Anxiety and the Healing Journey (Part 1: Anxiety Disorders)

[Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hello everyone and welcome to this broadcast looking forward to addressing today's subject and getting into a series on this and i pray it'll be a blessing to your life and to your journey mark dejesus here welcome welcome welcome i enjoy producing these video content uh resources that are a blessing to your life and today what i'm going to be getting into is i'm going to be getting into the subject of the healing journey specifically when it comes to anxiety and anxiety disorders and i'm going to get into what that means what we're looking at what areas i'm going to do some insight into what's going on what's happening i'm going to talk about your body you're going to talk about your your thoughts i'm going to talk about what are factors that influence this i'm going to talk about scriptures we're going to talk about a lot of things so these are more long-form um resources where it gives me the opportunity to express to flow to go through i i try to do my best to create shorter resources that give you stuff to think about and work through but what i really like is the stuff where i can sit down we can go let's put our seatbelts on and let's take a drive together because most of our battles and our struggles and areas where we need help in our life they're issues that are relational and we need time to process out and i feel like what i can do in in the way that god's wired me gifted me and where i'm passionate is i can sit down and talk through these issues and and throughout it questions will come up and i'll rise and i'll be aware of them as you send them my way feel free to send me questions mark at mark dejesus.com and if you know how to spell my name then just mark m-a-r-k at m-a-r-k-d-e-j-e and you can send questions in and this is going to be material that i'm putting together that i'm going to encourage a lot of people to go through and process through because it's an important issue it's an important subject so it's going to be a series and i'll do my best to keep you updated on when i'm going to be doing them probably at this time each week a lot but i'm going to probably sprinkle it into some other areas too as i'm going to be talking a lot about this subject now if if anything i'm talking about resonates with you you want to be more equipped for the battle i would highly recommend the book i will not fear this is a very near and dear subject to my heart because i address my journey i dress what helped me especially in the initial stages of really going okay what am i up against what am i battling and i want to advise you and encourage you to um get a hold of resources that speak into your life and in your journey so if what i'm talking about today speaks into your life you go man this makes sense it's helpful for me and just a quick quick intro many of you who might be new to my channel or to my materials uh i have 25 years wow yeah more actually more than that now it's crazy how time flies um since 1995 i've been in some form of ministry leadership position in capacity and was a youth pastor for many years music and production pastor assistant pastor and have a lot of experience in large church settings i've also pastored small church for a number of years and throughout my story and throughout my journey there has there is a point in time in my life right to really deal with some issues of mental emotional relational health in my life and it got so intense and i was really battling some heavy-duty anxiety and so if you're struggling to whatever degree i get it i understand i understand what it's like i'm not speaking from a place of you know distance on some lofty place where i can't relate to what it's like to struggle in battle and so in that in the midst of the struggle at the time i was working on staff at a church and a fairly large staff and a lot of a lot of things going on i i was i was i was a mess inside and i recognized that and my mental health journey brought me to a place where i said god something's got to change and i submit myself to that change so if you're in a place where you realize there's some stuff going on you know it doesn't have to be like so intense that you feel like your life is falling apart for you to say god i need i need some deeper work in fact if you can pick up on it sooner it's even better to recognize okay i got these anxiety issues so the things i began to learn were so profound so important so needed that i changed my whole directory my whole trajectory in life and began a whole new ministry emphasis and so that's where i've been focused on for about the past 15 years is really being passionate about seeing people healed whole living in wholeness living healthy having more grounded relationships living connected to god from the heart being able to maximize their potential their capacity learning to relate to love each other to allow god to work at the root system of the battles that you face in your life so i pray this is a blessing to your life and your journey i'm not a doctor i'm not a psychologist psychiatrist or any of that i'm your brother and i'm i'm incredibly passionate about talking about these issues and love bringing in insights getting to the root and heart of the matter i love bringing scripture inside the bible says so much about mental health we just got to see it we just got to recognize it and what does the bible say about anxiety was the bible you know bringing us and leading us to now this is going to be multiple parts so so i i you know like i said i'm not gonna cover everything in this one thing at all in fact i've got probably at least about eight parts to this at least if not more so buckle up enjoy again disclaimer this is not meant to replace any professional help that you're getting it's not meant to come into conflict with any professional help you're getting i'm here to add value to your life i'm your brother and i actually as an introduction i want to read something because this is my passionate heart cry when it comes to the subject of anxiety i'd like to take a minute and just read that if i could in the early 2000s as a pastor i began what i call a renovation journey to uncover the root system of my heart and life that was eroding i deeply struggled with anxiety panic attacks social anxiety ocd depression and more i knew what it was like to just get by even though the torment and unrest was growing and growing and growing in my life over time i could not ignore the symptoms any longer in my day-to-day struggles it was clear to me that really i wasn't even barely getting by i needed help i was tired of being dominated by anxiety each day it impacted my whole world i learned early on that it was not going to be a quick fix but a journey to learn what had impacted my battles with anxiety what i needed to learn heal from and experience to walk into freedom since this journey began i've committed my life to helping people experience freedom in their own life so if my journey can be of any encouragement to you it's an honor to speak into your life because god is using my story he's using my experience in pastoral ministry he's using my experience in teaching ministry he's using the things i've learned in my own life because nothing i teach is just theory i have a rule that i seek to live by that everything i teach has to flow through the conduit of my own application and experience otherwise it's not going to be shared with you just yet until it has that application in my life doesn't mean i've arrived i'm on a journey too but i only want to share the bread that i'm also feeding on and so i pray that my experiences in working through it myself and teaching my wife and my kids and also the ministry and help that i'm helping other people will be a blessing to you as i made the decision to embrace the healing journey with all my heart i made a commitment to god and myself that i would first share all these things with my family i would teach them because they're my first ministry but i would also commit to empowering those that god brings into my path and so it may be you stumbled upon this resource because god wants you and i to cross paths and there'll be some things i'll speak into in your life and so that's exciting and through my own journey of learning i want to speak into anxiety disorders i'll explain what i mean by when i talk about anxiety disorders i want to break down the battles i want to give insights we'll use god's word too we'll use practical application and but here's the thing i want to let you know because what i'm going to share about too is also for a remnant of people it's for those who really want to live as overcomers because i i noticed early on when i began sharing about my journey many people were relieved because they were like wow here's a pastor who struggles with the same things i struggle with i saw a large percentage of the church battling with mental health issues no one even knew they were all kind of just hiding in their own darkness and shame over it but i also say that overall i noticed the church at large was not necessarily embracing wow the people in our congregation are struggling with these areas they're struggling with these issues and we need to really understand how this is affecting us and how we can grow and heal together and to be honest if the church really did this though we would have to confront a lot of dysfunctional patterns that we live in and i don't say this from a distance i recognize in my own life in my own church leadership in my own journey that the performance driven lifestyles the constant programs the chronic busyness the emphasis on certain things that don't really matter as much as the life of the heart and relationship the pressures the the broken patterns that we live in and we use and the manipulation tendencies that we fall into in our our unhealed brokenness that we keep spewing on to other people in the congregation and keeps people spinning in their fears and anxieties and on top of it they they feel trapped in many of the things they struggle with i watched also something very concerning in that is that many in the body of christ didn't even want to address anxiety in their life they wanted to stay in christian busyness they wanted to keep the facade up so whatever they could do to just numb it out they would use it i had to learn that you can only help people when they're ready to be helped and heal and grow so i pray that today you're ready to learn heal and grow and face the fears that the anxieties and face the areas that god god is ever present and wants to be a real presence in your life to address these areas so that you can not only heal but you can experience him in dynamic ways it changed my life forever i'll never be the same but i'm also continuing to grow for years i've been warning and warning and warning the body of christ that we've got to address these anxiety panic phobia fear issues we've got to we've got to stop pretending they're not there or just masking them over this isn't just a mental health class that i'm giving to you it's an equipping to deal with fear in its various forms anxiety is one of them and jesus said as i'll read in a scripture in just a few moments that the hearts of people were going to fail because of fear and today we live during times of uncertainty where the anxiety in people's hearts is coming out like never before i believe it's increasing increasing increasing the numbers are not going down we see the effect of the fear factor increasing in people's lives it's my heart to come alongside of you and support your healing and overcoming journey you don't have to feel like you're alone you don't have to feel like you're crazy you don't have to feel like you lost your mind there's just some things that god needs to become real in your life not just some head knowledge but get those things in your heart so that you experience them and that it changes how you see him how you see your world you just need some perspective some truth some tools you need some mentoring a little bit of equipping so i don't present myself