Help and Hope for Anxiety

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Hope Blanton
Okay, well, hello and welcome to. And we forget the name of this talk, but we know it’s about anxiety. Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. So my name is Hope Landon, and I am a therapist that has a private practice, and I also a co-author of out of feet studies with Chris Gordon, who is a theologian and teaches at a seminary. And today, while we love to talk about the Bible, today we’re going to be talking about anxiety instead, which is something else we love to talk about: mental health and specifically how to engage in your faith with that. So we only have about 40 minutes. We could take like four days with this, y’all. But we’re gonna, you know, just try to give you a little bit.

Christine Gordon
We’ve been talking about it for about 10 years.

Hope Blanton
I know. We’re gonna

Christine Gordon
try to connect at

Hope Blanton
least, at least, and it’s going to be a podcast style, so we’ll be talking to each other, talking to you guys. But one thing we want to do first to kind of help you orient yourself is we’re going to tell you about a fictional person named Sarah. Now, Sarah might sound like a lot of y’all, but we’re doing that so as we talk today, you can use her to help you connect with. Okay, so this is how this would apply to her. So Sarah’s about 35. She has three kids, probably under the age of six-ish. She talks about being a worry wart and worrying a lot, but she never uses the word anxiety. Although frequently she talks to her friends about being afraid of health issues or flying, but she doesn’t call herself an anxious person. So one night, she’s sitting around the dinner table. All the kids are there. Someone’s in a high chair, of course. Her husband comes home and he talks about this argument he had with his boss at work that day. And as soon as he starts talking more about it, she can feel her chest get tight. She starts to hear some ringing in her ears, and she’s like, “Okay, okay. And she feels frozen. Then someone spills something. She snaps out of it. She grabs, you know, whatever that is. But that night in bed, she tosses and turns. She can’t get the scenario out of her mind, and she she feels panicky. The next morning, she wakes up, her chest isn’t tight anymore, the ringing’s gone, but she still feels not at ease. So we want you to hold on to that vignette because we’re going to keep coming back to Sarah in our time together. So to talk about anxiety, though, as all good Christians should, we need to go to the beginning. So Chris is going to start with us at Genesis.

Christine Gordon
That’s right. We’re going to start way back at the beginning. So if we talk about where did we start, we know we started in the garden, but then something happened.

Hope Blanton
The fall.

Christine Gordon
The fall. And here’s the problem that we often don’t think about. We we talk a lot as Christians about what happens when our hearts fell, but everything fell. So your neurons fell, your parasympathetic nervous system fell. Everything that’s in creation fell, including your bodies. And because we are embodied creatures, what we’re going to talk about today is how those things affect each other. Right,

Hope Blanton
right. And so, I mean, what I hear you saying that it’s not not just sin. So it’s not just our hearts. It’s it’s all these other things. When Adam and Eve made that choice, our whole body was impacted in the parts of our body that are necessary for us to deal with anxiety, like our brains, our nervous systems, our neurochemicals, all of those things. And often, when we talk about anxiety as believers, I’m going to pick on this a little bit. We usually just focus on the heart, which is important, but it’s not the whole picture. And so, how would this matter, Chris? As someone like Sarah, who I just talked about.

Christine Gordon
Yeah, it matters because she’s dealing with more than what meets the eye, and oftentimes the the grid that we have given Sarah, which is a great grid. The grid is I trust Jesus or I don’t, I I love him or I don’t. If I’m experiencing anxiety, it’s because I haven’t trusted him enough, and that that sometimes is true, and that’s a part of it, but it’s way more complicated than that because we are layered, embodied creatures, and so she is. Yes, she’s dealing with a heart that has fallen, and and and the fact that her desires are disordered, and she’s been distorted by the fall, but she’s also dealing with a body that fell, and so we have to make this. I think we make our category too small when we talk about the fall. We have to widen that aperture and talk about all the things that were affected.

Hope Blanton
Right. That’s exactly right. I mean, even though it’s a spiritual issue, that’s just part of it. And if we only speak about it that way, we’re not. We’re we’re being short sighted, and we’re actually not being biblical. Right. Can you speak to how that’s actually not biblical, just to say anxiety is a spiritual issue,

