Where Anxiety Shows Up

Mac: 0:02

Welcome to Praxis, a podcast where we explore how to practice and embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen. We're in a series on emotional maturity and how it's essential to discipleship. We believe that Jesus had more EQ than any other person that has ever walked the planet and consistently embodied emotional maturity. So what that means for us is, if we're going to grow as disciples of Jesus, we must grow our emotional maturity. We've actually planned on ending this series with our last episode, but we've received so much positive feedback we're going to extend it, and today we had a great discussion on anxiety what is anxiety, where it shows up and how it can compromise our best efforts to embody emotional maturity. So, katie Josiah, we just wrapped up this conversation. I'm curious, as our listeners get ready to listen in on our discussion, is there anything you would say that felt particularly important that you'd name on the front end to give them sort of maybe ears to hear as they get ready to listen?

‍Josiah: 1:07

Yeah, I would just say that this conversation about anxiety, anxiety is existing, whether you realize it or not. So, although we are going to talk about skills, today's conversation is more of just recognizing that it's there and it is present, and we're going to give some helpful tools on how to sort of, how to recognize it where it shows up and maybe clarify a few things. But the bigger thing to recognize is that anxiety is present in you and in all the relational dynamics you are a part of, and so it's extremely helpful in any walk of life to pay attention to this stuff and learn it.

Mac: 1:50

It's an inescapable reality and because we can't escape it, we can learn to see it and then begin to manage how we respond to it. So let's get into our conversation. Hope you guys enjoy it. Here we go.

Josiah: 2:18

Well, hello everybody, I'm Josiah.

Katie: 2:20

I'm Katie.

Mac: 2:20

And I'm Mac

Josiah: 2:21

And welcome to the Praxis podcast. Yeah, hey, I've got a question to get us started today and I shouldn't say it's more of a conversation. Starter is do you have any really strong opinions about things that most people would assume that really don't matter? It could be like a pet peeve, or maybe it's just like I feel really strongly about this, but it really doesn't matter.

Katie: 2:49

Like I feel like you have a lot of strong opinions, so you're likely to have some about things that don't matter. Well, that's what's throwing me off, that's objective I guess.

Mac: 2:59

Yeah, that's what's throwing you. I have like a dislike. That is odd. I don't like gum. I don't like it. I haven't chewed gum for probably over 20 years. 25 years.

Josiah: 3:15

Do you get annoyed when other people chew it?

Mac: 3:17

If it's like a strong smell, then I don't love it.

Katie: 3:20

I thought you have a bad sense of smell.

Mac: 3:22

I do, but for some reason, like the genre of like mint or cinnamon, like just attacks my nostrils, interesting.

Josiah: 3:31

So yeah, I love minty stuff.

Mac: 3:33

Yeah, and you know that's up to other people, but I don't love it.

Katie: 3:38

Well, I have been wanting to get back into the gum habit, so I'll keep that in mind. I'm not kidding.

Adam: 3:42

Are you serious.

Katie: 3:43

Yeah, I used to chew enough gum these days.

Mac: 3:46

I was a compensation for the fact that you can't drink coffee.

Katie: 3:49

Well, that's true. That's pretty sad.

Josiah: 3:52

I feel like that needs an explanation now for anybody listening.

Mac: 3:55

Well, there's something that happens when you drink coffee with someone else. I just feel like there's this space that opens up between you and another, and it's just like this.

Katie: 4:04

So rude, some bonding so rude.

Mac: 4:07

And when, like Josie, doesn't drink coffee, she gets all jittery and so for years I've been peppering or imbadging, you know, kind of being a pest, like I want her to get into it. But yeah, you aren't able to drink coffee, but it's not because you don't like it.

Katie: 4:21

It's not. I like it so much, as a matter of fact, that if you walked up to any one of my friends from high school or college or law school and you played like that board association game, like hey, if I say Katie, what comes to mind, I guarantee you they would say coffee.

Mac: 4:40

Crazy I guarantee it.

Katie: 4:42

I studied in coffee shops all day Panera, free refills. He's lent a coffee Like it was my jam, and then one day, like two and a half years ago, my body said enough.

Mac: 4:54

Enough. No more coffee for you Done, so Done Well for our listeners, if you ever feel like man. Josiah and Mack are like on the same wavelength here. Because, we're drinking real coffee, yeah because we're drinking real coffee while discussing important things.

Katie: 5:11

I am sitting here with my chicory coffee coffee alternative. I try to convince myself that it tastes like coffee. It really doesn't, but it's good enough. And I do have insecurity about the fact that I miss out on relational connection because I can't have a cup of coffee.

Mac: 5:24

I see, I see you Thanks.

Adam: 5:28

Would you say that it creates anxiety for you?

Katie: 5:31

Perhaps, Okay. There's some anxiety there that I'm not, that I'm not fully tuned to.

Josiah: 5:37

That's a perfect setup. Well, I wanted to say one more thing about gum. First. I think that chewing gum is almost an addiction for me, so I don't do it very often. When I was a kid, if I got often for birthdays, my mom knew I liked bubblegum so much. She would buy a family-sized thing of double bubble, like in the wrappers, and I could chew through it in a day, just keep chewing it and then spit it out. Chew it and spit it out. Now when I look back, I think of how much sugar I consumed once sitting. But if I start I can't stop.

Katie: 6:18

So will my new habit create will it cause you to stumble, Josiah.

Josiah: 6:23

It might. You know, there's that verse that says don't cause your brother to stumble, all right.

Katie: 6:29

So not being able to drink coffee perhaps gives rise to some anxiety within me, which leads us to our conversation today. So we've been in the series on emotional maturity and how it's essential to discipleship. In previous episodes we discussed four main components of emotional maturity. It's self-awareness. We talked about self-regulation, we talked about social awareness and then we talked about relational management, and in each episode we've attempted to flesh out how we see Jesus embodying each of these things. So we've received a lot of positive feedback on the series and we've decided to extend it just a bit. So today we want to do that by talking about where anxiety shows up. So let's start by getting clear on what we're talking about here with the word anxiety. What are we referring to here?

Josiah: 7:17

Yeah. So it's important to note that we're not just speaking of general anxiety or what an anxiety in the realm of like fearing something, although that can be connected. There are two terms that we can use for anxiety that will help us get to what we're speaking about, and that's using the terms acute and chronic anxiety. So acute anxiety would be something that's sort of localized to a certain stressor, so something poses a threat and you feel anxious about it. It causes a reaction. I think we talked about the autonomic nervous system in a previous episode. So acute would be a situation that is easily identifiable. So if the stressor could be easily identified, the anxiety generally only lasts about as long as the stressor is actually present or the threat is present. Think about basic fears. If you had a test coming up and you were in school and you felt anxious about it, well, as soon as the test is done, generally the anxiety goes away because you're done. Now there's no more threat. So that would be an example of acute anxiety. Or if your kid is about to run across a busy street.

Mac: 8:37

I got an example, yes. So a couple of years ago I smoked a pork shoulder and my youngest son, griffin, who has Down syndrome, doesn't know how to regulate how much to put in his mouth. So we're eating pulled pork for dinner and he started to choke. So that's acute anxiety. It's like a response to a real threat. That short induration, he turned blue. Josie, my wife Josie, is a nurse, so she immediately knew what to do. She springs into action, we do that trick to get it out and boom, he's fine. That's an acute anxiety that mobilized her to take action. And then, as soon as it's over, oh well, we were anxious for a while.

Josiah: 9:26

It takes a little bit to calm down from that.