as an expert nor do i present myself as someone who has arrived i'm always growing i'm still healing and i love the fact that this is a journey so i invite you to join me to heal and to grow so with that said let's talk about anxiety this part one which is probably gonna be split up into two because i know i have a tendency to really dig in and and i'll take some good tangents and then i'll go you know what that's gonna be it for today we talk about anxiety disorders here's what we're talking about i'm going to use kind of the the clinical grid and then we're going to dive in because usually we're talking about anxiety disorders there's there's a branch of them now there's some that are under the umbrella i probably won't quite won't cover specifically um but these are the main ones one is generalized anxiety disorder that's going to be uh in in a next session where i'm going to get into the world of worry the world of anxiety where it becomes a chronic pattern in your life anxiety disorders also include panic panic attacks panic disorders you ever have a panic attack you know you ever ever just you know did somebody have to tell you hey you're having a panic attack that's what you're having can you even know that's that was what was going on i'm very familiar with panic attacks for sure phobias okay now i'll get into that more and more that gets into specific areas that there's hundreds if not thousands of them you can have it's targeted towards a very specific thing that gets you stirred up and stirred up and and some of that phobia can make you very ocd obsessive-compulsive now i've done a series on ocd and in um in psychology they have this thing called the uh dsm 4 dsm 5. it's just a it's just a manual that they that they use to categorize certain things it's kind of interesting it's it's nerdy you know but um i do like nerdy stuff and and and and sometimes sometimes i'll observe something that's being said here and and god will use that i'll go hey you know the bible actually talks about that right but um they categorize certain things so this anxiety disorder is like an umbrella well ocd used to be a part of it but ocd was growing so much and had and had so many branches to it it's actually a category of its own now and in my opinion it's revealing the obsessive and compulsive tendencies of people out of our brokenness what's firing off in an anxious obsessive world right because we're just not feeling safe within ourselves another area is ptsd which is a post-traumatic stress disorder um and that is now its own category used to be under anxiety disorders why because we're seeing more and more in our world the effect of trauma that follows people we're seeing this isn't uh just a theory we're seeing that this is very very true that unprocessed unhealed traumas tend to stick with people in in in um both spiritually both psychologically and physically in their life and it affects them affects their world so i'm taking those two topics and i'm separating them out on their own too i've done a whole series on ocd spent about three months actually just on that you can go to forward slash ocd help and i organized it all on a page and and laid it all out so you could go through that so this series will actually be a good resource in conjunction with that i'm also letting you know that i will be discussing trauma more now you can search in in your search mark dejesus and write trauma click it and you'll see a bunch of videos i have done to kind of get the wheels started right but i will be doing series on some stuff lawlen and the creek don't rise on uh ptsd complex trauma stuff like that it's like what does it look like for us as believers to heal through walk through that kind of stuff in effective ways because it's it's a real deal so i'm actually glad they've been separated out because they they kind of deserve their own attention but here um the phobias can be the specific things we're getting to agoraphobia we're going to get into relational fears social phobia fear of public places relational settings social settings um and and and that i believe is important why these areas are big battles why are they big battles and why are they important to address because god designed you to heal grow mature in the context of community problem is if you're going to the grocery store and you're having you know a panic attack you're having some phobic you know trigger and you're walking out of the grocery store or you you're not going to meetings or you know maybe a small group gathering or you're not connecting with people right the enemy is after our relationship connection that's where his scope is to hinder your relationship world isolate you in yourself amp up the fear factor get you to back pedal more and more and more and disconnect you from love from safety and a lot of that is processed in relationships but look around our relationship world is got some issues right so it reveals the battle it reveals the war so i'm looking forward today i'm going to look at the overall game plan of anxiety disorders so if you struggle with generalized anxiety whether you've been officially diagnosed or not and doesn't matter but you're like man i have anxiety a lot two you've got panic attacks that you've had or you have a phobic area that specifically goes into what i first need to do is we're going to kind of have some big picture discussions and then we're just going to bring it down bring it down bring it down i'll talk about the battle i'll talk about your thinking i'll talk about medication i'll talk about what um what helps what doesn't help i'm also going to talk about mindsets like what are things i've learned over the past especially 15 years of personal help personal work of me receiving prayer ministry coaching of me then consulting people coaching people consulting churches of my research and what i have learned actually meeting people who minister to other people seeing how they go about ministering to them what do they actually do see that's why i find interesting in ministries when they talk about other ways people minister they talk about it but they never actually seen it and they never actually experienced it i've sat down with people and said oh so so when you help people you do inner healing or you do this you do prayer or you or you sit down what is it actually that you're doing and i become curious not in a in a judgmental i know what i'm doing curious to learn i'm going to share things i've learned and i've observed in that and then if you have questions feel free to throw it in the comment section i'll check it out and i'll just um allow god to use my journey to be a blessing to your own life okay so that's what we're going to be covering overall and if you did look up anxiety disorders there are things like separation anxiety some other things like that get a little more specific i probably won't cover in this series and that's okay because i'm going to give you the main meat that's going to equip you now the development of this issue is growing and rising it's anxiety disorders is one of the most common mental health problems in the us alone i know many of you are watching this from other countries but just from u.s statistics it's 40 million plus now when i look at a stat like that what crosses my mind it's like oh 40 million that's documented you know so does that mean someone who's actually gone been diagnosed been um you know they've been given that well if that's the case what about the millions of people that never actually get their situation put into the statistics what if they're just and i would say there's a lot of people really suffering in silence and i would say maybe some of you watching this that you're in that boat interestingly enough the overwhelming majority of all anxiety disorders start by age 20. so this tells us okay this is where like stats and psychology we as believers don't shoe this away because this is strategic stuff okay don't i don't shoe away psychology because they're good at observing what's happening in patterns and what the pattern is telling us is three quarters of people developing these issues by 20 this stuff's already at work so that tells me hmm childhood family upbringing teenage years these are critical years to equip sons and daughters in what it means to let perfect love of the father cast out fear to be armed up to the spiritual battle that we're facing problem is and i'll get into this more most of you who struggle would say i don't know anyone who equipped me during those years i mean just think about your teen years alone it's some of the most intense forms of fear in the form of peer pressure right and and all these influences hitting you and you're just kind of left in autopilot just go to school just do you'll be fine it's like wait a second are we equipped to handle this stuff so i like to pay attention to these things ninety percent of all of all of them start by age forty so this this stuff is is is in full swing um by that time now an interesting stat and i'm sure this is this is changing you can look at it for yourself and over time these things change and i understand that so um um you know you you can look it up yourself but there's an interesting stat of 30 more people who go to the er or emergency room in hospitals for chest pain they think they're having a heart attack but what they're having is they're having panic attacks i actually noticed this in my pastoring years people would be like they tell me oh last night i went to the emergency room oh my goodness what happened i thought i was having a heart attack and what happened oh they did tests on me everything was fine everything was was fine and they told me what was going on was i was having anxiety so there is a problem where many people are disconnected to that they're actually having anxiety issues and that can be for a lot of reasons it could be your disconnected to your emotions you're disconnected to what's going on you're numbed out and then all of a sudden it feels like you're having a heart attack it's suddenly so intense i get a lot of reports of that mark what do i do i had this sudden thing it kicked up in my life and i was told i was having a panic attack and i was like what was a panic attack i didn't even know that that's what i was having uh so statistically less than one percent of all anxiety disorders start after age 65. now what is typically known um a lot of times the elderly um can say when i say the elderly when you get you know past 65 and up many times what can be expressed the pattern that's been seen is they'll express being worried i'm very worried many times they've found that that can be actually a form of depression they're going through depression and it manifests as worry many times depression and anxiety can toggle back and forth and and at some point like i said lord will and creek don't rise we'll do some work on my journey and discovery of of depression and facing that in my own life in many layers so um so for for the elderly many times worry can actually manifest depression now i'm going to give you a little key and i'm not making this up um research is finding that with kids parents listen to this with kids anxiety can manifest as adhd they you know all the symptoms of adhd and the hyperactivity and ability to have attention and focus okay at a intense level can be symptomatic of what the real problem is there's anxiety going on and many for my experience my observation you can have your own but my experience and observation is a lot of times kids don't like my children they're like what's anxiety they're still at their ages like what what do you mean so sometimes it's like bringing out do you feel nervous do you feel uneasy do you sometimes in these descriptors because you may be thinking oh my kids adhd or whatever that's a whole subject in itself and there may there's an anxiety that could be going on so a lot of times they've found that now let's get in the bible for just a second because this isn't this is kind of an overall statement that when we look as christians we look ahead right we oftentimes look ahead and and and we look at the times we