Andrew Dealy | How Do I Overcome Anxiety and Depression? | TGC Q&A

hi you're listening to tgc q a a podcast from the gospel coalition and this is the biblical counseling series featuring hopeful answers to your questions on navigating fear anxiety ministry and marriage and everything in between my name is andrew daly and i am the executive director of the austin stone counseling center i'm the director of soulcare for the austin stone community church today i'll be answering some important questions received from you on anxiety and depression [Music] all right one of the questions we received uh says this as a believer how do i fight guilt when i experience anxiety and depression and how do i find resilience when i don't even have the strength to pray this is a challenging question no doubt the feelings of anxiety and depression are difficult to wrestle with in this life and so the first thing i want us to understand and to know is that as a child of god god loves you where you are god knows and empathizes you with you in your pain that he's aware of your hurt and he knows it intimately you have a sympathetic high priest who is with you in that difficulty the way the question is worded though it says what i do when i feel guilt and the feeling of guilt generally implies that we have done something wrong it means that we have erred in some way i'm going to offer although not all people and all theologians agree on this i'm going to offer that perhaps the feeling of anxiety and depression is actually not something that's wrong not something that you're doing wrong but rather is unfortunately a part of the natural reality of living in a broken and fallen world so let me walk you through why i believe what i do about anxiety depression and then we'll move into so what do we do with it so in general i treat emotions and feelings as information they're helpful at enabling us to understand how we're viewing and interpreting our reality if we were to look at the two primary passages on anxiety we'd look at matthew 6 25-34 in philippians 4 verse 4 through 9. in both these passages the apostle paul and jesus speak to anxiety directly jesus says do not be anxious but instead look to the birds in the air look to these creatures that god cares for look to the grass of the field that god provides for that consider that you can't change the color of your hair so stuff like that which is fascinating he's taking our eyes off of ourselves and saying hey look at creation look at what god is able to do and recognize man you don't have as much power as you need but if you were to look at that passage where he says do not be anxious at no time are you going to see him say do not be anxious but instead feel something else he's going to say do not be anxious but instead do these things engage in these practices likewise the apostle paul in philippians 4 4-9 this is going to say do not be anxious but instead with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests be made known to god he also is going to give us practice as we deal uh with our emotions at no point does paul say do not feel anxious but instead feel happy or feel joy or feel these things but rather he says here's what we do when the feeling of anxiety comes upon us and so in both of those passages scripture teaches us something about how anxiety works anxiety comes in and we feel it and what emotions will tend to do is try and rule us anxiety will say hey it feels dangerous so now respond with control respond with self-protection respond in these ways to try and relieve anxiety but instead what jesus the apostle paul invited us to do is instead of trying to control or let anxiety the feeling of anxiety rule us they invite us to look to god our creator to understand he is in control and to lean in uh to him and so when we feel anxiety it's actually the first temptation this is the way i phrase it this is partly why i don't call call it sin feel anxiety we're being tempted to live and operate and to evaluate our circumstances as though god is not being tempted in that moment we're dealing with depression and anxiety we're being tempted in that moment to believe that we're the ones that have to be in control of what's going on because god isn't going to do anything if we treat anxiety that way if we receive anxieties hey when i feel this way i feel like things are going to overwhelm me i feel like i can't handle it and we go okay god in this moment i realize now it's happening i'm being tempted to look at reality and believe that you're not a part of this thank you for this reminder although it's a painful reminder thankful for thank you for this reminder uh that shows me lord god that i'm forgetting that you're part of this and god if i put you into the equation if when i feel anxious i put you into the equation you've never been overwhelmed you've never been confused you've never been lost you know what comes next and so god help me trust you then when we feel anxious it actually will propel us towards god and propel us towards him instead of away i think the enemy often uses the feeling of depression anxiety to get us to believe that the game is already lost that when we feel anxious we start to believe oh my gosh i must be lacking in faith or i must be doubting god in some horrific way or i must be doing something so terribly wrong otherwise i wouldn't feel this anxious instead if we recognize that the feeling of anxiety and the feeling of depression is the beginning of the battle it's the first warning sign that we're being tempted to live and act as though god is not there then we can let that feeling actually propel us towards the lord and towards engaging with him let me give you one more example in scripture why i think this is a helpful way to think about anxiety and our emotions if we were to go into the garden of gethsemane with jesus before he goes to the cross and he's in the garden and he is talking with the father and the scripture tells us that he asks three times