Mac: 9:29

So that's an example of what we mean by acute examples. It's like a real threat that's intense and that you kick into gear to respond to.

Josiah: 9:40

Yeah, it's usually easy to identify what the stressor is Like. Anxiety would be when this feeling of tension or fear sort of lingers beyond one specific event, or maybe you'll have a difficult time identifying what the stressor is Like. It could be a combination of things, maybe there's a lot of things going on, but this feeling of tension, that sort of sits with you and lingers past the event is sort of what we're defining when we say chronic anxiety. And if you think about the test example, acute anxiety, appropriate anxiety would be oh, I have a test coming up, there's a lot of pressure, I'm nervous about it, I submit the test, I feel better, or at least things calm down. But if that tension that you feel about submitting the test is something that sits with you the entire semester long, well that would be an example of chronic anxiety, where it lingers and usually sits below the surface and oftentimes which is what we're going to talk about today oftentimes we're left with the effects of chronic anxiety but we don't actually know what's happening, we don't actually see it at play, we just sort of feel it and it sits subconscious, so that we don't really understand what's going on.

Mac: 11:05

Yeah, so chronic anxiety is a response to a real or imagined threat and it has an enduring quality to it. It's like we carry this tension around with us wherever we go. It's like this background noise that's just there all the time. And Murray Bowen, who's the pioneer of family systems theory, he used another sort of phrase interchangeably with the word anxiety, and it's emotional reactivity. And I actually like that better, because sometimes when people hear the word anxiety, they just think that it's about being worried about something or ruminating on something, and emotional reactivity can include that. But it goes beyond that. So anxiety is anytime my reaction is bigger than the circumstance. And I have people in my life who kind of think like hey, I'm not into, like I don't have a lot of strong emotions or whatever. But as soon as we switch that frame from being anxious like hey, I'm not anxious or whatever, but as soon as we switch that frame to go, yeah, let's think of it as emotional reactivity All of a sudden, like there's these numerous examples come to mind where someone got stirred up or charged up in any particular situation.

Katie: 12:21

Yeah, yeah, I was talking to a friend recently who's in training to become a therapist. She finished school and she's kind of going through her hours and we were talking about how, like she said, the vast majority of people who come in her office at some point say something like and then my anxiety rose. So everyone kind of talks about anxiety. I think it's a really good thing, right, that we're more comfortable talking about mental health in general. There's seems to be lots of resources out there and, um, acceptance is growing about talking about anxiety. But for me it kind of brings up this question that to your point, Mack, it does look different for everyone. I think we under we have different understandings of what that actually is. I think a common default understanding is just what you said I'm nervous about something, I'm worried about something, but it's actually much broader than that and that's what we're talking about in this episode is what is that sort of broader definition of anxiety and how does it show up? So I like that. It's kind of like an emotional reactivity. One image that comes to mind for me you guys know, when there's power lines in the air and everyone's in a while, they'll kind of produce like a buzzing, like a high pitched buzzing. You know what I'm talking about. That's kind of the visual that comes to mind. Like in my body it's like that there's this buzzing noise and it's kind of in the background. You could kind of walk by, like if you're going through for a walk outside and a power line is buzzing, like you might not notice it, but once you notice it you're going to be in a good mood, you pick up on it and you become aware of it and it's like oh, oh, it is there I just wasn't realizing how it was showing up.

Mac: 13:51

And it's worth naming that we are living in a world where that buzz is happening all the time. So you know the acronym VUCA. So we're living this is like an acronym that's been used to characterize our day and age Volatile V for volatile. You uncertain, see complex and a ambiguity. And so there's this. There's chronic anxiety, is like super charged in this cultural moment that we're living in. And I just think that's important, because as we begin talking about anxiety and emotional reactivity, sometimes people get the impression that, like the goal is to eliminate it, and I would like to maybe just blow that up for a moment and go. The goal is never to eliminate it. In fact, just like stress, there's healthy stress that keeps us motivated and you know, I guess engaged right. Anxiety, when we're aware of it, can be like helpful to us. The goal isn't to eliminate it, it's rather to learn to notice it and then manage it. If you set up the goal like I'm gonna try to eliminate any experience of anxiety or I'm never gonna be emotionally reactive, You're like you're gonna set yourself up for failure because it's impossible. It's there. So the goal is to notice it and name it so that you can better manage it. And I would just say, like when we fail to do that, when we fail to notice and name anxiety or emotional reactivity, then it creates major problems for us. It sort of wreaks havoc. Yeah, you know what?

Josiah: 15:32

I mean, yeah, I see the our desire to try to eliminate it or our attempts to completely eliminate it is sort of like one extreme on the spectrum of what to do with anxiety. The other extreme would be sort of like being completely asleep to it, or like sort of checking out and disengaging completely. And I think that when you try to eliminate it, not only are you unable to do so, but you actually do the work of spreading it around even more Absolutely, it creates extra anxiety and extra tension between you and other people. When you're constantly on the prowl to sort of like keep any anxiety from rising anywhere in your life and we've talked about it in previous episodes that when, even in the realm of like emotional intelligence, when you try so hard to like when you're avoiding the real work of this stuff, you end up sort of just constructing things around you in your life to make sure like nothing ever happens, nothing ever goes wrong, no tensions rise and so, yeah, so we can either completely check out and disengage from people and from things that are stressful, or we go into hyperactive mode and try to eliminate it completely. Those are both extremes that produce negative results.

Katie: 16:56

And I would say oftentimes, like are the things we're doing to try to eliminate it end up creating more anxiety?

Mac: 17:03

Yes.

Katie: 17:04

Yes, it usually comes out sideways somehow.

Mac: 17:06

Yep, so I think what we're saying is anxiety. Just to kind of maybe summarize Anxiety is emotional reactivity that's disproportionate to the circumstance. The goal isn't to eliminate it, that would be impossible. Rather, it's to notice it and name it so that we can better manage ourselves. And when we do that, when we don't do that, it sort of creates a slew of problems, right? I've noticed just real quick it prevents us from being able to discern right things. When you're stirred up and anxious, you're not able to like get your best thinking around. Whatever the problem is, it's use our perception of reality, like we don't see the situation rightly, even if we know the right thing to do. Anxiety can prevent us from actually, it gets in the way of us actually doing it. It causes people to lose their calm presence and become like unproductive relationally. It can lead to behaving and acting in ways that violate your values, right, which we talked about at the beginning of our podcast, like very first few episodes, the things that like block our ability to live into our values. It's often emotional reactivity.

Josiah: 18:17

So, anyway, yeah, so we started talking about anxiety, defining what it is, so where does it show up? So, like, what does it look like when it surfaces, and where does it and in what situations does it show up?

Mac: 18:34

One person who has become a trusted voice for me in this realm is a guy named Steve Cuss. He was a chaplain for many years and then became a pastor and now kind of trains in this field. But he has this little diagram that highlights four different spaces where anxiety can show up, and this has been really helpful for me. The first one is within you, the space within you. The second one is the space between you and another person. Then thirdly is within another person Someone else might be anxious, and then finally, between others. There might be a group of people where anxiety is present. So I thought it might be fun just to kind of walk through those and give our listeners at least a basic understanding of each one and how that can show up. So again, the first one is that space within you. This is internal anxiety, where anxiety is bubbling up, emotional reactivity is bubbling up within you, and there's obviously for each person. The sources of that anxiety will be different. It will sort of depend on their personality, maybe their first formation, their family of origin and so on. But how would you guys say that it shows up for you when you think about how internal anxiety can show up for you, what kind of examples would you give our listeners to kind of flush it out?

