Episode #240 - Anxiety Disorders & Sharing the Gospel

Anxiety and sharing the gospel may seem like incompatible ideas.  And yes anxiety certainly causes issues. Many individuals see their weakness as failure but that is not what the Lord sees.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #240 – Anxiety & Sharing the Gospel. I don’t think that anyone is immune to the sweaty hands, shaking knees, and a blank mind that comes in a moment of anxiousness.  Anxiety is actually very common.  Among the various mental health issues one can encounter, anxiety in all its forms is by far the most common concern.  It was estimated that about 30% of youth, adolescents, experienced symptoms of anxiety in 2001 to 2004.  The current rate of anxiety for young people is now above 40%.  The same type of increases have also occurred among young and older adults although at lower percentages.  We are experiencing a mental health crisis among many of the rising generation.  But it is not isolated to the youth.  We see increases across the board.  Many reasons and theories have arisen to suggest a cause, but none seem to fully explain what is occurring.  We have little answers and a burgeoning problem among members of the church and especially with the commandment to share the gospel with the world and the wards.  Anxiety occurs with various levels of intensity and at times specificity.  For instance, I know an older man who never really experienced at type of mental health issue throughout his life, and suddenly developed “panic attack disorder” where suddenly the walls and people are closing in and the body ends up in flight or fight mode.  I have seen young missionaries return home regularly who had never before experienced anxiety in their life and suddenly cannot continue to serve.  By the way this return rate is significantly higher than you might realize reaching at times 20%.  I have also seen youth white as a ghost, shaking terribly attempting to give a short talk.  I have seen military veterans who develop PTSD and can no longer function.  And the list goes on including phobias and OCD symptoms.

I don’t think that I am going to definitively answer why anxiety has risen so dramatically other than it is the last days where trust has been reduced to ashes, and love has run cold in too many individuals.  Additionally, selfishness seems to have descended upon most of the modern world as a terrible vice with a tremendous emotional cost.  Just those reasons alone would give anyone anxiety.  It is important to remember that anxiety is rarely caused by just one thing.  Often it requires both a genetic and environmental component for the illness to raise concern.  For instance, young people who suddenly have serious anxiety during their mission when no symptoms were previously noted.  We can see the environmental component was not present when they were home.  They had the necessary support system that kept their illness in balance.  Yet once the environmental conditions became conducive to the illness suddenly the imbalance appears.  Interestingly enough, once the imbalance appears, it can be difficult to go back to normal even with the return home to supportive conditions.  It can take a significant amount of time to rebalance and to stabilize the emotional system.

What is anxiety and why is it so difficult to manage?  Why is it such a barrier to sharing the gospel?

Let’s first take a quick look into the brain to understand how it works and why anxiety arises and then why it is so powerful as an emotion.  

Our brains are built with a stout infrastructure.  We as humans beings have one very good processor in our brain.  While this processor is very good, it can truly only process one thing at a time.  This causes problems for us as human beings.  If we have to think about every brush stroke of cleaning our teeth and basically learn to walk, talk, move everyday.  If we had to relearn everything everyday, we would have little time for anything else.  Our body cannot function this way.  It needs the processor to interpret the environment around us and to keep us informed, interpreting and predicting what is and will occur.  We need to be able to do more than one thing at a time.  So our bodies have created routines that don’t need the processor.  We call them habits.  These are all the things you do naturally without truly thinking about them.  Think for instance about driving your car.  It actually takes quite of bit of effort to drive a car considering the physical necessity to stay between two lines.  Yet we are able to talk and think while we do this.  We are able to use the processor in our brain while all these other body functions are happening.  Our mind has created habits from our previous driving experiences and we use these routines to drive the car.  As long as nothing new occurs in our experience, we can drive without really thinking about it.  However, when we encounter something new on the road such as a deer on the road then suddenly our mind kicks into action and we have to stop talking and doing other things until we have dealt with the new experience.

