The Anxiety Signal Pt. 1: 3 Steps to Heal Anxiety | [RTH Episode #50]

Hey friend! We’ve been working behind the scenes for a while to bring this to you, and we’re so excited to finally start this journey together.

Josh & Cassie are back behind the mic to kick off a brand new series on The Road to Happiness Podcast:

👉 The Anxiety Signal

Anxiety is something so many of us face, especially as Christians trying to make sense of faith, fear, and what’s actually going on inside of us.

In this first episode of the series, Josh & Cassie lay the foundation for everything to come in this series by answering the big questions:

• What is anxiety, really?
• What does the Bible actually say about anxiety?
• If anxiety isn’t a sin… then what is it?
• What’s happening in your body when anxiety shows up?
• 3 practical tools you can start using today to respond to anxiety in a healthier way

If you’ve ever felt confused, stuck, or even ashamed of your anxiety, this episode is designed to bring clarity, relief, and a new way forward.

This series is an invitation.

An invitation to stop fighting your anxiety… and start understanding it.
To move from shame → clarity → healing.

Key Takeaways:

• Anxiety is not your enemy, it’s a signal 
• You don’t have to approach anxiety with shame 
• Understanding how your body and faith can work together 
• 3 steps you can take today to improve your anxiety
• This is just the beginning of a deeper healing journey

Get To Know Josh & Cassie: https://joshcassie.com/

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🌴 Our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/joshcassie

🎧 Listen to the episode and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next in The Anxiety Signal series!

And when you’re ready for deeper support, visit MyCounselor.Online to get matched with a counselor who can walk with you into True Happiness. We're cheering you on friend!

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Thank you for joining us on The Road To Happiness! We're cheering you on as you Mature into True Happiness!

Transcript

Episode Trailer

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey friend, do you feel exhausted from feeling on edge all day long? What are some of the common things that you hear said about anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

It's overwhelming. It feels ethereal. It seems to come on out of nowhere. It can be really debilitating to functioning in daily life, and people feel stuck. They're just trying to figure out how to manage the symptoms in order to be able to function.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

We are kicking off a new series around anxiety. What is anxiety? How does it work in our brain? What do we think about it from the scriptures? How do we understand it? Yeah, there's just a lot of misconceptions around anxiety. What if your anxiety is trying to tell you something really important and that's why it just won't go away? Anxiety is more than the symptoms. It's a signal. It's indicating that something needs our attention.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

God really wants this healing and freedom for you. He wired this into your body for that perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Stick around to learn about the anxiety signal and how God has wired information into your nervous system to help you navigate things in life that you don't want to ignore.

Episode Intro

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I'm Josh Spurlock. I'm a licensed professional counselor with a degree in biblical languages. I also developed a model of therapy called neuroscience-informed Christian counseling and founded the faith-based therapy company My Counselor Online. Every month, my team and I help thousands of people mature into their true self and experience true happiness. We have a 93% success rate and 4.8 stars on Trustpilot. It just works. And in this podcast, we share the secrets we've learned to true happiness, the abundant life that Jesus spoke of in John 10.10. So thanks for joining us. Let's learn something together. We are kicking off a new series around anxiety. We're going to take several episodes and just really deep dive into the ins and outs of what is anxiety? How does it work in our brain? What do we think about it from the scriptures? How do we understand it? You know, how are we to navigate the experience of anxiety in our body and relationship? Like we're going to cover all the things and talk about all the things. And we're going to do it from this neuroscience-informed perspective, where we can understand how the scriptures apply, but we can really understand what science has to say about it also. And it turns out the two are very complementary. Imagine that. If Jesus is the designer of the nervous system and the author of scripture, just as we'd expect, the two work together really well. So in this episode, we're going to dive into what exactly is anxiety, what is it really? We're going to look at some highly effective approaches for managing anxiety. And we're going to look specifically at three of our top things that you can do today to begin engaging with anxiety differently and better in your life and world. I'm joined today by my wife and lovely co-host, Cassie Spurlock. And yeah, let's dive in. So

Anxiety Is Misunderstood

SPEAKER_02 3:38

anxiety is pretty misunderstood. I mean, it's it's universal in people's experience. Like everybody experiences anxiety.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Um, but even like that fact, people don't understand. Like sometimes people think that uh anxiety is a sin. Sometimes think anxiety is in itself a disorder. Yeah, there's just a lot of misconceptions around anxiety. So I'm curious, you know, as you navigate with your friends and just, you know, talk with folks, what are some of the common things that you hear said about anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

I think some of the biggest things that I hear is that it's overwhelming. It feels kind of ethereal. It seems to come on out of nowhere. It can be really debilitating to functioning in daily life. And people feel stuck. They're just trying to figure out how to manage the symptoms in order to be able to function to do what they need and want to in their daily lives.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Yeah, super mysterious.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

It's like the sense of like, I don't really know what it is or where it comes from. It just like comes out of the blue.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah, and it feels scary because you don't know when it's gonna hit. It feels like your body is betraying you. Like, I'm trying to do everything right. Why do I feel like this again?

