Anxiety & the Body: Understanding the Physical Aspects of Anxiety

In this episode, CCEF faculty explore the interplay between anxiety and the body, discussing personal experiences and insights. They consider the impact of past experiences on anxiety responses, the significance of community, and practical strategies for navigating anxiety in the moment.

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Mentioned in this episode: Learn more about our upcoming conference: To Live Is Christ: The Life & Ministry of Paul, where we'll consider not so much the content of Paul's theology, but rather how he did ministry. We'll ask the question, What does it look like when someone does ministry with Jesus at the center of everything? Register before the price increases after March 31. Learn more at ccef.org/2025.

00:00 Introduction to Understanding Anxiety & the Body
07:43 The Interplay of Body & Mind
10:08 The Impact of Past Experiences on Current Anxiety Responses
15:43 Trusting the Lord Who Watches Over Us
22:21 Navigating Anxiety in Relationships
32:13 Practical Ways to Navigate Anxiety

Hi, welcome to Where Life & Scripture Meet, a podcast of CCEF where we seek to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. Today I am joined by my friends Gunner Gundersen and Darby Strickland. My name is Alasdair Groves, and, sadly, Esther Liu, our colleague who normally is part of our core podcast team, is not here with us, couldn't make it.

Before we jump in today, I just wanted to let you know about an opportunity that we are very excited about this fall, which is our national conference, available both in person and online. We wanted to let you know about the opportunity now because prices go up at the end of March. So the conference is on the ministry of Paul, specifically the life-lived ministry of Paul, how he applies his theology, so not his theology per se, but what do we learn from watching the life of Paul? What does it look like when someone does ministry with Jesus at the center of everything? So we're excited about that and we hope you will join us and we hope you look forward to today's conversation.

Topic for today that we wanted to talk about is the issue of anxiety and our bodies. And this is actually something that sparked for us after our last conversation. We just talked about in the previous episode, what do we find personally helpful in the face of anxiety? And it was a great conversation that we all enjoyed. And we kind of got to the end and were debriefing afterwards and we're like, you know, we didn't really talk much about the physical aspects of this, and that's a big issue for us in our own experiences, and it certainly obviously is something that comes up a lot in conversation in the era in which we live. And we're all counselors, and so we certainly have run into those conversations in counseling rooms as well. And so we just want to come back and double back to that particular conversation. 

You know, guys, as we were speaking earlier, a number of different things were kind of popping up for me in our conversation. I think one thing that sticks out when I think about the issue of of anxiety and our bodies and what we do is the idea that sometimes the experiences of my interpretation of the world, something happens to me and then it feels like my body gets, you know, hammered with anxiety. And sometimes it feels like my body has the experience of anxiety in it for reasons that aren't clear to me. And then it's like my mind sort of wants to jump on the bandwagon. I’d just be curious, Darby, Gunner, I mean, how do you guys think about the relationship between the body and anxiety? Do you feel like it tends to be more one versus the other in your own experience or in your counseling? Yeah, curious to hear what you're thinking.

I would say I have anxiety manifest in me in two ways. One, it can be more of what we were talking about last time is just a loop of thoughts. Like I'm just aware, I'm thinking about what's going to happen next, am I going to being able to handle it? Is something going to go wrong? Or it can actually show up physically. I can get a stomach ache. I might get dizzy. I might get jittery. Yeah, there's been even sometimes when I get a little shaky, actually. So I've actually had both experiences of it in myself. And it's distressing in both quadrants, but I think what happens when you start to feel it physically, you have the added layer of what's wrong with me, is there something wrong with my body? And that just takes you down another rabbithole of fear. Why am I dizzy? Did I not eat enough? I'm going to faint. And for some people, that can be quite extreme. Am I having a heart attack? So I think when our body starts to respond, it just introduces a whole new category of fears on top of what we're already wrestling with that can make it more confounding.

