Finding Peace Amidst Anxiety and Uncertainty

"Anxiety that the way that I have learned to think about anxiety, um, you've heard me say before that the psychological core of depression, something we all deal with, is always loss. And in similar way, uh, the psychological core of anxiety it's very clear to me, is the issue of uncertainty. How do we human beings deal with the things that we can't know, the things that we're uncertain about, and one of the natural outflows of that is the emotion that we call anxiety or worry." [00:02:47]

"And it turns out that the definition in the Bible of anxiety is almost always what we're talking about right now. It's worry about tomorrow, it's uncertainty about what's going to happen. Um, and so be anxious for nothing and let not your heart be troubled are the various ways that, um, the biblical authors and Jesus himself would talk about dealing with anxiety and it basically is the idea that the Bible's prescription to dealing with uncertainty and the future which by definition is uncertain, is to put the future in the hands of the one who owns the future." [00:03:40]

"Rick practically how do people roll up their sleeves and actually try to pursue peace because you can't make yourself stop worrying by just trying not to worry. That is very true well, uh, so I think, uh, anxiety management is a challenge for everybody so, I will think about having a, like an arrow a quiver full of arrows that you can pull out if necessary when you're feeling anxious, and I tend to think of them as spiritual, physical and then mental." [00:05:18]

"The spiritual one is very much what we've been talking about, is training yourself to put the future into the hands of the one who owns a future trusting God, and many of your own teachings John, you've talked about faith you define faith as surrendering outcomes and putting outcomes in God's hand, so I think that's part of the practical benefit of walking with Jesus, is having that capacity to put your worries about tomorrow or next year or your job or your health or you somebody's health in your family that sort of thing in God's hand and take the onus of it uh off of your own shoulder." [00:06:00]

"Physical ways that you can, an author years ago said you can't have an anxious tense mind in a relaxed body, so finding ways to calm your body down sometimes you can do that by meditating, meditating on scripture, um, doing relaxation, um, exercising, work looking at your sleep just all of the ways that you're physical, I've just finished reading a book that I reread called the body knows the score, and it's really a book about this idea that the body will tell you if you're holding trauma holding anxiety holding worry." [00:06:57]

"And then targeting you know strategies, um yoga I think you've done some yoga that sort of thing, and you know any emotional challenge can be helped by of course focusing on things like your relaxation and your sleep and your nutrition and your exercise so people listening to us right now could take a moment and scan their bodies and see is there tension in my shoulders, am I breathing shallowly and just a deep breath and to relax it's amazing when we do that with our bodies, it's easier spiritually to hand problems over to God." [00:07:44]

"The third arrow and, um, is sort of an interesting idea that it's come up in maybe the last 10 or 15 years of my practice and that is it used to be back when we were getting our training John we were in the late 1890s, yeah way way long ago we were trained that basically when you have anxiety or depression or anger you should argue with the thoughts that give rise to them and that still does hold water, but sort of a new development has been to work at maybe again I would say train yourself to allow or bring on or welcome anxiety when it comes to you." [00:08:23]

"It turns out that if you feel anxious or you worry and you hate feeling anxious, and you hate worrying you end up exacerbating or amplifying the anxiety the problem and so one of the ways to play with that is to sometimes you have to do this kind of aggressively, and a stupid example is I don't like uh heavy traffic, I'm going to go into LA to see the Dodgers or go to some kind of event in LA um I'll always hit a lot of traffic, and I don't naturally like traffic so I have, you know as I was learning about this way of dealing with anxiety, I will sometimes say out loud and my kids will make fun of me when we run into a traffic jam this is exactly what I need right now bring this on." [00:09:07]

"Or I had a client a few years ago a pastor's wife who had a big problem with anxiety and we were talking about how much he hated anxiety and it turned out that was the biggest problem for her if she could hate it less and allow it more and welcome it, we would use the the psalmist idea of owning but not enthroning your emotions and that ended up being very helpful for her about anxiety, one of the things she did was she named the anxiety she called it Wilma, and so she would always when she started to worry or start to feel anxious she would say, welcome Wilma and there was something about just taking that moment and and allowing it, um rather than fighting it rather than being very self-critical uh that she had it." [00:09:56]

"Boy this whole idea of uncertainty um really speaks to me even as I'm thinking about the question because I don't know how this is going to turn out, I don't exactly um no but I'm just gonna trust God, and I've got friends like you and a wife like Sherry that helps me with that and I think I get to help her with that as well so thank you for telling us about that and I, I think how often when we talk there'll be an expression that you will often use that I won't quote exactly but it will be an expression of uncertainty and the pain of uncertain outcomes and it drives both of us back to there's only one foundation and it's not outcomes and that's Jesus." [00:12:07]

"Okay and everybody today it's the prince of peace, and uh if you want one phrase to take with you welcome Wilma, welcome worry welcome troubles I hope you invite the prince of peace to bring peace into your life and your day-to-day and I'll see you tomorrow." [00:12:56]