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yeah. And uh, you know,

Is Anxiety A Sin?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

sometimes we've getting the message that, you know, it's a sign of spiritual weakness.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. There's this thought of like, if I was a better Christian, I would just cast my cares on the Lord, and then I would feel great. If I really believed, then, you know, when Jesus said, take my yoke, my yoke is easy, my burdens light, then I could receive that for myself. And because I can't receive that for myself, I'm clearly not a great Christian. I've got something messed up in my life, which is just so tragic, it's so sad because it's actually not that at all.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah. I it's an example of how the enemy uh distorts the scriptures in order to shame people, right? Scriptures tell us he's the accuser of the saints. No, he likes to come at us just like he did Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

I know, that's what I was literally thinking. I'm like, he literally came to Jesus with scripture.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah, it's it's what he does. You know, he likes to you know take and twist and distort scripture and use it to bring shame. And sometimes well-meaning Christians are like cooperative with him in that process. They don't even realize that the they're trying to teach the scriptures, but the way they're going about doing it actually is bringing about shame. And it takes a verse, you know, like we, you know, would read in uh Colossians, you know, um, in an or in First Peter, you know, around you know, bringing our anxieties to Christ because he cares for us. Yeah right? His invitation for us to um to be with us in the things that create fear because of his care for us, and it turns it into a weapon. It turns it into this shaming thing. Oh, oh, you're supposed to be able to cast your cares, you're not doing that. And so clearly you suck as a Christian, like you're failing in some way. And and what's meant to be a life-giving invitation becomes like this accusation of shame.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And then we feel so embarrassed and so small that we don't even do the one-anothering well. We don't even go to our friends and say, I'm really struggling with this thing because we're like, well, if if I couldn't give it to Jesus, then I'm not gonna tell my friends about it.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah, totally. It the shame around it causes us to hide and keeps us isolated from actually the very things that God has given us to be the antidote to the anxiety that's there. That's all part of because of the misconception of not really understanding what anxiety is.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, I feel excited to jump into that because it's like let's peel back the curtain and get a sense for like actually what God meant.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Right, which is a big deal. Because there, you know,

Jesus, Anxiety, & Your Nervous System

SPEAKER_02 8:24

we believe in intelligent design. Right? We believe that that Jesus designed the nervous system, that it functions the way that it functions, not by accident, not by random events that shaped our nervous system, but from an intentional plan that fearfully and wonderfully made us in a way that you know is incredible. And anxiety is actually part of that design. Like that's I know that seems weird

Pain As A Signal

SPEAKER_02 8:57

to folks.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

I think immediately when you say that, I think about pain. I think about how it's a warning system for our body. Like if we touch a hot stove, we know immediately to pull back. And anxiety's kind of like that.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

It totally is. Like pain, anxiety is a kind of pain, it's a kind of psychological pain that we experience that, and just like all other kinds of pain, it is information to us, you know, and it's really important information to pay attention to. You know, sometimes we uh miss the value that comes from pain in general.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, right, because we're just trying to get away from it.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Right. It's just unpleasant. We want to get away from it, and we want to make it stop, right? Which is totally understandable. But we miss the if we don't get curious about the pain, we actually miss the message in the pain that God has wired in to be helpful to us and useful for us. Yeah. If I if I reach out and I touch a hot stove, my skin and the nervous system is gonna send pain signals up to my brain to let me know that damage is occurring to my skin. And if I ignore that or somehow block off, or I didn't feel pain, I wouldn't know the damage was being done, and I would just continue to leave my hand on the stove in a way that created tremendous pain or destruction to the tissue. And so the pain is a gift because it indicates there's a problem that draws our attention to that problem in a way that gives us opportunity to do something about it, and it's really important, and it also helps us, it tells us something about our environment that's contributing to the pain and causing the pain. It informs us as to action that needs to be taken in order to address the source and cause of the pain. And so it's a teacher, it's a teacher, and it's super helpful. And anxiety is a lot like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah. Which it feels it feels counterintuitive because it feels bad. Like when we're experiencing it, our body feels overwhelmed, clammed up. Like I think of it almost like barely keeping our nose above the surface of water because our system is so alerted. And so yeah, I just think it's it can be hard to think of it as a teacher. And that's why I think as a narrative, we have we gotta get away from this, we gotta fix it, we gotta figure out um just make it stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talking about um not paying attention to the signal and how that could cause us damage. You know, like sometimes we in order to try to fix it, like we numb out, or we turn to alcohol or drugs, or we turn to doom scrolling, we turn to all these places. We think we're trying to regulate and get back to like homeostasis, but we're actually just masking something that God intended to give us information so that we could heal or we could um have access to information so that we can do something that will actually fix it from the root.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Yes. So I mean that's uh if the