Yeah, that word shaky really resonates for me, Darby. I think that's a good, that's maybe one of the best words I can think of to capture what I would describe when I feel anxious. And I think it's certainly something I've heard in others. But shaky and probably with a special emphasis for me of like, there's something in my chest that's happening that's not good. It's hard to get a breath in because I'm just so, the jitter shake of it kind of comes after me. I, you know, it's interesting, I would personally not describe myself as a highly anxious person. In fact, I would say for the first 20 or so years of my life, I wouldn't have been able to identify much anxiety that I would say I experienced either mentally or physically. And it was actually, yeah, I think one of the most just like, “I remember this, you know, 20 some years later,” I was actually heading out to a CCEF conference, driving down the highway, I'm in the right lane, and this white car comes flying up behind me, looking in the rearview mirror and I see it coming. It veers momentarily into the left lane, and then goes shooting off to the right and flying off the road into the woods. It had to be doing at least 100 miles an hour. It was probably like a two to three second experience of, you know how you're driving and something happens in your rearview and it's in your side attention, then suddenly it has your full attention. Two or three seconds, by the time I realized I suppose that I was in physical danger if the car had actually come and hit me, I was out of danger before I even had time to process it. And I was so shaky for hours. I missed that next exit that I was supposed to take. I was going, you know, I didn't really know the route I was following so it was, you know, complicated, there's even cognitively and visually processing the road signs. I took a wrong turn once I got off the exit. I was just so thrown off by a two or three second experience that left me completely safe and had no physical contact with me. And I remember walking into the conference, I was a volunteer, and feeling like, I just want to tell somebody like you, wow, you have no idea what just happened to me. There was this urge to share the experience, and I've learned a lot more since then. There's actually more anxiety in my life than I realized and I've been able to identify a lot more points of anxiety in the last few decades than the first few, but yeah, it's just, it's interesting how much our body does become the expresser of what's happening inside. Again, so my experience tends to be like, there's a reason I'm anxious and I don't really like how that feels. I don't like feeling shaky. I don't like finding it hard to breathe and feeling that semi-nauseous pressure in my chest. Yeah, it's just interesting to watch how it plays out in small ways. And then I can begin to imagine, okay, let's extend it. What if it was more than a two to three second interaction? What if it was repeated? What if it was constant? What if the danger was severe and extended? What if you've actually been, metaphorically speaking, hit by that car many, many times and now the car's coming up? It's helpful to me. I feel like I get even in small glimpses as someone who wouldn't identify as super anxious, I can see the impact it has on my body. And that's not the norm for me, but for some people that is the norm. That's where their body is living is that place of, yeah, it is scary. And again, there may be places where they're overinterpreting that and they're actually totally safe and fine and they don't have to be as nervous as they are, and other cases where they're very appropriate to regularly be feeling that and that's the baked-in pattern. But yeah, it's striking to me how much impact it can have.

Yeah, I'm reminded of just the intricacies of how God has designed us to operate and I think first off I'm really thankful as I think about it because I know that God has designed my brain to send signals to my body and my body to send signals to my brain and there's so many ways in which that is used by him to protect me and to help me understand the world around me and so when I think about a fallen world I know it's attempting to start with just the fallen, but I also think there's the goodness of a Genesis 1 world that God has made. I was frying an egg the other day and somehow my hand, as I was working on something else, just came to rest on the outside of the pan and immediately, or at least once I felt that it was burning me, I just reacted. I didn't think about it, I just did. And I'm really grateful for those signals being sent. I know the issue, and we all know this, is just that like everything else in the good world that God's made, there's been a corruption, a brokenness. So we suffer, we sin, combinations of those things. And so that system can go haywire at different points. And so for me, it can be ,the other day for example I was doing a Q &A and I found that as I was sitting there on the stool and I was holding the handheld microphone that it was getting slippery because I was sweating on this microphone handle and even in the moment as I was seeking to engage with the person who I was talking with as well as the 50 or so people that were there, I was thinking, what is it about these topics in this environment that has me feeling nervous? I felt that I was able to communicate basically clearly. It was a very supportive, encouraging room of people that love the Lord and are committed to serving him. But still that effort in wanting to answer complicated questions in a way that was helpful and not being totally sure how that was going in the room impacted the way that my body was responding and interpreting that moment. And it was a good moment walking away to reflect a little bit on what were the fears and what were the concerns, and some of those good and healthy and loving some of those self-focused that I was able to reflect on. And that was just one recent illustration.

