Think about a time when you got really anxious recently. What was it about? How did you respond? How well did your response work?
Spoiler alert: Most of our attempts to deal with worry and anxiety on our own don’t work. Well, I should say the natural ways we deal with anxiety don’t. At best, we delay the anxiety. At worst, we push it down and give it a chance to fester and grow inside of us.
Now think about that same story in the context of fight, flight, or freeze. If you had to fit your response into one of those categories, which would it be?
I am a flier. I have been since I was a little girl. I’ll never forget being at a haunted house with my dad and my Brownie troop. We were standing in line, listening to the screams of other people in the house. I saw a poster of a vampire—it wasn’t a real vampire (and by real, I mean a real person posing as a vampire) or even a super-scary image. I think it was an outline of a vampire that, in my mind now, looks more like the Count from Sesame Street. But within moments, I was down on all fours, backing my way out of the house between the legs of other people in line. My dad didn’t even realize it had happened until I had exited the building.
I could say the same has been true in my life as I’ve gotten older, and in deeper areas too. It’s not just a reaction to a silly sense of fear. It’s a reaction to worry, anxiety, and stress. At times when things feel hard or scary, such as conflict with a friend, I often disappear. I back out and avoid that friend, conveniently unable to get together. In the last few years, I feel like I’m finally learning to stay in the scariness and talk things through. Not haunted houses—not ever again—but the more important scary things. The things that matter. I actually believe all of us, in silly ways and in deeper ways, lean toward fight, flight, or freeze.
What about you?
Sometimes fight, flight, and freeze are what are called involuntary reactions, which originate in the amygdala, the more reactionary part of the brain. But we also fight, flee, or freeze as a choice with the thinking parts of our brain, or at least the subconscious thinking parts of our brain. This kind of fight, flight, or freeze is more of a learned behavior than a survival reaction. It might have started as survival, but by now, it’s gotten relatively entrenched.
Think of one story from your childhood that reflects a fight, flight, or freeze response. Write about it here.
Write about a more recent story.
Looking at those stories, do you think you’re more of a fight, flight, or freeze kind of person? To get to where we’re going, we have to start where we are. In other words, we have to start with an understanding of what doesn’t help before we can get to what does. As we said in the beginning of this chapter, the fighting, fleeing, or freezing we do doesn’t work—at least not for long.
The Path of Least Resistance
Fight
I’m writing this in the midst of a pandemic. Many businesses that were required by the government to close to prevent the spread of the virus are now reopening. At this stage, it’s fascinating (and tragic as well, in terms of the loss that’s occurred all over the world). In Nashville, we’re required to social distance, wear masks, and gather in groups of fewer than ten. As you can imagine, though, that’s not happening in lots of areas. In fact, it’s making more than a few folks angry. I saw a sign outside of a restaurant that said something like “Open and should have been all along!” I think the owner must have been more of a fight kind of guy.
If it’s hard to tell, think about your first reaction to conflict. And be honest about your first reaction. When someone confronts you about something, do you get defensive? Do you fire back, trying to explain your side? You may have heard the saying “The best defense is a good offense,” which really means “Attack them before they can attack you.” Can you relate?
What about your fears? When you’re afraid of something, do you make yourself do it anyway? You’re afraid of heights, so you’re first in line to try the ropes course at camp. Or maybe your fight comes more in the form of sabotage. You actually set up the thing you’re afraid of happening. For example, you’re really afraid your two best friends are getting closer to each other than to you. Instead of talking about it, you tell them they should just go on without you, and you hang back to see if they’ll try one more time to include you.
Sabotage doesn’t work. You end up being left by the two friends you were afraid would leave you out. You get up on the highest pole of the ropes course and then realize you should have learned on the lowest. You end up hurt, and the thing you were afraid of actually comes true.
Flight
There are a lot of ways those of us who are flight risks choose to carry out our plans. The main three are denial, distraction, and escapism.
1. DENIAL
Denial and pretending could be the same idea. When we lean toward that method, we make statements like these:
“I don’t really worry about things. I just get a lot done.”
“I’m not rechecking the lock because I’m worried. It just makes me feel better.”
“I don’t want to think about it. I’d rather think about the good things.”
With younger kids I’m counseling who lean toward denial, I take them outside and bring a Coke bottle with me. They’re typically girls who are in the middle of their parents’ divorce or something else hard and anxiety provoking. We sit outside and talk about how “great” things are at home and school and in their lives in general, and all the while I shake the Coke bottle. At the end of the conversation, I open it—and Coke spews out everywhere. To deny or pretend is the same. We squash those feelings down and squash those feelings down, but they have to come out sooner or later. Often, they spew out all over your mom or little sister. Or they come out in the form of headaches or stomachaches. If you’re a deny-er, you know exactly what I mean.
