An open letter to friends suffering with anxiety, who are wondering if CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) or other 'Christian/other counselling' can help them. Whether you are struggling with anxiety over health issues or other things, these things will help you too. Anxiety is vicious and the Christian is not left without biblical help.
Dear friends,
I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with anxiety and worry. I have just jotted some thoughts down here for you to consider, gleaned from years of struggling with chronic anxiety myself and from what I have learnt from sound Christian sources. I have found from personal experience that the world's psychological 'answers' are but 'empty cisterns' and best avoided by the Christian. We do not need them however, as the Bible, as always has the answers to all of life's problems. Biblical Christian teaching on these things is hard to find though, as many have sold into the counselling model in a 'Christianised form'. However, true biblical 'psychology' comes from a completely different angle as the Christian is a new person, no longer controlled by the flesh (or does not need to be). Biblical help for anxious Christians turns their thoughts away from self-seeking (and ultimately steering life along a course with which I am comfortable), towards God, the one in whom true healing is found, as He alone has the power to cancel sin and gives us new hearts that no longer desire to glorify self, the root cause of our problems. Poor teaching leaves many of us bereft of help. Christianity points to God, the flesh tries to bring God down to us. Man's chief end is to glorify God. We are to do God's will, not expect Him to do ours. God has dealings with His people that the world cannot understand. The Christian is often called to go through various trials. Trials are designed to make us more holy and increase our dependence upon the Lord. What matters most is that the trials are sanctified to us. Often these trials will be uncomfortable, but when God is dealing with our heart, immediate relief may not be helpful. We can of course, and indeed should pray, but must be prepared to expect God to reply in His way and time, as that is what will be best for us. There is quite a lot here – but I trust something might be of help to you. First - a word or two to help you understand the effects of worry on the body: it causes bodily symptoms of discomfort. We might call it STRESS - yes a modern word that you won't find in the Bible. The Bible instead talks about the seat of our emotions - the 'bowels'. Look it up! Here is one verse from Job 30:27 'My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me.' Maybe this describes some of you now! Please do not underestimate stress, as I have done many times before. It can do the most bizarre/horrible things to the body – and we all respond in slightly different ways. Whether or not you have something serious/otherwise wrong with you, or are going through tough times for whatever reason, if you are worrying then your body will be under increased stress! Stress brings its own set of symptoms and makes everything else much worse. It often affects the bowels and digestive system with uncomfortable symptoms, but affects other parts of us too. When you are stressed it is easy then to start panicking and worrying that the symptoms ‘can’t just be stress’ or reacting to feelings! How many times have I thought that – but despite years of weird symptoms that have baffled the docs and umpteen tests for all sorts of things – all have so far cleared up once I stopped worrying! I have even worried about the amount of worrying I do! And in actual fact I worry least when I am actually ill with a defined illness. It is also very easy to deny stress. Be honest with yourself! The world tells us that stress is bad for our health - which can make us worry more when we get stressed. Do bear in mind that the saints of old did not consider how stressed they were getting when they carried out God's commands. It must have been very stressful building an ark against much opposition. The Apostle Paul much have suffered greatly for his faith: but these men did it with any eye to God's glory - not to their own comfort - trusting Him to take care of them. We easily lose sight of this in our self-centred, fleshly thinking. You will not die before the Lord is ready to take you. If he sends 'stressful' trials your way - will we say: 'Lord, this is ruining my health, it's too stressful!'? I trust not - though we might actually be implying it by our response to the situation! The problem, as always is not just a word, i.e. 