EP 43: Anxieties Invitation- Feelings are Good Gauges, Not Guides

Anxiety can feel like it comes out of nowhere, but we keep seeing the same pattern in military life: the unknown timeline, the what-ifs, the pressure to perform, and the quiet fear that we can’t control what’s coming next. Around our table, we talk about anxiety with zero polish and a lot of honesty, because many of us have wrestled with it personally, including a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. 

We work through a simple framework that changes how you relate to anxious thoughts: emotions are gauges, not guides. Anxiety is like a check engine light. It’s real information, but it’s a terrible leader. When we treat it as an invitation, we stop trying to “fix the light” and start asking better questions like: What am I believing right now? What’s the real issue underneath this feeling? Is my mind spinning a story that isn’t true? 

We also open the Bible and sit with Jesus’ words in Matthew 6, not as a harsh scolding, but as a loving invitation into trust and daily dependence. We connect that to Exodus 16 and the idea of God’s daily provision, then get practical about what helps and what makes anxiety worse: preparation versus rumination, spiritual rhythms, biblical counseling, and the role of medication as symptom relief rather than a full solution. Finally, we talk about screens, comparison, and why “the anxious generation” is not just a slogan but a mental wellness reality for Gen Z and the military community. 

If this helps you, subscribe and share it with a friend, then leave a review so more military families can find the conversation. What’s one anxious loop you want to break this week?

Connect with us at hello@militarywellnesscolective.com

SHOW NOTES AND RESOURCES:

1. Amazon.com : running scared ed welch

2. Amazon.com: Overcoming Fear, Worry, and Anxiety: Becoming a Woman of Faith and Confidence: 9780736987905: Fitzpatrick, Elyse: Books

3. Amazon.com: The Anxious Generation (International Edition): 9798217059201: Haidt, Jonathan: Books

4. Amazon.com : none like him jen wilkin

5. Scripture passages- Matthew 6, Exodus 16, and Philippians 4

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of the Military Wellness Collective. I'm Brittany Brown, and I'm going to be your host today. As always, I'm joined by my husband Joshua. Me and Brian and Kelly O'Day, our friends.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Good morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

I love it. So just if this is your first time listening, welcome to the conversation. Yeah, we're we are so happy that you're taking 30 minutes of your time to sit with us. If you like what you hear today, we want to encourage you on the front end, hit follow so you can get notified when we post more stuff. Um, and if you've been a faithful listener, we thank you for being with us along this journey. We've been podcasting. I mean, at the end of the summer, it's gonna be a year, which is wow.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

That was our commitment.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Post weekly for a year. Could we do that? And we're getting there. We're getting there.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Let's not go count that chickens or no, but it has been really cool to sit around the table with these people and just have conversations. And if you're new here, this started over double date night conversations that we were like, hey, this might be helpful to other people. So we hope that you find it helpful and encouraging. Are you going to say something?

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Yeah, if it's helpful, maybe share some encouragement our way. Galatians 6 6. Share all good things with those who teach. So if we've taught you something and helped you encourage people, especially encourage Kelly. If she's helped you in any way, encourage Kelly. Hello at military wellness collective.com. Hello at military wellness collective.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Well, we just want to have real raw conversations and they are unedited. I mean, we go through and we take out the little like noises that's probably gone. You probably don't even hear it now.

unknown 1:42

Hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Hopefully, you took it out. The gulping, yeah, gulping, all the things. But we just have the conversation and trust the Lord and get it out to y'all. So today's conversation, while there's been a lot of laughter on the front end, we're gonna talk about a subject that plagues a lot of the age demographic that we minister to and just people in general. The Bible talks a lot about it, and that's anxiety. And we're gonna

Why Anxiety Hits Military Life

SPEAKER_00 2:05

talk about what is anxiety's invitation to us, and that our emotions are gauges, not guides. And anxiety is an overpowering emotion for many people. And we see this a lot in the military community, especially since the general age of our population is 18 to 26 years old. I believe that puts you in Gen Z. And there's just a lot of stats out with anxiety and the younger generations coming up behind us. And so we just think this is a really relevant topic and we want to talk about it. And some of us here at this table have struggled with severe anxiety ourselves. So uh I just want to start by asking what is anxiety? Does anybody want to define anxiety for us?