Yeah, I think that's what's so difficult to sort out is oftentimes once our body is cued up, like in the situation where Alasdair's talking about where there was real and present danger, right, then our bodies are activated in such a way that we might run into something that isn't dangerous, but our bodies are responding to it. I was in a car accident at one time, pretty serious, and the person had blown past a stop sign. And for the next year, every time a car approached a stop sign but didn't stop at the line but rolled through the intersection, I was really tempted to swerve the car out of the way. I couldn't get in my mind that I'm okay. I had this automatic reaction to veer out of the danger. So that's where I was misperceiving the cues because I was cued up to think of it as danger. And it took a lot of careful work.

 And in other situations, we might not have been in physical danger, but we're anticipating that we might be. And that's why I think it's just even helpful to think about, you know, am I experiencing this because I've learned this honestly, that I am vulnerable and I've had this heightened response because I've actually been exposed to a vulnerability? I've lived in a home that was unsafe or I've been harmed, been in an accident. Or am I fearing what might happen? Because I just have this wonderfully gifted imagination of anticipating all sorts of things where I might feel embarrassed or shame. So I think it's even just helpful to think about, how did I get here? What's the history of me arriving in the place that my body's now sounding alarms?

Yeah. It's interesting you put it that way, Darby. I have had a similar experience of I got rear-ended in my car, car was totaled. I was turning left into our neighborhood, a turn I’ve made a gazillion times. It's about, I can't remember exactly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like 10 years ago now that I got hit. And before you turn left, you come up over this hill and you're cresting a hill and starting to come down the other side, which certainly limits visibility. Anyhow, there was a car coming behind me, I'm slowing down to turn left, and the woman driving the car behind me had reached out for her drink and put her hand, didn't have a lid, but she was expecting a lid. So she put her hand into ice cold water and suddenly looked down to see, whoa, what just happened? And then wasn't looking at me and, you know, came pretty hard into my back seat. And what’d I say, 10 years ago, something like that? To this day, I just feel more cautious when making that left-hand turn, which I've made more than a thousand times since it's been 10 years. And I suppose on some level, it's probably a slightly more dangerous turn to make than your average left-hand turn because of the way that hill works and, you know, there's just less time for a car behind you to receive, but my, my shoulders tense a little bit every time I look in that rearview mirror. And as I'm pulling down to that, there's just a heightened level of tension in my body and sort of looking back at what's happening. It's interesting to watch my physical reaction be just a little bit heightened at that particular intersection. And that feels like sort of an appropriate response to that. And yet it's not one that I don't think like, okay, I have to drive home and when I get to that left-hand turn, I'd better be a little more careful than usual. It's just my body is instinctively, my eyes flick to that rearview mirror more quickly and more frequently, my shoulders tighten up a bit more instinctively. It's just interesting how that plays out.

And what's fascinating is for some people, that will be the only place that the anxiety shows up, making that left-hand turn. And for other people, it gets generalized when they're on the other side of a hill or every time they're making a turn. And so that's what's so difficult about each of our stories is how we generalize specific experiences and fears are extrapolated. And then pretty soon for some, that physical anxiety can actually create patterns of avoidance or limitations, when the fears kind of multiply from something simple. It becomes a much more riddling experience to live through.

I think that's a great observation Darby, that something experienced as an incident or experienced repeatedly, but in only one category of life, we can then begin to translate into a lot of different areas, or the experience physically can be signaling to us that we need to be hypervigilant or we need to take these measures or we need to avoid any number of different things or a whole combination of things that we might even know theoretically that those places are safe places or the fears are not likely to be realized. I think the word a “riddling” experience is a great way to describe when it becomes constant, even if we might tie it back to an incident or just a particular arena of life that seems like it's cordoned off from the rest of life, but I'm a person experiencing all of my life.

It leads me to want to keep watch over myself versus trust that the Lord is watching over me. And it's just such a natural thing to do, I think for us, is to say, how do I keep myself safe, how do I avoid feeling this way? Versus saying, how do I trust the One who's keeping watch? That sometimes for me helps me face something that would otherwise give me anxiety, is remembering the ways that he's watching me and I don't have to watch, keep that intense watch.

Darby, do you have particular things that help in that, whether physical actions or thoughts or Scripture memory, or like what helps you press into the reality of that, the hope of that in those moments or after those moments or what's helpful?