2. DISTRACTION
My counselor referred to this as brain candy. It was one of those sessions when you’re not sure you even like counseling, because they tell you something hard about yourself. But in the long run, you’re glad. In fact, I think it’s part of our job, as counselors, to help you see the parts of yourself that you might not want to. Otherwise, you keep doing the things that don’t work, and that ends up hurting you in the long run.
What he was saying was that I can get into a routine of work, brain candy, sleep. Work, brain candy, sleep. I wonder if the same is true of you sometimes. School, brain candy, sleep. School, brain candy, sleep.
He didn’t actually tell me what brain candy means. (That’s another sign you have a good counselor—when what they say makes you connect the dots on your own.) Here’s my interpretation. Brain candy is something that’s appealing and fun and distracting, but too much of it makes you sick.
What would be your distracting brain candy? Mine often is TV. Or playing a silly game on my phone. Or Mexican food. Or Coca-Cola. Now, candy is not a bad thing, and none of these things are either. But when I lost the first dog I ever had and really loved, all I did was cry and drink Coke. Somehow, Coke was comforting for me, but it wasn’t helpful. I wasn’t eating, and I wasn’t drinking water. Just downing Cokes through my tears. Not terrible. Just not helpful. A lot of brain candy is like that.
What are your most common types of distractions?
Then there’s the brain candy that is more on the terrible side. I’d use the word destructive. I hear about that kind of brain candy in my office too. Alcohol, drugs, pornography—anything that can be addictive. Eating disorders are also a destructive form of distraction that quickly becomes addictive. Again, anything we do that’s for the purpose of distracting us from our feelings can become destructive and only works to distract us for a little while. The feelings just come back after the distraction is over, and sometimes they come back with more destruction in their wake.
3. ESCAPISM
Escapism is a harder one. It’s harder because it’s often something you’re taught. And I’m not at all trying to call your parents out here, but you may have to respectfully tell them it’s time to do something different.
I’ll never forget the time I saw a mom teach this form of flight right in front of me. I was walking through the Daystar lobby with Lucy on my heels. Let me just say, so you can put yourself in the scene, that Lucy weighs nine pounds. She’s approximately ten inches tall. She’s more fluff than form, but don’t tell her that. And she’s eleven, so she’s missing most of her teeth. She is NOT an anxiety-provoking dog, as dogs go. Again, don’t tell her I said so. She thinks she’s quite scary. As Lucy and I were walking through the lobby, a little girl started screaming. I looked around to see what could possibly be wrong when I realized she was pointing at Lucy. Her mom snatched her up, held her daughter’s face to her chest, and yelled at me, “Keep that dog away from us!” She was teaching her to escape.
What I wish her mom had done is get up and walk over to Lucy, even leaving her daughter at a safe distance on the couch. I wish she had crouched down (way down, since Lucy is so small and not scary) and petted Lucy, saying, “What a nice dog.” I wish she had modeled what it looks like to face your fear—not fight it, but face it.
But we run from those fears every day. I didn’t take speech in high school because I hated speaking in front of people. (Ha—now I speak in front of thousands of people for my job. God’s kind of ironic that way.) And often, when trying to help us, our parents help with the escaping. In fact, research says that the most common responses to fear and anxiety are escape and avoidance.1 Of course your parents love you and don’t want to see you in distress. And honestly, it’s kind of nice for you not to have to be in distress.
Maybe you don’t like to be away from your parents, so you don’t spend the night at a friend’s house. Or go to youth retreats or summer camp, even though you’ve always kind of wished you could.
Maybe you don’t feel like you’re a great athlete, so you stopped playing team sports where you could let the others down if you didn’t do well. Now you’ve stopped playing sports altogether, but you feel a little like you’re missing out.
Maybe you get anxious in crowds, so you have pulled yourself further and further out of the social world of your peers. Now even going to school is hard.
If you’re escaping in this way, my guess is you already know what I’m about to say. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Any time I’ve pulled myself out of a situation because I was afraid, which I have done plenty, I’ve been sad about it later. Now, I’m not saying you should be doing all of the things all of the time and be under that kind of pressure again. I’m specifically talking about something you secretly want to do but don’t because you’re anxious.
What is one thing you haven’t done out of fear that you regretted later, even if you’ve never said it out loud?