live in and we go the end times are here the end times are coming right and and i'm not against all that i'm not against teaching of that what i have a problem with though is our end time focus as believers looking ahead it seems to be that christians become more negative more depressed more hopeless more anxious god never intended for the prophetic words of the future to bring believers into greater fear that's the world's problem you hear me we this is where we as believers need to recognize we're set apart because unfortunately in the church we're manifesting the same the same stats of anxiety and anxiety disorders as those who do not believe okay so we would call them the unbelievers and we're the believers but i don't know why i'm using air quotes but um we we we tend to like okay we're going to heaven we have eternity with god but why are we manifesting the same fears beware of coming under the hypnosis of the negativity the darkness and the fear of the world system that wants to pull you in and and i believe that can sneak into our end times oh the end times are coming oh it's coming and i got people with ocd and panic attacks hyperventilating jesus he's coming he's coming back that's showing that these scriptures are not being delivered in the spirit in which they were meant nothing god teaches you is meant to ignite fear so if it does we need to reboot if a scripture brings in anxious torment we have to reboot reboot how we're seeing it because psalm 91 gives us this it's a very prophetic even to now when it talks about he who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty i will say of the lord he's my refuge my fortress my god and him will i trust in the passage of scripture he says you will look and see destruction but it's not going to come near you and see what we there's this tension because god wants us as believers to be strong to be filled with his love to be bold to be courageous and to not look at these passages of scriptures through a chronic panic attack phobia anxious timid dark negative kind of heart because what jesus is warning here and i'll put this back up on the screen in luke 21 25 he says there will be signs in the sun in the moon in the stars and on the earth distress of nations do we see that distress of nations certainly certainly with perplexity and he says there's going to be things you're going to see the sea and the waves roaring and what will happen men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth for the powers of the heavens will be shaken and so what will happen is mankind will become increasingly anxious and we as believers need to start with there's a journey god's taking us that's not of this world and i remember in my awakening i was preaching and teaching wherever i could and telling people we need to address our fears we need to address our anxieties whatever they are stop numbing them out stop hiding from them allow god to do a work because there's a healing work because what the enemy meant to stranglehold you will actually be the very thing god will raise you up as a courageous overcomer i'm telling you i'm living proof of it and i see others as living proof of it as well so that when you see the signs of the times happening you don't become sucked in by the negativity of it and sucked in by the doom and gloom because anxiety phobias and panic attacks have a way of chipping away at our hope where over time you start to develop depression i see a large large mass of believers struggling with depression and just heaviness negativity because the fear factor took a toll it's just tapping away tapping away tapping away tapping away tapping away and jesus said listen men's hearts are going to fail for them now what could that mean i think one way there they won't know in their hearts what to believe and what to step into they'll be easily deceived i think their emotional hearts will struggle i think also their physical hearts what does chronic stress anxiety worry chronic fear chronic panic attacks what does it affect tremendously the cardiovascular system one of the number one areas that you know we're facing is cardiovascular heart disease heart attack kind of issues right now chronic anxiety stress and worry isn't the only thing there's diet stuff all this other stuff that's affecting it too but the men's hearts failing them for fear is a big part of that you don't have to live in that equation you don't have to live with that sentence over your life now it's not a snapping of the fingers it's a journey i'm on a journey of overcoming my fears i'm on a journey of learning to live in peace i'm on a journey of learning oh that's why i struggle with that fear i'm on a journey of letting god layer by layer heal me and set me free and i want to give that invitation to you so that when men's hearts are failing them from fear people are panicking you don't have to give in to that now it doesn't come without some struggle because if you take two people who talk about the same subject one is an anxiety over it and the other one isn't the one with anxiety can often get angry that the one who isn't in anxiety isn't an anxiety it's amazing how we can defend our fears right why aren't you worried why aren't you afraid why aren't you and it's so anti-biblical but we as christians have gotten sucked into the hypno the hypnotic trance of fear and i call it that because it's exactly what it is beware of the hypnotic trance of fear to blanket us under darkness and cloud rather than us rising up because isaiah would prophesy and say though deep darkness cover the earth the glory of the lord shines shines so arise and shine it's your time so i believe it's our time i'm very very passionate about that but i want to get back to now practical so with that in mind what is anxiety because sometimes it's just important to just establish basic things a lot of people like i said don't even realize what they're battling is anxiety so sometimes we just put some terms to it so people can process things and and work these things out with god the first place is just a simple definition it's a troubling of the mind for an uncertain event it might be a specific thing it might just be just this blanket uncertainty that you have maybe there's like a hyper vigilance that's tagged on to it too or just a general sense of a lack of safety it can be anticipation of a future threat something is a threat now from some webster definition you can see that anxiety is a painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually over an impending or anticipated ill fearful concern or interest an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physiological signs sweating tension increased pulse by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with it and many people with ocd this is very very heavy because you your doubt and uncertainty increases so much it gives fear a lot of power and so the the threat becomes so empowered the threat becomes magnified your ability to handle it becomes lowered you say i can't handle this and the threat gets bigger so that's kind of the the world that anxiety wants you to live in your ability to handle things diminishes the magnification and the building up of this threat increases and so part of my journey is going to lead you to we're going to change this now and we're going to increase the confidence of your ability to walk in victory while decreasing the voice of the bully in your life because that's what fear anxiety all that stuff is is just a bully and we gotta get equipped to overthrow the bully and you can do it so what you're called to you just need some equipping so furthermore the word history of anxiety this i found fascinating when you look at the word history of it it's exactly what it does it's exactly what the enemy's wanting to do from a latin word meaning to choke to cause distress or tightness and narrowness now why is the enemy interest interested in this in your life you know paul said to timothy and he called it a spirit of fear why is there this spiritual attack why is there this unseen battle going on with fear because the enemy knows if he can create a choking sensation or a distress or a tightness or narrowness it will create a restriction and you will feel less prone to stepping out taking steps of faith taking steps of moving forward you'll get paralyzed maybe in procrastination or just frozen right many people express to me anxiety in in the form of like even when they eat you know they get this tightness and neuroscience so even digesting food is very uncomfortable and and this this would be another deep dive in this but i've mentioned this many times before many people in their history when you go oh they've got these gastrointestinal issues or esophageal issues or this tightness or thing when they eat and stuff like that it's like well sometimes i ask the question what was dinner time like for you growing up and it's like it was actually it was actually very stale some people say some people say it was nerve-wracking dad was an alcoholic and i didn't know if he was gonna be sober or not and you know i'm gonna talk about that because people raised by alcoholics it's very common that you'll struggle with anxiety it's a very very common pattern that needs that needs healing it needs it needs awareness right the dinner table was judgment dad and mom or whatever bring out your performance review how school going you know they examine your grades or that's the time where they correct you on something right i cannot emphasize this enough eating food is actually a god-given place of connection he says it many times i just studied with my kids this morning in some bible time but where the lord came down to abraham and what did they do they ate they had some food you know in psalm 23 david cries out you set a table before me in the presence of my enemies in the midst of battle you set a table in revelation 3 jesus says i stand at the door and knock if anyone opens the door i will come in and guess what i just want to have a meal when when we look eternally into the future and we look at the return of christ what does it all end with a giant meal the most heavenly buffet you've ever experienced right so god designed food to be a place where you enjoy connectivity because it's a place to relax it's a place to feel safe to feel nurtured and the food needs to be digested in peace and now we have all these gastrointestinal issues and all these problems our nutrition's out of whack was there a nurtured place where you had a center point for sitting at the table and enjoying company you know for a while people didn't even sit at the dinner table they just you know got the tv trays out watch tv didn't even talk or everyone's just in their own thing they get dinner this person gets dinner there maybe a simple step in recovery of anxiety is having when every time you have a meal you pause and you allow your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down and you go into peace that what i believe why prayer for a meal is important not because oh i gotta make sure i get my prayer in so you know my food doesn't poison me or god's gonna be mad at me part of it is bringing yourself into peace and gratitude so you can enjoy the food for the nutrition your body can digest it properly in peace and you can enjoy the relationship company that's around you see see how the simplest things we kind of pass by you know like oh god you know change my life help me and maybe god's staying back sit down and have have some dinner yeah god i need you to help me with my we don't pay attention to the important things just sitting and wherever your meals are whether you have three meals a day or two meals a day or whatever of stopping and pausing and saying god i want to learn to take in your peace that is one of the aspects of setting up yourself to battle against the work of fear and remain in peace and early on in my i would do prayer sessions with people and have all these fear issues or like this tightening this choking now what's that also want to do keep your voice from speaking out that's one of the number one reasons that paul gave that profound statement