Overcoming anxiety is not simply a matter of believing that you are safe in God's loving arms and that you need to stop worrying. I believe that overcoming anxiety, especially for those who have an anxiety disorder, involves identifying the hidden causes of your anxiety.
Psychologists theorize that much anxiety is due to two types of suppressed fears: fears of loss--loss of either life, security, love, or some other object of great value--or to fears of guilt. Fears of guilt involve an awareness at some level that I've done something terribly wrong and am worthy of being punished. Psychologists say that the therapy for overcoming such anxiety is to confront the hidden causes of your fear and bring them out in to the open where they can be discussed with the therapist. I whole-heatedly agree. We as Christians do not run from what we fear, we do not ignore what we fear or suppress it, we confront our fears in Christ and overcome them by his truth and love.
In the case of adult victims of childhood abuse the two types of fears, fears of loss of a valued thing, and fear of guilt, are often combined. The hidden anxiety is a contributing factor to many addictive behaviors including addiction to drugs and alcohol, sex and pornography, and is often accompanied by depression, especially when guilt is a significant component.
In my own battle with anxiety I found that some of my anxiety was due to stored up trauma that I had excluded from my conscious memory. Some therapists call this body memories. As a child I had been so overloaded by hurt that I turned off my mind to thinking about it or even feeling it. Nevertheless the pain stayed in me, contributing to a debilitating anxiety that crippled my ability to take risks and lead an emotionally healthy life. Later in my Christian walk, after exhausting my search for quick solutions and pentecostal emotional highs, I decided to confront my anxiety with Christ.
My confrontation was like this: I would lie on my bed and ask Christ to hold me. I would imagine him with me there. I would ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the roots of my anxiety. I would start to remember the pain of my childhood. I would tell Christ how scary it was to remember, how alone I felt at that moment on my bed, how dreadful the feelings coming up were. I would remember his charge to be courageous in him and his promises to protect me. As I remembered the hurtful actions of the adults in my childhood I would begin to feel the same emotions I felt as a boy. I would feel the emotional overload of my capacity to receive pain that I felt as a child. I would relive the trauma there with Christ and as it became unbearable I would tell Christ to take it all, to take the pain because I couldn't bear it. At that point, my body would start to convulse. My convulsions were involuntary. I would shake as if I were having an epileptic seizure. With these convulsions I felt the pain going out of me and into Christ. I felt as if a demonic force was taken off me. In a moment I was free of that specific pain. I felt free and the anxiety was gone. Nevertheless there were many painful memories stored up in me from different occasions and from different experiences, some of specific events, mostly of patterns of treatment I endured. I had to repeat this process for the various different causes of my anxiety. Each time I did the same thing with Christ alone on my bed and each time I felt that cause of my anxiety lift as the emotional overload of my mind and soul was given over to Christ. Each experience was a different type of pain, a different spirit, a different ugliness. Within several months of perhaps 40 different sessions with Christ on my bed, the anxiety of my childhood trauma was gone.
Now I am dealing with anxiety due to guilt. I will report on my progress in the next blog. I encourage anyone who reads this to believe in the power of Christ, to stop looking for easy ways to the victory. You are a Christian, especially a survivor of childhood abuse, you are a warrior, called to war, and open war is already upon you. Do not fear the enemy any longer. Confront it. Gird yourself for battle, take up your sword, put your little hand in Christ's and cross the Jordan. God goes before you.
