experiencing a ton of anxiety and it’s not going away, and I just really need your prayers.

And what I wanted and what I needed was what I got. I got prayers number one and number two. I had a sense of community of people who said, we’re going to pray you through this. We’re with you through this. We’ve previously mentioned how very frequently we’ll tell an individual with anxiety; you need to read and pray.

What you have just said though is that the helper needs to read and pray. There is a time in a sense. The Word of God and prayer has always been the answer. Yes. And we’re not suggesting here on this podcast that’s not the answer. Right. It is the answer. Right. But sometimes we have to do it for people.

Oh, yes. Do you know what? That was so wonderful to have my brothers and sisters who they maintained their confidence that God was able when I was on shaky ground. I knew it, but I was struggling with it at the same time. They had that, but what they did was they put their arms around me, and they just said, we’re going to love you through this.

And that was a huge help for me. The second thing though, was that I still was having trouble sleeping, which was affecting my concentration and things like that. Other times, I was thinking about it over and over and I finally said to Donna, I think I need to talk to Dr. Marshall about this.

I’ve got to do something. And that was also a very big step for me. Because it was not something that I wanted to do as a professional, because I wanted to be able to just bring my skills to bear and handle it myself and go on. But I got to a place where it was just too much. And so Donna and I went to see my family doctor.

And I sat down with him and said, Hey, you know what? I’m going to have this heart surgery, and this is what’s been going on and things like that. And I said is there anything that you can give me to help with some of this anxiety to knock it down? And I think one of the things was part of the shame that I was feeling that I should be able to do this on my own.

I should be able to do this just with prayer and those kinds of things. And I wish it would have been that easy. He then listened carefully, did an assessment, those kinds of things, and handled it very kindly. He prescribed an anxiety medication just to take in the short term to knock that anxiety down.

And it was one of those things that I think as a professional, it was really good for me to have to take my own medicine, so to speak. I mean literally, but also figuratively. And I think one of the things about it is that I finally slept good at night.

My thinking got clearer within about 24 to 48 hours of knocking that anxiety down. I started to just be able to process a lot better. I was able to get more perspective and the other thing I found as my anxiety came down, I was much more able when I read the Word and when I prayed to just let things rest. Even though it was a painful situation that I didn’t want to go through, and it was hard to go through, it was a really important situation for me to have.

Because, you know what, it really did help to reconnect me to the suffering of my clients. Boy, now, I tell you what, my prayers for people are different. My encouragement for people is different. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, where God announces himself as the God of all mercy, consolation, and comfort, that we comfort others out of the comfort whereby we’ve been given.

And that comfort has come from the most credible source. Yes. The afflicted one. Right. Jesus, the Afflicted One in all manners tempted as we, the Scripture says. Think about what he went through there in the garden and you have him go to the cross where he is ultimately afflicted. Yeah.

Right. So out of that source. of consolation, he can console us and we others. Yes. It’s amazing. It is. I appreciate you, Ted, sharing that story. Very vulnerable, but it highlighted a lot of the elements of today. Yeah. Appreciate that. And to our friends who have been along. Thanks a lot for listening in.

We trust and pray this has been a blessing to you. Please share thoughts, questions, suggestions. We’re always happy to take those at [email protected]. Have a great day.