that he gave in second timothy 1 7. i'll reference this a lot for god has not given us the spirit of fear now go to the verse before it verse 6 ii timothy here he says therefore i remind you stir up the gift that is in you through the laying out of my hands so there's an understanding of there's gifts god's given you within you he's deposited in your life no he hasn't he hasn't given it to me okay that's a whole nother subject he has what wants to block the work of the gifting in your life anyone anyone fear in all its forms whether it's anxiety you have an anxiety kind of pattern i i would have anxiety from the moment you told me mark you're gonna speak uh three weeks from now i would have anxiety from that moment for three weeks non-stop up until that speaking moment then i'd have a little bit of relief after it was done and then i'd have anxiety thinking about the next one and then when you're a pastor and it's happening all the time you're in chronic right what's happening the fear is seeking to keep the gift from operating now it may not be just speaking it doesn't mean you have to be on a platform you have to have a youtube channel or you have to you know do live videos sometimes it means just speaking encouragement sometimes it means just speaking words of exhortation and help to someone or comfort right there's gifts in your life and so paul says here i want to remind you the gift is in you and we prayed this and and these gifts are ignited in you and he says stir them up for there's that connector word for god's not giving you a spirit of fear fear is after your potential fear is after your potential anxiety is not your friend it wants to keep growing wants to steal the capacity of your life and i appreciate timothy because timothy was a young guy who struggled with anxiety he says the bible talk about anxiety yeah because paul said tell him hey man stir up the gift he tells him don't all this stuff that paul tell him read through read through the writings of timothy where paul has to say hey man don't let people look down on you because you're young that's a little insight okay so he's young he's dealing with these older people they come in they intimidate him well i've been in the faith longer than you i'm older than you i'm elder so-and-so and i've been around for a long time we think you are a little kid telling me what to do you think you got an apostolic calling blah blah blah you know whatever right then in other sections paul's like don't get lost in these arguments with people who are coming against you with more insight timothy's got these people coming against him man man i just appreciate it and paul's like god's not giving you a spirit of fear and then paul's also hey by the way have a little wine for your stomach he got a little acid reflux going on there doesn't he right the anxiety is affecting him here and gut issues are a major part of anxiety that's that's i'll get into that a little bit because chronic fear stress and anxiety will cause gut issues and if we don't take care of our gut there's you know there's a whole science in that that can back that up we don't take care of our gut it can also produce anxiety so it's like they're both kind of working in conjunction with each other right so we see this just there alone i've just given you a mental health lesson not from the dsm-4 from ii timothy because timothy timothy didn't have a father role in his life paul look right here look at right here in this verse i'm not making this stuff up paul says well i greatly desiring to be filled with mindful of your tears i may be filled with joy when i call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you which first dwelt in your grandmother lois and your mother eunice now that's amazing that's beautiful great mom great amazing grandmother right but if you just understand simple biblical pattern people's lives are never talked about through the female if you notice from the beginning of scripture all the way to the end it's described through the seed there's no mention of timothy's father so part of timothy's battle is the fatherlessness to some degree whether his father died his father wasn't around or what happened we don't know paul presents himself as a spiritual father so we see why that's so important that healthy mentoring fathering is a big part of your anxiety overcoming so i don't even need a psychology manual i don't even need a medical manual i'll just take ii timothy and teach you about the life of anxiety because timothy had it but timothy sought to overcome and paul was the key voice in his life and sometimes all you need is just a nurturing voice in your life to remind you you're not crazy you're not out of your mind you have what it takes and we're going to do this and you're going to learn to overcome that's been a game changer in my life and i want to be that voice in your life whether we meet someday or not whether i coach you someday or not didn't matter this right here could be just what you need to be an encouragement to you see how i told you i would take tangents that's what i'm gonna do take some good tangents okay so back to the narrowness and tightness and get that in your chest you often feel it there in your chest a lot right that's where i know it would show up a lot for me it's right in my chest some people say in my stomach some people say in their back or their hips um some people get in their head headaches but this area this tightness is a big part of it okay now anxiety one may not even know the object of your anxiety because sometimes it's helpful to go what am i anxious about what seems to be the theme that bugs me but it can get to the point i know it did for me where it's just an overall atmosphere that's going on constant pain in the neck chest tension sweating increase pulse or some form of that now from a teaching standpoint i talk about anxiety under the umbrella of fear because people say i don't have fear i'm just anxious anxiety every word that we use in this in these areas and categories is a form of fear and i have it up here in the notes anxiety is a fearful anticipation now as another word we often use worry and in my i will not fear curriculum i walk you through these a bunch of different words that we often use that are really just other examples of the influence of fear in our life now worry can be a related word to anxiety but worry is a fear it's a fear of the future it often leads us to ruminating cycling and cycling and cycling and the same thing and it creates these ruts of neural pathways of thinking that keep firing firing firing firing firing firing firing panic attacks i'm having a panic attack do you have fear no i don't have fear i'm having a panic attack panic attacks are the sudden feelings of fear we'll get into that in in a dedicated session on its own phobias then are a specific fear okay so that just kind of helps with some of the lingo now what i'd like to do is just take a little bit and talk about the physiology of anxiety because i think everybody should understand what's going on in the body when anxiety is kicking up what's happening is your fight or flight response sometimes it's called fight or flight freeze fight or flight they're adding other words to it fight or flight fawn fight or flight but i'll just keep it simple fight or flight what does that mean it's your body's response to either fight i gotta gear up and fight or i gotta flight i gotta get out of here and that's oftentimes what we're dealing with when we're dealing with anxiety either oh my goodness i'm i'm anxious because i'm in an argument with somebody and now i'm i'm you know my my pulse is rising i feel the tension the stuff in my chest i'm in this argument or the flight i gotta get out of here i gotta get out of here okay so here's the basis of this okay and and i'm going to lay this out simple because i think simple i i don't complex and heady and all that it's not my world so i like taking things to make it simple so what happens is when fight-or-flight kicks in your body anticipates a threat a stressor a pressure-filled situation your brain sends a signal to your body through the sympathetic nervous system everybody say sympathetic if i was in a room with people that was okay there's there's there's there's two two systems that you understand with your nervous system sympathetic which is your body sympathizing with you going we gotta deal with something here we gotta deal with something then there's a second one it's called the parasympathetic and parasympathetic goes hey you've been up there in stress zone bring it down okay these two work in conjunction they're meant to work in conjunction with each other okay hypothalamus other glands and signals to gear this up now god made this for emergencies you're walking along bear jumps out of the woods fight or flight kicks in so that you you probably should get out of there right run or if you're like some amazing woodsman you're going to fight you know don't advise that because you get what i'm saying some kind of threat happens you you respond in a way of protecting yourself or avoiding running away and getting out of the situation god designed our body system to use this only in emergencies temporarily number one and number two when you gear up you were meant to come back down and what i'm gonna show here is a vast majority of society we have not come back down we are living in a chronic state of fight or flight at us even at a small drip you might think well man it's it's crazy and me i'm up to here okay whether it's that or whether it's just a low hum of anxiety throughout the day you can't get still can't quiet yourself right what you have is the sympathetic nervous systems turned on and it's not really turning off okay and so i'm going to show you how this affects so the body releases cortisol you've already heard of cortisol okay adrenaline which is also known as epinephrine and other hormones get sent all right now again this must be supposed to be just for a moment your kid got trapped under a car and you get the strength to pick the wheel up you somehow you got superhuman strength right we've heard of those stories right because the adrenaline cortisol gets released there's this instant response that floods your body you're gearing up now here's what and i wrote this on the slide your body reacts to gear up and also to pull resources from other body systems to deal with the stressor at hand okay so the nervous system is going i need resources i need resources here we're going to pull resources so first thing that happens your heart rate speeds up that's why normally when you feel anxiety right in your chest feel that right there nervous systems heart rate increases breathing starts increasing and oftentimes it can get more shallow okay where the breathing now what the what the nervous systems do what cortisol's doing is it's going to send signals to the body hey we need you so if you see there on the slide digestion slow down because what's happening is the body's going it's not time to eat time to run from the bear okay so it pulls resources from digestion it's going to give it back it's like hey we're going to give this back in five minutes we've got to get out of here parasympathetic it's going to calm down digestion will kick back in but right now it's not time to eat so it pulls the resources okay now i'm going to pause right here and go for those who struggle with anxiety and things like that or struggle with chronic fear or you're having stress in your life a lot for many people they see it manifesting in their stomach notice you don't feel like eating or maybe when you do you gravitate towards junk food fried food fast food sugary food why because cortisol is cranked and one of the signs of stress is you start craving carbs because you're looking for kicking in blood sugar levels because blood sugar is getting impacted by stress too so now you're eating fast food now you're having your cokes now you're you're having sugar you want a candy bar and you can't stop right because the overall anxiety effect and it's affecting from here all the way down into your digestion out to the