I believe all of us feel the best about ourselves when we’re doing hard things. Not all the hard things, but a few along the way. We feel best when we’re not letting our worries and anxieties prevent us from being who we can be. Courage brings confidence. But courage may feel impossible right now. It may be that you’ve pulled yourself out of enough things that you don’t think you’re capable of much.
Anxiety is an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of yourself, remember? There is a better way, and it’s coming.
Freeze
If you lean toward the freezing side of things, you likely feel helpless. You see the scary thing looming. The closer it gets, the heavier your feet feel. You know you need to get the research paper done, but the deadline just passes you right by. You just can’t seem to make yourself do it. You’re not necessarily escaping or avoiding. You’re just paralyzed in a way that only makes you sad or frustrated with yourself later.
I also see another phenomenon happen often in my counseling office. It’s when girls freeze more by choice than out of genuine fear. Maybe they do have some genuine fear at first, but the attention they get from that fear becomes more appealing than the confidence they would get if they worked through it.
“I have anxiety” or “My anxiety has been really bad this week,” these girls say, almost as if it’s a badge of honor. Undoubtedly, there are girls who make those statements out of their own sadness and vulnerability, asking for help and wanting to share their struggles with others. However, for some girls, it’s not a source of pain, although they can make it sound that way. It actually becomes a source of pride. For these girls, anxiety isn’t something to fight. It’s something that has become part of their identity. It becomes a way others might pay more attention, or even see them as unique. They’re allowing it to become a part of who they are.
Your primary job in these years—and for many more years to come—is to figure out who you want to be. You’re defining yourself. It’s part of that circle you drew in the second chapter.How do you want to define yourself? Have you thought about that question?
I want you to define yourself by the gifts that God has given you. Yes, you may be anxious, but you are braver than your anxiety. I know that to be the truth.
You may be sad. Depressed, even. You may have to be on medication for the anxiety or depression you’re experiencing. It still doesn’t define you.
Don’t let something that’s temporary have the power to be permanent.
Don’t let something that’s a small part of who you are define the sum total of who you are becoming.
Don’t let a place where you’ve gotten stuck become a place where you live.
I want you to define yourself by more. I want you to define yourself by the things you’re passionate about, the strengths God has given you, the things and people you love, the things that make you light up. I want you to define yourself by how deeply loved you are by a God who never wants you to be defined by anything less.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is “You are the only you this world will know, and something about your life is meant to make something about God known in a way no one else can do.”2
When you’re living in a frozen place—or are fighting or fleeing—you aren’t getting to experience the only you God made. You’re not free in the way you can be, even in the midst of this anxiety-producing world. There is a better way.
The Less-Traveled Path
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost was my favorite poem when I was your age. . . . Still might be. Have you read it? It ends with “I took the [road] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”3
I really do believe that this book—well, not so much this book as your bravery in the fight against worry and anxiety—can make all the difference. I believe it can free you to be you.
Throughout the next section of the book, we’ll be talking about practical things that can help. We’ll be talking more about the Worry Whisperer’s most common tricks and your best tools in the fight.
All of the tools are ones I use daily in my counseling office. Many of them are adapted from a type of therapy called cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT for short. CBT is the most widely researched type of therapy for anxiety.4 It works. But here’s the thing: You have to practice.
From all of my years of counseling and all of the research I did to write these books, I think the most important thing I have learned is this: To work through your anxiety, you have to do the scary thing. And you’ve got to practice doing the scary thing over and over and over.
You’re not going to do it without help. We’re going to do this gradually and together, and I’m going to teach you lots along the way that will help in your fight against the Worry Whisperer.
Remember, he’s a liar, but he’s smart. He’s going to try to come at you on every level. First, he’s going to come after your body, where he tries to make the panic take over and set off all kinds of false alarms. Next, he’s going to come after your mind, trying to make you believe that you can’t do this. He’s wrong. Finally, he’s going to come after your heart. He’s going to try to convince you not to do the scary thing. That you’re not ready quite yet. That you’re not capable. He’s going to fight you hard, but you are brave, bright, and more than capable. He doesn’t stand a chance.
But you will only beat him if you practice. Can we just go ahead and make an agreement? I’ll teach you everything I know to help you fight Mr. W. W., but you’ve got to agree to try and to keep trying. He’s had a lot of years to convince you that his voice is true. It’s going to take more than a minute to convince yourself that it’s not and for you to experience the freedom that’s coming and the confidence that can come when you’re taking the less-traveled path.
You’ve got this.
What are some of the things you’ve learned so far?
What would you tell a friend who’s struggling with anxiety?
A Few Brave Things
to Remember