Yeah, there was a particular season not long ago where I had just a lot of anxiousness around how to deliver, yeah, it's like public speaking is difficult for me. What I speak on can often feel controversial, probably like Gunner, you know, wanting to be accurate, not wanting to be misunderstood, wanting to represent the Lord well. I can work myself up quite well. So, passages of Scripture, being reminded like that he will not let my foot slip has been hugely important. But I think where I actually gained the most ground was actually feeling surrounded by the Lord. He goes before me, he goes beside me, he is behind me. There's nowhere I can go that he is not. And really just drilling that into my soul. I was having a particularly hard morning one day, driving into work, stomach aching, thinking this is impossible, almost projecting all the things that could go wrong would go wrong. I had gotten myself really far down the road of, this is going to be a disaster. So the physical aspects of anxiety were peaking. And out of nowhere, my car connected to my phone and a friend had bought me an album, a Sandra McCracken album. And I never knew how to access it before. And it literally, this is just a God thing, right? He started, I would say he cued up for me the song, “I Am With You,” by her in that album. Just that whole imagery, I think it was for me, instead of thinking about what I was physically feeling, the song drew me into the image, what Scripture says so clearly, he goes in front, he's behind, he's beside me, he is with me in a really concrete way. So that really helped me begin to imagine what are other ways when I'm reading Scripture that I can imagine he is a refuge. So for me, because when anxiety is loud, it's dominating, it gets kind of all the attention. So it's really hard to have your attention focused on the Lord. I've counseled myself and other people, like, how do I imagine something different? And for me, that song really captured me. I can sing that song, but actually then trying to imagine what that would look like to feel enclosed and encapsulated by the Lord's presence. But it's work, right, to do that.

What you described, Darby, I think really reminded me of Psalm 3:1–3, when David starts by saying, Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me, many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. That's the problem. And there's this repetition of the word many, many, many, many. And that really reminds me of that experience of anxiety, like waves crashing on you repeatedly over and over. And as you try to get out, you just keep tumbling and eventually you don't really actually know which way is up, even though you did before. And then the next verse in Psalm 3:3, he says, but you, O Lord, are a shield about me. And he describes the Lord as a 360-degree shield, which is not actually how a typical shield, ancient or modern, works, especially an ancient shield.

Yeah, you don't want a 360-degree shield if you're on an ancient battlefield.

It's this vision of the Lord completely surrounding him. And in the story from which that psalm comes, in Samuel, David has been turned on by Absalom and his life is being sought by his own son. But in the story, one thing that's worse is that Ahithophel has actually turned against David as well. And the narrative says that in those days, the counsel of Ahithophel was like the voice of God or like the voice of the Lord, meaning everyone listened to him. And then the Lord does this amazing thing as David prays and the Lord actually makes Absalom's people and Absalom himself not listen to Ahithophel who everyone listened to. And so this miraculous deliverance takes place that went against all human logic, all the ways that the political system worked and Ahithophel's good advice to—like if you want to kill David, his advice was the right one—was not listened to. And David was rescued from 12,000 men that were going to be taken against him. And so thinking about that to me is really helpful to just, as you said, be able to picture the Lord as truly protecting us. The other thing that stands out to me as we were describing the different experiences of anxiety was there's some that are related to the material world and ways that we might be harmed, but then the relational world in many ways in our experience is way more fluid. And I think in relationships, there becomes this significant testing of how I respond and how I trust God in that ultimate relationship that we have with him. But I think that fluidity in relationships, which can be ever-changing, especially in certainly relationships that do become volatile and unpredictable or predictably bad that we've been hurt by. And so it makes me all the more grateful that the solution, if you will, or the consistent exercise that God takes us through is a relational exercise, as Darby said, of turning to him, resting in him.

And finding part of his grace often in human friends and people who like, you know, I'm talking about, I got to the conference and I wanted to tell someone, hey, this happened to me. It's amazing how powerful even something like that, just sharing our burdens and our sorrows, you know, Galatians 6 and Romans 12, just both in different ways alluding to the power of bearing one another's burdens and sharing each other's heart experiences, which makes sense. If the Lord wants us to pour our heart to him, it makes sense that pouring out our heart to each other would be helpful.