output okay and so for those of you that have physiological issues in that area it would be helpful to go do i need to shift how i'm dealing with stress is there anxiousness that's it might am i kicking in this fight or flight i need to like learn how to actively engage peace more often okay blood pressure increases muscles get tense veins constrict pupils dilate blood glucose level increases okay digestion shuts down to allow for needed energy and functioning which i just mentioned another one that's not here as well too is a whole other category in itself reproduction the resources from your reproductive functions get pulled from it's not time to have a baby this is time to deal with the fight-or-flight stress response right which is a whole subject in itself because those stress patterns affect those areas in people's lives okay now this is a big one number 10 is the immune system it takes resources chronic stress takes resources from the immune system so your immune system is not functioning optimally now your body does it doesn't matter god designed it this way it's just for this 20 minute thing it's an emergency you need it for this emergency to run from the bear get out of there then you come back down to peace again the problem is we're not coming down to peace we're in a chronic state so therefore our immune systems are not working at the fullest capacity that's there and there's other things that can be impacted too and depending on how you respond to stress how you respond to anxiety you can have trouble focusing on small tasks you can you can sometimes get foggy sometimes you don't even know where like a threat is coming from right now why am i sharing all this with you because this is what's going on when you're having anxiety and again i can't emphasize this enough all these physical responses are intended to help you survive a dangerous situation by preparing you either to run for your life or fight for your life and they are temporary because the para everybody say pero the parasympathetic nervous system is meant to come in that's the nurture that's the nurture god built into your body the nurturing comfort calming to say the threat has passed i'm okay there are masses of people that don't land into i'm okay it's chronic the parasympathetic system is struggling to bring you back to peace it's technical term for that's homeostasis what does homeostasis mean settled peace i'm okay i'm at rest and it is my conviction that god wants to bring his perfect peace to lead you into the manifestation of homeostasis the problem is and i put this right there in the middle of the slide we are living in chronic fight or flight you say no i'm not stressed out well you're having panic attacks something is going on and we're not returning to true peace so a lot of times this chronic stress this chronic anxiety gets stuck within us some people talk about i feel like it's stuck in my body it's like the imprint of it is in my cells and it's like my nervous system hasn't let it out so that i can come into peace so i just stay locked in this torment i stay locked into this place am i speaking at all to areas where you are seeing in your own life or people around you now there is some sometimes confusion right because there are aspects where anxiety could serve a purpose and i want to be careful in mentioning this because i don't want to create confusion oh is this anxiety good or is it not if it's creating chronic patterns if it's if if it's ongoing it's it's not good anxiety is not your friend but anxiety like i said can temporarily warn us about a danger hey there's a tornado coming to your house you know get to cover right if if we were sitting there like blobs going ah that's all right you know so there is where the nervous system wakes you and alerts you problem with most people is that there's no bear there's no tornado but this is kick this is still kicking in right the feeling of anxiety and people i've coached i i help them to understand um can be about something you're excited about like you you can have that like like a nervous anticipation about christmas i can't you know those days where you just couldn't go to sleep you couldn't go sleep it wasn't because you're being tormented because you're excited and sometimes people with anxiety don't know how to manifest excitement because it kind of triggers that pathway and just kind of goes to anxiety that's all they know it's like no there is a part about being excited that's that's an okay thing we have to be kinder to ourselves in this process sometimes low levels of anxiety can be a motivating factor meaning that it helps a doctor in the in the surgery or an emergency room focus maybe studying for your attention for a test you know um giving a public address or something that you're speaking on be alert it's not it's not technically anxiety it's just a little bit of that almost i don't know the word to put to it maybe a good stress or just a good a little bit of that tension right because the goal is not that you just float through life there's an awakening but it doesn't torment you right so you say what's the difference the difference is it doesn't torment you it doesn't hold you back it doesn't keep projecting failure doom and darkness right because remember this fight or flight thing is only meant to be temporary it's an emergency thing and today the problem is not bears it's bills deadlines conflict finances insecurity traumas people attacking us people harming us people wronging us people hurting us all these become the bears that we're dealing with in our life the thing that's interesting to note too is that our body doesn't know the difference between is there a bear or is there a bear i'm spinning about in my head it doesn't know the difference so it just responds when it senses you're not at peace it just responds um unless it's trained and for a lot of us and i know for me i had to learn how to train spirit soul body to learn to come under the peace of god and learn to develop my um ability to to to to heal so that i could walk through the res the resistance and get some resilience right i think that we have a lot of denial about our anxiety too because many people say to me i'm worried about this mark but just you know it's a real fear this is a real fear you know like real fear fake fear it's like well chronic fear is all an enemy chronic anxiety is all-in and it's it's not going to serve you but sometimes we defend and i talk about that and i will not fear as we often defend our fears and one of the first layers for me was once i stopped defending my fears i actually it was much more helpful because how are you going to heal of something you're still defending no no this is a real concern i understand i understand what you're saying like i'm in an environment that's very unsafe or i'm in this i get you and those things need to be dealt with but what i want to do is draw a line in the sand to separate out this anxiety this fear that we're dealing with chronic levels it's not who you are it's not who god made you to be it's not a part of his imprint god did not make you to be a chronic anxiety ridden person now that's not to condemn you nor is it to condemn me it's informative for empowerment that there's a journey ahead of you that does not have chronic anxiety and fear in the equation of the imprint of your identity so i want to help introduce you more and more to your future self and bring it into the here and now so you can begin to start applying that does that make sense so what i'd like to cover here in the the remaining time and then i'm going to take this next week to a part two and you can post questions and things like that what i want to get started in is what are the factors contributing to battles with anxiety i believe i have 10 of them yeah and hopefully i'll get through the 10. this is a place to start you recognize okay i've got anxiety panic issues it's good to kind of develop a blueprint of okay what does it seem to surround what are the issues or the subjects what do you know so far i believe it's helpful to have a journaling process i kept a journal and i began to document what i noticed what i was learning and just kind of kept going what's this fear about what does it seem to point to what does it seem to keep kicking up in my life when did this start where does it seem to come from what am i aware of so far what some of the areas that i can understand scripturally and understand practically in my life to to address this okay so some of what i'm going to share will kind of lead you on a journey of that to help you and encourage you in that okay so the first one we're going to look at is inheritance or heredity whichever word you want to use your dna what is going on in your family tree we all have a spiritual and natural inheritance right you have dna that's coming down the line that you've inherited there's also spiritual inheritance right battles your parents faced that you're inheriting there's also blessings of where they served god where they made decisions to honor god and you inherit that where they made strong decisions of sacrifice you know but i like to encourage people start with your family tree does your anxiety match what you see in mom does it match what you see in dad do you tend to have the battles of both parents or one of them which parent you like the most where do you notice this thing flowing for example is um many people anxiety comes out in the form of of shyness um where where you know shyness can be a form of a fear of man starting very very early right we become very very shy we don't have confidence in talking to people and in studies they found that it seems that shyness is more inherited than it is learned it's like that shyness is already starting before they're learning traits and learning things in their in in their coping mechanism right people say well what about our new identity we have a new inheritance in christ right yes and we are on a journey of allowing all that we've inherited in christ jesus to take over in our thinking our believing in our living but this is a journey this is a process and i i know in the word nowhere in our identity in christ is anxiety or fear part of the equation but the good news is god's not condemning you in your current anxiety in your current fear you know what god is saying to you he's saying i want to let my love cast out that anxiety so let my love have its work so that you get to give future generations a new inheritance whatever you started with and some of you go man i got terrible genes i got terrible genetics got mental illness i got this i got that well what do you want to offer future generations even whether you have kids or you don't have kids what do you want to offer future generations because you do not have to be a victim to your family's genetics and god's never said that you have to be a vic but it's a start to recognize where you come from sometimes to go where you're going you need to know where you came from where this started it's helpful you have to be introspective you don't have to do you don't have to write a novel about your upbringing but just a good general sense where do i come from now number two ten years ago i probably wouldn't have made this number two but i had to bring it up to number one because if i if i'm if i'm going to encourage you and coach you we got to change your diet because our modern day diet is so contaminated and i used to do a lot of nutritional teaching especially when i was pastoring because my my church was was was so unhealthy and i was like we got to go i did some sunday night series we got i need to change we all need to we all need to clean this up because they were battling mental health issues and i did a lot of teaching at that time on overcoming healing freedom mental health stuff like that and i was like we got to clean up our diet because we can't go god heal me and my anxiety learn and then we're doing drive through eating that contaminated food processed food and it's not even really food most of it is food like it tastes like something but it's really filled with chemicals that overload your body