God literally created you with the physiological, psychological, and spiritual capacity to be the peaceful person you long to be. You just have to learn how to lean into that vision of yourself to “become what you are” (as Saint John Paul II was fond of saying). God has great plans for you. He wants to free you from your fears and deliver you from your anxieties so that you can rest confidently in his love and care like a child rests in its mother’s arms. That was his intention for you from the beginning, and it is your destiny to be fulfilled through his grace. The first step is learning to stop clinging to our anxiety as if it was a necessary part of us, and cling, instead, to the perfect love of God, which will cast out all our fears.
That said, anxiety is a multifaceted problem with physical, psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual factors contributing to it. Because these different factors come together in different ways in each person, everyone’s anxiety profile is a little different. Over the next few chapters, I’ll help you create a battle plan by enabling you to discover how, and to what degree, each of these factors may be contributing to your experience of anxiety. After that, we’ll look at what you can do to help your body, mind, relationships, and faith start working for your good and strengthening your peace of mind. As we go along, I’ll offer you several exercises that will help you apply the various concepts in each chapter to the specific circumstances of your life. To get the most benefit out of these exercises, I recommend grabbing a notebook and a pen and keeping them with you while you read so that you can complete them as you go.
Anxiety Quiz: How Bad Is It?
Answer True (T) or False (F) to the following.
| ___ fatigue ___ muscle aches | ___ bowel problems ___ sweating | ___ dizziness ___ shortness of breath |
Scoring
Unless otherwise directed (e.g., #8, #9), give yourself 1 point for each T answer.
Explanation of Results
Please note that this is not meant to be used as a tool to diagnose a specific type of anxiety disorder. There are many different anxiety disorders, and only a professional can help you properly identify the exact nature of the problem you are experiencing.
That said, because each of the above questions points to a symptom potentially associated with a serious problem with anxiety, if you have 2 or more points, you should speak to a professional counselor to discuss possible treatment options. Remember, anxiety is highly treatable. The quicker you get appropriate help, the sooner you can experience full recovery and start leading a more peaceful, confident, enjoyable life. If you are unaware of faithful, professional counseling resources in your area, contact the Pastoral Solutions Institute for assistance at CatholicCounselors.com or 740-266-6461.
Chapter Two
The Anxious Brain
Anxiety is sneaky. It wears many masks. The more intensely a person experiences anxiety, the more difficult it can sometimes be for them to tell the difference between anxiety and a host of heightened emotional states such as excitement, anticipation, surprise, stress, nervousness, agitation, anger, frustration, and others. This confusion can be especially strong when a person is struggling with panic attacks. In such cases, something as benign as simply feeling excited about an upcoming birthday celebration can sometimes trigger fear that another panic attack is just around the corner if they allow themselves to get “too overstimulated.” Ironically, obsessively attempting to live a less stressful or stimulating life can become its own stressor, as the person feels both overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task and suffocated by the sense that their life just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Agoraphobia — where a person can become so fearful that they cannot leave their house — is a perfect, albeit extreme, example of this.
Even people who do not experience crippling levels of anxiety can be helped by learning how to distinguish between the various emotional states that are often confused with or can lead to anxiety.
For instance, a prominent public speaker I once worked with perceived an increased heart rate, slight sweatiness, and light-headedness before speaking engagements. These feelings caused her to imagine a cascading series of events that would undoubtedly go wrong and ruin her talk and, ultimately, her career. Over the course of several sessions, I was able to help her reinterpret these sensations and come to see them not as anxiety but rather as a kind of anticipatory excitement — a sign that her body was ramping up to help her put on a dynamic presentation. Reframing her experience as an adaptive response — rather than a threatening one — helped her see that her body was actually trying to help her do a good job. Understanding these sensations in a new light enabled her to more effectively focus her mind on the performance she was about to give. Because excitement (along with most heightened emotional states) triggers increased heart rate and respiration, muscle tension, retinal dilation, and increased body temperature, including perspiration, excitement can easily be interpreted by the body as anxiety. This simple reframing intervention did not completely cure my client — who was struggling with other issues as well — but it did allow her to more effectively reinterpret and manage the physiological symptoms that were threatening her ability to go on stage.
An Ocean of Emotion
We’ll talk more about how the mind creates your feelings (and can learn to change them) in the next chapter. For now, it’s enough to know that every emotion begins with molecular shifts that occur throughout your body as you interact with the outside world. Neuroscientists refer to emotions as molecular action programs. Everything that happens to you, every choice you make, every thought you think, every response you make sends a wash of hormones, neurotransmitters,