Katie: 20:06

Man, I typically experience anxiety this won't be a surprise either of you, but when I have to disappoint someone. So let's say that one of you was really hoping for me to read something.

Mac: 20:21

We're really hoping you did coffee yeah.

Katie: 20:24

You want me to lead coffee hour by taste testing all of the coffees and recommending the best one. I would really want to meet that expectation. And as soon as I start to realize inside like man, they seem like they really want me to do this and I'm not gonna be able to deliver, I noticed my mind really racing. Like I'll start to ruminate, I'll get fixated and kind of search for like well, is there a solution? I'm not seeing. And then when my mind goes into like the lose, lose situation if you know what I mean Like there's no way out here that I can make this person happy, I noticed like sometimes I look at a feeling in my gut and I would say, yeah, my gut and my head, like my mind, races, and then I can, I kind of feel that pit in my stomach, feeling I can relate to that.

Mac: 21:10

Maybe a label for that source of anxiety would be a double bind, when you're sort of presented with a situation where, no matter what you choose, you're going to disappoint someone. I remember during the pandemic, especially in the early days, like being confronted with like one double bind after another Do we open up or do we stay closed? And people had very strong opinions about either option. Some people are like we need to stay closed. Other people felt really strongly no, we need to open up. And then it was about mask wearing Do we wear masks or do we not wear masks? And no matter what you did, if you said, hey, let's wear masks, just to err on the side of caution, that made some people really mad and upset. And then if you didn't request people to wear masks, then the people who felt like that that more cautious approach was obviously the best thing to do, were really outraged and that created a ton of, I think, anxiety for me and other people who were sort of forced to navigate and make some of those hard choices.

Katie: 22:19

Some people left over it.

Mac: 22:20

Oh yeah.

Josiah: 22:21

Oh yeah, I mean I think that's probably a general theme for sure in churches during COVID, yeah.

Katie: 22:26

But yeah, that's a great example that double bind is a major source of anxiety.

Josiah: 22:29

I would say yeah, for me anxiety shows up, I mean in a lot of ways, but I notice how tense I get when I am responsible for something. So if I'm in, charge of a situation, I feel tension. I feel the tension Even just at home. If I'm at home with the kids by myself, it this tension raises, like I'm in charge of everything, and then I can get reactive emotionally because I feel the tension of that. And when I show up on Sunday morning and I'm in charge of the weekend service and I've got a band to lead and other people, it I can feel tense. This tension sets in where I'm not as relaxed. I'm hyper focused, my brain's probably racing a little faster and sometimes that's effective. But if I don't notice it, if I don't notice its presence, it definitely causes me to be reactive in moments when I don't need to be.

Mac: 23:29

Yeah, I think one for me would just be sometimes a scarcity mentality, particularly around time or energy. So I've noticed I don't think I'm unique or special, but I do have a lot on my plate just in this season of life where you're helping shepherd a community and I have young kids who are involved in activities now and there's a fair amount to juggle. And one of the things that can happen to me is I'll look at what I need to do for the day or the week or whatever, and all of a sudden I this narrative of like can I really do all this? Like do I have enough time to get this done and that done? And before I know it, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety around. Will I have enough space to do the things that people are asking me to do or that I'm expecting myself to do? Sometimes it's external expectations, sometimes it's imposed expectations that I have around deadlines and whatever. And then what ends up happening out of that urgency is I'm on edge and I can fail to then be present the way I want to with other people, like a small exchange where we're just hanging out and talking and shooting the breeze for a few moments Now all of a sudden feels like a massive burden because I need to get to that next thing rather than just slowing down and sort of eliminating that hurry. But underneath that hurry is that anxiety I've attached to a narrative about time and energy.

Katie: 24:53

Well, Mac, one thing I will say is at least you can drink coffee.

Mac: 24:57

Because it just speeds you up and makes you more productive. Yeah, helps you fit more things into that schedule.

Katie: 25:01

Just add another cup of coffee in there.

Mac: 25:03

Right on. Steve Kuss has like a whole and he wrote a book called isn't it like managing leadership? Managing leadership anxiety. Yeah, it's a great book, but he has a whole list of sort of universal sources of internal anxiety and things like when your values are violated or imposter syndrome, those moments where you're present but you kind of feel like if someone knew who I would like they'd know. I don't measure up or blind spot exposure when we are in a situation where something about us that others see and we don't get exposed usually in a public way, ambiguity like uncertainty about how I handle this situation or that situation, can create anxiety for people. So there's a whole list that you can explore and go. Man. These are the ones that really really create anxiety for me based on my personality or first formation. Before we go to the next one, let's just talk about how we can recognize when that internal anxiety is starting to bubble up. We've talked before in previous episodes about your body. You know that your physiological response to anxiety can often help you notice and name it. When your heart starts to race or you get that you mentioned, like I can feel it kind of in my gut. So your body is one. But, katie, you sent out this article by a guy named Jeff Scott, where he also talks about your thinker, your feeler and your doer, so let's just mention those.

Katie: 26:37

Yeah. So what I like about how he set those categories up is for each of these he sets out almost like a continuum and when the anxiety rises it pushes you to either extreme on the continuum. So he talks about your thinker. If we pay attention to the times we experience anxiety, you could either be like me, where my mind goes into overdrive, it might kind of ruminate or spin out of control. Or you could go to the other extreme, which is what we might call like under thinking, like your mind feels like it's slowing down. You might become indecisive, have a hard time making a decision. And then same thing with feeler. Similarly, there's kind of a continuum and when your anxiety rises you might go to one end and feel jittery, restless, irritable, kind of like your body's in overdrive. Or you might kind of slow down, feel withdrawn, low motivation, maybe kind of lonely, kind of like that feeling of wanting to crawl in a hole and hide. So that's feeler, how we feel internally. And then, lastly, he names your doer, which what you notice yourself doing. When you get anxious you might go again, go into overdrive and need to be busy with your hands, like I know. Mack, you've talked about an example of one time where you were anxious and you ended up cutting your lawn in March, even though there was no reason to, because you just needed to do something.

Mac: 27:57

Yeah, my son, my middle son, just had a hard time feeding when he was an infant and we ended up at Children's Hospital for a week. It was super stressful and, yeah, when we got home he had like a feeding tube in for six weeks and all this stuff. It was just super stressful. And it was in March and I'm like mowing the grass and all of a sudden I had this moment like why am I mowing the?

Adam: 28:19

grass.

Mac: 28:20

I'm obviously anxious and I'm trying to keep busy to manage that anxiety or you know what I mean. Like I can control this over here, because that feels really out of control.

Katie: 28:29

Yeah, that nervous energy kind of needs somewhere to go, yeah. So I think that's one extreme, and again the other one might be kind of avoiding people or maybe binge watching TV or sleeping a lot or avoiding responsibilities. So yeah, I found this category is helpful to go. Hey, with each of these it can kind of push us into one or the other, and I think most people probably have a default.

Josiah: 28:52

I think it's worth noting, before we move on to the next one, that this is probably where the most work is to be done in your personal life, like if you're gonna tend to this stuff and learn this stuff and about anxiety. It starts here. It starts with recognizing where anxiety shows up in me, and you'll start to realize just how often you reach outward to manage your own inward anxiety, how often you're gonna reach out to control someone else before managing your own anxiety. Your anxiety spikes and you're gonna reach out for lots of other things when the anxiety is actually existing within yourself first.

Katie: 29:32

But it's so much more fun to see it in other people.

Josiah: 29:34

Yeah, you can recognize it in other people and see all their problems, but this is just the same way we've talked about it with the last series that it starts inside yourself.

