worry

Guard Your Plateau

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

There is a principle I like to call “Guard Your Plateau.” It means simply that once you’ve worked hard to gain some ground over depression, anxiety, fear, worry, and doubt, do all you can to maintain it. 

Living a happy, carefree, worry-free life can be extremely difficult and takes a lot of hard work; it can be exhausting mentally and emotionally. 

The day may come when you’re thinking to yourself, You know, I feel pretty good right now. Things are going OK.

When you have thoughts like that, take extra precaution. Never let your guard down and never quit doing the things that got you where you are. When you’re worn out emotionally, it can be easy to relax and “just let go.” 

Don’t do it, however. Be watchful that you don’t slip back into old habits and old thought patterns. Reverting to behaviors of the past will drag you down quicker than anything.

Keep thinking positively. Keep saying uplifting things to yourself. Never let your foot off the gas. As I heard Joyce Meyer say in a podcast, “Gain and maintain.”

The “Guard Your Plateau” principle is just as important if you find yourself in a pit of despair. If your life seems a mess lately and nothing is going right, stand your ground. Don’t give in to more feelings of doubt, gloom, anxiety, and depression.

Build yourself up to keep yourself from falling deeper. Don’t let your situation spiral out of control and get even worse. The more ground you give up, the more momentum you give to the negative in your life. 

When you think you’re at the lowest point possible, you’re not. Things can always be worse, just as they can always be better. 

During the low times, work even harder to get back to a point where you can see the light again.

More importantly, remember that God is always with us, especially during the hard times. 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to “Cast all your anxiety on him [God], because he cares for you.”

Here’s hoping that today is a better day for you than yesterday, and that tomorrow is even better than today.

Reframing How You See Your Life

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

Too many people struggle with depression and anxiety on a daily basis—and I’m one of those people. One approach that I have used from time to time to help eliminate my worry and anxiety over the future is to completely reframe my thinking regarding it and the past.

By nature, I have always held onto the past. It’s where I’m most comfortable because it’s a known. The future is unknown of course. By thinking about the past and dwelling on the past I’m able to keep my mind in a more comfortable, secure place.

However, we don’t live in the past. We only live in the here-and-now, with the future to look forward to. So, by living in the past in my mind, I’m actually creating more anxiety for myself. What happens now is that I see my “true” life as that which I had before I left home for college. That’s the point at which one major phase of my life ended and another began.

Therefore, in my mind, all the events that have happened since I left home are cataloged as leading away from that anchor point. 

Let me explain it this way. It’s as if I’m wading into the ocean backwards with my eye on the shoreline that is getting ever farther away. My childhood is represented as my walk down the beach until I reach the edge of the water. 

Everything after that (adulthood) is represented by my wading into the water. The longer I live, the farther I get away from the shore with its supposed safety and the more treacherous my journey becomes. 

Slowly but surely, I’m wading backward out into deeper waters, getting closer to the point where I’m completely underwater. My focus is not on the direction I’m headed, but rather it’s always on the shore.

Each day of my adult life is seen as a crisis—it’s not my real life because that ended at childhood when I began wading into the water. The crisis is heightening day by day as I get deeper and deeper. There is no real living in this scenario—just survival for as long as Ican.

As you can imagine, this way of thinking makes for a very anxious kind of life.

However, by reframing my way of thinking, I can see my life in a whole different light. If I create a different schema to catalog my experience, then everything is flipped 180 degrees. If I see each new day as the beginning of the rest of my life, and all the events that come afterward as just a long extension of my real life, then a great deal of worry, fear, and anxiety is eliminated.

I have to tell myself, “My life is here and now. Everything else is in the past. This is my life, along with everything that I experience from this point on.”

But the real key is to see my life this way. I have to keep in mind the image that the past is all behind me and that the future is a great, wide road in front of me, representing all the potential that life holds.

Creating this image in my head helps me see my life completely differently. Instead of ruminating on the past and fretting because each day takes me further away from its “safety,” I’m instead focused on the future and making each day count for something. I can look forward to each day instead of being anxious because life has taken me so far from my past.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul tells his readers that he uses that same approach:

“…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”

Phil. 3:13b

It’s good to learn from the past, but not so good if you live in the past. As the motivational saying goes, “Remember the lesson, but forget the details.”

Living in the past cripples you and makes you totally ineffective for you present life. Plus, you end up fearing the future because your mind is conditioned to crave the apparent security of the past. 