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Anxiety is typically a fear. So one of the books I'll recommend in this conversation is Running Scared by Edward Welch. The whole book is about anxiety. So it is a it's fears, and almost always those fears are around something that we can't control. It's often like in the future, and so it's it's often what might happen. So it's a fear over what might happen. And so it's not necessarily a fear of like, you know, I'm being attacked right now by this person who's hitting me in the face. Like that's a different type of fear. This is like, oh no, Joshua may jump across this table and punch me right now. That's a that's an anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Um how was that the example?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

You just gave up.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Just into the top of his head.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

But anyway, so I think that's what fear is or anxiety.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Yeah, and it's something that affects you physiologically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, like just different ways.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

It's like all consuming, right? What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_03 4:02

No, that's good. All consuming.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I think it's important to distinguish between anxiety and depression because sometimes we intermix those.

What Anxiety Is And Is Not

SPEAKER_00 4:10

And as Brian mentioned, anxiety is looking forward to the future. It's a fear of something coming, you can't control it. You create a narrative in your head, it spins out of control. Depression is often looking back, it's something we're sad or grieved over, and it's overtaking our mental space. Uh, so they do sit on like a similar track, but they're going in opposite directions. And so we're talking about anxiety. Depression is a whole other topic. And but we're gonna talk about anxiety. I just want to give a quick like, what are we talking about when we say anxiety is an invitation, it's a gauge for us to notice something. It's not our guide.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Did you were gonna say why don't you tell us about that? It's not a gauge, not a guide. So I'm thinking like where it is a gauge, it's not a guide, right? So a guide would be this thing might happen, therefore I have to follow that you know, natural thing. So, like a guide leads me down a path. So we're saying anxiety is not a guide. Like, let me follow it. Joshua may jump over this table and punch me in the face. Therefore, I need to run away from this microphone right now, or I need to punch him first, or I need to right like a fight. That would be anxiety as a guide, right? Right. So, but you're saying it's an invitation and it's a gauge.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

And I know that sounds weird, the wording invitation, but it's an indicator. It's just like a check engine light. It's an indicator to you. Something is going on, right? When I think of a gauge, I'm thinking of like it measures what's happening, right? Just like that indicator guide. It it's telling me, it's like a red light warning system. Somewhere I'm off. Something is off. Take note of it. What tends to happen is we begin to respond, or I won't even say respond, we react. And that's when it becomes our guide. And like Brian said, the guide is somebody that's leading you. This is it's gonna dictate and direct your behavior. Um, it's gonna guide you like a compass would guide you, or a principle. You start following that anxiety, it never leads to true mental wellness or health. It's going to perpetuate anxiety and actually make the problem worse. So that red light indicator is telling you something's wrong. Okay, so now what do I do? I need to assess and I need to respond. I need to go to truth, I need to go to the actual guide or find somebody to help guide me through that, not just follow the anxiety emotion as a guide. Does that make sense? Or is that distorted?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Can I explain the check engine light descriptor a little bit further? Because this is just the way I understand it.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

And maybe there's some other weirdo out there like me that only understands it in this way. So a check engine light comes on. It is a gauge, it is an indicator of a problem. And what you're saying is a lot of people will see the check engine light come on and they'll go, oh no, there's a problem. The light came on. I need to fix the light.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Right. That's good. Not the problem.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Instead of going with the guide and go, oh no, this is an indicator of a problem going on in the engine. I need to go pop the hood, figure out what the real problem is, and then fix the problem. So oftentimes we have an emotion that hits us. That's the indicator. And oftentimes we just try to fix the emotion instead of go after the root cause, the problem that's causing the emotion. Right. Is that accurate? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

And sometimes we don't even go after it. We just ignore the check engine light. That was me at 17 years old. Like, huh, that's probably