'stress'. It is our response to the situation in which we find ourselves. Two people can go through the same experience and come out with totally different reactions. If we were to truly live by the Spirit, perfectly, like The Lord Jesus Christ did, then we would always be looking to the Lord and be able to resist the temptation to become overly absorbed/overwhelmed by our feelings and emotions. Sadly, because of the fall, we are prone to be easily thrown off course: but Jesus knew this. Read your Bible and see how he understood his poor, feeble disciples: their panic when they thought the ship would sink, their confusion, their simplicity! Friend - He understands you and does not condemn you for struggling. However, He must often think 'Oh dear, foolish one - if only you could/would believe what I have told you!' Note: What we worry about most is coping with fear (fear of the unknown) – rather than illness/the problem. This might be hard to believe, but it is the fear of the feeling of fear that causes us problems. Panic attacks are nothing but fear feeding fear and it spirals out of control and they are VERY scary. Fear is a very powerful emotion that can make our fears seem unsurmountable and very real. Learning that I was not actually afraid of the situation - be it health or other, but rather afraid of the feeling of fear associated with it, has helped me enormously. We can focus on the symptoms of fear and everytime we feel it coming we start to panic. We can even try and control the symptoms by tensing that part of our body - making it even worse. Because fear is the issue – not our symptoms per se, we are able to control them. Our symptoms are out of our control – but we are exhorted ‘do not fear’. Think how many passages of scripture tell us that. It would make a good Bible study to look them all up! We have trouble heeding them as we listen to our feelings rather than using our mind to think rationally. We expect to read Scripture and feel calm, and when we don’t we panic more or think we are not good Christians. We need to think past our symptoms and ignore the unhelpful feelings and learn to remain grounded in God's Word. This can take time (and for me at least has needed much practice!) - but try and see each episode of fearing as another opportunity to learn to lean upon the Lord and take Him at His word in faith. The flesh relies on feelings - the Christian should rely on faith - which may mean going against feelings and that is hard. We need to ask the Lord for help. I'm sure Abraham did not leave Ur without any feelings about the journey ahead of him - into the unknown. He was commended in Hebrews 11 for His faith - not his feelings. He was guided by what he knew of God rather than what his feelings told him. I'm sure he had some pretty tough times when he was no doubt anxious - or tempted to be so! We live in a psycho driven world – which puts self at the front. Even Christians are not clear how the Bible can help us with our problems as we have sold into the ‘counselling’ industry, bypassing our Bibles. Many churches are focused on self - in their worship and palliative 'sermons' that do nothing but stroke the ego: 'God loves you' we say as if that is the whole message. We surely must start with the truth 'For all have sinned..' (Romans 3:23). CBT is very person-centred, rather than God-centred. It makes your happiness life’s goal. This book by Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones has the best description of ‘Biblical Psychology’ for want of a better description, I have found. It is a series of easy to read sermons based on Psalm 73, but in it, he outlines biblical psychology which is hard to find elsewhere. He had an acute God-given ability to apply scripture to our lives with all of its hard questions and difficulties.
Do not either underestimate the health your gut in causing migraines, anxiety, allergies, digestive problems etc...The gut is the seat of all illness (which doctors are not trained to recognise – only to hand out drugs to treat specific symptoms) and the modern diet – especially refined sugar and white flour (gluten in toto) and pasteurised milk products - were not designed for the human body and cause much damage. My anxiety has much lessened since addressing my diet.
Here is info about the GAPS diet that we are using: http://www.gaps.me/index.php http://www.gapsdiet.com/ It is designed as a temporary diet to bring about healing, though as you come off, you will probably not return to what you were eating before as you will have learnt more about food and your body. Animal fats, meat/eggs/fish and veg are the mainstay of eating naturally, with a little fruit/nuts and small amount of unrefined sugar (honey, date syrup, molasses, rapdura), with plenty of probiotic foods to populate the gut with good bacteria – either though fermented foods - or by taking probiotics. Soaking grains makes them more easily digestible – boxed cereals are bad news to health. I learnt to re-do most of my recipes to fit this before we started the diet. This website has been of great help to me in days gone by with plenty of family friendly whole-food recipes, but there are many more out there! https://gnowfglins.com/ 'But I eat healthily,' you may say: the problem is the years of stress/over-the-counter/precription medicines/dieting that take their toll on our gut. In most cases, the gut needs time to heal. There are several ways you can do this - the GAPs diet is quite drastic - do some research.
Do make sure you are taking magnesium in some form. It is in short supply in our diets and helps to keep us calm - in otherwords, a shortage of it can cause (increased) anxiety. I like home-made magnesium oil as it bypasses the stomach where it can cause loose bowels for some if taken orally. Here is my website and info about magnesium oil.
https://mindthegapsdiet.weebly.com/all-posts/magnesium-oil-and-anxiety There are two aspects to consider when we start to worry: the physical and the spiritual.