Christine Gordon
right? Because of course, again, yes, it is. But to just talk about that is a little as only a spiritual issue is a is we lose a lot. It’s a little bit. It’s short sighted. It’s a little bit naive because what it says to you is you are only a moral creature. It’s kind of like living as a Gnostic, like your body doesn’t matter. You’re just-it’s just your heart that matters. But that’s not what God says, and that’s not what the Bible says. So, first, yes, anxiety can be a sin, and it can be really hard to pull it apart and figure out. Okay, if you’re saying that it’s not always just that, how do we figure? Here’s a good litmus test just out of the gate. If your anxiety is pulling you to a place where how you understand God and His character is beginning to be distorted, that’s a good red flag on the dashboard to see that if suddenly God was loving, but anxiety is taking you to a place where now God is cruel, or if he was faithful, but now your anxiety has pulled you to a place where he’s abandoned you in your mind. That’s a good red flag. So what we have to think about now is how do we, as we widen that view and that grid, how do we think about it beyond those red flags? Because a picture of this is any time if you could look at the world and the you know that song as far as the curse is found. It’s like a Christmas song, right? I want you to think as far as the curse is found in every end of the world and corner of your body. That’s what’s been affected by the fall. So part of what we’re called to do, part of what we do is just as humans, because we’re made in the image of God, is we push back against the effects of the fall. Everybody does it, whether they mean to at all. But as children of God, who actually purposely do it, we have a bigger job. And the place you do this all the time, whether you know about it or not, the place Christians do it the most is in church, and in spiritual things, right? Part of what you’re doing every Sunday when you go to church or any time you do spiritual things, you use the means of grace, is you are pushing back against the effects of the fall on your heart. You are using things like communion, the Word. You’re listening to sermons. You’re enjoying fellowship with other people. The Holy Spirit is convicting you of sin, and you’re repenting and enjoying grace. What you’re doing is pushing back against the effects of the fall on your heart, but that’s not the only place we do it. Yes, we do it on our hearts, and we need to, but we also do it in the physical realm where the fall has affected us, right,

Hope Blanton
right, which is all super helpful. So while sin might be at play, it is rarely the only thing at play with anxiety. While it might be at play, and we have to look at that as believers, it’s rarely the only thing. So something I want you to visualize-a visual to help you with this-is think of a braid. You know, braids have three strands, right? And so, when we think about anxiety, think of it as like a braid. One strand is your heart, your sin nature. The other strand is your body, which is fallen. And then the third strand is the world and Satan. That’s things like that have happened to you, like trauma, and obviously the enemy who’s always lurking. So when we think about anxiety, we have to think about those three features coming together. And then as believers, we have to to find the root of what’s going on with us and our anxiety. We have to unwind that braid and look at each of those strands, not just the sin strand, but all the other strands, and then we use the means of grace to help us in our hearts to push back against that, and to and to meet to deal with what’s going on there. So, how specifically would we push back against that?

Christine Gordon
So, just like we do with our hearts, think here’s an example. Think about something like penicillin. 200 years ago, she. By the way, she’s a chemistry nerd, so that’s right. She

Hope Blanton
loves this part. I had

Christine Gordon
to stick it in here somewhere.

Hope Blanton
I know. Every time she does. Go ahead.

Christine Gordon
So, 200 years ago, hope gets an infection. It’s like 50-50 if she’s going to make this. I don’t

Hope Blanton
know why she’s making it. That’s right. But it’s not. You’re

Christine Gordon
fine.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Christine Gordon
You’re actually fine. Okay. It’s 50-50 if she makes it right. 21st century, she gets some amoxicillin at CVS for $10. She’s going to be fine in three days. What is that amoxicillin? It is a gift of God. It is a good gift. It is part of His creation that He uses in His kindness to push back against the physical effects of the fall. Every time you do something in the medical field, that is what you are enjoying: is God’s grace to you and His kindness to push back against the effects of the fall.

Hope Blanton
Okay, I agree with you, but I think here’s where people get stuck. So you need to help me out here. People would say, “Okay, that’s the world of medicine. We’re talking about that. That’s very scientific and specific, but anxiety and spiritual things in church is very abstract, way more abstract than like I have strep throat, right? So like, get in there. So theologian. So a good theologian would push back on you and say there is not a corner of creation

Christine Gordon
that is not under the jurisdiction of Christ. It’s not like Trinity, atonement, justification. They’re over here under Jesus, but your strep throat is under somebody else’s jurisdiction. Everything is under His. It was a Kuiper that said, “You’ll say it later.

Hope Blanton
Yeah.

Christine Gordon
There’s not an inch of creation over. Christ doesn’t say mine, and it’s it gets even more clear. This is Augustine. He said this: Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, wherever truth may be found, it belongs to His Master. It’s not just theological truth. It’s not just the theological structure and moral structure of the universe. It is all structure. It is all truth. So anything that has been discovered or made or principles that work in the universe, from bare aspirin to thank God the tampon, whoever made that. All of that is under Christ’s jurisdiction, and and the world in general belongs to him,

Hope Blanton
right? Right. And so, like, name some other truths like that, because so often we just think of like the truths that you mentioned, redemption, all these things that are huge, and you know. But name some of the other things that are like his handiwork, obviously. Right. We don’t think about it. So the

Christine Gordon
apple falls to the ground from the tree because of gravity. Osmosis moves about through the body. No, water moves about through the body because of osmosis. Those, the physical structure of the universe is from God just as much as the morals. So betrayal in a marriage makes it really hard to trust. And depressed people in the world sometimes need help getting out of bed. Both of those structures are under the jurisdiction of Christ, so it’s not like there’s one that’s outside.