Mac: 29:43

Which is honestly a misunderstanding of responsibility. Emotional reactivity If that's happening, if I'm becoming emotionally reactive, my response is disproportionate to the circumstance of the situation. Someone else can't change that. We like to think like oh, if I could change a circumstance out here, it would fix what's happening in here, but the primary responsibility is for me to notice a name, what's happening in me, and then begin to manage that, Whether or not that external circumstance changes or not.

Josiah: 30:15

Yeah, even if you're not to blame for that circumstance, it's still your responsibility to manage how you're responding to it. So, when we can separate those things, I mean, that's just one way that we can, you know, focus on something that's going to help us grow.

Katie: 30:32

Yeah, one distinction I heard lately to describe, I think, what you're getting at is other people can influence us, but they can't control us. Right, you might do something that influences how I respond, but I'm ultimately responsible for how I respond and how I tend it to my anxiety. So, yeah, I think we did a good job covering the anxiety within us, the space within us. The next one I would name is the space between myself and another person. So I think this is what we might call relational anxiety, where anxiety is triggered because of tension in regards to someone else in your life. So this could be you want a spouse, you want a child, a coworker, a friend. It could be anyone in your life who says something or does something that causes tension and all of a sudden you notice it between the two of you. So I picture like two people sitting on a couch and there's like a cloud between them and that cloud represents anxiety. An example that comes to mind for me would be with my husband, alex. So we have very different approaches to how we like to schedule events and spend our time. And so common scenario in our house is we'll have like a calendar and we'll have events for the weekend, sometimes scheduled out like a month or so. And I tend to be more extroverted, I have a lot of stamina for social activity. I don't really expect to rest much, so I just sort of tend to fill up our days. And he's total introvert like other extreme for me needs a lot of time to just kind of be home, do stuff around the house. He totally he kind of re energizes by having downtime. And so I'll look at my calendar. Let's say we have, like you know, a couple things scheduled on a weekend, but I see a big chunk of time and I might hear about something that would be really fun or I might get invited to something. I have lots of high school friends in town and family in town, extended family, so there are, you know, lots of opportunities. Infinite opportunities, infinite opportunities for fun and busyness. So I might walk in and know in the back of my mind like, okay, I know we're kind of busy, but we do have like this chunk of time where there's nothing scheduled and I might suggest like, hey, hon, so so and so invited to me, me to this thing on Saturday afternoon, or invited us as a family, and I'll sort of instantly notice his response. And all of a sudden there's anxiety between us because we've got kind of two different ideas of how we'd like to spend that time and we can't do both and we have to navigate through that.

Mac: 33:05

Yeah, I think you're kind of hovering over it, perhaps on a big, big picture when we get on the balcony and look at it, like perhaps the biggest source of anxiety, relational anxiety between me and another person, is difference. It's just when we have differences, it could be different wants or desires hey, I want to watch this show and you want to watch that show. It could be differences of opinion, like, I don't see it that way, you see it this way. You know, we were talking about what did Jesus mean when he said hey, you're to be a city on a hill, you don't hide the lamp. And we kind of were discussing how do you not hide a lamp but also not be self promotional? And we had some differences of opinion as a staff. Was the moment those differences surface? Well, I don't see it that way. Well, what about this? And you feel, you can feel being, you can feel some of the emotional reactivity starting to build and that requires you know, noticing it in yourself, to be able to stay present and open-minded and curious with other people. One example for me that created is perhaps most people if they were in this, I don't know if they would have noticed it or not, but I was kind of preparing for this podcast so I was alert to it. We were at a baseball game for my son Griffin. He was doing Miracle League and I don't love baseball, I just don't. It's boring. But Miracle League is a blast. And all of a sudden it starts to downpour, like it is raining hard, and Josie looks at me and she's like go home. Like go home. And I knew like, okay, she's giving me permission to leave so that I can maybe go home and make dinner or whatever. But there was that moment where I'm like, does she really mean that? Like if she's the one who stays in the rain and gets soaked and like you know, is she really giving me permission to leave? And that so I'm like all of a sudden feeling a touch anxious about. Is this a mixed message? Is she giving me permission to leave, like genuinely, or is it kind of like no, you know it's going to come back to bite me. My wife's amazing, so no, she genuinely was like go home, you've had a long day, I'll get drenched, no big deal. And then I was able to get home and do dinner but, like I realized in that moment, like oh, a mixed message when someone's telling you or giving you permission to do one thing but you're not certain about it all of a sudden creates like this, I don't know, this anxiety around like is that, can I trust that or not? And if it ends up being sort of a trap, you know how will I pay for that later on?

Josiah: 35:34

Yeah, I think it's worth noting that this anxiety we're talking about connects people that seemingly aren't connected, or maybe they're, they are relationally connected, but they're not even in the same room and you can feel connected to someone. I mean if you if you're listening to this podcast and you're like I don't see it, I don't know if I buy all this stuff. Just think about someone you have relational dissonance with and think about the fact that they could be on the other side of the globe and you're still thinking about them, you're still connected to them. It's almost like this invisible force, that sort of like, is connecting people and if you don't, if you don't recognize it, you know that's when it starts. It starts to wreak havoc.

Mac: 36:22

I'll give you an example of that. One thing that I encounter a fair amount in my leadership here is that I'm encountered with complex sort of situations that require a certain degree of decision making, like in real time, in the moment, and I will try to be present to the situation, do my best to exercise good judgment and wisdom and whatever. But I'm also aware of like how would other people who might be present to the same situation respond? And it's like you. You have these people on your shoulders, like talking into your ear. Well, here's their perspective on it and here's what they would do. And if you don't do, what they would do in that moment. For example, let's say the leadership team. We've got like seven people on the leadership team. I have a good indication of what they might do in this situation and if I do something different, that now creates a sense of anxiety that I might have to report back to them and tend to that difference that you would have handled it this way. This is how I chose to handle it right. So it's like these giants on your shoulder that you're having to like navigate, and that could be a parent whose voice is really loud in your ear all the time, or a friend that you're sort of enmeshed with. That's constantly you constantly filtering things through what would they say or what would they do? And if you do something differently? I had a woman come up to us. We had moonlit movies no Kids Fest this past week, so we had this long day in the park and someone came up to me and hadn't seen them for a bit and sort of named like here's a possible next step for me. And I knew she knew it would create some conflict with her participation at crosspoint. And it was almost like this that's what was happening, like she was contemplating this decision. She knew if she went this direction it would affect her involvement at our community. And she was kind of naming it for me knowing now we have this relational tension and I just kind of said you don't filter your decisions through me, like, be free. I trust God's work in you to lead you and guide you where he wants you to be Be free. So anyway, that's an example I think is like we can often like have voices of other people informing our present moment when we make decisions and if we do something different than what they would expect, it can create anxiety then that we have to sort through later on.

Katie: 38:42

Yeah.

Josiah: 38:44

Yeah, so the first two categories have to do with our anxiety, whether it's within me or between me and someone else, but these same categories exist within the other people in our lives as well. So just as I'm experiencing anxiety within myself, you're experiencing anxiety within yourself, and that's another source or another way that anxiety shows up in people that I'm connected to. So think of it as like a web. That's sort of like pretty well connected. So and I think that one of the more I don't know, one of the more thought-provoking things about when I'm thinking about other people's anxiety is just how easily their anxiety can feel like my anxiety. And just the example you use, she was experiencing anxiety within herself about I don't know who this was, but some decision, thinking how it might affect you, your choice and that matter could have been to adopt that Right. So, like it Take it on. Yeah, it provokes anxiety within you because you see her anxiety and if you don't recognize that, pretty soon you're managing her life for her. Or like trying to influence a decision because you feel this dissonance within yourself about someone else's anxiety.