Can we zoom in on this relational piece for a minute? I find that to be in many ways the most important, or at least the most frequently important in my counseling experience. I think about my own experience, and if I were to identify anxiety in my own life in its most frequent and galling form, it would be the anxiety I feel when there's any kind of tension in the room or heightening of conflict or discussions get a little heated. And I find that I am so eager to not say a wrong thing. I don't want to make things worse. I'm so focused on and nervous about making wrong words come out of my mouth that I actually feel like I lose some cognitive ability. I cannot think as quickly as I normally could in those moments. And so one of the interesting questions for me, there's several that are posed by it. One is, okay, Alasdair, how can you be less controlled by your fear of man and how others will perceive you or being afraid of what will come out and that being bad, but also a genuine sense of what does love look like? So it's not just, yeah, sure, are there places where my heart may be misoriented, undoubtedly. And I feel like I have a sense of, yeah, bring that to the Lord and ask, Lord, help me to love you and love this other person. And that's actually often something I'm praying in those moments like, help me love this person. But having a reduced ability to think in one of the most sensitive places is not what I would choose. It's not my favorite aspect of being an embodied soul. And it, I think it's just always raised questions for me even about what does love look like when you have temporarily reduced cognitive capacity, even if some of that reduction is because maybe you are too worked up about how someone's seeing you. And there may be a sinful heart component, but there's also a genuinely physical weakness in the moment, even if the two are back and forth. And I think sometimes it's right and good that I would be really careful with my words and I would be especially cautious of not wanting to say hurtful things or things that would, yeah, you don't want to be flippant in the middle of conflict. And so I think there's an appropriate slowing down that's good. I would choose to slow down with my words, but have my mind operate at 110% capacity so I'd be most likely to say helpful things. And I find that actually both slow down together.

How do you guys think about in particular tension in relationships where you feel anxiety in a conversation? Either what's happening there or what you do there. I know for me, the main thing I'm often doing in those situations is praying in the background, and my prayer is a complex, intricate one that you have to memorize over time. It goes like this, help me, help me, help me, help me, Lord. Or some version of that, right? It is not complicated at all. It maybe doesn't even have the word me or Lord, it may just be help, help, help. That's about all I can do in those moments. And I do find it helpful to cry out in that just very direct, real-time way. It's not even like I do it because it's helpful. It's like I am doing it because I have no choice. I need help, help, help me now, help. What do you guys experience in those moments? What do you turn to?

Yeah, if I'm in an awkward social moment or a conflict moment or if I'm in a relationship that just feels particularly stressed or strained. I think one of the things I'm constantly reminding myself is that the Lord sees me. Again, it's just a different way of visualizing that I'm hemmed in, right? The Lord sees, he knows, he understands what's happening in this moment in ways that I don't. And he's not going to abandon me. He's not going to reject me. He's going to stick with me even if I mess this up. Like, have a friend that sticks closer than a brother. There's nothing I can do here that's going to rattle his affection for me. And that helps me take my eyes off of the horizontal interaction, how I feel like I'm going to fracture or break or be harmed, break it or be harmed by it, and focus on a different type of relationship that's protective. And so again, I think it's just having that, feeling loved and protected by the Lord helps me weather those moments. 

Again, I'm better off when I anticipate, like I know this relationship is difficult for me. And so if I can prep myself by going into that conversation, and be meditating on the Lord's protection of me. It's a lot harder to do that when it's sudden. It catches you off guard. And then it's gonna take time to settle in. How can I talk to the Lord about this?

 And so what I often do is instead of just internally talking to myself about how uncomfortable I am, I'll talk to the Lord. I'll be like, do you see that? Do you see what they just said? I don't know what to say to that. Or I feel like that was an unfair accusation. So at least again, it gets me out of myself and it puts me back in relationship with him by directing those in-world swirl of thoughts towards him, even saying like, my mouth is going dry, my heart's racing, my stomach's turning. The conversation, the anxiety is directed towards him. Because oftentimes, it happens out of nowhere. It's one thing, it's great when we can prepare, because there are those relationships we know that are perpetually difficult. But oftentimes, it feels like probably the disciples in a boat. I'm in a boat, I'm happy, and all of a sudden, there's a storm out of nowhere. And it's that unsettledness, that unexpected, yeah, things like happen in a moment, just feel like a great windstorm and now there's chaotic chaos. And I don't know how humans, maybe more sanctified than I, can pivot in all the right ways to think about things biblically, but I often find I can't do that when a storm suddenly arises. So I just start talking about the storm with him. That really helps redirect and he shows up in ways then.