Hope Blanton
Yeah, which is huge. I mean, I think that’s a game changing thought for sure, right? I mean, we still have to approach this thinking with discernment, like we do everything. But to think that all of this is under God, His handiwork, is huge. So when we think of Sarah, this is a game changer for her because when she’s thinking about anxiety, thinking in this way gives her a chance to ask herself these questions: things like, “What’s my nervous system doing? What what is my nervous system? First of all, do I have enough serotonin in my brain to calm it down when it is anxious? You know how is my lack of sleep just fuel to my fire, and why I am so anxious? Should I go to counseling? Who would I go to? What childhood things happened to me in trauma that might be at play here? Right. So we’ve now opened up all that to her to figure out why she had that moment at the table that night.

Speaker 2
Right.

Hope Blanton
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Christine Gordon
It’s a little less clear, and it’s it’s not as if we can blame everything on our bodies. Right. This is why Christians get scared when people start talking about about therapists and psychology. Is because what often happens is people will walk all the way over here, and fall in the ditch of it’s all psychology. It’s all biology. You have absolutely no responsibility for what’s going on. It’s just your body, and I think what the Bible makes clear is no, no. You you do have responsibility, and also there’s a body that you live in. You’re an embodied creature, so we have to, we have to think about all of this. So just like we talked about penicillin earlier, God gave us that tool and a bunch of tools in His kindness to push back against the fall and especially what it did with our brains. So there are things like what Hope does in our office every day, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and some people will say again, no, no, that’s a secular tool. That’s not going to help us. But let me give this to you: penicillin, insulin for the diabetic, the MRI that my friend Catherine just had the other day on her foot, front row, front row. The cat, or you know those terrible tools that you go the dentist and they like scrape the tarter off.

Hope Blanton
We’re all like,

Christine Gordon
I know they’re horrible. That’s

Hope Blanton
from the fall.

Christine Gordon
But they’re that is the fall. We were not meant to have bacteria on our teeth, and then the new earth. My teeth are going to be amazing. No crowns. But those those those are all tools, and so is CBT. They’re all tools from a good God who encourages us, comforts us, and gives us health.

Hope Blanton
That’s right. So, if all truth is God’s truth, and like you quoted earlier, Abraham Kuyper, there’s no inch of the world that is that God does not say mine. Then the tools we can use are almost unlimited, unless they lead us to sin. They are almost unlimited. So the penicillin and the oxacillin, the chemistry girl loves those. But for the therapy world, the clinical tools like EMDR, you may have heard of that, that helps process and reprocess traumatic memories, or a therapy like IFS that I use in my office every week that helps people get space and work through their anxiety in a different way. It’s it’s a game changer, and medication that can help lessen the effects of what’s going on in the brain, so it can handle anxious situations in a different way. These are just a couple examples, and there’s so many. That are helpful, and the believer, you guys, we have access to them. So we’re going to walk over here into Hope’s office. That’s right. Come on, sit down, y’all. She’s going

Christine Gordon
to open the door and offer you a couch.

Hope Blanton
Let’s talk specifically about what does this look like week to week in your office. For someone walks in. What they’ve told you is, I’m coming to you because of anxiety. What does it look like? What does it feel like to them? How does it affect their relationships? Talk about walking around in their body. Yeah. So phys, you know, it always has a physical manifestation most times, and physically, it’s going to look like everything from what we heard earlier-the tight chest, the ringing ears that Sarah had, to nausea, to dizziness, to panic sensations. I mean, you name it. There’s a lot of them, and what’s tricky is they also overlap with other health issues. So that’s why so many of my anxious clients will be like, “Well, I ended up in the ER this weekend, and then I realized it was anxiety because they ran 5000 tests. So, but you know, when your nervous system gets hijacked, anxiety comes out physically. So that’s one thing, and it’s like an alarm bell going off. The other thing is emotionally and mentally, anxiety feels a lot like a lot of intrusive thoughts just jump into your head out of nowhere. You could be driving or making dinner, and all of a sudden, it’s like intrusive thought. Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Telling you that the worst case scenario, or it can feel like being on a hamster wheel that you just can’t get off of. Of just the same thought that’s filled with dread and worst case scenario worry, and it just keeps going. And so often it’s all colored by overwhelm, dread, catastrophic thinking is usually part of the part of the the mix in the mix, and so obviously those things, those physical and emotional symptoms, can have an impact on your relationships because you can imagine you’re feeling overwhelmed easily, or you might be one of those people that gets anxious and just shuts down, or you might get irritable and snippy and overwhelmed and and and all of that, or you might be one of those people that you have to process that fear over and over again and verbalize it, which I do with Chris a lot. It’s it comes out like that in relationships, or it might look like control. We get really controlling because you don’t want your fear to happen, and people feel that. So it’s all of that mixed together.