Our mind uses our past experience to create these habits and to predict our present.  The mind subconsciously uses our past experiences to predict our future.  As long as our present experience appears similar to past experiences, we generally do not have anxiety created by external sources.  This doesn’t mean that we don’t have anxiety.  Just not the kind where a new experience causes the adrenaline to flow.  As far as anxiety is concerned there are two types of anxiousness that we tend to deal with.  The first is the fear of the unknown.  The second is the fear of a repetitive negative experience.  Our mind is built to look for these two situations and to prepare for them.  When we encounter a negative experience in our lives.  Car accident, sudden death of a loved one, significant embarrassment, abuse, or really anything that causes serious pain the mind remembers it.  And when I say remember, I don’t mean casually.  The mind embeds this experience in memory almost vowing to never repeat it.  Our mind is far more attuned to pain than pleasure in the sense of memory.  In fact, science believes that one significant negative experience has to be followed by ten positive experiences to overcome the negative one.  So yes our brain keeps a tally of our painful experiences and does whatever it can to avoid them.  Often we associate the experience with places, people and things.  For instance, if abuse comes from a church member or leader we will often associate the church organization itself, the buildings and even the people with the abuse rather than just the person.  If we had a car accident in a particular location we may avoid that location.  The mind does this to protect against any and all possible threats of pain.  It builds walls around experiences and keeps us from even encountering anything that might cause us pain or trigger the memory, which causes us to relive the experience.

This idea that pain is far more important to the brain than pleasure is incredibly important to understanding anxiety.  When you understand why the brain is doing what it is you can often work better with anxious emotions.

The first reason for anxiety is one in which we enter an experience with little to no experience of our own.  Our mind is always trying to predict our future.  How far we attempt to predict is likely dependent upon the individual.  This is so deeply structured in our brain that we find ourselves rehearsing over and over again situations where we have little experience.  As we do this our fight or flight mode can be activated and we can feel those anxious sensations running about in our minds.  Have you ever had to speak, or to perform, or meet with someone you don’t know?  Have you had to meet expectations under conditions that you had never experienced? How many times did you think about it before you encountered the experience?  How many different scenarios did you run in your mind?  This is your mind attempting to predict the future so that it can reduce the uncertainty and the unknowns.  This is a natural process in the sense of the mind and how it works and almost everyone experiences this problem.  What is supposed to happen in the mind is that the experience is not nearly as difficult or problematic as our mind predicted. When this occurs a couple of times, our anxiety should dissipate over time.  The amount of time and experience we need to overcome can differ but for the most part this is how the mind should be.

For those who suffer from what we call an anxiety disorder, this mental processing and reduction of anxiety does not go as it should.  The origins of how the brain gets out of balance vary per person.  But the key is that the brain becomes out of balance and the anxiety lasts far longer and with greater physical and mental symptoms and consequences.  Individuals with anxiety disorder tend to have symptoms that interfere with abilities and possibilities and how they want to live their life.  For example, an individual might have significant anxiety in social circles.  They do fine one on one with someone they know but cannot function in a group setting.  They can’t exactly tell you why most of the time.  What they can tell you are the terrible symptoms they feel.  Shaking, sweating, fast heart rate, racing or frozen mind, fear, impeding doom and so many others.  This is not something they can necessarily control on their own.  For those, who experience normal anxiety it can be very difficult to understand how anxiety can run far beyond its boundaries. 

Those normal individuals who possess this brain balance where anxiety is reduced over time struggle to understand why others cannot learn as they do.  This often leads them to over encourage, push, barter, and even force youth, young adults and even adults to push themselves beyond their boundaries.  While this type of forced willpower push works for those not experiencing an anxiety disorder, it can be devastating for those who do.  When you push an anxiety disorder beyond its true capacity, the result is often devastating to the individual.  It can create significant chaos, pain and suffering. So much so that the experience will not be remembered as a positive one but a truly negative painful one.  And remember that painful experiences are far more sticky that positive ones.  It may take that individual many years to overcome one bad negative experience, and that is if they can.  For many, those type of negative experiences, cause only further suffering rather than positive reinforcement.  

