What If Anxiety Was An Alarm System? by John Stuart
TW: Before reading this story, we want to warn you that there will be mention of potentially triggering mental health subjects. Also, this is based on one person’s experience and is not written from a doctor’s perspective. If you or someone you know may be living with mental illness, please get help. Talk to a licensed and qualified mental health professional and search the list of resources on our website
What if Anxiety was just an alarm trying to tell you that something isn’t safe? Anxiety might not be a sickness but something that is there to help you, and you have to figure out how to listen to it.
Dr. John Delony says “A learned physical and mental response to a world full of threats and disconnection — real or not. It's your body's way of trying to take care of you. And since you learned it, it can be unlearned.” So if that is the case then anxiety isn’t the problem, it’s the things causing you to feel fear, dread, and uneasiness and anxiety is just your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong.
How do we change our mindset from Anxiety being a diagnosis, a disorder, a sickness, or something that defines us? Into something that can help us, an alarm system, a helping hand, something to keep us safe?
It’s a choice! Every single day when you start to feel those feelings of anxiety you have a choice. You can choose to let your body go into a state of panic or you can take a deep breath and ask yourself “Okay what is going on in this moment? What is my body trying to tell me?”
In Dr. Delony’s new book Building A Non-Anxious Life, He talks about how we have to choose Health and Healing. He talks about six daily choices you can make to help you live a non-anxious life.
The Six Daily Choices are:
Choose Reality
Choose Connection
Choose Freedom
Choose Mindfulness
Choose Health and Healing
Choose Belief
And the good thing about these is you don’t have to start in any sort of order. As you see in the illustration above it’s a wheel because they don’t start or stop in any order. They work in sync with each other.
What does it look like to choose those things? Well, I think it might look a little different for everyone. One person’s reality may look different than another’s. One person could have had a pretty good childhood, two parents, a sibling, and a stable life. Another person could have had a rough childhood, divorced parents, an only child or mean siblings, a very unstable life. And they both can experience anxiety. They both can experience that feeling that something isn’t safe. That alarm in their body trying to tell them to get out. To stop and take care of themselves. To BREATHE!
Let me tell you a little about my childhood. I grew up like that first example, a stable life. I had two parents (and still do) who loved me, took care of me, put a roof over my head and food on the table, and showed me that they loved me. I had an older sister who was nice to me, we got into the normal sibling fights and arguments but I would still say to this day we have a pretty unique relationship. For being seven years apart we really get along.
I had a pretty easy childhood, I was homeschooled, I was involved with Boy Scouts, and went to church every Sunday. A lot of people would give everything for a childhood like that. But even with all that, in my teenage years, I still struggled with anxiety. It even got to the point that I had thoughts of suicide. In high school, I had gotten into a relationship that my parents weren’t very supportive of. So what did I do? I kept it a secret from them. For almost three years! I saw the girl once a week at my Boy Scout meeting and we texted and Facetimed all throughout the week. I thought I was doing the right thing. But my body was trying to tell me otherwise.
I was doing a pretty good job keeping this secret. But inside all those alarms were going off. I felt fear that my parents were gonna find out and make us break up. I felt dread thinking that they could walk into my room and see me on Facetime with her and put two and two together. All of it just made me feel uneasy. Because I felt all this I became depressed and unhappy. And in come the thoughts of suicide. Thinking about how much I hated life and how the world would be better without me. It got to the point eating up inside of me that two years into this relationship I broke down and cried. I had to tell my parents I was in this relationship, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
So I told them. I remember sitting on the couch between them, having just told them that I had been in this relationship with this girl for two years and that I needed to tell them the truth! I felt a big sense of relief. I think they saw how much it was bothering me and reacted in a much better way than I was playing in my head over and over again. I wasn’t telling them I was breaking up with her but just that I was dating her. I even asked if I could go to a Valentine's dance at her church the following weekend. My relationship with this girl continued, and so did the secrecy. I wasn’t open with them about our relationship, I didn’t tell them much of anything. So I think they thought we broke up. Because almost another year went by and it still felt like a secret relationship. All those alarms were still going off in my body.
I finally broke it off with the girl just weeks before our three-year anniversary. Looking back now they were stupid reasons but I am still glad I did it. So you may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with anxiety being an alarm system?” Well, what I didn’t realize then was that all those feelings was just my body telling me something was wrong. During that time I would feel very nervous around big crowds. Sometimes to the point of throwing up. And I remember my mom telling me this bible verse and explaining it to me in a way that helped me get passed the nerves and find peace!
“And God's peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:7 (GNT)
She told me to imagine that my dog was peace, and as long as I stayed behind my dog, she would protect me and keep me from feeling anxious. I think probably in that moment I blew it off and thought “Yeah right.” but then once I actually thought about it next time I was nervous or felt uneasy. It all made sense. If I made a choice to take a step back, behind a “shield” then I felt better.
In conclusion, remember that YOU are in control of your body. But also listen to what your body is trying to tell you! if you have those anxiety alarms going off, take a minute and breathe. Try to figure out what is going on. Then, work to get through it!
Resources:
Learn More about Dr. John Delony (https://www.ramseysolutions.com/john-delony )
Read: Building a Non-Anxious Life (https://store.ramseysolutions.com/personal-growth/books/building-a-non-anxious-life-by-dr-john-delony/ )
Watch or Listen to “The Dr. John Delony Show” (https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnDelony )
Additional tools for when you may be in crisis:
U.S. Crisis Text Line: 741-741
Ohio Mobile Response and Stabilization Services: 1-888-418-MRSS (6777)