Yeah, the 1% of the time when you can actually anticipate, this anxious thing is coming toward me, I have time to prepare, those aren't the ones we're most worried about. Those are the ones that are the tricky ones. It's the other 99% of time when it hits you without warning. 

Darby, I have a combination of images in my mind. And one is the story that you were just telling about Christ in the boat or the disciples who were there and he's sleeping and they begin to lose their minds over this storm, which I totally would have done as well. And he gets up and he talks about their little faith and then he rebukes the sea and calms it and it's really a striking moment, but I think that one is a little bit easier for me to go to because I think, wow, he's just so calm and peaceful and they're so chaotic. He's sleeping in the boat and as a preacher, you would naturally bring that out and highlight that. 

But then the other story that comes to mind that gives me a different kind of comfort is Jesus in the garden and the actual postures are the opposite. So now the disciples are actually sleeping and they're not aware of what is coming to him and what he is facing, even though he's warned them leading up to Jerusalem what he'll face, but they can't fathom it. And he's the one actually that's experiencing what Luke 22 calls this deep, deep agony that's physically evident in what he is sweating and how that's working. And of course, Luke, the physician, highlighting that for us, understanding in a way different than others might what's going on. And then to think that he endured that when in my own experience of physical anxiety, I want to get away from it and I want to get away from the things that I'm facing, even if it's just, you know, answering a question in front of a group of 50 people that are highly friendly. And it makes me so grateful for what Christ endured there. And it gives me comfort that when I don't respond to my anxieties in the right way, I have a Savior who, as you said, loves me, who intercedes for me, and has clothed me in his righteousness and is in the process of helping me to walk in the way that he walked. Whether I'm in a garden like Genesis 2 or in a garden like the Gospels and facing those things, I just know that he's gone before me and that means so much. I think seeing him experience those things, facing those temptations and overcoming them is a really sweet comfort in addition to the Savior who in other situations simply sleeps in the storm and gets up and calms it. But that was a storm he chose not to calm but chose to endure and suffer. It gives me a lot of comfort.

Yeah. I want to move us onto our kind of home stretch here. And I'd like to do that, Gunner, by actually asking you to revisit something you were saying before we got started, where you were talking about Matthew 6, and you were talking in particular about physical experiences of God's creation. So if you'll start with Matthew 6 and the insight you were sharing there, and then talk about some of your own experiences and then Darby, I'd love for you and I to get to just also reflect on the most tactile, physiological, you-could-capture-this-with-a-video-camera level. What are things that have been helpful to us in the face of the physical experiences of anxiety? So Gunner, will you kick it off there?

Yeah, I think in Matthew 6, Jesus, as he addresses anxiety starting in verse 25, really walks through some different ways that we can perceive the world that God's made and through the goodness of his creation, his provision for his creation, we can really have a sense of his goodness and a sense of his care and the way that he protects and provides, which could allow in their day a day laborer who gets enough for the day and spends it and gets their food and wonders what's next the next day, enable even someone in that kind of setup to be able to rest in and trust the Lord. But I think those categories go broader, that there's an invitation to engage with the physical world as a fundamentally good place that God has made and to be able to taste and experience with all our different senses what God has done to make this a good world and what he'll do in the future to redeem it and make it new again. And so for me, that can mean things like walking outside. I love a good temperature change. If I am really wrestling through mental, physical anxieties and it's 40 degrees outside, it's great to throw on a coat and go for a mile walk and speak to the Lord and be woken up by that. I love to hug my dog and play with my dog and wrestle with him and be reminded of the great gift that he is and has been to our family and how God's provided for us in that way. Even the physical act for me of writing out my thoughts can be extremely helpful, not only because it organizes my thoughts, but there is a physicality to it that keeps me focused as the pen stays focused on the page and connected to the page. Often as I write out maybe a prayer, not even my thoughts alone, it keeps me centered on speaking to the Lord and even doing it in a much slower way than I would if I was trying to do it verbally and out loud. And so there's all these physical dimensions that I just find are great gifts that God has provided.