Emotions As Gauges Not Guides

SPEAKER_00 8:05

fine. And then a whole slew of other problems come because you don't head it off and check, yeah, check the engine light. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Yeah, and it's interesting to in danger of carrying the analogy too far. Sometimes check engine lights on our modern vehicles are silly things like the gas cap was not fully, which I guess we got away from gas caps. But anyway, um the you know, but it's something small. Or like, hey, the tire pressure is, you know, half a pound too low, or whatever the case is. Or it's like, hey, your head casket is gone and you're about to blow your engine.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

And so the same thing's true with our mental health. Sometimes we're feeling anxious, and if we would we would use it as an invitation and we would use it as a gauge, and we're like, okay, what am I anxious about? It would actually invite us in to figure out what that is. And sometimes it's actually not as big as we think it is. Right. Those unknowns tend to become like monsters in the closet when we're kids, and we are just like, it's so big and scary. What we're saying is it's an invitation to figure out, okay, what is this? What is causing me to have these physiological responses? What is causing me to feel this way and start to freak out and start to do everything else? And so we need to go go to the Lord and go to scripture and andor journal and figure out, okay, what is going on? What am I doing here? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:34

I think one question I ask myself is like, what am I believing? That's true. And that's what leads me to the word, is because I have to go to the truth because I'm I'm usually believing some type of lie in that anxiety, you know? Something that's not true. And I have to like face that and be like, is that true?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

You know? I think that's good because I think the word surrender anxiety is usually an invitation to me to surrender. Like I don't want whatever I'm afraid of to come to pass. So I think I know better than the Lord, and I I need to surrender something, usually.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

I know. I think a lot of my anxiety comes from like not knowing. Yes. So it's like not necessarily like expecting something that I don't want, but just like not knowing. I don't know. That makes me anxious enough.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So we're we're dealing right now with a a Mew that has been out, MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit. It has been floating around doing different jobs around the world, and there's been this anxiety in a in a lot of the young ladies back here of when their husbands are coming home. Because it was one date, and then it switched to a different date, and then it switched to a different date. And I think what you just had said just really it really happens in their minds. They are anxious over an unknown and they worry about it. And so all these other emotions come up of stress and anxiety. And if if you're looking at the root cause, it's like, yeah, you just don't know the date that he's coming home. That that seems simple, but when you're listening to this constant reel in your mind going over and over, well, if if it's this date, then this. And it's this, will I ever see my husband again?

SPEAKER_04 11:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And then there's all these things and like these future things. You gotta do that.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

And it's just a constant whirlwind, and we need to realize that those things we need to look at the root cause of it and not and dwell on that, not all of the gauges that keep spinning us all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

One thing that I think about, are you gonna read Matthew? Is that where you're going? Okay, hang on one second. I one thing, because I think about this passage was what I'm about to say. One thing with anxiety, I think sometimes we get in our heads, and it's like, I'm wrong as a Christian for being anxious, but I am comforted by the word of God. And Brian, I think he's about to read the passage that Jesus addresses it like, do not be anxious. Why would he tell us that if we were never gonna be anxious? He knows there are gonna be times in our frailty as humans where these emotions are gonna come up, and then he speaks to them. And to me, that is such a great comfort and beautiful thing that he tells me and he reminds me why I don't need to be anxious through his word. And so I don't know what you were gonna say. What are you gonna say? Say

Pop The Hood On The Problem

SPEAKER_00 12:25

it, but then can you read that, please?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

So I th we we've been talking about anxiety as an invitation to seek the Lord and to figure out what's true. Here in Matthew chapter six, the very end of the chapter, I would call this an invitation from Jesus that we not be anxious. And so sometimes if we're not careful, we we read those words, do not be anxious, as like this, you know, stern father who's like, Don't you dare be anxious. And if you're anxious, you're in sin. That's not the weight of this. This is more like an invitation, like, hey, don't be anxious. Like a loving father. You don't need to be anxious. This is a loving father saying, Come with me and come into this life of not being anxious.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Like, I've got you.

