Michael: 00:08

Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are back in studio.

Michael: 00:22

I have Beth Clays with us. Beth, how are we doing? I'm good. Good. So last episode, we talked about codependency.

Michael: 00:28

I would encourage you to listen to that one if you get a chance before this. But this episode, we're gonna be addressing generalized anxiety disorder or overanxious disorder. We're gonna be talking about this because, obviously, anxiety is because we talked about in the last episode where, like, how within our culture, we drop these psychological labels, like a name tag that we walk around with. Anxiety is a huge one. Everyone seems to have anxiety.

Michael: 00:53

Right? It's almost like a standard at this point. But then there's variations of anxiety. We've done social anxiety disorder, Jeremy, earlier this year. We've had some inquiries on generalized anxiety disorder.

Michael: 01:03

And so, again, Beth, who has really been the large part of her counseling days on this side of things before transitioning to biblical counseling and then being able to to provide that biblical framework around this. And, really, that's the goal for these particular episodes within this miniseries is looking at these these symptomologies and descriptors of psychological labels and just talking about the characteristics of what they are. But how do we more or less have a we talk about generalized in this sense with this disorder. But, really, how do we have a generalized biblical framework or theology around behaviors and moods, which is primarily what the diagnostic and statistical manual is, basically. So just within those accesses, we're looking at how we understand it within our culture and the modern psychologized world.

Michael: 01:51

But how do we understand it as Christians, as believers, as counselors, as pastors, as elders? When we hear these psych psychological labels, how are we engaging with people? Because that's really what we wanna come back to as a conversation much like we did last episode. How are we engaging with people? Because oftentimes, when people drop these psychological labels, as Christians, we feel like we can't really engage, that somehow Yep.

Michael: 02:14

Intellectually, they've just one upped us. Like, we don't have the intellectual capacity to engage with people. Like, somehow, that knowledge supersedes the general and special revelation that the Lord has given us, specifically the Holy Spirit as believers. We'll talk about that throughout this podcast as well. Beth, if you could introduce generalized anxiety disorder and some of the descriptors and symptoms, and we can walk through this like we did last episode.

Beth: 02:40

Generalized anxiety can become a catchall diagnosis for someone experiencing high levels of anxiety, but it's not specific to a particular situation. It's not specific to a particular object. We think of phobias, people who are afraid of spiders or things like that. That's a type of an anxiety disorder, but it it's isolated to a particular area. Generalized anxiety is what it sounds like, an anxiety that seems higher than normal almost all of the time relayed unrelated to particular things more just generally speaking.

Beth: 03:16

The criteria talks about occurring more days than not for at least 6 months. I think it does point to a little bit of just from the the coming out of the gate that there's a lot of a lot might be too strong, but there's is subjectivity in how people are going to determine whether or not someone's meeting the criteria. Excessive worry or or anxiety for more days than not, The individual finds it difficult to control the worry, and it is being characterized by 3 or more of the following. I'll highlight them briefly. Restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, or sleep disturbance.

Beth: 03:58

I'm gonna turn a question on you, Mike. What stands out to you about that list of symptoms?

Michael: 04:05

I love it. So good. That's great. I would say probably irritability. Irritability is probably the foremost, at least, that I personally have experienced.

Michael: 04:15

And then just with others, tiredness and inability to concentrate. Those are my 3 that I would go to.

Beth: 04:23

I think it's interesting because on one hand, none of those are things we enjoy experiencing. Being irritable, sleep disturbance, difficulty concentrating, we do recognize that those are problematic. They're unpleasant to experience. At the same time, they're not necessarily uncommon. All of us have experienced probably every single one of those in different points, maybe combinations of them.

Beth: 04:48

And so I think one of the things that is helpful to keep in mind when it comes to diagnostic labels is living in this tension of when someone is experiencing 3 or more of those symptoms for more days than not for at least 6 months. Is that a problem? Yeah. Okay. That's fair.