Within the church culture, we have a problem in that we have a tendency to ignore serious anxiety issues and push our membership way too far in the sense of social interaction and performance as far as teaching and sharing the gospel.  We tend to classify everyone in the “if you just do it you will get over the anxiety” type of group.  And while that works for 70 percent of the population the other thirty percent are more likely to be harmed by it.  And what happens to those who experience worsening anxiety symptoms due to a pushy but well intended leader?  Most often they remove themselves from the leadership and group and from the negative experience and everything that surrounded it.  They become inactive in a sense.  Not because they don’t love the gospel but because what they might experience within the social groups of the church and within the leadership.  Their mind naturally avoids another negative experience.  What is interesting is that the mind intuitively understands the environment and what is needed to avoid certain situations.  And so rather than tell you that it is because of a painful experience, the mind causes us to be physically sick.  And the symptoms can be across the board from stomach issues, to rashes, to exhaustion or even problems with headaches and vision.  Often individuals with anxiety whose mind is working to avoid another negative experience will have all types of physical problems that may not be easy to associate with the anxiety condition.   Many individuals live a long time with anxiety problems thinking that they have other physical issues or conditions.

Due to a pioneering spirit of independence, the membership of the church tends to lean towards pushing through to the other side of anxiety and it is evident in almost every teaching of the gospel.  We are asked to share and teach the gospel to our families, various groups of members, neighbors and everyone around us.  In fact, we are commanded to do so.  

I have always had an anxiety disorder so I have experienced this command and cultural pressure regularly throughout my life as I am sure many of you have.  I fully understand how problematic the culture can be for those who suffer from any type of anxiety disorder.  This is especially true when it comes to sharing the gospel.  I have struggled regularly with this commandment due to my anxiety and yes my depression as well.  Sharing the gospel when you have serious anxiety can be an overwhelming task.  So overwhelming that it can become a negative experience rather than a positive one. Let’s just consider full-time missionary service.  A person who serves a full-time proselyting mission and who has a moderate to severe anxiety disorder is not likely to view their mission in the same way as others.  Everything about missionary service is a problem for someone with an anxiety disorder.  There is nothing consistent about location, companionship, people, or even at times schedule.  The lack of consistency and a good support network is why many individuals do not discover their anxiety problem until serving their mission.  It is not that a mission does not provide a support network.  It is that the individual must leave an established network or family and friends that has been developed over their lifetime.  The mission support network must be established and that takes significant time.  Something which a mission does not necessarily have.

Missionary service brings with it a set of unknowns that persist almost throughout missionary service and for someone whose mind is somewhat unbalanced in the sense of anxiety.  This can be more than the emotional boundaries can bear.  It is certainly not the fault of the individual or of the requirement to serve.  The individual cannot control mental illness any more than they can control a virus or cancer.  Given the right conditions the anxiety will emerge.  Unfortunately full-time proselyting service, generally provides for those conditions where anxiety will emerge among other mental and emotional illnesses.

The same can be true of a simple calling in the church to teach, to pray or to lead.  The service can create a crisis for individuals suffering with anxiety and then inevitable failure in the sense of accomplishment and service to the Lord.  When someone receives a call to missionary service or any type of service, they expect that call came from the Lord.  This makes it very difficult to explain any reasons that they may have great difficulty serving to a leadership.  If the Lord called them then they really can’t say no.  And so they reluctantly accept.  Two things will occur, one far more frequently than the other.  The most common occurrence is that anxiety symptoms will eventually dominate, and the person will eventually remove themselves from the negative experience, either by not fully engaging or even becoming inactive.  The second less common experience is that the Lord provides for the individual to accomplish the calling despite the mental illness.  However, the Lord does not regularly do this.  I personally have often wondered why.  Why would the Lord call someone to do something that due to illness they cannot?  Why would the Lord call someone to teach whose anxiety does not let them, whether that be a full-time missionary or a Sunday School teacher?  Why does he cause this to happen and allow them to fail?