SPEAKER_03 13:20

I've got you. Yeah, it's it reminds me, there's this, it reminds me of Psalm 23. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not even though I walk into death, it's right, even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, like ah, I will fear no evil. Why? Because you are with me. You are with me. The presence of the Lord is one of the ways that we get out of anxiety. But Matthew 6, Jesus telling his disciples, 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? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? O you of little faith. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So we get that invitation, we get that instruction three times. Do not be anxious. Your anxiety is not going to produce anything. You cannot add an hour to your life, you cannot add a qubit to your height, I think is another translation there. You it anxiety is not productive, it doesn't do anything productive in the world for us or anybody around us. And also, anxiety is almost always in tomorrow, right? Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow's got enough anxiety, it's got enough problems. Don't

The Stress Of The Unknown

SPEAKER_03 15:55

worry about tomorrow. What is God calling me to today?

SPEAKER_00 15:58

I think that's beautiful. It reminds me of an older woman that used to tell me when I was struggling with anxiety that you're trying to borrow from tomorrow's grace. And God only gives you grace for now. Like he doesn't even give me grace for five minutes from now. I have no idea what's going to happen. The grace that I'm given is right now from the Lord. And she always used to say to me, It's robbing you. It is stealing from you. Um, and that passage makes me think of that like the Lord is giving us these things and he's inviting us into this space. And if I choose to sit in that anxiety and continue down that path, I'm actually losing time from today because I'm so focused on what's ahead that I have no control over that I'm missing right in front of my face. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

And I think the word control, that's so big. It's like we that lack of control. Yes, it's really hard for us to wrestle with.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

And I think too, with lack of control, it reminds me of Jen Wilkins' book, None Like Him. And when she talks about rivaling God, like we image God, that's something I had to realize. Like me wanting control is really me wanting to be sovereign. So I'm not like surrendering to God's will. I I want to be sovereign over Britney's life. And and this took me a long time to get there. It's not like this just happened overnight.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

But when you see like God helping you rest in him and not be anxious, it's so much better. Yeah. Like as I think as I've learned and grown and just like knowing and understanding that God is sovereign and I'm not like, you know, like being able to truly rest in that, it's it's been huge in my life.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Right. Because everyone those feelings come, you can return to the truth of that. Not that they don't come. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Yeah. So if you're struggling with anxiety, like spend some time in Matthew 6. Notice the things he talks about, your life. That's a big one. He talks about food. He talks about clothing. Right before what I read, he's talking about money. He's talking about the things we look at with our eyes. He talks about food some more and prayer and all sorts of other things. But mainly it's time, money, food. It's it's real nitty-gritty normal stuff. And so spend some time in Matthew 6. Another passage that would be interesting, different testament

Jesus’ Invitation In Matthew 6

SPEAKER_03 18:20

in Exodus chapter 16, we see this story about God providing manna for his people. And the Lord provides enough mana for today. Today. The only exception is the Sabbath, which there's some interesting things to notice about that as well. But just let's assume we're talking about the other six days out of the week. God provides manna for today. God provides mana for today. If you try to take too much and store it overnight, it rots and it gets worms and it doesn't work, which is disgusting. Nobody wants worms in their manna. But just realize like what Brittany was saying, like, God gives us the grace and the things that we need today. He gives those to us today. And so, yeah, spend some time in those passages, Matthew 6 and Exodus 16, just to realize God's daily provision for you, an invitation away from anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

And he's doing this to help us. I think oftentimes we we forget that this is the best way to live. And when we look at the inverse, we realize that. So going back to the example of Brian and us starting to punch each other in the face, apparently, that became a thing. If I were sitting here worrying about and being anxious about him just being angry with me and like and and having a physical altercation, if that's in my mind and I'm dwelling on it and I'm concerned about it and I'm freaking out about it, and I'm just sitting here like sitting back away from the microphone, not doing anything because I'm just worrying about and thinking about what this is gonna look like. And then I realize he's not angry with me.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

And then I'm like, oh, all that worrying and all that time and all that attention was for nothing. Like it completely ruined the last 20 minutes of my life because I was worrying about this, you know. Why do we put ourselves through that?