father if there is a different way man i want it if there's a different way than going to the cross if there's another way to accomplish this i want that path in the gospel of luke it tells us that at that moment jesus as he is beseeching the father for a different path his body is responding by literally sweating drops of blood if i were to ask you in that moment what do you think jesus is feeling i think honestly we took the name jesus out of it and we put in the name bob and i just said hey what do you think bob is feeling we would all feel comfortable saying he feels anxious in this moment the most natural thing for him to be feeling at that time was anxiety now again if we take the very basic definition of anxiety is when i look ahead what i see coming feels overwhelming to me i want you to think for a moment is there ever a time in the history of mankind where it was more appropriate and healthy to feel anxious in this moment jesus is looking to going to the cross to suffering a gruesome death to paying for all the sins of the world and on top of that to being separated from the father what was coming was overwhelming in other words jesus's body in that moment is responding in a healthy and appropriate way his body is saying i don't want to feel the pain i don't want to suffer this loss i don't want to be destroyed his body was doing what it should have been doing and so again this is why i would say to feel anxious is quite different than being ruled by anxiety we're all going to feel anxiety we're all going to feel depression in this life we're all going to have moments of looking at what's ahead and feeling overwhelmed and yet in those moments jesus shows us in the garden of gethsemane that faith can trump what we feel that even as jesus sweated drops of blood as he's prayed to the father and the father said no this is the path what does he do next even as his body is still screaming at him he stands and he walks towards the cross this is one of the great hopes that jesus gives us as we deal with depression and anxiety depression anxiety don't get to tell us who we are they don't get to control us they don't get to determine our future they don't get to set the boundary lines for what god can do believe you me it will feel like they can anxiety and depression will want you to believe that they have the kind of control to determine what happens for you next but what jesus models is even as we feel anxious even as we feel depressed by god's grace by faith we can still stand and take the next step in faithfulness and here's the good news for us as we fail in that where we have failed jesus has succeeded where we fail we give in to anxiety and let anxiety and depression just absolutely rule what we do next jesus offers us grace and offers us a better way uh to move forward so as we talk about let's stay specifically with anxiety right now one of the difficulties of walking or dealing with anxiety is that there are any number of potential causes for us feeling anxious in a given moment and so i think it's helpful if you're a person who's dealing with anxiety at this time to spend time really working through the different possibilities and the different things that might be feeding the way you feel currently um and so you want to walk through physiological factors so i can guarantee you one thing if you today drink 16 cups of coffee you know what you're going to feel you're going to feel anxious your body is going to respond to that with anxiety you put that much caffeine in your system it's going to have an effect and an impact and so we want to attend to diet how we're eating how we're taking care of our body again i can guarantee you this if you haven't slept in three days you know what you're gonna feel probably anxious and depressed uh any parent out there who's dealt with you know young kids knows when you go without sleep you turn into a bit of a monster because it's a form of torture uh it's terrible so again how's your sleep rhythm are you getting a good amount of sleep every night are you taking care of your body exercise one of the most practical things that you can do right now if you're someone who's struggling with anxiety and depression is do some form of exercise and i want to be clear i'm not talking about some high interval crushing work out here i'm talking about go for a walk like just go for a 10 15 minute walk it's a great way to start your day get out in nature see god's creation recognize you're not in control but he is and let your let your body just calm down other factors consider with anxiety apart from physiological sleep what you're eating exercise relational realities so if you've got um relationships that are fractured or broken you have a diff difficult family of origin story a relationship with your parents or siblings uh are in a difficult time or fractured or that you just haven't connected any with anybody that you lack community uh those types of things are also gonna likely lead to an increase of feeling anxious on this life now attend to media consumption in our day and age you've got to spend time assessing this what are you putting into your brain galatians 6 tells us god is not mocked to what we sow we will reap so if the types of shows that you're watching the type of podcast you're listening to the type of news outlets you're feeding yourself on um trade in fear don't be surprised that anxiety is going to be a marker in your life if what you're feeding your brain is this constant sense of the whole world is ending and everything is chaos the natural emotional response is going to be anxiety and depression um so attend to the type of media that you're putting in uh to yourself i'll give you an example from a client i had i had a client i was working for working with for about a month and a half and he was dealing with severe anxiety he would have basically panic attacks uh near bedtime and couldn't get to sleep which was creating a self-compounding problem if you can't sleep