Christine Gordon
I would say maybe six or eight years of my life when I had small children was irritability and overwhelm. Pretty much like you could have just written those right here. Yeah,

Hope Blanton
that’s that’s exactly right. That’s right. I know, right. And this is why anxious people are so exhausted because a lot of this is going on and we can’t see it. Right? We can’t see it. It’s inside, but we are feeling it. And most humans will experience anxiety in their lifetime, but not all of us will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, so there’s a difference there.

Christine Gordon
Okay, so then how do I know? I have I have experienced anxiety many times, but I’ve not been diagnosed. So how do we know when we go from one to the other, and why does it matter?

Hope Blanton
So okay, first the difference. The difference is frequency and intensity. So like think about it for someone maybe who’s a pre-diabetic. One of my best friends is a pre-diabetic right now. She she has a lot of the markers. She has some of the symptoms, but she’s not all the way there yet. She doesn’t have the frequency and intensity yet that she would need to have that diagnosis of being a full-blown diabetic. Same thing with anxiety disorders. So let’s think about Sarah. Okay, let’s take her as an example, and obviously this is a very 30,000 foot view. Okay, let’s say after that situation with the table, she spent the next day she thought about the situation and she didn’t feel anxious at all. She had no intrusive thoughts about it the rest of the day. When her husband called from work and said, “Hey, I talked to my boss again, she was good. No tight chest. No ringing her ears. Okay, so maybe she had that moment of anxiety, but she maybe isn’t struggling with it in the intensity and severity way. Or the opposite is true. She can’t quit thinking about it. She’s thinking about it all the time, over and over again. Can’t stop. Every time she thinks about it, she feels like, you know, she’s sweating. Every time she’s going to drive a kid to school. She’s thinking about it, and then we might be creeping over into something different. So those are kind of maybe more into an anxiety disorder area if that’s happening to her a lot. So it’s kind of like situational anxiety versus clinical anxiety. So why does that matter? It matters because our suffering matters to God, and if your suffering with anxiety has gotten to the level that you are diagnosable, He cares about that. He wants to push against that. He doesn’t want that to be how that feels for you. Okay, and if we even have compassion on that, that’s because He’s. Taught us to have compassion on that, so we didn’t invent compassion for anxiety. God invented that, and so He wants to push against that and help you. So if you are feeling that way, you can’t diagnose yourself. You need to have a therapist or someone trained to do that. But you can ask people that you love, mentors, people in your life, and say, “Do you see these things in me? What have you noticed, and start to think about how can God and you partner to push against that issue in your life and get some relief?

Christine Gordon
Okay, hope so. I’m thinking probably 75 to 80% of the people in my sort of daily life, especially in my house, struggle with anxiety, right? But they don’t always need therapy or medication. Sometimes they do. I remember I used to struggle with a lot. I started taking piano lessons when I was five or six, and I remember she did. I sorry. I remember the first recital, and my hands got all sweaty. And I remember doing this, but you know, of course, it was a dress with lace, so this didn’t help at all. And I learned somehow to like take deep breaths, and it was

Speaker 3
helpful.

Christine Gordon
But what what do you give people if it’s not medication, not therapy? What are the other tools?