Mac: 40:07

Yeah, maybe a good reframe of what happened in that moment was she's feeling internal anxiety about this choice that she's making, assuming it's gonna create a conflict with me. She's anxious. I'm not. If I didn't notice that I could have got like emotional contagion would have taken over, her anxiety spreads to me and now we actually have relational tension.

Josiah: 40:31

Yeah, and you can assume that the tension you're feeling is actually your anxiety about the situation and some sort of like sober-minded eyes can see this is her thing. Yeah, this is her anxiety. Right, she's anxious about this, and it's actually even just from a leadership standpoint how I can actually empower her even better to let her know that if I do feel anxious about it, it has no bearing on what she should do with her decisions.

Mac: 41:01

Yeah, and I honestly wasn't even planning on sharing that example, but I now feel like, hey, I did decent in that moment. There's plenty of times when I fail, but it was like you have internal anxiety. You're assuming it's creating relational anxiety. I recognize. No, it's just your anxiety and you can be free to do what you want to do.

Adam: 41:20

Yeah so.

Josiah: 41:22

Yeah, and when you don't recognize it, pretty soon you're convinced that it's yours to take care of. I need to manage how I'm feeling about it when really it was theirs and you just let it spread to you.

Katie: 41:36

Yep, yeah. So I read a book recently and you read this book too, I believe the Cost of Control, by Sharon Haddy-Miller, and she talks a lot about how grasping for control leads to anxiety, which is interesting. It's a little different than what we would think, but one thing she says in the book is that this space that we're talking about, the space within another, is the space that we have the least control over and yet, arguably, we spend the most time focusing our attention on it, and that was a big light bulb moment for me. I came across the phrase in preparing for this podcast secondhand anxiety, and I think that describes what we're talking about. Like we notice anxiety in someone else. It's not in ourselves, but then all of a sudden it is. If we catch it and we take it on and this happens to me all the time like I might notice any one of you being anxious and it has nothing to do with me, but I might assume it has something to do with me I might take on myself and try to fix it and think, okay, well, what could I do to make this person less anxious? And all of a sudden I'm anxious and it's not even about me, and I may. The best thing that I could maybe do is just let you be anxious.

Mac: 42:45

Yes, yes, this happens a lot in workplaces. You know, you come to work and one of your coworkers is not in the best place for whatever reason. They're dealing with something and in our neurosis we assume it's about us oh, what did I do wrong? Or whatever. Or we go oh man, if they're not in a good place, they won't be able to do this or that and it will let me down, right, either way. Their anxiety then becomes my anxiety, and then I try to fix them or manage them, to actually lower something in me. Yeah, rather than just giving them permission to be where they are and maybe be present in a way that could support them, which is different than I, need you to be less anxious in order to be okay.

Josiah: 43:26

Yeah, yeah, and when you go into Christian circles, I feel like there's another layer that gets put on. This is sort of spiritualizing the management of our anxiety that's provoked from your anxiety, by coming in and helping.

Mac: 43:46

But, quote unquote helping.

Josiah: 43:47

Really, what you're doing is fixing. You're jumping in to thinking you're helping because you can point to ways that this is like the Christian thing to do, but you're not necessarily help. It may not actually be the thing that would help them. You're doing the thing that's helping you feel better. Yeah, and this happens. I think it's really easy to see when someone's grieving Say, someone in your church body is someone loses a spouse or a family member and they're really sad. That grief, I think, provokes anxiety in the whole system and you start thinking what do I need to do? Yeah, right, and you see people who are not that relationally connected to someone coming up to them and being like, oh, I need to help them, when, of course, help is good sometimes, but really you're not necessarily responding to what they need in their moment of grief. Their grief is causing anxiety in you thinking I need to help, and so then you respond to your own anxiety by doing something that's probably not as helpful to them.

Mac: 44:54

That is, like the entire well, one of the main points in the book of Job.

Adam: 44:59

Yeah.

Mac: 44:59

Like Job, is experiencing this crisis after crisis, and his friends do everything. All of their responses, their theological explanations, et cetera, are rooted in alleviating their own anxiety that the same thing could happen to them. Instead of actually being present to Job and being friends, all of their words are spoken from a place of internal anxiety that this could happen to them.

Katie: 45:29

And so often I think we're just it's because we're not comfortable letting someone be anxious.

Adam: 45:35

Yeah.

Katie: 45:36

Right.

Mac: 45:36

Yep, but again, these situations happen all the time. When you're walking into work a coworker might be emotionally reactive for whatever reason. It may not have anything to do with you. You can come home from work and your spouse may be charged up, stirred up. Has nothing to do with your kids. Many moments this past year where a kid I walk get home from work and they're just cranky has nothing to do with me. But if I assume it has to do with me, then all of a sudden I'll start like responding in a way that's less than helpful and just present to what they're going through.

Josiah: 46:08

You start managing or you get defensive, so they're mad. They could actually be really sad about something else going on in their life. And because you're not aware of your own anxiety and theirs and how it's provoked by theirs, pretty soon you start thinking you're almost like defending yourself, yep. And then, instead of being present like a non-anxious presence in a way that could like help them sort of be sad or figure out what's going on, you get defensive and then pretty soon you're clashing and you're headbutting. And all of this is really because they're experiencing anxiety in some way and it's leaking onto you and you're on a workbed. You've caught it.

Mac: 46:51

You've caught it. It's like the difference between being present to help them do the work of them taking responsibility for their own anxiety, versus you taking responsibility, trying to take responsibility for it and then control or manage them, and that makes all the difference in the world. Well, let's jump to the last category then. We've talked about in you, we've talked about between you and another person, anxiety in another person. The final one is space between other people. So you end up in a situation where there's anxiety, relational anxiety that exists in a group of people that now you're becoming present to. So this could be parenting. You walk into a room where two of your kids are fighting with one another. There's anxiety between them, and now you're showing up and are present to the anxiety that exists between them. It could be work Two people have a disagreement at work that doesn't include you, but you enter the room and now you're aware of this relational tension between them. It could be a friendship triangle Two friends are at odds with one another, they disagree about something whatever, and now you're the third person who becomes present to it. A decision is being made between two opposing groups. Josiah, we've got a situation that definitely involves this space between others. At our gym right now there's kind of a new gym that's formed just down the road and our existing gym and they're very similar in what they do and now members are kind of deciding where they wanna go. When I step into our gym to work out, there's already tons of anxiety in that system that exists. Your phone- is ringing. That's okay, that's my mom. Oh, interesting, speaking of anxiety, I silenced the call.

Katie: 48:43

Now I just raised anxiety. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this podcast.

Mac: 48:47

Right, but that's an example that I think we're experiencing in the moment is just like different the moment we step into our gym, like there's already anxiety between groups of people as they're deciding what to do.

Katie: 49:00

Yeah, and you can almost like feel it in the air. I remember a situation at a former job where there was relational conflict between someone who was kind of at my level, like over another organization. I was over the legal office, she was over another area within the office and she had conflict with someone that I supervised. So every time that two of them were working on a project together or in a room together there was anxiety there. And it didn't involve me directly but I did get pulled into it because I supervised one of the people and so, yeah, looking back, I can see ways that I maybe caught it by maybe trying to keep the person that I supervised off of projects or trying to kind of shield or over explain why he did things a certain way or in some ways I probably over function to try to get her to like him more and there was just tension. It's just one of those things where, yes, I probably had some role in it, but I may have stepped into it more than I needed to because I wasn't comfortable with the anxiety existing between two other people. Does that make?