Beth: 05:08

They're they're struggling. They're not experiencing life as we would want anyone to experience life. At the same time, it's not necessarily dramatically different than the experience that others might have, and that's part of the subjectivity that's involved. I don't say that to be dismissive and say, so it doesn't matter if you're experiencing anxiety. That's not what I am saying, but I do think recognizing that those symptoms, we can turn the label of a diagnosis, in this case, generalized anxiety disorder, into something almost mystical label.

Beth: 05:46

Then all of the sudden, it explains things. We talked about that in the previous podcast that we did, that these labels are descriptors, not explanations, and we can think that it's something wholly different than what a normal person might experience. My view would be that generalized anxiety disorder, when it rises to that level, it's not something wholly different. It's just to a greater degree. It's taking things that all of us likely experience, probably fairly commonly, but you're experiencing them to a higher degree more persistently than a more typically functioning person.

Beth: 06:28

Hopefully, that demystifies it a little bit. I don't think that it's something dramatically different than our normal experience. It's just to a greater degree.

Michael: 06:36

I appreciate that. Just a couple of thoughts. The other day now it was a little more comical when I watched it, but for the sake of the podcast, I'll spare some of the details. There was a reel that I saw that this guy was engaging this other guy, and he was asking him some questions. And the host of the show is asking this guy about anxiety because the guest on the show was talking about how he struggles with anxiety.

Michael: 07:00

A lot of the things he mentioned would be generalized anxiety disorder. As the host began to ask a series of questions, he started to get a little bit more specific with his questioning, and the guest on the show was like he'd stopped and thought about what the host was asking him for a moment. And he's like, yeah. I I have anxiety about a lot of things. And he's like, yeah.

Michael: 07:19

Like what? And then he so he starts getting specific, and then he's like, basically and then this is the guest. He's like, basically, anything that disagrees with me. And I'm like, There it is. What we're doing, much like what Beth is talking about, yes, like, some of this stuff, it's it's unpleasant.

Michael: 07:33

And there's physiologically, there might be some responses like sweaty palms, and those are legitimate responses. Imagine if you're about to go into war, the body reacts because it's anticipating something. The problem in our culture is we don't wanna feel discomfort. Instead of going through it, we wanna take pills or we wanna just we wanna we wanna flight. We wanna we wanna flight freeze.

Michael: 07:56

We we don't wanna engage in that because we're uncomfortable. That's not life. Life is uncomfortable to the bigger conversation that we're having as we're addressing these psychological labels. From a biblical worldview, our theology says the world's broken. It's uncomfortable, always uncomfortable.

Michael: 08:13

Now we can either dwell on that and be defeated by that, or we can trust a sovereign god who has a purpose and plan for all these things. We can begin to think through that in the same way that I was talking about where a lot of this stuff is conceptual, and then it can play into reality. If I'm thinking about, oh, man. I have to be in public. I don't really wanna do that.

Michael: 08:33

And then you begin to have all these other thoughts. Before you know it, you find yourself getting irritable. In other words, we don't really think about these things at a root level. We think about them symptomatically, which is what we've been talking about from the last episode as well. As as believers, these psychological labels don't have the corner market on knowledge or our souls or how we respond to things.

Michael: 08:54

And I think that's the bigger conversation that I think, at least one of my goals is when we have these conversations, what's the bigger conversation here? Yes. We can talk about these psychological labels because we need to as Beth mentioned, we need to demystify these things because they they don't hold secret knowledge to the soul and understanding who we are as people. Like, they're just descriptions. They just reveal behaviors and moods that we can all observe in real time.

Michael: 09:22

It doesn't explain any of it. Thoughts, Beth?

Beth: 09:26

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think that yeah. One of the things as you were talking, I was thinking about is how I do think in our culture, we've gotten to a place where when something is unpleasant, we view that as a problem that needs to be solved.

Beth: 09:40

And, again, on one hand, I understand why we do that, and on the other, it's there's issues with us viewing it that way. So one of the things I'll do sometimes with counselors I'm working with who are struggling with anxiety is talk with them about growing more comfortable with anxiety, like almost making friends with their anxiety.