Hope Blanton
Yeah. Well, first of all, the 75% I just want y’all know I’m in that. I just love it when she does that. Anxious people in my life, and I love little six-year-old Chris rubbing her. He’s being so nervous. So that’s a great question, and I think the best way to think about how we can work on anxiety in our life is two categories. One is going to be life rhythms, and for the believer, that’s going to include spiritual disciplines, and then the other one is going to be clinical things that we’re going to do more in the area of counseling. Clinical tools. So, clinical tools might look like certain kinds of therapy that have evidence behind them that they target and help anxiety, or certain kind of medications that we know it’s been proven that they lessen anxiety and they make up for those lacking neurochemicals, or working on things like breathing techniques, mindfulness techniques to help people when they feel that panic coming on, for them to be able to then calm that panic down. So there has been evidence that all those things help. I use them with my clients all the time. One of my favorite ones is counting backwards from 100. I mean, I did it last night after that tornado alarm. For just everyone wondering, and it’s it just those little things are clinical tools that help you just backwards by one, and slowly your brain lets go of that anxious thought. Now let’s switch over to life rhythms, and these are going to feel more familiar to you as believers. These are things like praying. We we have a direct line to the Lord to be like, help me, I’m anxious. Help me, I feel panic. Direct line, which is amazing. Finding certain scriptures to meditate on that you can, when those intrusive thoughts come in, that you can start to be like, okay, I’m going to try to think about this over and over again, letting other believers know that you’re struggling and having them pray with you and over you and check in on you. Worship is a great pathway out of anxiety. Worshiping corporately, worshiping by yourself, those things are huge, and all of that’s crucial for the anxious believer. So there’s other things that I like to call working with your frame, work with your design. Those are things like moving your body so it can release like these neurochemicals that feel good. I heard one scientist once say a bubble bath of neurochemicals. I thought, oh, that sounds good. She just said go for a walk. Do you know all those things help? Or sleeping a regular amount as best you can and trying to work on your sleep-it’s a very-it’s very foundational, you know, to try to go to bed around the same time, get up around the same time-that helps greatly lower anxiety. Or eating foods that help give you energy and don’t make you more anxious-and you might be surprised to hear that sometimes certain foods make you more anxious. But these are just things you gotta start paying attention to. Now, I know saying this to anxious people. I’m not saying all of y’all are anxious, but can make you anxious when you’re like, “Well, here’s the 57 things I gotta do. So I’m not anxious. We’re not. We are not going for an A plus. I’m talking a B minus. Okay. I just want you to start thinking about these things and being like, “How am I doing on my sleep-ish B minus? How am I doing on moving my body when I feel like my chest tightens up? B minus. How am I doing on this? So you just we just want them to be mindful so that we can use them and kind of see which area. A lot of times I talk to my clients about what area is it for you that if you kind of let one go, you feel more anxious. And I started to realize it was sleep. I would have never guessed that. You know, where other clients are like, “Oh, if I start eating this one thing, then like forget it. The next week I’m off. Or you know, just you just got to pay attention, right? And so all those things work and help push against. That anxiety.

Christine Gordon
Okay, so let’s say we’re not particularly anxious in ourselves, but we have friends who are.

Hope Blanton
Okay, gotcha.

Christine Gordon
Like I don’t know, the one on the stage, right? So, how do we help, and what is not helpful?

Hope Blanton
That’s right. She’s been really helpful with my anxiety, by the way. Just so you know, what is not helpful is assuming that it’s an easy fix and people should just get over it. Why are you worried about that? That’s stupid. That’s not going to happen. I love when people say that. I love when people say, “Well, what’s the worst that could happen? I was like, “Oh, I have 5000 things that I could tell you. That is not helpful. It’s actually a CBT thing. And I’m like, don’t use that. Don’t, don’t. So, and and you know, just in general, all suffering, not just anxiety. When we are engaging with people that are in suffering, which all of us have suffered, and we engage all the time with people who are suffering, we have to be compassionate and patient, and that is very hard. So, asking the Lord, help me to be compassionate for that kid that has to ruminate about that thing for the 57th time. Help me be patient with that friend that is stuck in that thought and she cannot get out. Another thing that’s not helpful is to be like, “Hey, I get anxious, but I do this and I’m fine. Okay, cool. And and you could say something like, “This helps me. It may not work for you. Just a thought. I don’t know. That’s way better than being like, if you just do this, or if she just did this, she wouldn’t be like that. But she, you know, that’s that’s on you know that whole thing. And I think that just it’s helpful to be asking questions to help them figure out anxiety. What’s helpful? How can I be helpful to you? What do you What do you need from me when you feel that feeling? Is it better for me to talk to you when you when you look like you’re having a panic attack, or should I just kind of be like, “Hey, let’s go over here” I mean, you you know, just asking those questions are helpful. You know, when I start to feel a wave of panic, I need my husband to say nothing, and if he does, then I’m like, how dare you? You know, it’s like he makes it worse, right? But so, but it’s like you’ve got to you’ve got to figure that out, and then tell people. But you can ask those people you love what is helpful for me to do right now, and what is not helpful for me to do when you’re feeling this way.

Christine Gordon
Yeah, I am the I’m the depression part of our anxiety and depression duo partnership

Hope Blanton
dynamic duo. Yeah, of mental health.