The Anxiety Signal Explained

SPEAKER_02 12:32

first uh paradigm shift that I want to offer you, that we want to offer you is to think differently about anxiety and really pain as well, but we're specifically narrowed in on anxiety. I want you to start thinking about anxiety as a signal, uh not just a symptom.

unknown 12:54

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Signal versus symptom. Symptom, you know, we just want to make the symptom go away. Are there symptoms of anxiety? Yeah. Like there's, you know, increased blood pressure, there's pupil dilation, there's uh increased heart rate, you know, there's changes in breathing, there's changes in perspiration, like there's muscle tension, like you know, we'll we'll deep dive in a future episode as to what's all happening in the nervous of what's going on. But those are the physiological symptoms of anxiety. But anxiety is more than the symptoms. It's a signal, it's indicating that something needs our attention. And you wouldn't take the batteries out of a smoke alarm, right? Smoke alarm is a signal. It's alerting to potential danger that exists in your house, that the house could be on fire, might not be on fire, might just be cookies, you know, that are you know been left. Not that that ever happens at our we can't name which of our children um maybe burn stuff the most because that will be a big thing. There is one that I'm offender. There is there is one who tends to burn more things than others who will name remain unnamed.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

There is one that I say, did you set a timer?

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Is it can you hear the timer you said?

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yeah, you wouldn't you wouldn't take the batteries out of a smoke alarm when it's going off without understanding why it's going off in the first place. But that's exactly what we tend to do when it comes to anxiety. Like we don't, if we don't understand that it's a signal, then we think it's just a symptom. And our all of our effort goes into how do I make that symptom go away?

Fake Joy & Coping Mechanisms

SPEAKER_02 14:45

How do I make the smoke alarm noise go off? And so we look for all kinds of different, we don't fake joy, we call it, to try to mask or filter or muffle the obnoxious alarm because it's highly unpleasant to the body, highly unpleasant to the ears.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Even the things that are not fake joy, but are just like regulation techniques that are like slowing down, deep breathing, grounding in a space, um, haven't, whatever it is. We just we're looking for something rather than tuning into the signal to figure out why the signal is there.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Yeah, there's a there's like a bad, better best.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Right? Like there's things that we can turn to that are just destructive. Yeah. We can we can turn to alcohol, we can turn to drugs, we can turn to uh pornography, we can turn to workhaulism, we can turn into shopping and doom scrolling, we can turn to eating. Like there's lots of different things. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

There's the never-ending amount of opportunity of unsuper unhelpful things.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, all these things we call fake joy that can be aimed at trying to regulate the nervous system and to, you know, uh mediate the symptoms of that anxiety, uh, which are in and of themselves destructive and create problems.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Right. Not because necessarily all of them by themselves are problem. Eating isn't isn't a bad thing, like we all need to eat. Compulsive eating as a means of regulating anxiety, that's pretty unhelphy and unhelpful. And you know, you excessive consumption of alcohol in order to regulate the nervous system and the angst that exist there, pretty unhelpful. Other kinds of activities that are high risk or you know costs our relationships, family, you know, these are destructive. But like you said, you know, not everything that we do that is um only moderately helpful is bad. Like there's there's value in regulating the nervous system. There's value in box breathing, there's value in exercise, there's value in um, you know, the various kinds of meditation or journaling or creative activities. Yeah, to help mediate anxiety. All of those are good.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

But if we do that instead of Yeah, they're just not addressing instead of getting curious about what the signal is telling us and following that signal back to the things that need our attention, then we get stuck in this perpetual cycle of trying to manage the symptoms, and we never really find freedom because God designed the system to keep sounding the alarm until the thing it's drawing attention to is addressed.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, it's just a band-aid.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Right. It's just a band-aid.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

And as life goes on, more things build on it, and it just gets more and more and more overwhelming and hard to manage through those techniques.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Right.