Michael: 10:00

A little paradoxical. Do. Uh-huh.

Beth: 10:02

Yeah. What they can do is start to fear having anxiety itself, and Right. That becomes almost a a a whole another cycle of now I I have anxiety, and I have fear and anxiety about having anxiety. And I just don't wanna feel the anxiety, and it's like helping them pause and say, wait a minute. Okay.

Beth: 10:21

You can't fully control the feeling of anxiety. If you could, when we're anxious, we would just stop it because it's unpleasant. We cannot fully control it. What we can do is choose how we respond to it when it comes. And so when we're feeling anxious, what are we doing with it?

Beth: 10:39

And I think this is where a biblical framework can fill in a ton of gaps for us because on one hand, god has great compassion for us in our anxiety and fear. We know it's one of them. I think it's the thing most often stated in the Bible. Do not be afraid. Do not fear.

Beth: 10:57

And when that's spoken to people, it's not it's not in a tone of judgment and condemnation. It's often an encouragement. Right? It's a don't be afraid. God has this.

Beth: 11:09

He he he is the one speaking. I will care for you. I will be faithful. So I think that the Bible speaks to it. It helps us to see, okay, when I'm experiencing anxiety, what what do I do?

Beth: 11:20

Where do I go with it? And I think going in a slightly different direction for a minute, the other thing that a biblical framework does is it allows for the most complex view of why we struggle with these things. I think psych the psychological view could be reductionistic. It will pick a certain thing as this is why people are struggling with anxiety. It's the brain chemistry, which can be involved, but we don't have good evidence of it being causally involved in terms of why people are having an anxiety disorder.

Beth: 11:55

The Bible, on the other hand, does acknowledge we do have bodies. We are embodied. Our bodies matter, can influence how we experience anxiety. Our experiences can impact how we experience anxiety. See that in the Psalms, David's life, the things that he went through, and the way that he would run to the lord with all of the fears about enemies, and where is god gonna come through?

Beth: 12:21

And those were related to a lot of his own experiences. So we have we have physiology. We have our own experiences. We have things personality and and how things are modeled for us. All of that can play a role.

Beth: 12:35

And at the same time, the Bible also acknowledges that we are agents in our own story. And so we are both influenced by multiple domains in our life, but we are also influencers of those domains. And so when we are thinking about anxiety biblically, we don't discount the fact that someone goes through something traumatic and they feel anxiety, a heightened sense of general anxiety. We don't say whatever. It's too bad that you have that trauma, but trust the lord, and you're gonna be okay.

Beth: 13:09

No. We could meet that person where they are, but also help them to recognize that the things that have happened to them that contribute to those feelings of anxiety don't have the ultimate hold on them either. They also have other other ways that they can learn to respond, connect their present experience of suffering and difficulty with who God is and his care for their life. And as they make those connections, they often will find not necessarily that anxiety totally goes away, though sometimes it does, but they they're able to experience it differently because they are thinking differently about who God is. They know him differently.

Beth: 14:01

And it it really does impact how we experience our own soul, our own life, and the world around us.

Michael: 14:09

That's really good, Beth. That's really good. And I think that's what's missing. And now I'm I'm not saying that these things aren't helpful. Right?

Beth: 14:17

Yeah.

Michael: 14:17

I'm not saying that these things aren't helpful as far as they're helpful descriptions. They help us make observations. They help us think categorically about some observations, and that's helpful. Right? That can be helpful.

Michael: 14:28

Yeah. But to build our entire framework around these descriptors, it's just it's just not productive. So that's really good. Beth, I appreciate that conversation on generalized anxiety disorder. I just wanna encourage you guys again to email us at topics at speak the truth dot org for any other topics that you'd like to hear, talk about.

Michael: 14:47

We look forward to having those conversations. Thank you guys for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you, Beth.

Beth: 14:51

Yeah. Thank you.