Mac: 50:09

sense it does. I mean anytime a triangle exists and you can't escape triangles. There's a difference between triangles and triangulation, but a triangle is like anytime there's two people and a third. So, like right now, we have a triangle. I'm connected with Josiah and I'm connected with Katie, and both of you are also connected to one another. So the key is to be able to notice it, so then you can navigate. Another example from my life would be my dad had some health stuff this past spring and ended up needing an open heart surgery. It was sort of a genetic thing and a valve that needed to be replaced, but leading up to that, that's an anxiety provoking situation. Open heart surgery is a big deal and leading up to that, I have three sisters and not all of them were planning to be present for the surgery, which created anxiety in our family system because both my parents wanted everyone to be present. So all of a sudden, I'm kind of in this situation where I know that there's different expectations and fulfillment of those expectations involving my parents and my sisters right, who are all out of town. We're the only ones who are in town. That's an example I think of oh, there's anxiety between this group of people, and then I have to be careful that it doesn't spread to me, so I get caught up in it. Make sense.

Katie: 51:28

It does. And I think one challenge is when you are in the triangle. You can't completely step out of the triangle because it's your parents and your sibling. You can't just not answer your phone, but it's how to manage yourself within that triangle when that anxiety exists.

Mac: 51:43

Yeah, triangles are neutral. The goal isn't to eliminate triangles, it's to manage how you're present in those. We could do another entire episode on how to do this.

Josiah: 51:53

Yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about it triangles more, because it's a big part of this. I have to admit that this is the part of this that I'm the worst at managing. Why do you say that? An example my kids are mad at each other and they're fighting If I do not. Even just as I'm sitting here reflecting, I realize I have not been very good at that lately of managing my own anxiety. When the tension rises and they're at odds with each other, my immediate reaction is try to fix it Lower there, try to break up the fight, which isn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, but often my way of managing my own anxiety within that is to assert control and dominance. Dude, it's not just you, I know that, but I'm just thinking and even just if I have people in my life that are in tension with each other, I feel like it weighs on me, like a burden and I don't know necessarily how to let it go. I'll be honest, like you just talked about it yesterday with my therapist, but not knowing how to let, not knowing how to stay uninvolved, cause it's even if I'm not physically involved within drama or tension between two other people, I just feel like it just connects me and weighs on me and I don't know how to let it go.

Mac: 53:27

No, I appreciate your vulnerability there and we all deal with this. I mean, I have had many moments where I blow it. In fact, just a week and a half ago I'll give you a story, and this is an example of like if you don't notice and name that anxiety as it's starting to accumulate, it'll leak out sideways. So it was on Monday. I it first day of the week after a Sunday. So I hit the ground early, like 5, 36 o'clock, I'm going, and it was one of those days where I knew it was going to be an entire marathon. So I work all day and then I get home from work and we have to immediately turn around and go downtown to the Brewer Stadium for my son Kieran's like end of the year baseball game at the little like practice field in the Brewer.

Josiah: 54:14

Park. It's your favorite. You love baseball. I like when my yeah.

Mac: 54:17

And so so Josie makes me dinner, I scarf it down in like three minutes to get out the door, to make it to this game on time, fight the traffic, get there, all that stuff. But I'm like I've been going all day so I'm already feeling and probably wasn't in tune with like my fatigue and some of the frustration I had with like just no opportunity to rest. Then we're watching the game and you know I yeah I don't love baseball. It's sort of slow. I like when my son bats, but that's about it, or when he makes a play, but it's you know. And so now I'm sort of like feel like, ah, this is just not the most fun. Then I realized I didn't eat enough for dinner and so I'm starting to get hungry and lo and behold, there's another person from our church who ends up being there, who offers me a hot dog which I'm like this will alleviate my hunger. But then I feel bad that I ate a hot dog cause I'm trying to eat clean. So finally, this game, this night, ends and it's time to go home. Let's go home, and it's like a little after nine o'clock now and we get to our van and Kieran is sitting in like the side door seat and refuses to move to the back seat for his older brother. So we're sitting like everybody's ready to go and now they're having a standoff about who has to sit in the back seat. You guys, I lost my biscuit in that moment. I literally Tyga's standing kind of like outside the car demanding that Kieran move to the back seat. Who's refusing to do so? I just started driving away with the door open.

Josiah: 55:51

That'll work. That fixes it.

Mac: 55:56

I mean I'm not like, but I started inch forward slowly, being careful not to run over his toes, but you know what I mean. Like there, it wasn't just that moment, there was this accumulative anxiety for me throughout the day that led to like a blow up, you know, around fighting over the seat.

Katie: 56:13

So what happened? Who sat in the back?

Mac: 56:15

So eventually I just said like kind of barked in order, Like you were talking about, like I took control of the situation and you know, then there's like sour attitudes for the next 20 minutes in the car on the way home.

Josiah: 56:27

Yeah Right, I'm laughing because I can't tell you how many of those I've had with the van situation. Oh yes, and usually if one of them has to go to the back, they'll listen, but they'll do something on the way back, like sort of like purposely step on the person's foot or kick them as they're walking by, as they're walking by and they're like wow. They're way over dramatic and oh my.

Katie: 56:51

God Yep. We should create a reel of those moments. I would have money to add myself, oh yeah, and then I feel bad.

Mac: 56:56

Yeah, then I feel awful because I ate a hot dog and blew up. You know, it's just ugh.

Katie: 57:03

Yeah, so one of the things we've talked about in all of these episodes is how we see Jesus embodying the principles that we're talking about, and I love that because it's opened my eyes to even a new way of reading the gospels Like I'm starting to pick up on things now when I notice in Jesus's life. You wouldn't typically think of Jesus as a model of emotional maturity, but as we've dove into this, I really like how we've been holding him up and going all right, let's look at how he embodies this and, in particular, how he navigates the four spaces that we're talking about today. So what would you guys say are examples of how we see Jesus living this out?

Mac: 57:42

One example I thought of was that story where Jesus is asleep in the boat and there's this giant storm, and you see these four categories in that story. So Jesus is asleep in the middle of a storm, which to me indicates he had already done the work to have a non-anxious response to being in a boat when there's a storm, like his degree of trust in God allowed him to be non-anxious, non-reactive in that moment. The disciples haven't done that same work. So they start to get really. There's anxiety in them and perhaps between them they're starting as a group, so they're stirred up about the threat of this storm. So then they nudged Jesus and wake him up, and now they're trying to introduce relational anxiety. Don't you care that we're going? It's almost like an accusation you don't care, you're doing nothing. And so now we see that between us relational anxiety bubbling up and Jesus just masterfully responds with calm, non-anxious leadership. He calms a storm and then invites them to a place of deeper trust in God in these types of situations, like he keeps responsibility where it belongs on them. No, this is about your anxiety and the solution is a place of deeper trust in me and in the God who created you. You guys see that, yeah.

Katie: 59:18

I do, and I love how you use the verbiage of like. Jesus had done the work and the disciples maybe hadn't, at least not to the same level. I think for me it can be easy to read these stories and go well, of course Jesus did that. Like he's perfect, but he wasn't immune to anxiety, right Like. Even though he gives us his perfect example, he was still a human with all the emotions, and he had to do the same work that we're talking about here to notice and get present to it and be able to sort of regulate himself and show up in a non-anxious way.