Getting Curious

SPEAKER_02 18:15

So, what do we want to do instead? Right? If we're if we're not going to just try to manage symptoms, if we're not just gonna like try to muffle the smoke alarm, what do we do instead? So first thing we want to offer you, let's think about it differently, anxiety as signal instead of just symptom. Second thing we want to offer you is the hopeful response to that signal instead of fake joy or numbing, is to get curious about that signal, to not just try to silence it, but to get curious about why it's going off and be willing to follow that anxiety to what it's directing your attention to. You know, if you are in a commercial building and the smoke alarms are going off, there's a fire panel. If you go to the fire panel, it has zones and it will light up and show you which zone the smoke alarm is going off on, and it directs your attention to where the problem exists. Jesus wired this beautiful system in our body that not only sounds an alarm, but if we will give our attention to it, it will actually lead us to the zone, to the place that is in need of care in some sort of a way.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Uh when we were thinking about this episode, I was thinking about uh being at the gym and how sometimes I'm at the gym and I'm doing some exercise, and I'm like, I don't think this is doing anything, but man, I hate it. I'm like, I gotta get away from it. I wanted to suck. I should probably just quit this exercise because I can't tell what it's doing.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

It just made me think of that, how it's so similar. But then I tell myself, okay, I need to slow down. I need to take a breath, I need to focus. I know that because I'm uncomfortable, something is happening. Let me tune in. I can trust that I'll be able to figure out what is happening. Yeah. And I feel like anxiety is like that as we're following that feeling and that, you know, getting curious. What when you talked about what can we do?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

I was like, this, we'll do this.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Because for me, that is like a helpful tool of getting curious, taking a pen and paper and sitting before the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

For sure. Yeah, there's

Tools For Right Now

SPEAKER_02 20:57

there's a lot of things we're going to deep dive in in this series. And so, but it's important to me that I we give you some really practical things that you can make use of. You know, we want to just be like, stay tuned. Yeah, today we do want you to stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Listening about anxiety, because you care about it. Let us help you.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, we do want you to stay tuned because we are going to deep dive in more, and it is going to be helpful the more you learn, the more you understand, the more equipped you are to be able to navigate your own anxiety, because we all experience anxiety. It's not a uh select few. When we talk about anxiety disorders, we're talking about anxiety that is uh experienced to an extent that it's really debilitating.

unknown 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Right? That it is um creates distress in a way that inhibits the ability to function well within life. And that's what elevates anxiety into an anxiety disorder, the level. Of disruption.

Jesus & Anxiety Revisited

SPEAKER_02 22:01

A hundred percent of humans experience anxiety and we need it.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah, it's God's wiring in our system for our benefit.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Right. It's a signal. It's not a problem to eliminate. And we would be in bad shape if we if it were possible to eliminate all anxiety. Yeah. And those that kind of drug themselves to a place of trying to completely zero out anxiety in their life creates real problems in their life because anxiety plays an important role. But we want to understand what it is. We want to know how to use that information to benefit our life.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

And when we do that, our anxiety stays at a low level that we have.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, because we just tackle it when the symptom comes up. We just get curious and lean into it so that we can figure out what's going on and we can do something about the underlying thing that's going on.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Right. It's like your smoke alarm should not be blaring in your house all the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

If it is, you should check the oven.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

You should there's a problem. Safety. Something, something is wrong. And sometimes sometimes the problem can be with the smoke alarm.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, sometimes it's the batteries.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

But the vast majority of the time it's not the smoke alarm. The smoke alarm is doing its job and sounding the alarm. And we get it's a really dangerous place within our society when we just assume that there's something wrong with the smoke alarm and try to take the batteries out of it instead of listening to it and curious. So when you address the things that are causing the alarm to go off, the alarm doesn't go off all the time.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Yeah. And that's nice.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah. Nobody wants to live in a house where the smoke alarm is going off all the time. It's maddening.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Which is what anxiety disorders are like.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

The smoke alarm is going off all the time, right? It's maddening. And it awares on our biochemistry in our body and leads to depression over time. That chronic cortisol levels and that chronic erosion at our brain chemistry and fatigue and adrenal fatigue that happens, you know, creates depression within our body, um, and a host of other problems and difficulties that come up. And so it's it's miserable living with the smoke alarms going off all the time.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

It's not the life that Jesus wants for you.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

But he's not disappointed or angry at people because the smoke alarm is going off in their house.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Hear that. Jesus is not disappointed or angry at you because the smoke alarm's going off in your body that he wired into your body. His heart is one of compassion, and he's put that mechanism there to alert you to some things that need attention. And he wants for them to receive care. That's what the scriptures say: to cast our anxieties on him because he cares for us. That he wants us to find and be able to turn to him and the mechanisms that he's put in place to care for the things that that is alerting us to, so that we can be whole and that we can be healthy, that we can mature into our true self and experience true happiness. Like that's his heart for us.