Christine Gordon
Right. So sometimes I think when I talk to people who are experiencing depression, I think, oh, oh, oh, I know what that’s like, but I don’t know what that’s like because I haven’t lived in her body. So I also have to ask questions, even if it’s something that feels very familiar to me. I got to slow myself down and go, tell me what that feels like. Tell me what would be more helpful? Do you want, do you want me to sit next to you on the plane because you’re anxious? Do you want me to carry your drugs for you on the plane? Do you want me to be quiet or distract you with talking? It’s just you know you just ask me all these questions. We got we have to we get if think of it as being curious and investigating what’s helpful for you and

Hope Blanton
also for you to say things like, the person’s like, I feel like I’m gonna have a panic attack. You can say, What do you mean by panic, or what does that feel like for you? Like, just because we’re all speaking the same language doesn’t mean we mean the same thing by the same words. So, yeah. Okay, great question. She always asks really good questions. She’s my favorite therapist, even though she’s not one. Often, as believers, though in all areas, we are called to fix our eyes on something greater in order to live this life of what’s coming, right? The already not yet, and so that’s the same for anxiety, right? I mean, how how would Sarah do something like this? How would she think about the future, new heavens, new earth, and how would that even help her?

Christine Gordon
Well, first of all, if Sarah started thinking about the new heavens and new earth because it’s new and unfamiliar, and she’s never been there, she will feel anxious. Of course, and one day I

Hope Blanton
told her I was like, anxious people feel really nervous about heaven. Because

Christine Gordon
depressed people are like, that’s amazing. Let’s go today. So that’s normal, first of all, because it is an unknown, and you don’t know what it’s going to look like. Am I going to be nauseous on the way there? And is my underwear going to hang out? And I’m not ready yet. You know, all the things you’re going to think. Am I going

Hope Blanton
to have a panic attack?

Christine Gordon
That’s normal. Am I going to have a panic attack on the way to the New Earth? So,

Hope Blanton
am I right? Raise your hand if we’re right about that. Thank you. Okay, keep going. Here’s

Christine Gordon
where I want you to start thinking about the new Earth. First of all, there’s a new Earth. If no one has told you, there’s good news. It’s not just heaven. There’s a new Earth, and one of the ways you can start thinking about it is because it feels so abstract sometimes. A good picture is what is most comforting and familiar to you on this earth now? Because there’s from what what this what Scripture says, there is going to be a lot of continuity between this earth and the new earth. So just like worst case scenarios, we use our imaginations all the time. To come up with worst-case scenarios. So, what if we used our imagination to come up with what the new Earth might be like when we can inform that imagination? We can be anxious, but we can also inform ourselves in what we’re going to see. So, think about things that are hard here. Think about like that heightened sense of alert that you get everywhere you go. That’s not going to be a part of the new earth. There are lots of things that are going to be canceled and over. A tight chest, like she’s been talking about, attention headache, intrusive thoughts about your kids. None of those things are going to be the things that reign and rule in the new earth. Redemption will. So, if you think about your favorite place, maybe it’s walking by a calming brook or a still river, or for me, because I’m a total bird nerd, sitting somewhere in a field and watching the birds. So, all the things that are wonderful and good and peaceful and calming about that will still be true. So if you can picture that and start to subtract the things that are the results of the fall, so think about the fact that your knee starts to hurt when you walk to get to the bird field. Think about the fact that you are worried about what your husband said to you before you’re left, or getting murdered in the bird field. Right, right. I’m sorry. Y’all feel me. I have not gone far enough. The ax murderer, who you are sure is living in the bird field. Okay. There’s a there’s a chance. That’s the problem. If you can take all of that, which I know is difficult, and start to subtract all that from the familiar good. That is the new earth. Okay, there is so much continuity. So, think about what. Think about part. Just a little bit about Revelation. The new city of Jerusalem is going to come down from heaven, and it’s going to be beautiful. And part of what it says is the gates will never be shut. Why is that? Because when are gates shut at night? When dangerous people come, there is no night and there is no danger where you’re going. So I want you to think about absolute safety, the possibility of being whole people who are able to enjoy each other in full reciprocity of love, with no fear of rejection. And by the way, beyond all of that, you’re going to be with Jesus face to face. Why does any of this matter? I’ll tell you why. Because on Tuesday morning, when you’re sitting in your cubicle and you don’t want to be at work, part of why you keep sitting there is because you’re going antique shopping with your friend and drinking Bellinis on Saturday morning. Okay, that’s how we work as humans, and part of why we have this vision of this beautiful, holy, whole place with the one we love is because it helps inform our present, and that’s part of how I want. I call it holy imagination. I want you to use your holy imagination too, just like you do worst case scenarios. I want you to start thinking about best case scenarios because guess what? They are your actual future. That’s part of how we can we can use the new earth now.

Hope Blanton
Right. I love it. Oh, so encouraging. I’m like visualizing it. Okay. What about for relationships? What’s that going to look like in the new heavens and new earth?