Yeah, I think for me, I have to distract myself from what my body is trying to tell me. It's trying to tell me it's making the most important interpretation of the world around me, a reason to be nervous. And so I try not to listen to it. I don't want to give it the authority. The Lord is my authority. So I often do things to try to overcome what I'm feeling. Like I think Gunner was saying, moving around, getting up, going for a walk. Even if before I speak publicly, I have a lot of nervous, so you'll often see me, if it's a large group of people, I might go somewhere outside and kind of shake it off a little bit, just to kind of get some of that adrenaline out. And it's just a way of, yeah, saying what I'm experiencing isn't accurate. It's not predictive of what the next thing is gonna happen. So I want to draw my attention elsewhere. That can be chewing gum, drinking a nice cold glass of water, listening to music. It's looking for other things that show me of the Lord's goodness. You know, he's refreshing. And so doing something like the water drinking or the gum chewing is reminding me of the Lord is a God who refreshes our spirits. And so again, is trying to point myself to another truth that's more accurate other than what my body is so inaccurately saying—you're gonna fail, you're gonna humiliate yourself. No, I wanna remember the Lord is faithful. He promises something far more predictive. I can count on what he is going to do for me. I often will say to myself, I've never spoken up and didn't have the words not come out of my mouth. So the other thing is, do I do something for my body? Yes. Then I also actually tried to remember who the Lord has been in previous moments. I try to direct my thoughts instead of thinking about how my stomach's rumbling. I'm trying to overcome that by thinking about well, remember the Lord's faithfulness. And I think that's something we see in Scripture, particularly in the Exodus, we see the people fighting to remember the Lord telling them, remember, remember, remember, you're going into this big and scary thing. So I'm inviting you to remember my previous faithfulness. So those are probably the two dimensions I use in the moment to overcome the anxiety when it's threatening to overtake me.

Yeah, it's funny, I didn't realize that you guys were both walkers too. That's one of my big go-tos, is just there's something about yeah, especially walking outside if I can, but just walking anywhere and and it's just thinking as I'm saying, for me, I don't think it's so much an anxious pacing, when I hear the phrase anxious pacing or the word pacing, I picture an anxiety that sort of self-perpetuating that you're striding back and forth because you just feel so anxious and you can't help but keep striding and you're sort of going more and more on a hamster wheel. And for me, which I think I hear what you guys are saying too, there's a certain nervous energy that does drive me to go do something and to walk, but there's something about walking—for me, it's increasingly associated with being in the Lord's presence. I think it's no accident that so often Scripture will use the term walking with the Lord, so-and-so walked with the Lord or so-and-so did not walk with the Lord as the way of capturing what it means to be in a depth and a constancy of relationship with him. I think the physical act of walking increasingly, I would say in my life, is something just associated with being with him. Often, especially if I'm by myself, that does in fact include explicitly praying and talking to him. But I think in a really good way, there's just a sense, especially if I'm walking outside of, I'm in his playground, I'm in his world, I'm under his sky. I'm surrounded by the works of the hands of the people he made. Often I think that sense of walking is a very, very visceral physical tie to, I'm in his hands. And I think Psalm 56:3 when I'm afraid I will trust in you or 1 Peter 5:7, cast all your cares on him, all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Just both of those, the simplicity of when fear, go with fear to the Lord, take it to him, trust in him, let trust be your anchor. That's Christianity 101 on many levels. And I find there's something so helpful about anything I can do physically to point me to the fact that I can trust. So whether that's walking, whether that's observing as I'm walking that there is a sky and the Lord of the sky is my Lord, or at night there are stars, or even there's gray fog and clouds and he's the Lord of the entire environment. Just anything that I can visually or tactilely perceive, that's a reminder of his bigness and goodness. I often just find that to be such a helpful counter to the anxiety. It's not like it washes away and makes me not feel that physical feeling in my body, but there is a counter to it. And even when I'm public speaking and I'll, know, I do, for me it's pushups, because that's just, it's a very full body activity and I suddenly I'm struggling to breathe for a different reason after a few pushups. And I just, yeah, I find it helpful as a way of pushing me just to say, my hope is in the Lord's hands. I'm walking into this with him and I am pushing back against. I like the way you put it, Darby, I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but the idea that your body is trying to give the wrong interpretation of the situation. So anything I can do that points me to say, you know what, I actually can trust him, is just incredibly helpful to me, body and soul. Guys, thanks so much for the conversation. This has been good for me. I hope it's good for those of you listening, and we look forward to being back with you next time on Where Life & Scripture Meet.