system mess up your gut and can actually induce anxiety so if i had to look back on my renovation journey in the beginning the early stages before before i even say okay we're going to learn this we're going to learn this we're going to learn this to heal anxiety in your life first thing i say is if you want this really want this clean up your diet i mean clean it up and when i say clean it up don't clean it up in a way where you say well i eat healthy people say that why i eat healthy uh where someone else who's educated knows what they're talking about you know a nutritionist doc you know somebody who i say doctor sometimes i hesitate in that too because all doctors are arguing over things somebody who knows nutrition gives you feedback and says yes this is this is going to help clean up your gut i have found that poor nutritional habits have a massive massive effect on mood brain clarity energy and mental health and i'm encouraging all the people i'm coaching in in any mental health area clean up diet i mean clean it get the sugar out get processed food out start with that any processed food like let's get back to good ingredients because your gut health has a lot to do with overall health and mental health in fact um there's so much learning that's happening right now about microbiome because you have bacteria good bacteria in your gut that's meant there to help help process not only process food digest food but it also affects immune system it affects nervous system it affects brain function i mean don't you notice you eat like a whole bowl of like you know pasta or pizza or something like that and then what happens you have this dip and you feel like you just want to pass out or you feel like headache you feel lethargic you don't feel energy right that's for a lot of reasons a lot of it the ingredients are toxic that are there it's overloading your digestive system so now the digestives are pulling from resources man back detroit this is really toxic we need all the work we can so now you're not at full capacity and energy right and so there's research that you know 70 percent more of immune system cells are in your gut this is all starting with your gut this is incredible right and gut health regulates your brain so if you want to if you want to see anxiety heal more in your life take a look at your nutrition take a look at are you are you going for walks are you you know taking care of your temple in this way and it's important to know many toxic foods can induce anxiety and we're praying god god help me help me eating stuff that's that's inducing those things so this is important to know we as christians should not be ignorant all right christianity has been known to be the people that go to buffets [Music] and um we've got to deal with how we're caring for ourselves big time number three there are many medical conditions that can mimic anxiety so for instance if you have low blood sugar issues hypoglycemia that'll cause shakiness dizziness anxiety just like it just like you're having anxiety attack or um you know those who frequently have anxiety in the morning or between meals who then notice that it goes away following eating you should probably be evaluated for hypoglycemia and you should probably look into to a new lifestyle in dealing with that um many times diabetics can sometimes think they're having a hypoglycemic episode when in reality they're having an anxiety attack so sometimes it's the blood sugar sometimes it's anxiety but you know what's blood sugar like for you if you regulate that regulate insulin we have an epidemic worldwide of pre-diabetic and it's a major major issue there's also thyroid problems get your thyroid checked it can cause increased heart rate sweating there's two main kinds of conditions there's the hyper thyroid which means the thyroid gland is making too much thyroid hormone that's graves disease right or it's hypothyroidism which is um the thyroid's not making enough thyroid hormone that's hashimoto's and that can be that can slow down metabolism that can create a lot of weight gain you're trying to lose weight trying to lose weight trying to lose weight you're in a lot of stress you know anxiety right that's a whole another topic when it comes to weight gain because it's a sign of cortisol is um that belly fat and that weight just staying around you could have an uh adrenal fatigue where your adrenal glands have been worked so hard it just wiped out and so you um i feel like for many their fight-or-flight system is just tapped out and you're exhausted uh be aware of hormonal changes and what stage you're in your life um where you are at menopause or in pregnancy uh that state you know puberty is a big hormonal changes our our children need help and teaching around those stages to help them because all kinds of stuff all kinds of emotions that's very very important um and and sometimes simple things like are you coming off of a certain drug are you having too much caffeine there's certain you know drugs that create anxiety as a as as as a side effect that's a whole subject in itself that i i plan on getting into okay so want to start there now we're going to get into the deeper work okay we talk about anxiety we're gonna roll up our sleeves we're gonna here's where the work gets started we talk about anxiety we're gonna talk about your parental relationship now my mom and dad were a good dad can we move on to something else no no because this is where you form your grid your genetics start and then your parental relationship kick in right away much of our view in life and our ability to process life stems back to mom and dad so studies are showing now this is just studies looking at research studies are showing the parental relationship is a bigger factor than genetics so you may have a whole line of anxiety grandma and great-grandma grandpa all the way down mom and dad you see this inherited pattern of mental illness or anxiety or whatever right study and research is showing solid parenting can be a bigger factor and more helpful and more influential than the genetic factor so that's why i said you don't have to be a victim of your genetics now this is where the enemy's got a sniper on parents because he's got the sniper on marriages and he's attacking marriages and he's getting parents where their unaddressed brokenness then manifests chronically in their parenting and we see all these different patterns of narcissistic parents or abusive parents or neglectful parents or cold parents or certain patterns that people fall into it affects the children and then the children say i don't want that i'm never going to have that but then they end up reproducing that in their own life in some form in some fashion i believe the most important factor in overall mental health is how well the parental child relationship is cultivated this is so key this is so important i just looked in the screen and saw my my black finger you see i see my black thing that's where the log hit my finger my band-aid must have fell off so even if a child carries a genetic factor of anxiety a well-equipped parent can set them up to overcome did you hear what i said did you hear what i said i'm looking and johnny's got anxiety ah maybe running in the family johnny needs equipping in addressing anxiety so stop rushing to the next event stop rushing to the soccer game stop rushing to the things pause take time and talk the most important person in a child's life is dad and mom and we have a we have a problem because many parents think my child's having anxiety i got to get them to a counselor and that's not step one that's not step one i get requests for parents who contact me saying my kid's having anxiety i'm not against helping but i said i'd like to help you because there's two things one i want to help deal with maybe where you may have a struggle with it deal with areas in your life number two i want to empower you and how you parent because i'm just going to meet with them however many times or what one time or whatever that's not going to change their life your relationship now i'm not saying i won't have an impact i could say something that could stick with them but i'm not the most powerful person in their life you are now the devil doesn't want you to think that the devil wants you to think they don't care about what you think especially when they become teenagers ah they don't care they're not listening because they go whatever mom whatever dad and they go in their room and play video games do not set parenting into autopilot because everything in life we learn yes we have genetic imprints to lean towards certain directions but there must be learning that takes place to reinforce and if there is no learning if there is no coping skills then we're left to just deal with our issues in dysfunctional ways so now let me let me talk to you as though those watching this with your parent or not in your life a great way to learn healing to learn healing through anxiety is look at your parental wounds what kind of father did you have be honest don't feel guilty and bad if you have to bring out certain things because a lot of christians we feel oh i'm dishonoring my father no no just understand what did he give to you in his fathering i know he loved me i know he loved me when we say stuff like that we're usually covering over something and say he didn't love you you know did he tell you he loved you on a regular basis did he honor your mother did he demonstrate love to you did he show you attention did he let you know that he's got your back that he's he's he supports you he's with you he's proud of you was he present was he lost at work was he absent was he an addict was he abusive was he harsh was he did he abandon you did he abandon you by choice or abandon you not by choice through dying maybe he had an illness and nothing he could do about it but he was okay it's underst it's important to understand your father grid what about your mother grid what kind of mom was she was she nurturing was she warm when you were anxious did she tell you well you better pray more you know just tell you to get over it and so you took that anxiety and you shoved it in a lock box and shoved it deep down as far as you could and then you just hidden darkness and shame while you're shaking in your boots and you felt shameful for even having anxiety it's important to bring out what are those two wounds we carry it's important because then if if you tell me mom and dad what they were like i could probably tell you what your anxieties are like for example i said alcoholic parent right if you have one or both alcoholic parents most likely you will struggle with chronic swings of anxiety that may often lead into depression why because growing up with an alcoholic conditioned your nervous system to never feel safe because you don't know what you're expecting is he drunk is he going to be drunk is she drunk are they sober are they not so there goes your sympathetic parasympathetic going it's just hitching back and forth hitching back and forth hitching back and forth hitching back and forth right not being able to settle then now you're 40 in life and going i don't know why i can't get at peace well your parents struggled with the same anxiety but they but they fell into alcohol to numb it and then it became an addiction and problematic and now affected you in that way this makes sense so let me go back to you parents you need to understand there's a battle over your children's life there's a battle over your life there's a battle over your kid's life what your child needs is not perfect parenting they don't need a performance parent trying to be good and do everything right what your child needs is just an available parent who's growing themselves you grow some of the best advice i was given in parenting is mark you're not going to be a better parent by trying to be a better parent just grow in what it means to be a loved son of god and bring that to your parenting it's so much more effective because then you relate it's not just you up here telling your kids talking and lecturing them it's you relate yes you're leading them yes you