All the Feels: Take Charge of Your Feelings (Instead of the Other Way Around)预览

 Anxiety: When Thoughts Go Blender 

When I’m anxious, my thoughts spin fast and wild, a tornado of worries that tangle, loop in on themselves, and then multiply. In those cyclone-brain moments, I need a Bible-based strategy for clear thinking and for untangling the knot. 

Whether we’re dealing with chronic anxiety or occasional anxiety, we all have to learn to manage anxious thoughts. Let’s consider a key passage: 

The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 

Philippians 4:5-7 (niv)

The Bible’s message is this: Don’t worry. Trust God instead. It’s not that God doesn’t take anxiety seriously (quite the opposite). It’s just that God’s solution is straightforward and simple, one we can easily cling to even when anxiety throws our thoughts into a blender. 

When the anxiety blender fires up, we have one of three choices: feed the fire, remain passive, or interrupt the cycle.

We feed the fire by thinking more anxious thoughts. We talk to reactive people who will help us tunnel into an even deeper rabbit hole. We read and watch things that confirm our darkest fears. (WebMD, anyone? Within two minutes you’ll diagnose a simple headache as a brain tumor, an aneurysm, or gangrene—or possibly all three.)

When we remain passive, we don’t actively feed the anxiety, but we aren’t intentional about resisting it either . . . which basically ensures that the thoughts will take us wherever they want us to go (which is usually a very un-fun place involving panic and misery).

The third option, interrupting the cycle, is the only one that allows relief. The relief may not be perfect, and it may not be immediate, but most of the time we can arrest the escalation. 

But to do that, we have to stop whirling around the house, dervish-style, and slow down to work on our thoughts. As Paul encourages us to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12, niv), so I urge you to work out your anxiety. 

Here are a few practical steps to help you interrupt the cycle:

1. Write your thoughts down. You may find that you’re not worried about eighteen things; you’re worried about one thing eighteen ways.

2. Speak your fears out loud. Fears that sound perfectly rational in your head—likely, even—may be revealed as impostors when spoken aloud to God or a trusted friend.

3. Re-frame thoughts that include “I can’t” and “I could never.” When we say, “I can’t” and “I could never,” we hamstring ourselves and limit God. We pre-decide to fail, surrendering before a single thing has even happened! Not only that, but we also underestimate our own resilience, discount the power of the Holy Spirit, and overlook the never-ending grace of God. 

God takes our anxiety seriously. If we care about it, He cares about it too. But He knows how the story ends. He knows what He can do—and what He will do. When thoughts run wild or life runs amok . . . we are in His hands, and there we will stay.