Christine Gordon
Yeah. So, think about your good friend. You’ve been enjoying a good meal, and then you say something, and they pause for a minute and get that weird look on your face, and all you think about for the rest of dinner is what did I say? I shouldn’t have said he’s really mad at me. Oh my gosh, you fall asleep thinking about it. This means for relationships that that has an end date. All that worry and fear, there is an end date for that, and the dinner’s still going to be there without the anxiety. All the sensory, wonderful, reciprocal relationship will be there without any of that that fear. So, or that disorienting feeling that comes when you realize somebody you love and trust has lied to you, and the fear that it might happen again, it might happen again, it might that doesn’t exist in the new earth, so that’s that’s part of the antique shopping mimosa that is informing your present to help you walk through anxiety now.

Hope Blanton
She keeps switching drinks. I mean,

Christine Gordon
next time it’s going to be bourbon, but I don’t really drink that in the morning. I

Hope Blanton
don’t even drink, but okay. So okay, so this is all so comforting and and just so good to think on. How would you summarize everything we said and say it to Sarah today? Good old Sarah.

Christine Gordon
Good old Sarah. So I’m gonna use Hope for a second. Hope was having a really hard time a couple years ago. Just so you know, next time there’ll be a. Thing about depression, and we’ll talk about all my stories. I’m just saying. Hope went to the doctor. She was having a really hard time, and the doctor said to her before she leaved the office, which I remember this story, and it was really helpful to her. She took her and she said, she looked in her eyes and said, “We’re going to get you some help today, because she really needed it. And I think if we will widen our understanding of the jurisdiction of Christ and the good gifts that He gives through through all of creation. I think what we will hear Him saying is, “We’re going to get you some help today, and it’s not just through your confession of sin. Yes, it is absolutely. Search the roots of your heart and why your sin has taken the shape and form that it has of anxiety, and also use all these good gifts that He can help you. All the things she’s been talking to you. I want you to hear: anxiety is suffering, and if you have not heard someone who represents or talks about or for or teaches about the Bible, I want you to hear it. Anxiety is suffering, and it happens to you because the earth has fallen, and it would have come to you no matter what you did. And I want you to hear God’s compassion for you and how wide that is! There is hope for you today. That’s what I would say. So

Hope Blanton
thank you. I love that. Okay. The other good news for all the Sarahs in the room is that we just wrote a book about this. We wrote a book about anxiety and depression. It’s called Hope for the Anxious and Depressed: A Biblical and Practical Guide to Christians Walking in the Darkness. Because that’s what it feels like. So it’s going to be out in September. You can find it online. Hope for the anxious and depressed. Find it on Amazon. If you order it, like I think before September, you can put your name in at the it’s through B and H, and they’ll give you the first three chapters today. So it talks about all of this and more. I mean, we go through all of this in 10 chapters. It is like our-it’s probably the last 30 years of our life, stories, work, everything, all poured into a book. So we would love for you to have access to that. I’m going to pray for you, and then if you guys have, we’re going to do a quick Q and A for about five minutes. Yeah, Lord, thank you so much for the women in this room. We know that they probably have all kinds of things that they’re struggling with, and we just ask that you meet them there and that they see all the unlimited ways that you can. It’s your name. We pray. Amen. Okay, questions. Yes. A runner. A runner. Oh, it might take too long. Go ahead. Yes.

Speaker 4
Uh huh. Yeah. What’s your advice about finding a counselor? Finding a Christian counselor

Hope Blanton
is hard. Yes, it is. Yes. So she asked. She lives in a state where there’s not very many Christian counselors, it’s hard to find one. What are your thoughts about this? Well, I’m glad you asked. We talk about this for several pages in our book about all the different counselors you’ve access to. So, one, you can go to a Christian counselor, and and and they will help you from a biblical worldview, and that can be everything from a biblical counselor to a licensed therapist like myself. But also, you can go to a secular therapist too because of this unlimited thing. It’s kind of like you don’t ask whether your dentist is a believer. I know it’s a little bit different, but the same idea that there can be help, God can use them through common grace to help give you some relief. And then if it’s not, it’s no longer a fit, you can go somewhere else. So don’t let that deter you. There’s also sometimes there’s ways that you can get counseling online. So let’s say there’s two Christian counselors in Vermont that you can, like you said, you know you can counsel with them online. So there’s there’s options like that, but we’re not limited to just that. There was someone over there. Yes. Oh yeah, Kaya. God bless her. Thank

Speaker 5
you.

Speaker 6
My question is, when would you say we address our anxiety with truth in the heat of a spiral, or do we set it aside and come back to it later?