have to discipline them but you're walking alongside of them you're modeling compassion you're you're repenting for your own mistakes when you lose it or you're you're not present and you connect with them in that and they and they know that you're on your journey i want my kids to know i'm on my journey and i'm on my pathway and growing and i have a lot i can share from my learning but i do by walking alongside by having conversation that's the biggest place of transformation in parenting life is learning how to have conversations with your kids a lot of my kids aren't talking to me they're they're just on their phones or cell phones well get in their world then if they're playing video games then get in sit down and get curious about their video games play the video games with them i hate the video games they play you want to enter their world or or not because that's how we build relationship we become like jesus did god came and jesus emmanuel god with us the incarnate work where he didn't go hey you got to come up here he came here and he dwelt with us and i believe that is how transformational life happens we enter into their world and as parents you're the most powerful voice and your kids are being influenced by anxiety in a lot of different ways certain things that are springing anxiety certain stressors standards values things that don't matter and don't need to matter and there's this place called the parental voice that they need and it's not lecturing them it's not preaching at them it's encouraging them it's letting them talk without instantly judging fixing it's me listening to this going man we as adults need to do this with each other bingo bingo so my my journey is growing as a son so i have to learn to let god father me it humbles me it calms me so then when i bring that to my parenting it's a different perspective versus just go to your room just do this better stop doing do this you know that kind of parenting approach like god's working on me too just making sense now for anxiety there's there's there's a bunch of different factors i mentioned alcoholic parents there's a couple of parental factors that can increase anxiety in children and maybe this spawned in your own life one is the anxious parent this is they're just worried they and they but they don't admit that that's what they are they admit they they call it cautiousness i'm just cautious i'm just very concerned they blanket it right to cover they're i'm just being careful and they're the growing thought pattern is the world is dangerous the world is dangerous the world is dangerous so they make decisions based on that thought the world is dangerous so the focus becomes sheltering a child from any possible discomfort or harm decisions are based primarily on avoiding all fears and preventing all fears so this can develop control issues it can develop what sometimes called helicopter parents this is where parents need to learn to release their children to the lord it doesn't mean you're not engaged you're fully engaged but you're releasing the pressure and the weight that anxiety fuels off of over your kids this is a very very important precept that we have to live by from birth until they're older parents god they're yours they're yours i'm available i'm here love them pray for them but they're yours you love them more than i do so that's one type of parent another parent that can increase anxiety is a performance based parent and these this can be sneaky because this can sneak in a lot of areas it's results focused maybe the dinner table is focused on grades and you must excel and beware of your parenting surrounding the applause over awards and achievements how are your kids doing oh it's great um johnny he's uh he's mvp in his league and and sally she's you know she's she got first place in the violin i'm not saying that that's that's bad to share that i'm just saying is that the metrics by which we evaluate how our kids are doing just stuff to think about because we can develop develop performance based mentalities in our children who you are is based on what you do and how well you do it and that becomes now the currency of belonging i got to show up i got to do things well or else i won't belong i won't connect develops perfectionistic tendencies nothing is ever good enough nothing is ever good enough okay so parents don't tell your children do your best if you're always then evaluating on them being perfect right so the key is more love-based relationship it's it doesn't mean hey get good grades but there's there's a development of relationship that's not tied to performance like hey we're spending time together i'm getting to know you i'm getting to know who you are okay so this is a big one so when you look at your battles with anxiety at the struggles you have with with anxiety ask yourself the question what was my parental relationship what's the grid that i carry when it comes to how i was raised number five is kind of ties into number four is your home life and your childhood patterns so when it comes to anxiety anxiety disorders let me look back at your home life what was your home overall life like were your parents available to you what was the lifestyle like was there time for fun did you have fun together did you enjoy each other what was the like mindset towards sin was it just shaming you sending you to your room or was there just good discussions around it we understood like what you're going through what you're facing did you was there a lot of times where you just felt neglected you're just in your room a lot by yourself really a big thing is like did you feel safe do you feel safe with your other siblings did you feel safe with other relatives do you overall just feel safe and protected the safety is the key place what your grid of feeling safe your reference for it what it means to you did was that modeled was that a part of your journey was was how you deal with problems and bad days a safe pattern because then that can be revealed in a way where you can go okay yeah no i didn't feel safe i kind of felt like i was on my own i kind of felt like if it was to be it was totally up to me you know so um number six equipping equipping were you equipped for life coping skills man we put a lot of pressure for you to get that a in chemistry right even though you're not going to use most of it make sure you get that algebra right you know get those grades right you know learn these i'm not saying don't do well in school where do we put the priorities did you learn how to face stress do you learn how to face stress most people i think watching this learning this do you do you learn when you were a kid how to face stress how to calm your body how to think new thoughts how to recover from a hard day now you face that every day of your life where's the equipping in that it's amazing the things we actually need are not provided in our equipping the overwhelming majority of people i've observed we're not giving coping skills to deal with hardship disappointments trials so we get caught in these anxiety patterns and rumination and obsessiveness and then there's those times in life where coping mechanisms develop because your parents got divorced they were separated there was deaths there was strife maybe constant fighting maybe there's emotional silence in the culture and it just there was no equipping there's no equipping and i mentioned earlier that many times eight symptoms of what we think is adhd can actually be a chronic anxiety issue are we helping with that you know but then again we go no need to go see a counselor go see a therapist remember that's not step number one step number one is where's dad where's mom i'm gonna slow the two of you down god deal with your life i don't have time for that i'm super busy well ladies and gentlemen this leads us to the heart of what do we really want do you want lots of money and fame and be super busy or you want to look successful with all the things you're involved in and all the things that you're doing and drowning your brokenness and emptiness with chronic busyness and going with the matrix of the world system or do you want life and do you want to know your spouse and do you want to know your children do you want to actually know your neighbor's name and how they're doing do you want to actually relate and connect to people there's sacrifices that need to be made you might have to go yep maybe we won't have that third house because we're going to back down on how much we're doing people like third house i'm barely in my first house because whether you're poor or rich or wherever you are you're going to live by your value systems what is it that you really want now for me what i want is i want a great relationship with my wife does it mean we won't have things we got to work through i want a great relationship with my kids doesn't mean they're not going to have trials and stuff they're going to go through we're all going to face resistance and obstacles no one is exempt from the battle but i believe the greatest god-given gift is the family to the health of equipping people for mental health and this is where people say oh they'll say my mom and dad were wonderful i'm not trying to bash your mom and dad i'm not doing that at all this is recognition but i'll say did they equip you i to this day anyone i've sat down and helped i cannot recall if it is it was just a few that said yes they did equip me because that's part of parental responsibility is equipping our children to live as adult overcomers here's the problem here's the problem mom and dad i'm speaking to you as as as one we were not equipped so you're thrown to the wolves that's why we need to be equipped to learn to live as sons and daughters that's where it starts because in that sonship we learn the father's love and delight for us and then we pour out of that to our children and remember anxiety disorders they generally begin in childhood or young adulthood so for those of you in this broadcast either live or watching it later whether you realize it or not it began either in teen years or early on for me it was pretty early on as early as i can remember anxiety and depression are very early in my recollection but i didn't know here's the thing that's why sometimes it's good to ask questions to to cultivate talking in a healthy way i didn't know i could talk about that i took those feelings and like tried to just make them go away make them go away as quick as possible that's why we have to have like a discerning eye hey my kid seems a little distracted how you doing today not like interrogation like shining a spotlight on how are you doing just like how you doing i love you you all right everything going okay anything you want to talk about i noticed this i noticed when you're doing this sometimes it's good to just ask questions of just curiosity not to judge it not to condemn it just curious show interest in your kid's life show interest in what they're interested in they watch a tv show and you just kind of just you set them in autopilot sit and ask them about the tv show what do you like about it what characters do you like what do you what do you think's enjoy create safety by which then in the midst of that some of those things pop to the surface right of hey i'm going through some things and that's the greatest power i believe we're sending our kids to church to disciple our kids no no it starts here we're sending our kids hey to nothing wrong with counselors nothing wrong therapist i encourage people get all the help that's available invest in it you need having your budget an investment for wholeness in your life because what's what's the point in all these things that we put money into if we're lacking peace and we can't enjoy any of it and we can't connect to the life that jesus paid for okay so what kind of parental equipment did you get when you were a child and you felt nervous anxious or worried when you felt that emotion and you did share it with your parents how did they respond that's usually a key of then what formed some of the patterns in your life many times parents are very overwhelmed understandable i