Practical Tips

SPEAKER_02 25:26

So let's talk about the practical things. Yeah, let's get practical. What can we take away today? What can we start diving into today? So three things. The first thing is many three.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

This many That reminds me of my grandpa, my pea-pa. No, it doesn't remind me of Matt. Used to always go to restaurants, and when the hostess would ask how many for the table, he'd say, This many four. And it would always be so confusing. But I just thought he was He wasn't on real time. I know, I just loved it so much.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

All right,

Tip 1: Regulate

SPEAKER_02 26:02

three. So the first is regulate. Right. The first thing that we need to do is if the the sound alarm is blaring, like it's hard to like figure out what to do because your eyes are crossed.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Right, you're just here.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Yeah. And so uh we can regulate the nervous system, which is like acknowledging the alarm. So in a commercial fire system, when you go to the fire panel, which shows you which alarms are going off, the fireman can acknowledge the alarm that's there. So you can push a button that says, I acknowledge this is here. It doesn't stop the alarm, like the light is still flashing, showing that there's a problem in that zone, but it will silence the the buzzer that's right.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

It'll make it so you can tackle it without the added chaos.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Yeah. And it's not ignoring, it's not like the job is done for the firefighter once they acknowledge the alarm. The job is not done. No, the work is just beginning, but it's an initial step of saying, I see you. I'm paying attention to you. And that's what this regulation looks like. So practically, that regulation could look at uh noticing and naming out loud the experience.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And we want to name it out loud because it goes through different parts of our brain. We can hear it out loud. And it then it's not like so ethereal. It helps to ground us and be like, okay, this is what I'm feeling. This is where I'm feeling it in my body, this is what it feels like.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

The process of, and this is a little nerdy, I know, but the process of uh noticing and naming uh our anxiety, there's this little part of the frontal cortex over here on the left hemisphere.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Called number three.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

No, I don't know. Yeah. Uh where language exists. This is the part of our brain that processes language. And this frontal part of our brain, when we are activated at high levels with anxiety, this part goes dark.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Yeah, it just starts to shut down that, and we run off these deeper parts of the brain in here, which we'll talk about more later. And so these parts in here are running the show, this part across here, which is where we are able to be curious and ask questions. And so the the process of noticing and naming what we're experiencing, like man, I feel the tension in my chest, I feel my heart beating, my palms are sweaty, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

My stomach's clinched up.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Yeah, we're noticing what's the anxiety, the symptoms and the anxiety in our body, and we're forcing it through this part of our brain that languages it, which brings and keeps this part of our brain online. Then that simple act of noticing and naming by itself helps to regulate our anxiety. And so that's a just a very simple basic thing that you can do. I notice myself feeling angsty. Yeah, I feel it in my body. Here's where I notice it in my body, and just naming it out loud to yourself, languaging it helps activate and keep online this part of your brain up here, which helps to regulate your nervous system. Also, breathing, right? Being able to slow down our breathing. We'll talk about it in detail in the next episode, but anxiety is a function of the sympathetic uh nervous system, and it activates a lot of automatic things happening within our body as part of this alarm system that's going off. Um, one of the things that it activates is it changes our breathing, causes our breathing to be rapid and shallow in nature. Um and our breathing is a unique part of the sympathetic or the auto autonomic nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

We're getting science-y. I know. Sciencey terms here.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

So the autonomic nervous system, you know, is what runs the things that we don't consciously think about. Right. You don't make your heart beat, you don't make yourself, you know, necessarily breathing, you don't digest food. Yeah. These are all things that happen, your nervous system does on its own without you having to put any like conscious thought into it. But our lungs are very interesting in that they uh can be both automatic and manual.

unknown 31:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah, so we have some control over our breathing.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Right. Like we can switch it from automatic over to manual.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

And that actually influences these other systems because as we slow our breathing down, we slow our heart rate down. It it responds to it.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

Right. So, you know, well, you and I sitting here right now, we're not thinking about breathing, we're just breathing, our body is doing it.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