First, it is important to understand revelation and illness.  It would be very rare for the Lord to reveal that a member has an anxiety disorder before they experience symptoms.  This would be similar to the Lord telling you that you are going to break your leg tomorrow.  While the Lord knows of the illness, he allows us to experience it first and then aids us through our trials and learning.  Why allow for it to occur during a mission?  The answer to that question is very personal but what I can say is that if the Lord felt that completing the mission was more important than the weakness, he would remove it.  If he does not, then the expectation is that the Lord sees greater value in learning from our weakness.  The same is true for a calling in which we struggle and need to be released.  It is the Lord who has chosen.  I think for me that is probably the most difficult answer because it is difficult to see how anxiety could be better for us than missionary service or a successful calling.

From what I can gather from the scriptures, weaknesses given to us by the Lord are essential for our salvation and ultimately our exaltation.  Listen to Ether 12:27 from the perspective of our personal salvation.

“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”

How do we come to the Lord?  We do so by serving in callings whether that be a father, mother, president, bishop or teacher.  We become like the Lord through service and through service we come unto the Lord.  It is interesting that once we come unto the Lord and accept the service requirements, the Lord then shows us our weakness.  But why wait until then.  Why not show us before?  In addition to how the Lord reveals such things. It is because without the covenant or the assignment to serve, there is no power or grace to overcome the weakness.  We need the covenants and opportunities to serve to allow his power to come upon us and to work with us.  Once we have made covenants the Lord can aid us with his power to overcome weaknesses.  So our weaknesses need to come after we have committed to the calling.  Why then allow failure?  Why not give sufficient grace that failure really does not occur?  Because the Lord does not see failure in a return home from a mission or an inability to teach a lesson.  He does not see sin where there exists no capacity.  It is not a sin to put forth your best effort but still fail in the sense of the expectations, yours or others.  It is not a sin to be unable to serve as you desire due to physical, emotional or mental limitations.  Ultimately it is our personal expectation or the expectations of others that causes us to feel failure.  If we knew that we had serious anxiety and we served a mission with the idea that we would serve as long as we can and then return home with the blessing of the prophet, we wouldn’t think our calling a failure returning home in just a few months.  We worked within the weakness and did what we could.  If we taught two lessons and could do not more, then we did not fail.  Failure in the Lord’s eyes is as simple as the story of the widow’s mites.  The widow had limited capacity compared to others who through in much.  And yet the Lord did not say “why didn’t she work harder and put more money in the temple coffers.”  He said of her offering that she gave more than the others. He said that her offering was more than sufficient.

And so because of expectations, we see failure where the Lord doesn’t.  What if you are able to give a lesson once every three months and that was the entire expectation?  What if it didn’t matter that you read from notes the whole time and asked just a few questions?  What if your simple testimony is all that the Lord wants?  Then you really wouldn’t have failed.

The failure we are measuring is the expectation of someone who does not have our weakness compared to our efforts.  That is like expecting a sprinter with a broken leg to run as fast as a sprinter who has no injury.  We would think that is crazy to expect such a thing but we do it to ourselves all the time.  We see failure where the Lord does not.  If you can only attend sacrament meeting and then must return home, you haven’t failed.  The Lord simply expects us to work at our capacity and then he adds his efforts to ours.  If he has allowed us to experience serious anxiety troubles and caused to be unable to fully fulfill our calling, then we should accept the experience not as failure but as though we had completed and fulfilled our mission.  We have perhaps learned all that we need to by our calling.  What he is also saying when we allows this to happen, is that your anxiety, this weakness in your body, is important to your salvation, even more important than the call that has been issued.  That might be difficult to understand from this mortal perspective.  But when we have done what we can do and the weakness persists then the Lord has made his decision.  He wants us to continue to learn from our weakness.

