What I Wish the Church Knew About Anxiety.

BY SARAH ANNE HAYES

Sarah Anne Hayes is a believer, writer, and unabashed bibliophile. She spends her days running her small business, planning out her next adventure, belting out show tunes, and hanging out with her incredible fiancé. Sarah believes life is a gift meant to be celebrated, Tuesday morning should be as memorable as Saturday night, and nothing boosts your confidence like the perfect red lipstick.

I was diagnosed with my first anxiety disorder in 2012. It was the week of my older sister’s bridal shower, and there was a lot going on.

On Monday, I noticed that I seemed to be yawning more than usual — every 5 minutes or so. It only increased as the day went on, and by Tuesday afternoon, I was nearly hyperventilating because the yawning was so frequent that I was beginning to feel like I couldn’t breathe. It was then that my coworker stepped in and took me to the emergency room.

That trip resulted in a mandated two days off work and a diagnosis of Situational Anxiety Disorder. Later that year, I experienced my first panic attack. Then my second. A few years after that, I received the additional diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder with Anxious Mood.

In short, this means when there’s a change I can’t control, my anxiety flares. Sometimes it’s minor, sometimes it leads to a full-blown panic attack, sometimes it’s somewhere in between. And often, I have no conscious knowledge of why my anxiety is flaring.

In 2017, I was at Bible study when I felt a panic attack rising. A friend asked if something was wrong, but I brushed him off and excused myself to the front porch, where I spent the next 45 minutes sobbing and hyperventilating while employing every technique I knew to try and calm myself down. 

A few days later, he asked why I hadn’t told him I was having a panic attack. There were a few reasons why, but the biggest was this — most people in the Church don’t know how to talk about anxiety (or mental health in general) well.

As someone who’s dealt with anxiety for nearly a decade, I wish people in the Church had a better understanding of it because they often view it incorrectly and cause harm as a result.

01. Anxiety ≠ Worry

As a writer and a former English major, I believe the words we choose to speak are vastly important. Choosing one word over another isn’t an arbitrary choice, but an intentional one.

If you’ve read the Gospel of Matthew, you are probably familiar with the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

There is so much goodness in these words, but we often look at the word “anxious” and think of it as a blanket term for all anxiety… but not all anxiety is created equal.

There is emotional anxiety that many feel; some are more prone to it than others. I think this anxiety is more aptly described by its synonym — worry. 

In this mental state, you have the choice to stop your thoughts and trust the sovereignty of God, and I believe this is the kind of anxiety Jesus is speaking against, which is why some translations use “worry” in place of “anxious.”

There is also mental anxiety. Like depression or other mental health issues, it is a medical diagnosis. It often involves the brain, but it is not confined to it. 

This kind of anxiety can manifest itself in physical ways like panic attacks or the aforementioned breathing issue, and it is rarely something you can prevent or control.

For people like myself who have anxiety, this is what we deal with. Far from a general worry about something happening in our life, it is a palpable, deep reality where our body and brain often rebel against us and take control for who knows how long.

02. Anxiety ≠ Lack of Faith

When you read Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, He is emphasizing the sovereignty of God. He is saying there is no need for you to worry because God is sovereign and trustworthy, and He will take care of you.

Later in Matthew, we read about Jesus walking on water. In the middle of the night, the disciples see Him walking toward them, and to prove it is Jesus, Peter tells Jesus to call him out on the water.

He does, and after a few steps, Peter focuses on the waves more than He does on Jesus and begins to sink. As Jesus reaches out His hand and pulls Peter up, He says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

This is often what happens when anxiety is discussed in the Church. Because there is rarely a distinction between worry and anxiety, we are quick to equate anxiety with a lack of faith, telling people if they just trusted Jesus more, their anxiety would disappear.

I received my first anxiety diagnosis in 2012. In 2014, I asked the Lord to teach me how to really trust Him because I knew that was an area where I struggled. Since that day, my trust in the Lord has increased more than I could ever express, but my anxiety? It’s still there, just as present as it was on that day in 2012.

Anxiety of this kind is not indicative of a lack of faith, but indicative of the reality that we live in a fallen world. A world that is not what it should be.

It is my genuine hope and prayer that, far from condemning those who deal with anxiety in their daily lives, the Church would rise up and love these people well, praying for healing while coming alongside to comfort and support, until the day when the ailments and struggles of this world are left behind.