No, I'm thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Oh, are you? Okay, well, uh, yeah, I'm not. So uh, but if you take and switch that control over and begin to think about your breathing intentionally, and you begin to, with your lungs, send a signal to the rest of the autonomic nervous system that the house is not on fire.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

We're not gonna die. There isn't a a threat, imminent threat to life in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah, but your your logical part of your brain knows. It knows that there's not. But so just like you wouldn't want to be trying to do that if there was an imminent threat. You know, if you were in a place with an actual smoke alarm, you wouldn't be like, mmm, let's breathe.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah. The logical part of your brain isn't fully functioning when you're in that elevated sympathetic response, which is part of why noticing the naming helps bring this back online in a way that helps to regulate and also allows you to intentionally take control of that breathing in a way that you can either use like box breathing, where you're like kind of imagining the four sides of a box and breathing in and breathing out in equal measure with the sides of the box. Um, or what you saw me do a minute ago, we call resistance breathing. That's what I do a lot of, where you just take a deep breath. You don't have to blow your cheeks out like that. You can just like parse your lips.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

I really like the breathe in for four, hold it for a second, then breathe in again. You can get a deeper breath. I I don't know. When I discovered that, it brought me a lot of joy.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Yeah, yeah. There's a number of different things that you can breathe, and you can find lots of videos on the internet that demonstrate these techniques. And they're super helpful when it comes to that first step of just regulating the nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

They're great for regulating the nervous system, but we don't want to stop there.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Right. It is just the first step. So regulation is the first thing. Regulation helps bring this part of our brain back online. And in doing so, it

Tip 2: Organize

SPEAKER_02 33:55

gives us the ability to do the second thing. And the second thing is we want to organize, right? We want to organize our experience a little bit. Uh, organize is, you know, maybe a fancy way of seeing, you know, start to make sense of our experience. And so, how do we go about doing that? Well, Cassie demonstrated earlier, she's like minute. Yeah, journaling.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

I love a journal.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Yeah, journaling is a great way to begin to organize your experience. And so grabbing a pen, paper, I'll use this remarkable tablet, switched over to a few years ago. So this is my version of paper. Um uh and so I'll do my kind of journaling in this thing. Yeah. Um, but it's it's actually helpful. There's some research behind kind of doing things by hand versus kind of typing or typing like this, or even voice prompting into a phone. That the motor process involved in activating the language part of our brain and then moving that information back and forth as we reflect on what we're feeling, right hemisphere, language, left hemisphere, and then the motor, uh, we got motor speech over here, um, and then we have our motor activity up here. Okay. And so as we engage in it's right up here, right? So as we engage in the writing, it's moving the information around different parts of our brain in a way that helps to um uh integrate our brain experience. It raises awareness um internally of the experience that we're having and helps connect the dots. You know, as we move the information around, it helps the brain connect the dots of our experience. And all that helps us organize and make sense.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Makes me think of like when our kids were little, I would take them to like these little creative science centers, and you could put all these like little turning things up on a wall, and then you drop a marble in, and it'd be like ping, ping, ping, and then it would eventually come out in the bottom in this little category, and that's kind of like what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

That's basically what's happening in your brain.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

What's going on? It needs to ping around a bit.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

It needs to ping around a little bit. So slowing down with a notepad and noticing and naming your experience, because the question is okay, what do I what do I write?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

What do I write notepad? Start with just noticing and naming the things that we did earlier verbally, where you're saying notice the uh symptoms of the anxiety in your body, notice your breathing, notice your muscle tension, notice your heart rate, notice all the different stuff. Write it down. Notice what's going on around you, right? Where were you? What's happening? What was the context? What were the cues you know that were maybe cueing your nervous system? You know, what smelled like smoke? You may not know initially, but just asking the question helps us begin to tune into the signal and follow the signal. Question that I like to ask is you know, if if I could hold a microphone up to this anxiety, now I hold it here, I feel a lot of my anxiety, I feel tension in my chest, and I feel it in my face and my neck and whatnot. And it's if I could hold a microphone up to that, what would it be saying? If I could allow it to speak, what would it be saying?

