Beyond the Spiral: Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything Anxiety Tells YouSample

The Struggle Is Real.

We tend to say, “The struggle is real,” as a bit of a joke. But we’ve experienced anxiety, and we know just how terrifying and debilitating that struggle is. We have also watched thousands of young people learn to navigate anxiety, and you can do the same.

Anxiety is an inevitable part of being human. It only becomes a problem when it lingers too long, affects sleep and concentration, leads to physical pain, causes panic attacks and intense fear, feelings of being totally out of control or overwhelmed, or results in obsessive behavior.

Becoming aware of what causes your anxiety is the first step to overcoming it. Your anxiety might be related to any of the following:

• Social events
• Conflict (with friends, family members, or strangers)
• Too much caffeine
• Lack of sleep
• Big life changes
• Reminders from stressful past events
• Fear of the future
• Chaos in the world

It’s also helpful to recognize when anxiety begins to feel like a freefall spiral.

Physically, you may experience racing thoughts, nervousness, panic, increased heart rate, sweating, trembling, fear, trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping, an upset stomach, or feeling like an elephant is sitting on your chest. You may feel like you are going to die.

Anxiety spirals when all the associated physical senses, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors continue to reinforce each other, and this spiral intensifies until something breaks it. The first loop of the spiral is the normal part of the brain’s process. That means your first thought or reaction to something stressful is not necessarily full-on anxiety. It could just be a little bit of worry. After the stressor has gone away, or the logical part of your brain has assessed how to cope with the event, your brain breaks out of the spiral. However, when you start believing the lies anxiety tells you, you spiral, and then you keep spiraling.

If you’ve felt like this, you may have felt dismissed by someone telling you to stop overthinking things because it’s all in your head or giving you simple answers like, “you should just pray more.” That’s left you feeling like you don’t matter—like you’re unsafe, crazy, out of control, and forced to figure this out alone.

Please hear this: God sees you. Anxiety is real, and so are your emotions. But the good news is you don’t have to stay stuck, and you don’t have to believe everything your anxiety is telling you.

So, how do you break free from anxiety’s grip on your life? In this reading plan, we’ll identify five common lies anxiety tells us, the truths we need to say to ourselves instead, and the actions we can take to reinforce those truths and break the anxiety spiral. The good news is that Jesus promised us His peace (John 14:27). You don’t have to believe everything anxiety tells you. There’s hope, and it’s possible to move beyond the spiral.