That security is all a lie, however. The past has no real power, only that which you allow it to have. The present and the future are where life is truly lived.

Mama’s Hands

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Her hands tell her story. Over the decades they baked countless cakes, changed untold thousands of diapers, prepared meal after meal after meal, and washed enough laundry to clothe an army for a year.

They washed innumerable dishes and had been washed clean themselves. Each day, she wrung them in ever-present worry, as there is no purpose without worry. They only stopped when the rest of her body came to a halt. 

As the decades wore on, arthritis took its toll, adding twists and turns to her slender fingers. Graceful hands became tough, gnarled knots. 

These hands had sorted, fixed, cleaned, and soothed in their long lives, seeing both noble and not-so-noble purposes. 

Although, for me her hands represented mostly love, in my early childhood they were also fearful objects, capable of causing instant pain and humiliation. More than once they had left a hot red impression on my arm or leg, a perfect outline of her fingers molded into the white of my flesh. 

In these moments, it’s hard to say which one I felt more of—physical pain or humiliation. The loud smack on my skin would intensify the experience, drawing hot tears from my eyes and turning my selfish day in a new and awful direction. 

In her later years, the hands themselves endured blinding pain each day from the arthritis that wove itself through them.

For her, her hands’ movement meant she was accomplishing her duty. Hand work kept her sense of guilt at bay. After all, idle hands are the devil’s plaything. Busy hands showed her dedication to her duties as a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and employee.

Never once do I remember her having painted nails.That just wasn’t her style. Too flashy, she’d say. Too impractical. People might get the wrong idea. After all, these hands were born in the depression and we must never forget the lessons we learned during that time. Practicality and sensibility come before anything else. 

Her hands often worked even in her downtime. A bushel of fresh-picked green beans from our garden meant she’d watch “Barnaby Jones” or “Mary Tyler Moore” that night while mindlessly breaking one bean after another into pleasing, edible pieces. 

At the end of the day, she put her eyes and her mind to bed and patiently waited for her hands to finish their work. Their final tasks might include massaging sore joints, rubbing overworked calves, or trying without success to ease a fidgety leg. When her hands finally rested, she could at last rest her body. 

Her hands have at last found their final rest. They are peacefully still, her left one casually draped over her right. They and she lie free from guilt and worry.

Make the Bible’s Words Your Prayers

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Sometimes when we’re so down we just don’t know what to pray or how to pray to God. It seems like our prayers are going nowhere.

These are times when you can refer to the word of God for your prayers. If we’re weak in strength (emotionally and/or physically), all we have to do is pray words that have already been spoken before.

What this means is that we can use the God’s words from the Bible as our own prayers. We can find words that His people spoke to Him long ago and make them our own.

Rather than strictly coming to God with a list of concerns and cares, we can use these words as a guide to focus our prayers. Using them can transform our words into strong petitions that accurately reflect who God is and who we are in relation to Him.

Jeremiah 33:3 says,

“Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”

Call out to God. Tell Him of your weakness. Tell Him you want to serve Him but you feel unequipped to do so. Trust Him to speak to you. It might not be right away, as sometimes we must wait on God to hear His voice clearly. But never stop trusting Him that He loves you and wants you to hear Him.

Praise God and thank Him that you can trust Him just as Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us,

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

You might pray something like, “Thank you, Father, that I can trust you with all my heart and that as I acknowledge you in every area of my life, you are making a straight path for me.”

It might be that trouble with your job or professional life has left you physically drained. Perhaps your finances are in disarray and you’re barely able to make ends meet.

In 1 Chronicles 4:10 we find this prayer from Jabez:

“Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!”

We learn in the next verse that God granted Jabez’s request. That’s not to say that God will give you whatever you ask for or that if He does, that it will be in the timeframe you want. God works in His own time and for His own divine purposes.

However, by speaking this prayer to God, you’re letting God know that you have needs (He already knows them anyway) and you’re inviting Him to be the One who works everything out. You’re recognizing that you can’t do it on your own.

Psalm 34:4-7 is a wonderful passage if you’re just feeling generally afraid and anxious:

“I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.”

Here we find David’s testimony that God helped him in his time of need. Just as He did for David, God will deliver you from your fears. He will save you out of your troubles.

Once again, it may not be in exactly the way you think He should. It may not be when you think it should be. But he is faithful. He’ll save you just like he did David.