SPEAKER_01 37:29

And I feel very strongly as we were thinking about this. I think as we tap into these things and we're we're holding up this microphone and we're asking, you will be surprised what comes out. And so I just want to give permission on the front end to let yourself hold loosely whatever it is that comes out. Because if we could think of it and know what it was ahead of time, we would already know it. It's this slowing down and getting curious and letting God's system that He wired into us bring forth what it is, what is actually going on deeper. There have been so many times that I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. How could that be what is actually going on? But like I also know that it was important for me, and it is important for me, and that's why my body's holding on to it. So I want to get compassionate. You know, there's sometimes this initial hit of I can't believe that's what that's what comes up. But trust that what comes up is important and is legitimate and don't dismiss it, even if it seems super weird or super random. Like one time this wasn't a big trauma, this was not a thing. It's like it was, it was because your body held on to it and is telling you about it right now. So I think if you've never like done any of this, getting curious and like had the experience of your body bringing up these interesting things, you might dismiss it or not think that it is something important. So I just want to say that on the front end and like um solidarity on the weirder it is, because that's been so real for me. I'm like, that's weird. But it's good. It's so good.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Yeah. I appreciate you like you're naming one of the many things that could be behind that anxiety. You know, like sometimes there's uh wounds, you know, the experiences that we've had in life that shouldn't have happened but did happen, that left an impression on our nervous system. And those wounds are still need to heal. We didn't have what we needed at the time to process those experiences, so they stored in our nervous systems as wounds. And the anxiety is the triggering of those wounds, and it's so that when we follow it, we follow back to that. You know, at other times it can be uh about more uh real-time kinds of experiences that we're having. And the anxiety is alerting us to a threat or a potential threat within our environment. Yeah. And so it's warning us that you know something is not okay in a given situation.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

Um, sometimes it is uh, you know, a number of different, you know, maybe it could be positive feelings, could be joy. And sometimes joy is super vulnerable, and we can have anxiety in response to joy starting to come up. So there's there's lots of things. And you know, your advice, Cassie's advice, to um not judge what comes up, but to engage with compassion. Compassionate curiosity is the key word here. Being able to engage without judging what comes up. And this is a prayerful process. Like when I sit down with my notepad and I'm working through what's coming up with me, I'm asking the Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth. I'm asking him to help me be aware of what my nervous system, that in his wisdom he designed and the gift of this information that he wired in, help me make sense of it. Help me hear the message that I'm supposed to be hearing and to have wisdom about what to do with that and where to go with it and what I need to have take place. And so this is a very um God-centered process. It's God-centered because God designed the nervous system. Anxiety is a system that He thought of and created and wired into every one of us. And so when we pay attention to it, we are paying attention to the wisdom that God wired into our bodies. And it's a spirit-led process, right? That we're inviting the Holy Spirit to lead us in making sense of the signals that we're getting from the system that Jesus designed into our nervous system. And so, this is not an alternative to the scriptures of the Bible. This is the practical practice of what the scriptures talk about when it talks about bringing these things to Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

That's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

You never wonder what that meant in how to practically do that. This is the process for doing that. And it's so key because, you know, like Cassie was saying, you know, these things are not gonna necessarily make sense when they come up to this part of your brain, which is our conscious brain where we're thinking about it, because the anxiety is triggered and controlled from these systems inside our brain, which are subconscious. Like you're not thinking about these, these are running in the background. You know, they're if you think about on your phone, you know, there are systems and processes operating in the background of your phone, not just the app that you're looking at or playing at on your phone. And so when we are getting curious and we are uh making space for meaning, we are connecting the dots between what's happening in here up to the front part of our, which is the conscious awareness and analysis part of our brain. So we're moving content from internally that's triggering these responses in us up into our conscious awareness. And that's what we're doing when we're organizing the experience and taking time with a notepad to kind of write these things out. So the three things, right? Regulate, organize, and

