Understanding Anxiety and Worry Part Two

Understanding and Identifying Anxious Clients

People who have a history of anxious functioning will likely have an adjustment disorder superimposed on a Generalized Anxiety disorder, as the treatment eliminates the anxiety as it relates to a specific problem, the client and counselor may discover that anxiety is a general means of functioning for the client and counseling should address this matter.  The component of anxiety that exists along with primary diagnoses such as depression, eating disorders, and Panic or Phobic disorders should be therapeutically addressed in the manner listed in the following sections.

Unresolved trauma or stress should be examined. It can be that current events, acting as triggers to past trauma experiences are cueing the present anxious reactions. Anxious modeling from ones family may also lead to anxious coping styles.

Understanding and Identifying Anxious Clients

An anxious client will report uneasiness, or that something is wrong, but cannot always give specific reasons as to why they feel as they do. 

A person with chronic anxiety functions out of a core, unconscious belief system that lowers self-esteem and efficacy, often will dismiss any evidence or spiritual principles, which would counter their negative thinking. In this regard, look for depressive thinking styles or depressed diagnosis that will need to be addressed before the anxious behavior can be corrected.

The problem of the anxiety that the Bible addresses is primarily one of cognition. The anxiety of the Bible is not usually a reaction to actual danger or crisis. It is a negatively biased cognitive process that triggers physical and emotional reactions. These can be authentic in how such affect the human body. But their interpretations are based on biased appraisals of their cause and their nature.  Worry, fright, nervousness, apprehension are legitimate emotions and based on realistic appraisals of current circumstances. Anxiety however, is sinful and we are commanded not to be anxious because it refutes Gods care for us and denies Gods plan for us as other forms of fortune prediction would deny Gods peace.Understanding and Identifying Anxious Clients

The anxiety the Bible encourages us to avoid is in total opposition to God's peace, hope and joy. This anxiety is only circumstance centered and driven. It is never God centered or inspired.  Consider the men who Moses sent to spy out the Promised Land and report what lay ahead of the desert tribes. They came back and only reported the dangers of the Promised Land as insurmountable and representative of Gods scorn of them.  Only Caleb and Joshua saw the same circumstances and dangers as opportunities for God to prove His love and promises. Certainly, Caleb and Joshua experienced fear and threat, but they did not predict the future in the worst possible way, nor did they doubt Gods power to help them deal with such threat. 

In Matthew 6:33 Jesus tells us to not be anxious about tomorrow for today has enough troubles. God gave us a nervous system that senses danger and helps us be hyper vigilant to potential or obvious danger. Proportioned worry helps us confront our doubts and seek Gods reassurance and to strengthen our faith and trust in Him. Anxiety pulls one from God and acts as an emotional and cognitive wedge between threat and our knowledge of God. Since anxiety predicts the future of a problem in the worst possible way, it also denies or passes over other possibilities that are workable and positively solvable. Anxiety always leaves no options but the worst possible one. Anxiety ignores Gods possibilities or potentials for us.  While anxiety suspends faith and trust, it forces the believer to reactivity, catastrophizing, and black and white thinking, and missing evidence for rational appraisals.

The anxious client struggles with refuting realistic outcomes and goes for the most highly charged, negative and painful possibility as if it will happen. Believing the worst will occur causes the believer to judge his interpretations or projections as true fact. It is this narrow thinking that leads to further problems in coping and faith. Anxiety cannot accept Romans 5 as an answer to the effects of the worst possible scenario as building faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.