The physical:
Spiritual:
Do try and keep up daily devotions – I know it’s hard when you cannot sense God’s presence. Resist the temptation to feel a failure as it only keeps you from the Lord – who actually understands how you feel and just wants you to honour Him by casting yourself onto Him – it is the flesh that suddenly wants to return to a doctrine of salvation by works when we feel sinful! You know that thinking: If I was a good Christian I wouldn’t worry so much – what must God think of me? I’ll stay away until I feel more worthy! NO!!! Pour out your heart – tell Him of your struggle with fear - enlist the Spirit's help and continue to pray and read the Bible – even if feelings don’t accompany it. Remember – feelings are not the final word - they are unreliable and can/do deceive.
The need to watch the heart: the feelings of the heart will soon affect the mind if they are left unchecked. Brought out most clearly in the book I linked to above: you feel worried/panic, and hot on its heels, you start to think panicky things and imagine the worst case scenario. Learn not to be affected by the feelings – as I said they are not reliable and fear is very powerful. Learn to put a guard on your heart (remember the breastplate of righteousness!) and be ware of it's subtle ability to lead you astray.
Controlling anxiety in the short term: Here are some practical tips for controlling a bout of anxiety: First, face fear head on – as you feel the feeling start to ‘wash over’ you (that’s how it feels to me) – just freeze your thoughts and stand still. The feeling will mount until its nearly unbearable and then amazingly, it will subside. Now you might have to do this several times on the trot... but over the course of the next few days it will happen less frequently (more on days when I am tired). This will calm your heart and give space for your mind to take control and stop cyclical fear leading to a panic attack. In short- you will learn that fear is only a feeling - and it goes! The trouble is – we leave it too late. If we learnt to say ‘ok – it’s just my feelings running out of control, but it doesn’t change anything I believe about the Lord – He is unchangeable' – the minute we recognised fear mounting, it wouldn’t build up and get us freaked out. When your stomach gripes or your heart is jumping and you start to panic – try thinking: It’s nothing to do with my stomach/heart – it’s just fear and I am in control. Say it repeatedly to help you ignore the feelings until they subside. this is basically not responding to the feelings so that they cannot overwhelm you. In the longer term we need a better strategy - aiming toward not getting to this point of acute anxiety in the first place. We want to grow in faith: Anxious states may come as a result of months of small niggles about life's issues - and they can build up slowly and catch you unawares. Learn to examine your thoughts daily and make sure they are biblical. Make sure you are thinking biblically and not according to the flesh: the Lord is in control (don’t expect feelings to back this up immediately). This will mean studying your Bible, spending time in prayer and learning as much as you can about God and His ways and His dealings with mankind. You know, it is so easy to think that because you are saved, you know about God - and how easy it is to not realise you have heaps yet to learn! As I have said, good teaching is rare - in fact dare I say, we no longer know what good teaching is! If you want a good primer, so to speak of Christian doctrine - I can reccomend the Daily Remembrancer by James Smith. If the Lord sends an illness your way, learn to leave the consequences to Him. I have ultimately had to realise I was afraid of dying after an incident when I was young – our past does affect us now and we can have unbiblical thoughts that we have not yet recognised/changed. Do try and think what might have got you to stress overload point. It might just have been sudden onset physical symptoms – but it could have been a period of uncorrected, wrong thinking about life’s problems/issues that led up to it and made you vulnerable. An out of control heart (the feelings) will lead you to think ungodly things – like distrusting God’s goodness. So do self-examine and repent as necessary – not for feeling afraid – but for acting on the feeling. Self examination when you are feeling a little calmer is good for the long term in helping you to overcome the temptation to give into anxiety easily. It is not sinful to feel wrong things – but how we respond is critical. You can feel all over the place, but still have your mind fixed on the truth. You hear people saying – “my body’s doing crazy things, but I am at peace”. Peace does not necessarily mean ok feelings. It means your mind is stayed on the Lord and His Word. The feelings will then eventually calm down – but in the meantime it can be quite an unpleasant sensation and you need to be strong in the Lord to resist the temptation to respond to them wrongly. I’ll stop there. Please do not think you are alone - many people struggle- especially ladies. Many suffer in silence. Maybe you are one of them and I hope the things in this letter give you some hope. Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones's book needs reading! With Christian love
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Welcome!After studying for an Early Years Specialism degree (B.Ed. Hons), and teaching in mainstream education, I home-educated my own children, after my husband and I were persuaded of the need to take responsibility for bringing up our children 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' (Ephesians 6:4) We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
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