Unworried. Dr. Gregory Popcak

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      Through all this we see that although anxiety is common enough in this present, historical phase of human existence, it is not God’s intention either for our beginning or our end. The even better news is that we don’t have to wait until the end times to be delivered from most if not all of our anxieties! God is already hard at work, healing us day by day by drawing us deeper and deeper into relationship with him, where we can encounter the perfect love that casts out all fear (cf. 1 Jn 4:18).

      The “Mystery” of Anxiety

      To illustrate how God is working in our present lives to free us from anxiety, let’s briefly turn to what we know about anxiety and spiritual development. Classic mystical theology teaches that there are three stages that each person moves through, by God’s grace, on his or her road to sainthood: the Purgative Way, the Illuminative Way, and the Unitive Way. Most of us could count ourselves truly blessed to make it to the end of the first stage in our lifetime, the Purgative Way, where we learn self-mastery and surrender our attachment to neurotic comforts. Some may make it to the second stage, the Illuminative Way, where the soul experiences both the practical wisdom that comes from living a well-integrated life and a special sense of zeal for proclaiming the gospel not just with our words but also in the way we live and relate to others. A small few will be graced in their lifetime to achieve the third stage, the Unitive Way, where one experiences the beginnings of total union with God this side of heaven. The Unitive Way is the realm of living saints.

      In his book, Spiritual Passages, the late psychologist and spiritual director Father Benedict Groeschel studied people he encountered along each of these three stages of the spiritual walk. He observed a steady decrease in anxiety and an increase in peace and trust in God’s loving care, despite the trials a person encounters while moving through these stages and toward deeper communion with God.

      This makes sense from both a psychological and spiritual standpoint. As we experience the integration that comes with self-mastery, the peace that accompanies finding healthy and godly ways to satisfy our deepest longings, the wisdom that helps us confidently discern the right thing to do at the right time and in the right way, and the all-encompassing love that comes from entering more and more deeply into the intimate presence of God, it stands to reason that anxiety would have less claim over our lives. We may have to wait until the next life for complete and total deliverance from anxiety. But it is God’s will to allow us to experience however much peace we can — the peace the world cannot give (cf. Jn 14:27) — even while we are still in this world.

      Are You Saying It’s My Fault?

      Upon learning that it was never God’s intention that we would be anxious and that a decrease in anxiety usually can be expected to accompany greater spiritual maturity, many people can be left feeling that they are somehow to blame; that if they just worked or prayed harder, or somehow cared less about worldly things, maybe they could leave their worries behind. It can be easy to believe that having feelings of anxiety is somehow letting God down, or even sinful. People who are given to a type of anxiety known as scrupulosity are especially prone to this kind of thinking. The good news is that our anxiety cannot, does not, and could not ever let God down. No feeling — especially anxiety — can ever be sinful.

      To commit a sin, we have to consciously choose to do what we know is wrong. Our actions must be willful, conscious, and at least reasonably informed (cf. CCC 1860–62). An emotion is none of these. Emotions, like anxiety, begin as pre-conscious, embodied experiences that bubble up, unbidden, from the limbic system (our emotional/reptilian brain) several milliseconds before our conscious mind is even aware of them. Emotions, including anxiety, can never be sinful because sin requires us to make a choice. Even though we can learn to change what we feel and how we act once an emotion appears on the scene, we can never choose what we feel in the first place. Anxiety, in particular, is a physiological and psychological response to the perception that, for some reason, we are not safe; that our physical, psychological, relational, or spiritual wellbeing is in jeopardy. Anxiety is meant to be a sign that we are facing imminent danger and that we should prepare to fight off the threat, flee from it, or freeze and hope it will just go away. Sometimes the reasons we feel threatened are obvious. Sometimes they are not. We’ll look closer at this threat-basis for anxiety and where it comes from in a later chapter. But for now, you can see that the simple fact that a person feels unsafe — even extremely unsafe (and for not especially obvious reasons) — could not possibly be considered sinful. Anxiety is the perfectly predictable response to life in a fallen world where things truly are so often unsafe. More importantly, anxiety is an opportunity to experience the mercy and loving-kindness of a God who understands, better than we, how cruel this fallen world can be.

      “My Grace Is Sufficient”

      But beyond knowing that anxiety is not sinful, it is encouraging to note that God doesn’t require us to achieve anxiety-free status as a prerequisite for sainthood. NYU professor-emeritus of psychology, Paul Vitz, once published a paper noting that Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (who is not only a saint but also was proclaimed a “Doctor of the Church” for the wisdom of her writings) struggled with a serious separation anxiety disorder and anxiety in her younger years as a result of her sainted mother’s premature death. Likewise, both Saint Alphonsus Ligouri and Saint Ignatius of Loyola famously battled with scrupulosity, which today can be understood as a variety of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that makes people anxious about spiritual, rather than bacterial, contamination. We should take comfort in knowing that sainthood depends much more on God’s infinite mercy than upon our ability to achieve psychological perfection on our own merits. When Saint Paul experienced anxiety about his own inability to overcome certain flaws (2 Cor 12:9), God reassured him that, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

      So What?

      At this point of the conversation, my clients often say something like, “Well, that’s great and all, but knowing this doesn’t make me feel any less anxious. What difference does any of this make to me?”

      It makes all the difference in the world! We have a tendency to identify with our “emotional problems” in a way that we don’t identify with “physical problems.” I put these two terms in quotes because research shows that emotional problems are also physical, and many physical maladies (like heart disease, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia) have strong emotional connections. Regardless, when we get a virus, we don’t say, “I am flu.” We say, “I have the flu.” But when struggle with anxiety, especially if we deal with chronic anxiety disorders, we do often say, “I am anxious” or “I am high strung” or something similar. It becomes an identity statement. Like, “Hi, my name is Bob. I have blue eyes and brown hair, and I am an anxious wreck.” Um … nice to meet you?

      The problem is, when we identify with the anxiety we feel, we begin to think of it as a necessary part of who we are. We may not like it, but there it is. We think we can’t do anything about it. It’s just part of us, so we have no choice but to accept it. As clients regularly tell me, “It’s just how God wired me.”

      But think of how ridiculous this is. Even the person with an illness they can’t do anything about still thinks of his or her “true” self as healthy. We say this all the time. “I woke up feeling under the weather. I can’t wait to feel like myself again.”

      With anxiety, we have a tendency to assume that this is who we are. But if God did not create you to be anxious, and if he plans to deliver you from all anxiety in the fullness of time, then you may have anxiety today, you may even struggle against it tomorrow, but you are not “an anxious person.” You are not defined by your anxiety, but by God’s grace and the mighty work he longs to do in you. One day — whether in this life or the next — God intends to strip away your anxiety, and you will be free to be the peaceful person God created you to be. This is more than СКАЧАТЬ