Now that can be very painful.  We all want to be fully contributing members of the Lord’s church and to answer the call.  We want to feel needed and be a part of the pack. I admit from a proselyting perspective my mission wasn’t much of a success.  I was certainly on the weak side of things as far as sharing the gospel.  But the Lord made up the huge difference in the sense that I wasn’t detrimental to the gospel cause.  One might think that serving a mission and given hundreds of talks, presentations, and lesson might have helped my anxiety to reduce somewhat.  I suppose that is the case but I admit that I still struggle far more than I should.  I still struggle to make friendships and relationships work beyond a few close friends.  My anxiety problems have never really left me.  I work with medication and too many to count coping strategies to aid in my struggles.  But I admit going to church still causes me anxiety.  I still think about talks I have to give until I give them, running through scenario after scenario.  I struggle at times to know what the Lord wants of me with too many emotions running around in my mind with all those scenarios.  In the many years I have experienced anxiety and have worked with coping mechanisms and strategies, I still suffer symptoms on a regular basis.  Have things improved for me?  Yes, they have but my efforts to make small changes require significant work.  And that will always be the case.  But I know that the Lord appreciates my small efforts and a willingness to learn from my weakness.  I admit that I am not always appreciative of my weaknesses and I may complain a little to much for the Lord but I am working on that as well.

Now for the final note of this episode, when we talk about sharing the gospel, a scripture almost always appears that is intended to be supportive but for those of us who suffer it might be somewhat confusing.  It comes from 1st John Chapter 4.  The full verse is the following.

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

If one reads this scripture and considers anxiety as fear, the scripture might be interpreted as perfect love cures anxiety.  Once we learn to love perfectly then we will not experience anxiety.  We can get caught in a terrible trap at times when we pick a scripture such as this an apply it in the sense of mental illness.  While there are many good scriptures that help us understand mental illness, we need to be cautious in applying scriptures to ourselves with mental illness.  The majority of scriptures were intended for an audience that was not considered to have such difficulties.  In this particular case, we should not equate having charity or perfect love with casting out our emotional illness.  We can experience great love and charity and still experience serious anxiety.  Many times we apply such scriptures to our illness and interpret them incorrectly.  We should be cautious about applying the gospel as if we did not have our mental and emotional illness.  We should always consider the illness when we read and learn through the spirit.  If we listen closely the Lord can help us decide how best to apply it to our circumstances.  We certainly cannot rewrite the commandments to suit our needs but the gospel can be applied differently to different circumstances.  What this scripture tells those of us who suffer is that love can help us with our emotional illness but it may not be the cure.

When we consider sharing the gospel when we suffer with mental illness, we should understand our limitations as the Lord does and work in ways that provide for positive experiences.  The Lord certainly does not desire that we have such a negative experience that we distance ourselves from him.  If we cannot attend church, the Lord understands.  If we cannot attend the temple due to social anxiety the Lord understands.  What is important about our church service and our limitations is to know that the Lord understands.  And yes we might face some headwinds within church culture.  But the Lord fully understand this as well.  While this may sound strange, we should be content with what the Lord has given us.  I was in a sacrament meeting this morning with an older brother who had served in many callings and positions. He had been of great service to the Lord in his life but he is now older and unable to really provide much service.  I asked him how he was doing and he replied, Well I am here.  I realized that while he may struggle with his limitations he was grateful for what he could do and I am certain that the Lord was pleased with his offering.  I believe that to be true for all of us.  We can most certainly be grateful for what we can do rather than what we cannot.  May the Lord bless you as you struggle and fight to do the Lord’s work he has for you.  Be grateful for your two mites as you just might be giving more than all these.  Until next week do your part so that the Lord can do his.