Anxiety is not fatal and it goes away eventually. However, it’s an awful feeling and one no person wants to experience again.

The book of Psalms has so many prayers that help in the midst of an attack.

“God, You are my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? You are the strength of my life, of whom (or what) shall I be afraid? When the wicked (anxiety, my word) come against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, (fears, my word) they stumbled and fell. Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear!”Psalm 27:1-3 (anything in parenthesis I added).

“I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.” Psalm 34:4-7

While I pretty much have not experienced clinical depression in the last twenty years, anxiety still creeps up on me. My very favorite Psalms is 46:10:

“Be still and know that I am God.”

This verse reminds me that I need to STOP. I need to take a few minutes and examine my previous thinking. I need to find it’s source. I need to be reminded that God is God. I can give it over to him.

Anxiety can be seen as a wake-up call. Something is bothering you. So don’t be afraid of your anxiety. Your anxiety is telling you that something is frightening for you. You feel fear and more than likely you don’t know right away what it is. It’s called free-floating anxiety and it feels awful.

Just don’t make it worse by spinning your wheels. Anxiety is almost always characterized by rapid physical symptoms, as we learned yesterday. So because everything is so revved up, slow things down.

Slow down your breathing. Slow down your thinking. Walk slower. Talk slower. Pretend you are being held by a parent who is helping you control yourself. Believe it not, as simple as these suggestions are, they do work. Look back at Psalms 46:10.

“BE STILL”

Ask yourself, “What am I afraid of? Fear and anxiety go hand-in-hand. When we are anxious our “fight or flight” mechanism goes into overdrive as was created to do when faced with real danger. Except this time there is no real danger, only the feeling of fear. Cortisol in released into your body because your body doesn’t know the difference so it responds as it should.

The next time anxiety has you in its grips, examine your thinking over the day. For me, I often feel anxiety is my husband is the least bit ill. I fear greatly that I will lose him. Even if it’s a cold.

It’s irrational.

It’s not based on anything but my fear.

So I run through the list of how many times I’ve worried and felt anxious and how for all those times, there have only been a couple where I had any real cause for concern. I have to remind myself that I’m a Christian and I need to trust God.

I usually try to divert my attention to something else until I feel better. I might do some deep breathing or go for a walk.

I don’t try to deny my fear. We can’t, and shouldn’t, deny how we feel but we should certainly challenge how we feel when our feelings are so irrational.

There is such a thing called meta-fear. Do you know what that is?

It’s fear of feeling fear. Let me say it another way, we aren’t so much afraid of what we think we are as much as we are afraid of feeling the fear. In other words, if we could admit to the fear, but not have the feeling of fear, we’d probably do fine.

Tomorrow I will share one of my go-to Bible verses that says exactly this same thing. I refer to it often.

God bless and I hope this is an anxiety-free day for you.

The post, “When you are afraid of fear. What?”. appeared first on thegiftofdepression.