anxiety is going to continue to increase over time so i met with him for a month and a half we did the philippians 4 reality the matthew 6 talked about jesus being with him the provision look to creation and see that god's caring for it know that you don't have to be in control because your loving heavenly father is in control but we were getting nowhere and so i finally uh being the good counselor i am or lame counselor because i should have done this way earlier in the process asked him about a month and a half and i was like hey can you just tell me your bedtime routine like what do you do before you get to bed um so he told me you know around 11 12 o'clock i start getting ready for bed do these things and then i no joke y'all put on a horror film he was watching a horror film every night before going to bed and had no conceptual connection to that causing anxiety for him so i again being the brilliant counselor i am said hey i've got this crazy idea what if we what if we don't do that this week and see if maybe maybe that's influencing whether or not you can sleep and whether or not you feel anxious a shocker of us entered the story here he stopped watching it and he started sleeping well um so don't underestimate the small things what you're putting into your brain what you're feeding uh your thought life is going to have an impact on your felt experience of depression and anxiety and so attend to those realities and lastly the one that we're probably more commonly uh used to thinking about is spiritual realities how's your connection with the lord how's your time uh connecting with him in his word through prayer through fasting through community through gathering together with the body of believers which obviously in this season is uniquely challenging but that's going to have an impact as well if you feel disconnected from the lord it's going to be hard to believe that his promises are true it's going to be hard to believe that he is in control and that he's at work and so we want to have rhythms of spiritual disciplines that really attune our emotions to what god says is more true than what we can see and feel in the moment and so on all of those so if i got somebody coming in with anxiety just to give you all a little bit behind the scenes of what i do got somebody who's struggling with anxiety for the first time work it's been a long time one of the first questions i'm going to ask is hey when was the last time you had a physical when was the last time you went to the doctor and got checked out just to make sure that everything's functioning the way that it's supposed to because for some people in this life they're going to deal with depression anxiety on a neurochemical level for their lives this is the second corinthians 12 reality paul talks about in second corinthians 12 the thorn in the flesh that he had from the lord now we don't know what exactly that was we just know that was really painful for paul and we're told in second corinthians 12 that paul prayed three times god can you just take this away can you make it better can you provide relief and god's response was no my power is made perfect in weakness and so for some of us in this life the persistent annoyance of anxiety and depression the clinical reality of anxiety and depression for us is going to be that thorn in the side it doesn't control or tell us who we are it doesn't define our identity but we might have to wrestle with it for the rest of our lives and we know that god's purpose even in giving us that difficulty is to draw us nearer to him as paul responded after god said no my power is made perfect in weakness paul then says okay then i'm going to proclaim my weakness to all people that they might see god that you are great even though i am white even though i am weak they will see god that you are awesome and powerful even though i am feeble and in need and so for some of us we're going to have that thorn in the side now that does not mean that we don't consider medication as an option for help but what we do want to do is talk to the lord about that first in other words medication is it moral or not moral uh it's neither it's neutral medication is just a tool that can be used it's a common grace that we can use as believers that might be helpful for various things but we need to know that medication can be taken in faith and be god glorifying or medication can be taken outside of faith as a power grab to try and control our lives or control what's going on and so when i walk with clients and i walk through people through anxiety and considering medication what we do is talk to the lord a lot and ask them hey is this what you would have us do is this a tool that would be helpful in the season and it's wise for us to do it or no lord is it actually not time to do this so medication itself is not the issue the issue is going to be what the heart is doing with that so with my clients again will ask them if they got a physical asked to get connected with a doctor and make sure that everything's functioning right and then we'll roll through things like other physiological factors social realities and spiritual realities to try and assess other things that might be feeding their anxiety so particularly for those who this has been an ongoing struggle for a long time and you don't see an end inside um that you don't have clarity that the lord might have you walking through this for a long time know that that is difficult and painful to digest and in many ways uh i want to say i'm sorry that from from a church perspective and a christian culture perspective this is an area i think that we have failed in terms of equipping and loving on our people well in terms of communicating that the christian life is one that is marked by difficulty the christian life is one that is marked by pain and suffering but it's pain and suffering that is never arbitrary that's never accidental but always has trajectory and purpose so even as you feel overburdened by what you're