Mac: 59:50

Yeah, and again, the key moments there for me at least in looking at the example is he remains non-anxious and calm in light of the storm, but then he also doesn't catch their anxiety when they project their anxiety onto him and that then allows him to stay non-anxious and invite them to take responsibility for their own anxiety by pivoting towards trust. Another example I thought of is when Jesus is 12 years old and at the temple. So he stays like they're at Jerusalem for a festival, and then back in that day nobody traveled alone, they had traveled in big groups, sort of caravans of people, and Jesus stays behind at the temple and they're like a couple, like a day into their journeys when Mary and Joseph discover that Jesus isn't with the caravan. So they start to get really anxious, which I can appreciate if you ever lost a kid in public like it's unnerving. So they're anxious where is Jesus? And they go back to Jerusalem. They're looking for him and they eventually find him, like talking shop with the religious leaders in the temple and they basically say, like how could you do this to us? So their anxiety is again now being like taken out relationally, like this is a problem between us and Jesus. Again he responds very non-anxiously and just says don't you know that I would be in my father's house? So I don't know. This is an example. There's tons of other examples, but trying to give a lens to when you bring these frames to scripture, you'll see Jesus doing this all the time. You talked last time, josiah, about Jesus in the garden. Again, same thing space in me, space between me and another person, anxiety in others and in a group of people. It's all there. It's all there.

Katie: 1:01:42

Yeah, I like those examples because it seems like what he's doing there is he's defining what's theirs and what's his right, and so many of us I think so naturally would. When someone comes at us anxiously, we respond anxiously like you go and then I make a move, and then you make a move and then I make a move. And it's almost like what Jesus does is he holds up a mirror and he says no, that's you. And it makes me curious about how they responded in that moment, like if you could actually see them, just by him not taking on the anxiety that has to. I feel like that has to unearth maybe some increased awareness in the people who are coming at him anxiously.

Mac: 1:02:18

Yes, and that's kind of what we were talking about earlier. When someone else is anxious and we don't make that distinction, that's their anxiety instead of my anxiety and I take on their anxiety it spreads to me. Now I'm no longer present to help hold up that mirror because I'm caught up in it, right.

Katie: 1:02:37

Right.

Mac: 1:02:38

Whereas if I can go, oh, they're experiencing some anxiety here, they're triggered, they're stirred up. If I can identify, this belongs to them. Now I can become present in a way that helps them manage that. Not for them, right, not like I need to manage it for them, but I can be a valuable resource in asking questions and helping them navigate it.

Josiah: 1:02:59

Yeah, and at the least it will cause you to have a healthy distrust for your initial reaction.

Katie: 1:03:07

Yeah, that's a good way to put it, yeah.

Josiah: 1:03:09

Yeah, I think that when you look at it like, this whole conversation is like glasses you can put on, if it's this lens in which it sort of like brings to light things that you maybe didn't notice before. Compared to how we talked about Jesus practicing this stuff, like when we talked about emotional intelligence, we can see Jesus practicing it. But if you start to realize, okay, this anxiety, the way we experience anxiety, is just part of the human condition, it's part of what just all of us experience it all the time you put those glasses on and just reread some of those passages of scripture, you start to like and you notice like, oh, this isn't just like a story I'm reading in a book. These are real people who are experiencing their own anxiety. They had their own relational networks they were a part of, and then they're showing up in these stories. I don't know it. Just I just think it brings things to light.

Mac: 1:04:05

Yeah, and learning to just name that I mean, that's one of our practices together as a team is just to name. I'm feeling stirred up right now. I'm feeling triggered at this moment and that immediately is like does a good service for me because I'm naming it for myself, but it also alerts you guys like this is mine, you might notice it in this moment. You don't have to get swept up in it, right? And when we can all do that, like hey, I'm experiencing some internal anxiety right now. That's just helpful. It helps all of us lean in in a productive way.

Katie: 1:04:36

And I would say do it for each other in like a healthy, respectful way, Not like hey, why are you anxious, Like quit it. But, Mac, you've said to me before like hey, it seemed like in that conversation you were feeling a little stirred up. I'm like, oh yeah, I guess I was.

Mac: 1:04:51

Yeah, I had this moment of going back to my dad's surgery where I told my mom I said, hey, you seem anxious right now and she goes. I am not. And then I said I observed some behaviors like named them and she goes. Well, you would be too. And I'm like, yeah, I totally would be. You're right, we're all anxious, right, so you're right. I think when I reflect on that moment with my mom, it was like she probably heard that as an accusation rather than just kind of going hey, hey, we're all anxious here and you are too. Let's just like, let's name and notice that so that we can work our way through it. So, yeah, naming it. I think there's a risk, when you observe it in someone else, that they could experience it as an accusation rather than an invitation to trust.

Katie: 1:05:39

Yeah, yeah, naming it's a really good step. How else, outside of beginning to be aware of it and call it what it is, how else might someone start to grow into this? Like, how can our listeners begin to see and to learn how to better manage our anxiety in these four spaces? What would you guys say?

Josiah: 1:05:59

Yeah, so we already started talking about a little bit but just learning to see it, just learning to recognize it, and I think it probably starts. You can observe it in other people too, and I think you probably should, but it starts by observing your own. But just looking internal, how am I responding? What is my reaction? And, like I said before, sort of creating this healthy amount of distrust for my initial reaction when something happens, what's my initial reactivity? And just sort of having a being able to be a little more sober minded starts by just recognizing when I am reactive. And if I learn to see it within myself, then I can start to see it in other people and I can actually learn to have compassion for others and empathy and be able to sort of see the subtle nuances of our interactions together.

Mac: 1:06:57

Yeah, learning to see it, and I like the trajectory of that, which is to really put the focus on yourself Even when you observe it in others. The focus is still how am I relating to that? And I just think that's a good boundary, because I've seen people who weaponize this. Once they see these categories, it's like again, instead of working on themselves, they sort of constantly are pointing out anxiety in other people in a way that, like is really unhelpful, and that's not what we're inviting you to do. This is the you know work on taking the plank out of your own eye before taking the speck out of someone else's eye. Even if you see anxiety in someone else, the move is how am I relating to that? What's going on in me in relationship to their anxiety?

Katie: 1:07:42

Yeah Right, and I would argue that work ends up being most helpful to other people. Yes, Right, Like when they see us do that work and create that healthy distance about what I'm responsible for and what you're responsible for. They may not notice it, but in reality it probably will be more helpful than trying to fix it for them.

Mac: 1:08:02

Yep. So one practice is just learning to see it. Maybe create some rhythms where you're reflecting on your day and naming hey, here's where anxiety showed up in one of these four spaces, or maybe all of them at once. Second practice would be a calm down by slowing down. I recently heard about this sign in an emergency room that said don't just do something, stand there. So it's kind of like this, this clever sort of reverse of don't just stand there, do something. Well, it's the opposite Don't just do something, stand there. And the invitation or the reason what that sign was communicating was hey, in an emergency situation there's acute anxiety and oftentimes we'll just jump into action before really understanding what a person needs or what needs to be done, and you could end up causing more harm. And I think this is exactly what happens with our anxiety, as we get triggered and instead of actually standing there for a moment and taking inventory of what's happening, we immediately jump into action and end up causing more harm. So when we slow down, we are able to calm down and actually get a better read on the situation.

Katie: 1:09:17

Yeah, how often, when something's happening that makes us feel anxious, do we feel like, do we feel a sense of urgency that in reality isn't there, right like I'm just feeling like this is like a five alarm fire and I need to figure it out and fix it. But in reality, unless my house is actually on fire, that's usually not the case.

