Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:6-7 (The Message)
After all these years as a counselor, I have my own ideas on anxiety. I sometimes give clients my definition of anxiety- A self-defeating process that travels with us, which often comes up with reasons why things will not work out for us.
Many of my clients are Christians, and some are quick to attribute anxiety to Satan. While I certainly do not doubt the presence of this evil entity, I also do not ascribe most of the ills we fall into as Satan’s work. Frankly, the less I think and talk about Satan, the better. I give the Devil little attention.
I do agree that anxiety is part of all of our lives- an unwanted traveling partner. Some people struggle with it a great deal; others not very much; all of us, however, have some anxiety in our lives. The fact that it is a self-defeating process is baffling, yet we know it is true. Again, we all carry the seeds of our own destruction within us. That is just part of the life cycle.
My point to my clients is this- whatever we feed will get bigger. That does not mean that we simply ignore anxiety. It does mean that we recognize the presence of anxiety in our lives. In some seasons of our life, it is more prevalent than others. Expecting anxiety to “go away” is not realistic. Embrace the fact that anxiety is a traveling partner. Recognize too that we are the ones driving the bus, not the anxiety. We can learn ways to control anxiety, and thereby have the assurance that when anxiety manifests, we have ways that we can stay in that driver’s seat.
Prayer: Lord, we know that anxiety is a part of life, but we also know that we have the means to overcome that self-defeating process, Amen
Reflections of a Counselor 