Make these words your prayer. Personalize them. Thank God for His help. Praise Him for being faithful and for saving you as He did David.

Philippians 4:6-7 is another great passage for helping us through anxiety and worry. It tells us,

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Pray to the Lord and thank Him that you have nothing to be anxious about. Praise Him for His peace in Jesus that is guarding your heart (emotions) and your mind (logical thought processes).

God loves us and is always there for us. Nothing we can ever do will change that.

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him” (Ps. 103:11).

Use the examples that He gave us in His word to personalize your prayers and make them powerful, God-trusting, God-praising prayers. Fortify them with God’s words and see if He doesn’t help you in your time of need.

What to Do When You’re Stressed

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

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Stress—we all face it every day. If you’re like me you’ve probably seen 100 blog posts, listicles, tweets, and other bits of inspiration designed to help you deal with this unwelcome guest in our lives.

Well, here’s one more—but with a distinctly Christian perspective. God’s Word is full of practical advice to guide us through the challenges of daily life and help us stay on top of stress and anxiety, instead of being “under the circumstances”.

So when stress rises up and smacks you right in the face, follow these steps to put some calm back into your day.

(And, yes, I’m writing this as much for me as for anybody else out there.)


1. Relax and breathe

The first thing to do is just sit tight. Be still and shut your eyes if possible. Bring in slowly through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth. Do this anywhere from six to 10 times depending on your stress level. This action will immediately begin to calm your nerves.


2.  Give the situation to God

Over and over in the Bible God instructs us not to worry, but instead to give all our burdens and cares to Him.

My favorite such verse is Philippians 4:6: “Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

1 Peter 5:7 is another great verse to remind us God doesn’t want us to worry and fret: “Casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.”

And then there’s Matthew 6:34: “Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Is it clear yet that God really, really doesn’t want us to worry?


3. Pray

After you’re relaxed and have given the stressful situation over to God—just pray. Thank God for all the times in the past when He’s seen you through sticky situations. Thank Him for always being there with you. After all, He said, “I will never leave you or abandon you” (Heb. 13:5).

Then ask for His help dealing with the current circumstances, and thank him no matter the answer. Pray even if you’re so stressed you can only pour out “whispered prayers” like the Israelites did in their distress (Isaiah 26:16).

Always remember that God is a loving Father with a keen interest in you. “Call on me in a day of trouble; I will rescue you, and you will honor me” (Ps 50:15).


4. Rest and realize God is in control

God has this situation in His hands—along with every other situation in your life. Even though He may not resolve the circumstances in the exact way you think He should, He’s always working on your behalf. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28).

And if you still have any doubt about the goodness and graciousness of God’s thoughts towards you, there’s Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”


There’s no way to avoid all the trials of life, but God’s promises provide encouragement and guidance as we cross life’s rough spots.

 

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All Bible verses quoted are taken from the Christian Standard Bible.

Philippians 4: The Original Cognitive Therapy

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

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A good day

I discovered the book on the first Saturday in May several years ago. Derby Day for those of you familiar with horse racing. The giant of horse races runs on this spring day every year—the Kentucky Derby, AKA The Run For the Roses.

On this particular Derby Day the clouds had opened up and drenched our area with rain. With nothing in particular I had to do that afternoon, I decided to visit my local library before the big race. I began perusing the rows of wonderful books, finding myself in the self-help section of the nonfiction books.

That is where I found it—Feeling Good by Dr. David D. Burns. The title alone immediately drew me in. Who doesn’t want to feel good? Finding a cozy spot in the library I nestled in and began reading my new find.

I found the book so engaging that I checked it out from the library, later buying my own copy.

And that was my first real introduction to the basics of cognitive therapy.

 

Cognitive therapy? What’s that?

Merriam-Webster defines cognitive therapy as “psychotherapy especially for depression that emphasizes the substitution of desirable patterns of thinking for maladaptive or faulty ones.”

On its website, the Center for Cognitive Therapy describes the treatment in a way that’s easier to understand: “Cognitive Therapy is based on the premise that what we think affects our emotions, what we choose to do or avoid, and our physiological reactions…In fact, most situations remain neutral until we assign meaning based on how we interpret the situation.”

In a nutshell, Dr. Burns’ book describes how our feelings of depression are not actually rooted in reality, but rather in our perceptions of reality—false conclusions we make about ourselves and our circumstances.

 

OK—so how does it work?

