Worry

Jesus is known for some hard sayings, but one of the hardest is  “Don’t worry.  Have no anxiety about anything.”  If you are anything like me,  that’s easier said than done.  While I’m getting better at letting go, I still have a ways to go, so when I get stuck in a worry rut, I practice gratitude.  Focusing on the good things in my life helps reduce the intensity of my worries.

While “perfect love casts out all fear” none of us is perfect, so how are we to function and respond? Anxiety is a normal dimension of human experience.   Anxiety and worry, like fear, are one of our built-in responses to the unexpected, everyday problems, relational difficulties. . .  People who excel in worrying probably learned it from their parents,  who learned to worry from their parents.  In fact, a large percentage of our life is spent unlearning many of the practices, habits, and responses we learned as children.  Consequently, we are often vulnerable to levels of anxiety that interfere with our lives.  When that happens we find it difficult to trust and lack faith in God and confidence in ourselves.  We suffer from chronic anxiety that makes us less effective and can even make us dysfunctional.

We’re all vulnerable to anxiety and worry. They are a normal part of life, but when worry turns to panic attacks, phobias, etc., we’ve got a real problem.  Obsessive-compulsive behaviors and generalized anxiety are as real as diabetes or heart disease and just as treatable.  For many of us, participating in a 12-step program has helped reduce our worrying and anxiety because we learned other ways of responding to life’s stresses.  Some of us, however,  needed to go on medication before we could avail ourselves of the 12 steps or a trusting relationship with our Higher Power. What we learned by sharing stories was that since we are all individuals, there is no one way to respond to our troubles and worries. What works for one may not work for others, but one thing is true for all of us:  we can’t get anywhere without working the 1st step  “admitted we have a problem that’s taken over our lives.”