Unworried. Dr. Gregory Popcak

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СКАЧАТЬ that you are meant for more; that the anxiety you feel is not a God-intended part of your make-up. With your good effort and God’s grace, the odds are very good that you can make significant progress in lessening your anxiety (or even overcome it altogether) and feel like your “true” self again.

      Whole, Healed, Godly, Grace-Filled

      I like to ask my clients to imagine what I like to call their whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self (WHGG). This is not the super-hero self that doesn’t have any problems. Rather, it is the ideal self that responds well to the various problems of life. Imagine, for a moment, a peaceful, confident, secure, strong, grace-filled you, who can face the various challenges you experience in your life with real courage, wisdom, and aplomb. It might seem like a fantasy, but humor me for a moment and imagine this person, who contends with the same things you manage, but does it with real grace, certainty, and peace.

      Now here’s the really shocking news: your WHGG self is not a fantasy. In fact, it represents who you truly are. When God looks at you, your whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self is who he sees, and who he is working to help you to become.

      This may seem like utter nonsense the first time you consider it. Many of my anxious clients feel this way, but if you have children (or even know a child that you love), you might be able to naturally understand my point. Even if your child is having a bad day and making lots of mistakes, no loving parent would write their child off as a screw-up. You may see that your child is struggling, but you know who they really are. You know the good, strong, confident, talented person they are — even if they can’t see it themselves or aren’t currently behaving accordingly — and you dedicate yourself to helping them live up to all you see in them, all they can be. You want to help them discover that strength and lean into it so that they can exhibit those qualities consistently and confidently.

      The same thing is true of the WHGG self. If you are feeling anxious, you might not feel like you are a strong, confident, courageous, secure, faithful, person today, but your heavenly Father sees through all that. He knows who you are underneath it all, and he has dedicated all of his grace to helping you become that. That doesn’t mean you have to go from being an anxious wreck to being something else. It means that you already have the capacity to be a peaceful, strong, confident person dwelling within you in the seed God planted while you were still in your mother’s womb.

      Theologian Paul Tillich argues that God is the “ground of our being.” In a sense, everything we are meant to be already exists in God. As we draw closer to God, all the stuff that isn’t authentically part of us gets stripped away, and his grace allows us to become more ourselves. Grace does not take something that is horrible and turn it into something else. Grace peels away all the false layers our fallen world applies to us so that we can become more of who we truly are.

      If you struggle with anxiety to any degree, I want you to understand that God is not asking you to become something that you are not. He simply wants you to learn how to nourish the seeds of peace, confidence, courage, strength, security, and all the rest that he has already planted in your heart so that those seeds, once germinated, can help you become the whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self that is already present in you but not yet fulfilled.

      God literally created you with the physiological, psychological, and spiritual capacity to be the peaceful person you long to be. You just have to learn how to lean into that vision of yourself to “become what you are” (as Saint John Paul II was fond of saying). God has great plans for you. He wants to free you from your fears and deliver you from your anxieties so that you can rest confidently in his love and care like a child rests in its mother’s arms. That was his intention for you from the beginning, and it is your destiny to be fulfilled through his grace. The first step is learning to stop clinging to our anxiety as if it was a necessary part of us, and cling, instead, to the perfect love of God, which will cast out all our fears.

      That said, anxiety is a multifaceted problem with physical, psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual factors contributing to it. Because these different factors come together in different ways in each person, everyone’s anxiety profile is a little different. Over the next few chapters, I’ll help you create a battle plan by enabling you to discover how, and to what degree, each of these factors may be contributing to your experience of anxiety. After that, we’ll look at what you can do to help your body, mind, relationships, and faith start working for your good and strengthening your peace of mind. As we go along, I’ll offer you several exercises that will help you apply the various concepts in each chapter to the specific circumstances of your life. To get the most benefit out of these exercises, I recommend grabbing a notebook and a pen and keeping them with you while you read so that you can complete them as you go.

      Anxiety Quiz: How Bad Is It?

       Answer True (T) or False (F) to the following.

       1. Feelings of anxiety are making it difficult to fulfill my professional or personal obligations.

       2. My anxiety causes me to feel uncomfortable around people or actively avoid opportunities to get together with others.

       3. I have been forced to make changes in my life, work, or relationships to accommodate my anxiety.

       4. When I feel anxious, I can’t calm down unless I seek out repeated assurances from others.

       5. My anxiety is making me irritable (whether you notice this or others tell you).

       6. Worry and anxiety cause me to lie awake for at least some period most nights.

       7. I constantly replay social interactions looking for mistakes I may have made or offenses I may have committed.

       8. My doctor says I am healthy, but I experience consistent physical problems with (1 point for each). fatigue muscle aches bowel problems sweating dizziness shortness of breath

___ fatigue ___ muscle aches

___ bowel problems ___ sweating

___ dizziness ___ shortness of breath

       9. I have experienced any of the above for the last six months or more (2 points).

       Scoring

      Unless otherwise directed (e.g., #8, #9), give yourself 1 point for each T answer.

       Explanation of Results

      Please note that this is not meant to be used as a tool to diagnose a specific type of anxiety disorder. There are many different anxiety disorders, and only a professional can help you properly identify the exact nature of the problem you are experiencing.

      That said, because each of the above questions points to a symptom potentially associated with a serious problem with anxiety, if СКАЧАТЬ