get it i get it it's like this is just too much to deal with right now can we just like somehow you'll be fine translation i don't have time for this right it shows beware of how our busyness takes hold of everything you gotta fight for that margin you gotta fight fight the devil with this because he wants to steal your time okay so number six is where i would say now the coaching and the help begins because that's where we need equipping so your emotional makeup is a part of it like what's kind of your wiring you hypersensitive you find you have a really sensitive heart so you're empathetic to people man you walk into a room somebody's going through something you feel it feel it right and and and your discipleship journey is gonna learn how to use that effectively where it doesn't overtake you in a toxic way i say that because that's been my journey i have an article i wrote about um hypersensitive and and learning how to live with a sensitive heart it's in my book the heart healing journey so if you're if you find yourself in that it might be good there's also i believe the article form of it is is on my website marcasis.com so just look up sensitive heart and so that that hypersensitive sensitivity your emotional makeup like how you typically respond to stress you know you are you are you fi you find yourself emotionally wired some people are very are sensitive some people are very disconnected to their emotions so they don't even know when it comes to anxiety like how to even like do some you know healthy insight because they're disconnected they're not connected to what's going on and so in our emotional makeup our emotions when it's conditioned by fear and anxiety we become highly programmable it's what is a word i use like you become programmed in it where it becomes now an automatic response automatic response okay i'm going to give you three more number eight we'll get into this more is your faith grid and there's two key things here in your faith grid how you relate to god how do you relate to him is he angry is he disappointed in you is he judging you all day long or do you know him as father are you able to as jesus presented him because that's who he presented he said if you've seen me you see the father everything i say is what the father told me do you know how to relate to the father if you're a christian and you believe in the work of jesus christ do you know how to go to the father and relate to him in his love in his grace and receive the nurturing comfort that's going to be very very important if you struggle with anxiety that's where your spiritual focus needs to be on learning how to relate to god as your father that's why i spend so much time in my materials and resources covering that when i talk about god's love as your father rejection roots that come in as a result of not knowing him as father and then how you see yourself i spent a lot of time equipping people in this area okay so in your faith greatest how you relate to god how you see your battles are are you aware that you're in a spiritual battle and that god wants to equip you for war he's paid the price but the church has been called to manifest that victory and many of us show that we don't know the spiritual battle we're in because we pray god take this battle away god just do it for me god just please just make me feel better god just take away these problems god just take away these battles and then we go forget it god's not listening because god actually wants to equip you you are a son you are a daughter you're called as warriors and fear is something that we will have to learn how to face and overcome anxiety is something we have to learn to face and overcome so i had to relearn because i didn't know how to relate to god and his love i didn't i knew he loved me in theory i didn't know it personally in my heart i didn't i didn't know how to relate to him as a father especially as a father who's with me he's got my back helping me walking with me through things nope no reference for that no reference for that so we're gonna have to learn we have to learn how to get armed up to fight the battle the bible calls fears of spirit there's a spiritual work of fear that's all over the planet seeking to infect us like a plague how much have we been infected and what do we need to get our bodies minds strengthened our hearts strengthened to overcome now i won't spend a lot of time in this because i will dedicate at some point specific teaching series more to trauma but anxiety there is a lot of trauma now when it comes to trauma trauma has a real imprint on us these are moments in life or series of moments they could be a single event or a complex series of events they hit our system they overwhelm our faculties and fight or flight is just shot you could have adrenal exhaustion anxiety issues depression coming out of that unprocessed traumas fuel anxiety issues now i want to give you as a as a just a exhortation don't feel like you have to sit there and introspect like what trauma is it what trauma is it what trauma is it sometimes christians can become obsessive and trying to search out things i don't take that approach i take the approach of pay attention to things that god just bubbles to the surface i encourage people focus on his love is nurtures grace and in that he'll bubble things to the surface that you go home wow okay that affected me in certain ways at certain stages of your life he'll bring out certain things certain layers and and we get real obsessive i got us and we want to we want to document the whole tree and everything and get it all down it's like not just this one thing you know when you were yelled that in that situation that really affected you in that way when this this happened and this abusive environment that situation that season of your life that just like ran you over it was really hard had a traumatic effect on your life want to i want to begin to heal that and heal the mindsets that came out of that which leads me to the the last thing i'm going to close with this is what really impacts your the anxiety is your self-talk where are your thoughts coming from what are they saying it's been my observation and i think pretty much anyone i would talk to agrees with this the majority the high overwhelming majority of our inner dialogue what do i mean by your self-talk it's it's the narrator all day it's how you think you're talking to yourself all day long thoughts are firing and perspectives are firing it's not just a thought it's a perspective right the majority of people's inner dialogue is negative fearful condemning hopeless disempowering and then we're wondering why do i have this problem the self-talk you cultivate is going to set the stage and so for many of us we have to learn to tune into a more kind gracious and patient inner dialogue for many of you it doesn't start with fixing it starts with learning to set the stage that maybe just one takeaway today is you know what i'm gonna say yes to just being kinder to myself i'm going to insert into my thinking kindness which is god's way of showing his goodness to us of exercising patience i use this the statement it takes as long as it takes i talk about loving acceptance of you know what right now i'm totally loved accepted unconditionally by god i'll get into that more in the next session about applying that what that means but i'd like to take a prayer in this area take a moment and just pray because i believe so many are suffering and struggling and i pray this part one has been a blessing to you i'm gonna i'm gonna actually i had more planned but i think i'm gonna pause there i think this is a good place to stop and father i pray in the name of jesus christ that you would meet people where they're at and their struggles and their anxieties their ocd their panic their the trauma the battles i just want to stand in for a moment for their hearts and i pray father that you'd bring illumination use what was said today to illuminate the areas of their life that you're bringing into transformational healing at this stage to not be overwhelmed help us look at the root system and i shared some of the root system here today and so i just pray father that you would bless each and every person let them experience the perfect love that casts out fear because you're a good father and we need to learn who you are as a father and i thank you so very very much jesus name amen somebody wrote i don't know if the anxiety i get is normal nervousness or not i would probably chalk it up to anxiety but here's the thing you don't have to necessarily figure out exactly what's going on sometimes you have to learn like i'm feeling anxious it's okay that's i'll talk about that in the next session that approaching it from the standpoint of it's okay that i'm not okay right now because what happens is we have anxiety and then we go how do i get rid of this anxiety and that makes everything worse it makes everything more difficult so we're learning we're learning what is in the root system we're learning what's affecting us we're learning us um there are a lot of us that deal with social anxiety yep yeah and this past year certainly with all the things and lockdowns hasn't helped either because it's given us the inability to to be able to practice i'm worried i'm i'm going to have radiation treatment which attach me to this machine i'm worried that i'll have a panic attack and rip it up okay so you're having fear about having fear is is what it is how do i get over this fear um i think it's very very intense pressure to say how do i get get over this this is where patience with yourself when you're going through something that's so unknown you know the goal of eliminating all nervousness is not it's not realistic it's not patient it's not loving so i want to encourage you first and foremost to just say to yourself it's okay that i'm feeling nervous about this it's okay begin with a kinder inner dialogue it's like this is an uncertain thing your uncertainty is at a high level right now and that's usually what happens i talk about that in ocd when your uncertainty level increases it's where these things pop up the most it's being kind and nurturing that you know what this is a difficult thing i'm going to be patient with myself i want to be kind to myself in this journey because i know god's with me but i just gotta i gotta walk this and and experience as i go through it and david said though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death a fear no evil because you're with me so going through that process we learn the proxim proximity of god that he's close that he's near why is it that after i get home from being outside i feel drained and depressed i sometimes absolutely hate going out uh it's hard to answer who knows you may have allergies that you have seasonal allergies in the pollen's heavy right now and that's affecting you your immune system is worn out i appreciate your humor oh you think i'm funny that's good [Laughter] yeah stress is horrible on the body it is it is and um we need to recover our stress response let that parasympathetic do its job let the peace of god which passes all understanding guard guard your heart and what does it look like we practice that we engage it we let ourselves slow down we pause i'll talk about that more when i talk about healing stress response my daughter is amending and left and right thanks abby love you good stuff guys great to spend time with you i look forward to the next episode i'll probably jump into a part two next week do some more on this and more focus on this and i look forward to just continuing to be a blessing to your life and to your journey thank you so much share this with your friends comment and if it's been a blessing consider a one-time donation or become a regular supporter and that would mean so much to us

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 3,529

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Anxiety Disorders, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Healing from Anxiety

Id: FmPKJ7INuck

Length: 111min 30sec (6690 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021