Once again, Father Mike Schmitz's words have struck a chord this morning. I listen to his homilies on the Hallow app (https://hallow.com/prayers/1028953) and his homily on taking Jesus's yoke resonated with me on so many levels.
Let me first explain that I am by nature an anxious and neurotic person. All of us land on some part of the depression-and-anxiety spectrum at any given point in our lives. Most of the time I consider myself happy and well-adjusted, but for a long while, particularly in my adolescence and even in my 20's, I was a very anxious person. I think this is a common characteristic of most high-functioning people, especially professionals. It’s part of how we got where we are in life. But as I explain to my patients, a little neuroticism and perfectionism can become pathologic when it starts to affect your quality of life, your relationships, and your self-esteem. For example, making lists of things to pack before a flight versus being so nervous about forgetting something that you end up using the bathroom at least ten times between terminals (that’s me). Or studying diligently and daily for an exam all week versus doing nothing else except study while your boyfriend has to be happy with just sitting near you every day with little interaction otherwise (my husband will tell you stories).
Above: my husband and me at my white coat bridging ceremony
My point with just these couple of examples is that the latter examples illustrate how easily our worrying can get out of control. If we didn’t have a little bit of anxiety, it would be way too easy to let so many things slide. We would never accomplish anything, or have any aspirations at all! We all know a person like that, whose hakuna-matata lifestyle has turned them into someone who floats through life, presumably content to work at Starbucks making just enough to pay rent, eat, and pay their pot dealer, going on Tinder dates every weekend without any plans to do anything else in the next five years. These people are ones you may see walking down the street casually, scrolling on their phone; you might wonder where exactly they are going with absolutely no sense of purpose or intention in their gait.
People who hurry around are often busy trying to accomplish something, and usually hurrying comes with worrying. If you are rushing to get somewhere, presumably the destination is important to some purpose. The purpose is often important enough to cause some level of anxiety, hence the hurrying to get there. People who are always rushing around or staying busy without sitting still are usually anxious people who are either worried about getting something done, or trying to distract themselves from their own anxious thoughts.
Mary and Martha immediately come to mind. Jesus comes to visit them and their brother Lazarus. Mary sits by Jesus, enraptured by his words, and Martha is running around the house, presumably cooking and cleaning and doing other hostess-y things for Jesus and probably the other disciples, too. I can imagine doing the same myself, trying to be an attentive hostess to a group of important men who come over unannounced. “Martha, Martha, Martha,” says Jesus. “Mary is doing what is right and important.”
Ok, if I were Martha, I would be pissed. I am trying to keep my home tidy, make sure my guests are comfortable and fed, and I'm doing it all single-handedly while my sister is sitting and chilling out with said guests. I definitely predict that the moment I sit down, one of these men would be like, “Oh hey, can I get a refill on my water?” I utterly empathize with Martha. So how does one not hurry or worry in this scenario?
I'm still pondering that one, but I have learned that on a larger scale, worrying tends to get us nowhere except sleepless and irritable like Martha's frustration with her unmet expectations of her sister, and hurrying often results in making mistakes that just make life harder.
Above: artist's portrayal of Jesus visiting with Mary and Martha
A prominent example of my anxiety getting in my way is the memory of our first family trip to Sri Lanka when I was 21 or so. We were there for about a month, and two of the four weeks were to be spent traveling all over the island via private van, seeing a different city every day. Now this trip was done not long after my dad's second kidney transplant, and after another major surgery in which his surgeons literally had to screw all the bones in his left foot and ankle together. There were a lot of things to consider for him regarding his travel, particularly his mobility and accessibility wherever we went. I learned only upon our arrival in Sri Lanka that for the cross-country leg of our trip, my parents booked NOTHING. When I questioned my dad, he said, “Oh it'll be fine, there will be lots of places to stay.”
I'm sorry, what? We’ll be in a non-disability-friendly foreign country, with a man in a manual wheelchair, and we're just gonna wing it? I was not feeling confident.
I didn’t have much choice but to go with it, and at the time it made me so frustrated and anxious that I was isolating myself from my family, losing my temper, and was easily irritated. And then, when we started our journey, I soon learned that my dad knew what he was talking about. Not only were there hotels and hostels at every turn, but the people were incredibly hospitable. If there were stairs and no ramps, people would literally carry my dad into buildings in his wheelchair. The rooms were clean and comfortable. The food was phenomenal. I suddenly learned that I had no reason whatsoever not to trust my dad's judgement.