Mac: 1:09:34

I had a win around this. The other day. It right before it started pouring at Griffin's baseball game. I sit down on the bleachers and Josie says to me hey, they need someone to coach the morning CrossFit class on Saturday. What do you think about that? Okay, I immediately felt reactive like anger, because I'm a little bit more like Alex. I need some downtime to rest and recoup and I knew Josie was working on Friday. We already had plans for Friday night, and then Saturday we had in the afternoon a birthday party to go to, and then she had like something at night where I'd be home with the kids alone. And then Sunday I'm at church. So I'm like in my mind, I'm like feeling frustrated. I just sat there for like a minute and didn't say anything and at one point she goes you're not gonna say anything. So, and then when I did say something, I said what other things I think. I asked something like hey, I wanna make sure I'm seeing our weekend correctly. Here's what I'm noticing how would that fit in? Like what would that do to our family rhythms? I'm feeling like it would kind of push us over the edge. And she said you're right, I think it's too much. So that for me was a huge win, instead of just responding out of anger that she'd even ask or bring it up or not see it right away. Took like 30 seconds to kind of wrap my mind around work through that and then ask a question to like approach it as a team rather than a place of relational friction, right?

Adam: 1:11:10

I think one more thing. I know we're kind of over time but, if I can add, just something that's helped me surrounding this area of slowing down, it takes a lot of training to train your brain to actually hit the brakes in those split second moments. And I think something for me that has been helpful, that I've tried to practice, is taking even just five minutes in a morning or after the day is done, to just sit and be still and silent and recognize the things that are coming to mind most for you, because chances are those are the things that you're most stressed about or most anxious about. Just recognize them for what they are. Let them pass. They might come up again as you're sitting there and it just kind of gives you a baseline to not. You can have your foot on the brake, just ready to press the brake if needed when it comes up, because you're more aware of what's going on inside of you.

Katie: 1:12:12

That's a great one. Yeah, that's a great one. And I think that leads us into the third practice, which I'll name, which is getting curious, right, adam? So what you're describing is just sitting there and being curious about what's sort of bubbling under the surface for you. I was looking at a book on my husband's bookshelf titled Unwinding Anxiety, by a guy named Judson Brewer, and one of the main themes in that book is how curiosity can combat anxiety. So his basic premise is that our typical response to anxiety is trying to repress whatever's causing that, those anxious thoughts. You talked about this at the beginning, josiah. We try to repress it, but he suggests that instead of repressing, we choose curiosity and that by choosing curiosity we can cultivate like an open-minded, non-judgmental posture towards our thoughts, so kind of like what you're describing, adam, and we talked about this on our episode on self-awareness, the first one in the series. We start to wonder, huh, why am I feeling this way? What's bubbling up for me? What's causing me to feel anxious or triggered? And then by doing that, we can create that distance that you're talking about, mac, between ourselves and our anxious thoughts.

Mac: 1:13:23

Yeah, and neuroscience, josiah, you probably already know this is like becoming your field, but neuroscience shows that it's impossible to be both curious and anxious at the same time. When we get curious, it turns down that reactivity and sort of restores our rationality. And so this is why, like Trisha Taylor, who kicked off this series with her colleague Jim, she often says, hey, when I get furious, I get curious, cause it like restores that balance, that integration that you need in your brain to be able to sort through things. And, of course, when we notice anxiety in someone else, we also want to be curious about what's happening in them and learning to ask questions that are rooted in genuine curiosity. There's often a difference between inquiry, like genuine curiosity, and interrogation. People can sniff out an interrogative question pretty quickly versus just a general, like a genuine curiosity, or an inquiry about how are you actually doing, what's going on right now?

Josiah: 1:14:27

Yeah, yeah, they're really quick. I'm writing this paper for a class right now about chronic stress, which is sort of the same thing, at least in the same vein, and I found this study that this lab did in Poland, somewhere where they took rats and they exposed a certain amount of them to like, a stressor Like, and so they use like Bobcat urine, so like something that they would know was the presence of like-.

Mac: 1:15:01

Bobcat urine stresses me out too. Just for the record.

Josiah: 1:15:04

If my house smelled like Bobcat urine, I'd be stressed as well. No, but it was sort of like they were presenting a threat. Yeah, probably, and so they would expose them to it in a 14 day period. At the end of the 14 days number one their ability to do to sort of like learn skills, like the other ones did, went down, so they weren't able to learn anything new when the stress was-. It was at play. But they also noticed which wasn't even the point of the study that those rats wouldn't they wouldn't go into any areas of the enclosure where they would interact with any other rats in which they hadn't interacted before.

Adam: 1:15:49

So if they didn't, already know the rat.

Josiah: 1:15:52

If they didn't recognize it, they wouldn't even go near them, Cause they're on high alert, they're stressed was the first thing they do. So and the point that I was making in this paper was to say that like and I pulled it from a book, this other book called the Polyvagal Theory in therapy, and the idea is that, essentially, when we're in that state of stress, that it affects our ability to relationally connect with people.

Mac: 1:16:21

Yeah, if you're a teacher and you're listening to this, you know. Just imagine a student who can't seem to absorb what other kids are absorbing, or can't connect with other kids the way that they should be developmentally or whatever. It could be that they've just got like a really stressful environment at home yeah.

Josiah: 1:16:41

You know, yeah, and that stress shows up in a lot of ways. That would be a whole nother, yes, whole nother one.

Katie: 1:16:49

Yeah, one, just to close out this point on on getting curious. One image that comes to my mind is like a scientist conducting a lab experiment. You know, I picture myself sort of like sitting there and observing, as a scientist would so, rather than getting all wrapped up in it, being able to sit back and go huh, what am I noticing here? Except we're actually observing ourselves, rather than a bunch of chemicals and a beaker.

Mac: 1:17:13

Put the lab coat on.

Katie: 1:17:14

Yeah, put the lab coat on.

Josiah: 1:17:18

Well cool, this was awesome. So just to recap quick. We're talking about anxiety, about where it shows up. We talked about the difference between acute anxiety and chronic anxiety, which is just one is localized to a certain stressor. Chronic anxiety is referring to when it lingers and it has an enduring quality. Sometimes it's difficult to even name what the source is. It shows up in many ways. We talked about the four primary ways from this tool by Steve Kuss. Where anxiety shows up in you, it shows up between you and another person, anxiety shows up in other people, and then those people have anxiety that shows up between them and others as well. And all of that creates this web in which we're all connected to and learning to see the anxiety and allows us to manage it without needing to completely neutralize it. We talked about a couple of the ways where we saw this show up, with Jesus and stories in the gospels, and we talked about just being able to see it like glasses where we're putting on, like starting to recognize it, calming down and slowing down, taking a second to stop before reacting, having that healthy distrust for our initial reaction when there is tension, and then just getting curious about our own anxiety and the dynamics that are happening around you, sort of putting on the lab coat and being a scientist conducting experiments and just noticing where it's showing up in an objective way. All those things are gonna help.

Katie: 1:19:00

Yeah, so hey, thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and next time we're gonna continue our discussion on anxiety by talking about how anxiety shows up. So we'll talk about several different ways that emotional reactivity tends to show up and compromise healthy ways of relating. So we hope you'll continue to tune in and we'll see you next time.

Mac: 1:19:25

The Praxis is recorded and produced at Crosspoint Community Church. You can find out more about the show and our church at crosspointwicom. If you have any questions, comments or have any suggestions for future topics, feel free to send us an email. Also, if you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts.

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