Even though I was not exactly cured from anxiety, I felt empowered. I gave the anxiety over to the Lord and sought wisdom and because of that I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. For those that have experienced this at any degree you know how scary and debilitating it can be…but please hang on!!! If Jesus can heal the blind, make a cripple walk, and feed 5,000 out of one meal then he can certainly heal your anxiety. Please do not take that the wrong way, you may still need the help of a knowledgeable doctor, counselor, tremendous lifestyle changes and medication (I DID) and you must know that is OK! The book “The Anxiety Cure” helped me enormously. It gives a very clinical and spiritual take on anxiety and it JUST MADE SENSE for me.
How I understand Anxiety
Dr. A Hart in “The Anxiety Cure” has a great way to explain what happens in your brain when anxiety occurs. You have happy and sad messengers. The happy messengers are responsible for serotonin and the sad messengers are responsible for a chemical much like adrenalin. It’s a balancing act…if you have too much of one or the other you have problems. In my case I had depleted too many of my happy messengers which made my sad messengers go into over drive, which caused the intense anxiety/panic attacks. Because I had done extensive damage already to my happy messengers by years of stress I absolutely needed the medicine to restore the chemistry back in my brain and still do. The warning signs were there for years. That’s why this blog is so important to me…it’s about spreading the word!! It’s about slowing down, it’s about taking care of yourself so that you can be the best employee, mom, dad, wife, husband, sister, brother, Christian you can be. Somewhere in the middle of all this we have become a society that cared more about how hard we work and how many hours we put in per day. Your worth should not be determined from the amount of hours you put in each day…it should be determined by the quality and performance you show in your allocated 8 hour work day. Whatever happened to the “EIGHT” hour work day? Now the days are 10-12 hour work days and we take work home on the weekends. Some of that pressure is induced from managers/bosses and some just simply induced by ourselves. In my case it was absolutely me. My type A personality traits took over and very bad habits started to take form. I was “on” all the time and never unplugged from work. If that was not bad enough I started several side businesses as well. When is enough, enough? When do we become happy with our success? Once we reach a certain annual income, once we start a business, once we reach a certain square footage of a home we own, once we drive our dream car, when is it enough? My point is we always want more. For me it was success within my career, I always had to take on more which somehow meant I was a superhero, which was so far from the truth. This often meant I did not have time to exercise, was not truly present for my family and never had time for a haircut. I was never busy enough. I always had to do more.
Every one experiences stress and anxiety differently, however it may manifest for you it’s important that you understand the signs. Do you know the warning signs of stress??? Quite simply put these warning signs are the smoke alarm before the fire. Don’t let your smoke alarm go off…
“Be still and know that I am God” Psalms 46:10
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