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Yeah, but on the other perspective, there are things where our anxiety should push us towards preparation and or real activity. So I'll give you an example. If you're getting ready to deploy for to a combat zone, and let's say you're 21 years old and you're going to a combat zone, one of the things you're probably anxious about is I could die. I could die at 21 years old. I could die at 22 years old. Do not feed that anxiety with lies. I'm not gonna die. Don't don't feed that lie. You don't know that. You don't know that you're not gonna die. Instead, you need to allow that to have its effect and cause that to cause, call out to the Lord. And if you're not a Christian, call out to Jesus for salvation. And the scriptures would tell you to do that today. Do not wait until you're older. Do not wait till the other side of deployment. So allow that anxiety to have its full effect. Similarly, if you're getting ready to deploy, this is just a real like tangible thing. If you're getting ready to deploy and you're like, you're anxious, you're like, I don't know if I can do my job because I've been slack in my work for the past six months. Well, I'll allow that anxiety to cause you to get serious about the work that God has put in front of you and learn your job and learn how to do it at the best that you possibly can so that you can do that. So sometimes, like sometimes the anxiety and and the effect it needs to have in us is stop worrying about stuff you can't control. The other side of anxiety is do the work today that God has for you to do in things that you do have control over. Right. Right. Because that's your gauge.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah. What you just described was okay, I got a check engine light on. I have a deployment coming up. I need to pop the hood and get ready for this for very real things. Yeah, get after it. I have a job to do and I'm not prepared. I need to pop the hood open and get after the problem and fix it so that it runs well. Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And on the same on the live side.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

But if I'm trying to just band-aid the check engine light by instead of instead of truly like, oh, I don't want to think about death, so I'm just going to go drink heavily.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I don't want to think about death, so I'm going to go distract myself with a bunch of other things. So I don't think like all you're doing is putting a piece of tape over your check engine light. Your check engine light's there for a reason.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Yeah. And so just let's let's talk about those things for just a second. One of the common things we do with anxiety is we run to substance and that would be an unhealthy thing to do. Drugs, alcohol would be food, gluttony, like that can be an unhealthy running to to as a band-aid on this significant problem of anxiety. So don't do that. The other one is distraction that you mentioned, right? So I'm just gonna distract myself, which there's all the things these days that I can distract myself with. Our phones provide most of them. And so distract myself with social media or with online sports betting, that's gonna create even more problems to get anxious about or to or pornography or all the things that you can access on your phone, binge watching things, like just that's not going to solve the underlying problem. The other thing I want to encourage, so we're talking about anxiety. I have been diagnosed by a mental health provider with generalized anxiety disorder, right? So this I'm not just coming

Daily Provision And Today’s Grace

SPEAKER_03 24:10

at this from like, oh yeah, you people that suffer suffer with us. There there are medications that can be helpful. I would encourage you to not run to that first and not assume that's a permanent thing. So if you are gonna go on medication for anxiety, you should also be doing all the other things we're talking about. And Lord willing, you're gonna grow out of the need for medication. Most people that need medication for mental health things, if they do the hard work, they can grow out of that. And many of us can can do the hard work without ever needing the medication. Okay. And so I just want to speak. Whenever we're in these like mental health things, I want to speak to that medication question because it's a common question. That medication is really most of the time it's dealing with the symptoms, not the causes. And so if you need some symptom relief to get after the work of the underlying issues, then take that, but don't skip over the underlying issues thing. So good healthy rhythms and good biblical counseling is like the deep thing that you might need if you have like a real, you know, ongoing chronic anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah, the best example I can think of is having a headache. You can get a headache by being dehydrated, but it takes a while for you to drink water and for it to actually enter your system and then make your headache go away. So Tylenol is not good for you, but you can take it so that you can feel better while you drink water, and then the actual problem goes away. The problem comes is when people are like, every time I get a headache, which is all the time, I just take Tylenol and I just keep taking Tylenol, but they never actually drink the water. And then they just constantly have dehydration headaches, and they're constantly eating Tylenol. And now they have kidney issues, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:13

Yeah, most of yeah, most of our anxieties are spiritual. I mean, really at the root of it, it's spiritual wrestling that needs to happen. That's why I say biblical counseling. Right. I know the military is hiring lots of counselors and therapists these days. Some of those can be helpful from time to time with their clinical understanding, but ultimately we cannot rush past the spiritual wrestling that needs to happen and the biblical wrestling that needs to happen.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