Tip 3: Share

SPEAKER_02 44:03

the last thing is share that God designed us to co-regulate with other humans, to bear one another's burdens, to sort through and find healing in relationship. And so there's a limit to how much work you're going to be able to do on your own. Because God didn't design you to heal on your own. He designed us to live in community, to be in relationship with him and his body. And we cannot be whole without doing so. You know, James has a very interesting thing. He talks about confession so that we might be healed, right? That's any of you sick, go to the elders and confess and have them lay hands on you and pray for you that you might be healed. So there's this connection between confession and healing that we see take place. And we think about that sometimes in a medical metaphysical sense. You know, it's like, oh, if you're confessing sin so that you can have that sin kind of uh be forgiven and address, and that can lead to um healing and taking place. And in Jesus' ministry, there was a lot of forgiveness and healing um connections where he would say, you know, your sins are forgiven and get up and walk. Yeah. You know, he would he would tie those things together. And so we're not saying that everything that this process unveils is unconfessed sin. That's not the message that I'm communicating. But there's this connection between bearing one another's burdens and this idea of confessing one to another, and that the sharing of our life, both in the struggles, whether it's sin or not sin, but just the struggles and the pain and the heartaches and the heaviness of life, that the mechanism of healing that God uses is relationship. That it requires interaction with other nervous systems, with other humans. There's a lot of nerdy science that we have to confirm that today, that we'll dive into some in future episodes, where we can now see through brain imaging scans what happens in those burying one another moments that then facilitates processes within the brain that don't happen in isolation, uh, but only happen in connection with other humans and other nervous systems. Um, but you're not going to be able to fully resolve what's triggering your anxiety in isolation. And you're gonna have to, in part, take my word for it today. Uh, next episode, we're gonna get really nerdy and kind of dive into why that's true in some of the science and the physiology of it and the scripture of it. And so we're gonna unpack that in future episodes. But you have to take it for my word today that uh you're not gonna be able to resolve what the anxiety is signaling and leading to in isolation. It's gonna require allowing some others in. So you need to share with someone who loves you. Yeah, somebody safe. Regulate, spend some time with your notepad, organizing a bit of your experience, and share what you're finding, what you're discovering in that curiosity journaling, organizing place with someone who loves you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Share it with we talk about iron sharpeners, we talk about your sage circle, you know, iron sharpeners being the people that are like parallel in the journey with you. They're in similar seasons of the journey with you. And then we talk about your sage circle, you know, people that are mentors, people that are further than you in the journey, that can, you know, just impart some wisdom into you that can just say, I've been there, you know, can hold it with you in a different way. And sometimes if you're sharing it and, you know, the people that you're sharing it with are feeding it back to you, and you feel seen and you know that they're holding it with you, but it's it's still not resolving. Like you've you've tackled it yourself, you've shared it with a friend, you've shared it with your mentor, and still then you might need some professional help. You might need a counselor, somebody that has training that can help come alongside you and dig into it with you and just help unearth what's actually going on under that alarm with you. Because God really wants this healing and freedom for you, He wired this into your body for that purpose.

Bringing It All Together

SPEAKER_02 48:58

All right, let's recap as we wrap up today. All right, so uh anxiety is not just a bunch of symptoms to make go away. There are symptoms that are part of anxiety, but that's primarily what they are. They are a signal that God is wired into our nervous system that something needs attention. And we don't want to ignore that. What we do want to do is we want to have compassionate curiosity. We want to have compassionate curiosity about what our body is telling us, what the signal is is alerting us to, so we can give it the attention and the care that we need. And three practical things that we can do to give it the attention that it needs is we can engage in regulation to help our nervous system um soothe and bring back online this frontal part of our brain, which then gives us the ability to organize our experience, do some journaling, kind of capture in language on paper or in a written kind of format like this the um experience that we're having, and asking those compassionate and curious questions about what this might be connected to, not judging what the Holy Spirit brings forward in our nervous system, but just capturing it in writing and then sharing, connecting with someone who loves us to be able to uh hold to bear those burdens with us in a way that can help us co-regulate with their nervous system and can further help us organize the experience by bringing their own experience into this space as well, and can help us uh discern what wise action we might need to take in response, which could mean reaching out for more help with folks that can further help us regulate and organize what it is that's going on and really fully address what the anxiety is signaling from us.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Yeah. I hope that you are taking away from today's episode hope, because this is such a hopeful thing, because it's like, oh, if I can understand it, I can do something about it. And as you dive into this process of being with your anxiety and giving it the space that it is demanding, really, uh you will begin to heal. Or um, if it's not healing, if it's um just interpreting what you need to do to take action on the next thing. This is hard, vulnerable work, but as you lean into it, you will get better at it. And like Josh said, we all experience anxiety on some kind of spectrum. And the more that you do this, the more effective you will get at doing this until it's like second nature. Oh, I feel myself getting these feelings. Okay, I know I gotta get with this, I know I gotta take care of this. And you just experience life in such a freer way. You experience the true happiness that God has in mind for you, that he wants for you, that he's giving you this system, this wiring system to facilitate in you. So I feel like a lot of this has been like kind of heavy, but like I hope I want you to walk away with hope, with this like little buzzing of excitement of I can tackle one thing right now.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Hey friends, thanks for hanging out with us. If you've learned something, please subscribe and share it with somebody you love. You'll probably also like some of the other videos that we have, and so we'll link to those around here. Check them out and we'll keep learning together. And remember, Jesus wants you to live an abundant life, to mature into your true self, like the version of you that he created you to be and that he wants you to mature into, so that you can experience true happiness in him. A life characterized by peace, joy, and hope. And we're here cheering you on as you mature into your true self and experience true happiness. We love you, and we'll see you down the road.