To commit a sin, we have to consciously choose to do what we know is wrong. Our actions must be willful, conscious, and at least reasonably informed (cf. CCC 1860–62). An emotion is none of these. Emotions, like anxiety, begin as pre-conscious, embodied experiences that bubble up, unbidden, from the limbic system (our emotional/reptilian brain) several milliseconds before our conscious mind is even aware of them. Emotions, including anxiety, can never be sinful because sin requires us to make a choice. Even though we can learn to change what we feel and how we act once an emotion appears on the scene, we can never choose what we feel in the first place. Anxiety, in particular, is a physiological and psychological response to the perception that, for some reason, we are not safe; that our physical, psychological, relational, or spiritual wellbeing is in jeopardy. Anxiety is meant to be a sign that we are facing imminent danger and that we should prepare to fight off the threat, flee from it, or freeze and hope it will just go away. Sometimes the reasons we feel threatened are obvious. Sometimes they are not. We’ll look closer at this threat-basis for anxiety and where it comes from in a later chapter. But for now, you can see that the simple fact that a person feels unsafe — even extremely unsafe (and for not especially obvious reasons) — could not possibly be considered sinful. Anxiety is the perfectly predictable response to life in a fallen world where things truly are so often unsafe. More importantly, anxiety is an opportunity to experience the mercy and loving-kindness of a God who understands, better than we, how cruel this fallen world can be.
“My Grace Is Sufficient”
But beyond knowing that anxiety is not sinful, it is encouraging to note that God doesn’t require us to achieve anxiety-free status as a prerequisite for sainthood. NYU professor-emeritus of psychology, Paul Vitz, once published a paper noting that Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (who is not only a saint but also was proclaimed a “Doctor of the Church” for the wisdom of her writings) struggled with a serious separation anxiety disorder and anxiety in her younger years as a result of her sainted mother’s premature death. Likewise, both Saint Alphonsus Ligouri and Saint Ignatius of Loyola famously battled with scrupulosity, which today can be understood as a variety of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that makes people anxious about spiritual, rather than bacterial, contamination. We should take comfort in knowing that sainthood depends much more on God’s infinite mercy than upon our ability to achieve psychological perfection on our own merits. When Saint Paul experienced anxiety about his own inability to overcome certain flaws (2 Cor 12:9), God reassured him that, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
So What?
At this point of the conversation, my clients often say something like, “Well, that’s great and all, but knowing this doesn’t make me feel any less anxious. What difference does any of this make to me?”
It makes all the difference in the world! We have a tendency to identify with our “emotional problems” in a way that we don’t identify with “physical problems.” I put these two terms in quotes because research shows that emotional problems are also physical, and many physical maladies (like heart disease, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia) have strong emotional connections. Regardless, when we get a virus, we don’t say, “I am flu.” We say, “I have the flu.” But when struggle with anxiety, especially if we deal with chronic anxiety disorders, we do often say, “I am anxious” or “I am high strung” or something similar. It becomes an identity statement. Like, “Hi, my name is Bob. I have blue eyes and brown hair, and I am an anxious wreck.” Um … nice to meet you?
The problem is, when we identify with the anxiety we feel, we begin to think of it as a necessary part of who we are. We may not like it, but there it is. We think we can’t do anything about it. It’s just part of us, so we have no choice but to accept it. As clients regularly tell me, “It’s just how God wired me.”
But think of how ridiculous this is. Even the person with an illness they can’t do anything about still thinks of his or her “true” self as healthy. We say this all the time. “I woke up feeling under the weather. I can’t wait to feel like myself again.”
With anxiety, we have a tendency to assume that this is who we are. But if God did not create you to be anxious, and if he plans to deliver you from all anxiety in the fullness of time, then you may have anxiety today, you may even struggle against it tomorrow, but you are not “an anxious person.” You are not defined by your anxiety, but by God’s grace and the mighty work he longs to do in you. One day — whether in this life or the next — God intends to strip away your anxiety, and you will be free to be the peaceful person God created you to be. This is more than antics with semantics. It is a verbal recognition that you are meant for more; that the anxiety you feel is not a God-intended part of your make-up. With your good effort and God’s grace, the odds are very good that you can make significant progress in lessening your anxiety (or even overcome it altogether) and feel like your “true” self again.
Whole, Healed, Godly, Grace-Filled
I like to ask my clients to imagine what I like to call their whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self (WHGG). This is not the super-hero self that doesn’t have any problems. Rather, it is the ideal self that responds well to the various problems of life. Imagine, for a moment, a peaceful, confident, secure, strong, grace-filled you, who can face the various challenges you experience in your life with real courage, wisdom, and aplomb. It might seem like a fantasy, but humor me for a moment and imagine this person, who contends with the same things you manage, but does it with real grace, certainty, and peace.
Now here’s the really shocking news: your WHGG self is not a fantasy. In fact, it represents who you truly are. When God looks at you, your whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self is who he sees, and who he is working to help you to become.
This may seem like utter nonsense the first time you consider it. Many of my anxious clients feel this way, but if you have children (or even know a child that you love), you might be able to naturally understand my point. Even if your child is having a bad day and making lots of mistakes, no loving parent would write their child off as a screw-up. You may see that your child is struggling, but you know who they really are. You know the good, strong, confident, talented person they are — even if they can’t see it themselves or aren’t currently behaving accordingly — and you dedicate yourself to helping them live up to all you see in them, all they can be. You want to help them discover that strength and lean into it so that they can exhibit those qualities consistently and confidently.
The same thing is true of the WHGG self. If you are feeling anxious, you might not feel like you are a strong, confident, courageous, secure, faithful, person today, but your heavenly Father sees through all that. He knows who you are underneath it all, and he has dedicated all of his grace to helping you become that. That doesn’t mean you have to go from being an anxious wreck to being something else. It means that you already have the capacity to be a peaceful, strong, confident person dwelling within you in the seed God planted while you were still in your mother’s womb.
Theologian Paul Tillich argues that God is the “ground of our being.” In a sense, everything we are meant to be already exists in God. As we draw closer to God, all the stuff that isn’t authentically part of us gets stripped away, and his grace allows us to become more ourselves. Grace does not take something that is horrible and turn it into something else. Grace peels away all the false layers our fallen world applies to us so that we can become more of who we truly are.
If you struggle with anxiety to any degree, I want you to understand that God is not asking you to become something that you are not. He simply wants you to learn how to nourish the seeds of peace, confidence,