And you all mentioned distraction and turning your eyes back to the word of God. And even Brian mentioned, you know, digging into Matthew 6, and I think even into some of Matthew 7. And it makes me just think of the

When Anxiety Should Lead To Action

SPEAKER_00 26:55

age demographic we're talking to. You guys have had digital screens in your hands forever, and it is a huge distraction. And if I could encourage you to read a book, it is not a Christian book, but the statistics and the scientific findings in it are just really eye-opening. And that would be the anxious generation. Because in the book, he says this is a huge stat. It's something like 168% anxiety. Is let me see if I can find this stat. And it was like from 2015 to two or 2010 to 2018, anxiety jumped 168%. And a lot of that is being induced. That's a huge statistic. And the findings in that, a lot of that is being induced by our screen activity. And as Christians, I just read a quote by John Piper. He was saying, the devil is after you, it's like 168 hours or something in a week. And if you spend 10 minutes in the word of God and think you're gonna win the battle, we have got to get in the word of God. And I love what Brian said. Like there, there might be a time and place for medication. Another great book is Um Lies My Therapist Told Me. And he gets into the nitty-gritty of what those medications do and what they're actually for, and how we need to be doing the hard work as well. But those do have a time and place. We're not saying that. It's just the work that we need to be doing the hard work is getting with Jesus and being in the Word. Our screens are a major distraction and they are causing a lot of anxiety. Comparison is the thief of joy. You're comparing yourself, bodies, people's life. Her husband's home all the time, mine's gone all the time. Do they have a better marriage because he's there? Their kids are dressed in beige clothing and have aesthetic toys. My kids have hand-me-downs.

The Bandaids That Backfire

SPEAKER_00 28:56

I know it's crazy, but it's mustaches. Yes, yeah. She makes sourdough. Mine always falls apart. He is muscular and climbing rocks with no whatever pole. And I can't, you know. Rope, I don't know, Paul. You know what I'm saying? Like there's just so much that our screen, not just scrolling articles, we're reading, the confusion. This person says this, this person says the opposite. It's breeding all this stuff. And so we've got to turn our gaze when I'm an old hymn that I love is Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his wonderful, of his mercy and grace. If we're basking in that, we're gonna be a lot less anxious, but we have to do the work to know Jesus more. Does anybody else have anything they want to say? Because I totally just like took a set now.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

That was great. I feel like we've only scratched the surface on this topic. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Huge, huge topic.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Running Scared by Edward Welch. That won't be in the that which is a great biblical, basically like self-biblical counseling book. And then The Anxious Generation by John Heidt, not a not a Christian, but a well-researched book. Right. And then you had one more, Brittany.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Overcoming Fear, Worry, and Anxiety by Elise Fitzpatrick. It's

Medication, Counseling, And Root Work

SPEAKER_00 30:20

another biblical counseling book. And for the ladies, it she kind of speaks to women a little bit more. And the common things that we fear, it's almost laughable when you read it. You're like, oh, that's me. You know, just different things she's talking about in there.

unknown 30:34

But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Yeah, and then biblical passages, I've referenced Matthew 6 and Exodus 16. And I would also throw in Philippians 4, whatever is true. So often anxieties are like might be true, could be true, but whatever's true, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, think on these things. Philippians 4.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

It reminds me of the mental health episode we did a while back, and Brian defined mental health, the commitment to reality at all costs, correct?

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

I did not do that. I stole that from somebody, but yes, I still on the podcast. And then any passage on the gospel and turning back to that. Really Ephesians, just about any of these. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Or Colossians, put off and put on. You've got to put off the way you're thinking, put on something else. Well, friends, we hope this episode's been helpful for you. If you know someone that is struggling with anxious tendencies, we encourage you to share this episode with them. Reach out to us if you have questions or would like some more resources on this topic. And if you have something you want us to just talk about around this table, and we'd love to hear from you at hello at military wellness collective.com. And then follow the podcast if you've been enjoying it and just help us get this out to more people. We really appreciate you guys. And we're praying that those that listen

Screens, Gen Z, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 31:55

thrive in this military journey.