dealing with as you feel like there will not come an end god has said there will come an end there will come a time when this will change now the guarantee is not the side of heaven so i don't want to give you a false hope i don't want to give you a false hope here that says hey it'll just last another week or a month or if you just read the right verse or pray the right prayer it'll be done but rather god has promised he will give you everything that you need to endure in this season as long as this pain is here again going back to second corinthians 12 and even how paul approached his pain he wasn't blithe about it he didn't act like it didn't hurt he beseeched the lord to take it away because it was painful so for you child of god know that god welcomes you before his throne of grace to come and bring your complaint bring your complaint of pain to be honest with him to be like job to be like the third of the psalms that are all lament oriented to be like psalm 88 where it ends with man darkness is my closest friend god can receive that and he is with you in it and so you don't need to pretend like it doesn't hurt we can be honest about the pain but we go to the lord in our pain and we give him the truth of what's going on in our hearts share it with other people gather together community around you that can help you endure in these seasons and know again daily god will provide what you need to navigate it and there is purpose in it it's not accidental there is trajectory in it and let me again give you this perhaps frustrating reality god doesn't promise to tell you why god doesn't promise to tell you why you are suffering this even other than the greater meta-narrative of you are being conformed in the image of christ as hebrews remind us it was through suffering that christ learned obedience as well that as you suffer in this life and face difficulty you are becoming more like christ it may not be like it but we trust god's word that that is what he is doing in your life and in the midst of pain so be honest with your pain one of the dangers just moving into some things i think can also be helpful for you for us to all to keep in mind one of the dangers with anxiety and depression is it tends to encourage us to just focus on self and to go inside if we go inside and get kind of self-absorbed we will not see light we will not find help the help is not somewhere buried within us the answer is not somewhere buried within understanding our family of origin or our fill in the blank rather the answer is in christ and this is what jesus does in matthew 6 and paul does in philippians 4 again he calls us to look outside of ourselves in the christian life we're invited to this beautiful self-forgetfulness that we have a heavenly father who can provide for us and who promises to provide for us and because of that we don't have to be absorbed with ourselves or solely self-focused we can trust the father to give and provide what we need in time what that then enables us to do is to actually be focused on serving and loving and caring and being involved in other people's hurts and pains and so don't let anxiety and depression turn you solely inward if you do you will find yourself in a deep dark black hole instead when anxiety and depression comes and here's some of the tools i'd recommend talk back to it don't let anxiety and depression have the last word this will happen to me all the time when i start to feel negatively is i will just listen to the emotions instead of speaking back to them when those emotions start to come know that you have the power and the authority to speak back to them and to speak truth to them remember 2nd corinthians 10 5 is going to call you to bring into captivity and submission every thought that you have to take them captive and so if you are just listening it will go dark fast but as you hear as anxiety and depression speak to you if you will speak back the truths and promises of god if you'll gather around you people who can help you speak back if you don't feel like you got the strength to do it have people around you who can be that voice of truth who will speak back to anxiety and depression on your behalf in your life then you'll find that wrestling well and navigating these seasons of difficulty and pain is possible all right as we come to a close here i want to leave you with a couple verses i think are really helpful for us to keep in mind as we continue to navigate seasons that are challenging and difficult for us as we continue to face anxiety and impression which we all will in different forms and in different ways throughout our lives and so hebrews 4 16 is a passage that i just love listen to what hebrews 4 16 says to us let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need so we have a heavenly father who loves us who cares about our pain who weeps with us uh in our hardship and he says come come to the throne of grace because what jesus has done the throne that used to be a throne of judgment the throne that used to be a place we ought to be absolutely terrified to go to is now a throne of grace where he says child come come and ask and he will supply what we need in our times of challenge and difficulty and then lastly let's let jesus have the final word here this is what he says in john 16 33 it says i have said these things to you that in me you may have peace in the world you will have tribulation but take heart i have overcome the world [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Gospel Coalition

Views: 30,000

Keywords: the gospel coalition, the gospel, gospel, coalition, Christ, Christian, Christianity, church, churches, faith, reformed, reformation, bible, biblical, evangelical, Jesus, God, spiritual, spirit, Holy Spirit, fallen world, broken world, guilt, emotions, anxiety, anxious, purpose, medication, therapy, Self-forgetfulness, depression, depressed, counseling, counselor, counsel

Id: OTVeloW8sUg

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020