“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” - Matthew 6:30
During that trip, I let my anxiety affect my mental state and my relationships because I didn’t trust my dad's plan. Even now, I think it’s understandable why I would not have trusted the hotels run by complete strangers in a country I had never been to. But I should have known better that my dad would make sure we were taken care of, because he always took care of us. However, I let those negative sentiments affect me to the core. I let my anxiety - my fear of the unknown - impact my experience as well as the people around me. That is pathologic worry.
So, what do we do about that? Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat. But generally the cognitive behavioral approach is to flip the script on the catastrophic thinking or negative self-talk and tell yourself the exact opposite until you can bring yourself to believe it. It’s gonna be ok.
I had a patient posit to me: but how do I know it will be ok? My answer, which she hated, was: you don’t. You can never know the future. So then, what? Are you going to walk around in fear every second that something bad will happen? The answer to that is, yes, that is one option, it’s just not very fun. There are people who do that, and they have generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder. The reason it is a “disorder" is because it is pathologic - most of us have developed the mindset that we can only worry about so much without becoming utterly overwhelmed and non-functional. This is an evolutionary adaptation, a coping mechanism, for how we function in a world full of dangers. Our brains can only process so many thoughts and memories at once, so to survive, most of us just block out the thoughts that get in our way. People with GAD have brains that allow those counterproductive thoughts to intrude upon their daily activities. The conversation I have with my patients with GAD or new situational anxiety is, how do we flip the script?
Again, my disclaimer: if you think you have a mental health disorder, please discuss with your doctor and do not take this post as medical advice. At risk of sounding hokey, my personal strategy for coping with anxiety is, as Carrie Underwood classically proclaimed, Jesus take the wheel. Now, I have plenty of 20-somethings in my practice who are not religious and who would not accept this advice, but most of them and my older patients are Christian and take this suggestion to heart. I have noticed that my patients who do not have some sort of faith base do struggle the most. There are actually studies that show that patients who pray or believe in a higher power have better health outcomes in general. Is that because miracles are happening in their lives and they are cured of all their ailments? Absolutely not. But what I can tell you from my own experience is these patients who pray and lay their anxieties and fear of the unknown at Jesus’ feet are able to cope, and this does give them literal vigor. Despite their lung cancer, they have the energy to walk daily with their spouse. They find creative solutions to curbing their cravings and they get their blood sugars down so they can reduce their diabetic medications. They pray, and so their anxiety is pushed aside to make room for their own empowerment over their health and their lives.
Above: I saw this and at least 2 other rainbows at the hospital where I worked the months after I lost my daughter. Within those months, I conceived Henry, my Rainbow Baby, which is the name given to the child born after losing a child. And, in the Bible, the rainbow was God's sign to Noah after the great flood of His love and his promise to never destroy humanity.
Now, as Christians we are all called to evangelize, but there is a time and a place, and the medical office usually is not one of them. With my patients, we end up having a solid conversation about the fact that medication for anxiety and depression can be helpful, but what accompanies medication in a longer-lasting way are healthy coping strategies.
We are obligated to take accountability for our actions, to fulfill our responsibilities to work and family, but the things that cause the most paralyzing fear and anxiety are the things that we cannot possibly predict or control. My advice to select patients, which I have learned to practice daily myself, is simply to accept what I cannot control and offer it to God, because someone once preached that the only things that belong fully to us are our failings and our worries, and so we lay this down in prayer like an offering at an altar. Our weight is lifted when we put our burdens at God's feet, and then we are free to move on. It sounds way too simple. That’s because it is. Because Jesus said his yoke is light, and he wasn’t kidding.
So what do I tell my non-Christian friends and patients? Write down all your worries and fears and sadness on a piece of paper or in a journal. Get it out of your head and onto paper, then crumple it up and throw it away or burn it as a symbol of its destruction both physically and in your heart. Your anxiety does not define you. Worrying does nothing to change the future. Action does. Do what you can, and what you can’t…..well, it’s up to you to decide who or what you give that to. But we all have to practice the art of accepting responsibility for who we are and what we do, and giving the weight of the world - the things that are outside of us - back to the universe. Or God. You pick.