Dr. Burns’ self-help approach to overcoming these feelings has several steps.

For example, if I’m feeling depressed and worthless because my boss passed me over for a promotion, the first step is to identify the Automatic Thought that is behind those feelings (Burns 29). In this case the thought might be something like, “I’ve missed out on another promotion. I’m worthless—I’ll never get ahead.”

Then I need to label the negative thought as one or more types of Cognitive Distortion—the illusion I have allowed myself to believe, which actually has no basis in reality. Dr. Burns lists 10 different Cognitive Distortions in his book (32). This thought of failure and worthlessness could be labeled as Overgeneralization. My mind took one setback and turned it into a pattern of lifetime defeat (Burns 33).

Once I have the identified and labeled the negative thought, I need to replace it with a Rational Response. I could say to myself something like, “That’s just one promotion. It’s not the end of the world. They’ll be other promotions to work for. Besides, I’m certainly not worthless.”

That’s how self-help cognitive therapy works. Dr. David Burns is a pretty smart guy for having figured all this out.

 

And God said, “Let there be cognitive therapy”

With all due respect to Dr. Burns, however, God is a whole lot smarter.

He drafted the blueprint for self-help cognitive therapy 2000 years ago in the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Here we will find God’s instructions to us—via the hand of Paul—for handling the depression, anxiety, and fear of everyday life.

Philippians 4:4 begins God’s plan for correcting our faulty thinking. The first bit of advice Paul writes is to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” If we cannot take joy in God—the Creator of the entire universe and the Savior of our souls—then nothing will help us.

In the following verse we’re told that God is near to us always (Phil. 4:5b); we’re to understand and take to heart that we’re not alone.

These two verses should form the bedrock of our self-help ritual.

 

Where the rubber meets the road

In Philippians 4:6 we find the beginning of the heart of cognitive therapy. “[D]o not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

God commands us to have no anxiety. None. Zilch. But how are we supposed to do this you might ask. After all, each of us is bombarded on a daily basis with the stresses and strains of life—there is no escaping it.

The first key is to trust God, letting Him know our requests through the triple weapons of prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving.

On her podcast, bible teacher Kay Arthur elaborates on the key differences between these three important concepts.

According to Ms. Arthur, the word translated as “prayer” in verse 6 means general prayer to God in the original Greek. She explains that we should first simply talk to God, focusing on who He is—the fact that He’s sovereign and omniscient, and that He’s the One who promises everything in our lives will work together for good if we’re a believer in Christ.

She continues by explaining that supplication means making a specific request for our present needs.  When we’re fearful or anxious about a situation, ask God for help with the situation—whatever it may be.

Finally, be thankful. Stop and realize that you have Jesus for this situation—therefore you have access to the Father and everything you need for this and all other stressful situations in life. Your life is in His hands.

Fear, worry, and anxiety are the result of wrong thinking contrary to God’s word. They are also key causes of depression. Just like Dr. Burns’ method to identify and label the Automatic Thought—prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving enable us to grab hold of our fears, worries, and anxieties and hand them over to God for Him to take care of.

 

Finish strong

Verse 8 of Philippians 4 is the lock-in (similar to a grind-in if you’ve been involved in Emotional Brain Training (EBT), a form of cognitive therapy), tying everything together by keeping us focused on the positive things in life. Paul tells us to keep our minds trained on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

God designed us, so He knows our minds cannot remain empty for long. It is imperative to put something in place of our worries, fears, and anxieties or else they will creep right back in.

That’s why we’re commanded to think about positive, uplifting things—the sunshine peeking out after a morning rain; a fresh blanket of new snow; a full moon on a cold, clear night; a baby’s innocent smile; or even lighter-than-normal traffic on your morning commute.

On a recent podcast concerning Philippians 4, Pastor J.P. Jones teaches that if we want the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, then we must be “peace makers, peace receivers, peace thinkers, and peace practicers.”

Philippians 4:8 represents a strong parallel to the final piece of Dr. Burns’ self-help cognitive therapy method. The only significant difference is the terminology. We’re labeling the negative Automatic Thought what it really is—fear, worry, and anxiety, and instead of substituting it with a Rational Response, we’re filling our minds with all the good, positive, uplifting things about the world we live in.

So we see that Dr. Burns was definitely onto something great when he wrote Feeling Good. Only God beat him to it by a couple thousand years.

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Work Cited

Burns, David D. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Harper, 1999.