Hope Blanton
That’s a great question. So I think because your body is freaking out if you’re in a spiral. I think you probably need to get your body calm so that it can receive the truth. Sometimes truth can lead you out of it. You just need to test it, like a pair of jeans. Do these fit? Do these not fit? So some people it’ll be like, hearing a scripture is going to pull me out of the spiral. Other people be like, I’ve got to do some breathing and take a walk, and then I can believe the things that are true again. So you need to try those things on, like a pair of jeans, and see which ones fit you. There isn’t a wrong way to do that, but those are both options. So it’s never just one way. Okay. Yes.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 7
In a season. Of anxiety, where maybe it’s difficult to get out and do things with people, and that could look, you know, big groups, small groups, but it’s difficult to get out. What’s your advice on when to push yourself to do the thing, the family event, whatever, and when is it okay to say, “I just need a break and sit out on this one” And also, how would you communicate that to people? Because that could be confusing. Sometimes you can go, sometimes you can’t, and it could also be hard to put that into words when you’re in that season of anxiety. That makes

Hope Blanton
so much sense.

Speaker 7
So that’s a

Hope Blanton
fantastic question. I think in that situation, scaling things out is really helpful. Thinking about a scale of one to 1010, being you’re like coming out of your skin anxious, you can’t even go to the grocery store or get out of bed. Been there, or one feeling it, but you know, I mean, I usually wake up at a two every day, just the way it is. So, but and so you kind of scale yourself out. So, where am I at today? What number am I at? Oh, and where are we going? Are we going to an amusement park, or are we going to go sit in the movie theater, or whatever you know, and you think about is the activity that I’m going to do going to raise that scale up, or is it going to keep me around that number? So that can help you, and then also just letting people know, hey, this is where I’m at. I’m more anxious lately than I’ve been in a while, or my anxiety is is making it to where it’s hard for me to maybe come to Bible study every week, or you know, go to this. Or sometimes it’s hard for people to sit in worship, right? Because we get panicky, we’re gonna get stuck on that pew, all the things. And so I think that like you just knowing that and letting people know that was the first part of your question. I have had people literally come in and pray over me in my bed because I’m like, I can’t leave. I need you to come in here, and that’s okay to ask, and then explain it. and And here’s the thing: some people will understand, and some people won’t, and that’s hard. But that’s okay. That doesn’t mean that that you need to be like, well, because Susie doesn’t understand why I’m not coming to Bible study this week, I should go and have a panic attack in the bathroom, and then just run back in and be holy. No, you need to. You’ve got to figure that out, and then maybe Susie will go through an experience later on in life, and then she’ll go, “Man, I was really judgmental of so and so, of striped shirt girl, about how anxious she felt. So it’s it’s you know, but we so it’s kind of taking all that. I hope that answered your question. There was there were several questions in there, but what else? Yes, the brown, the brown. There we go.

Speaker 5
Just talking back about the holistic of the body, whatever is anorexia, bulimia, is that sometimes an outcome of anxiety, or is that sit in like a different category?

Hope Blanton
That’s a great question. My my counseling partner is an expert in eating disorders. I am not, and so I don’t know if that will lead to that. I really can’t answer that, but I do know that can that be in the mix? Yes, for sure, because anxiety can be in the mix with a lot of other things, other disorders, which means they have a comorbidity. So you can maybe struggle with anxiety, have an anxiety disorder, and have an eating disorder. But as far as what leads one to the other, it would really be situational based off that person and really digging through that braid I talked about earlier to figure out how that started and what that means. One more question, and then we’re glad we’ll step in the hallway and feel free to come and chat with us as long as you what. For raising

Speaker 5
preteen girls specifically,

Hope Blanton
I got some of those that are now. When

Speaker 5
would I know what’s normal adolescence development and what is potentially not normal anxiety?

Hope Blanton
That’s a great question, because let’s face it, they’re a little on high alert. Am I right? Mine, mine get high alert, but they also actually have anxiety disorders. God bless them. I think it just takes discernment and listening and asking questions. So just keep asking and listening. How does that feel in your body? You might be talking like you’re a 10 and you’re gonna die. This is terrible, but maybe can I ask you on a scale one to 10? How does that sound, or how does that actually feel inside you? Are we like at a four? Because if so, that’s good for me to know, and just kind of maybe start to ask them and listen. Oh, when she went this high, she was really like this the next day, or she got this high and she was like that for about four days in a row, and now we’re at a different deal. Does that make sense? So just try to ask good questions and help her figure out how she can explain what the level is in here. Does that make sense? Like give her language, them language, to be able to do that, and then just see what shifts and changes? Does that make sense? Okay, you guys have been awesome. We’ll be in the hallway if you have any questions.