Understanding Anxiety

 In 1 Samuel chapter 1, we see the story of a woman named Hannah who found herself in a place of intense anguish and anxiety. How Hannah talked about this emotional state and what prompted her to reach this point is worth exploring, because of the light it can shed for us today about the root of anxiety and how best to cope with it.

Anxiety is not an uncommon emotion. It’s a derivative of one of the eight core human emotions, as a matter of fact – fear – and it can take on many different forms and expressions: apprehension, nervousness, dread, fright, and panic. We tend to feel anxiety about a number of different things – from small to large – and this anxiety often comes from a fear of worst-case scenarios.

Anxiety can also be defined as “the mind and body’s reaction to stressful, dangerous, or unfamiliar situations.” It is that sense of panic and fear and tension when we are presented with a situation that makes us uncomfortable.

Beyond simply the body’s and the mind’s reaction to stress, anxiety can become pervasive and intrusive, causing disruptions in our thinking and emotions. This is when anxiety is more than a feeling; it becomes a rumination, a constant fixation in our hearts and minds, something that consumes and distracts us.

And this is what we find Hannah struggling with in this portion of Scripture.

Hannah was married to a man named Elkanah. Elkanah loved his wife and cared deeply for her. But Hannah could not have any children and surely felt disgrace and shame because of her barrenness. Elkanah didn’t love her any less, and in fact tried cheering her up and encouraging her often. But one of the problems lie in the fact that Elkanah had a second wife (culturally appropriate in that day) – Peninnah - and that this wife had given Elkanah multiple sons and daughters.

As if it weren’t bad enough that Hannah had to watch Peninnah providing to Elkanah what she had for so long wanted to provide, Peninnah constantly rubbed it in her face. She couldn’t just enjoy her privilege and live her own life; she had to meddle and mock and interfere with any ounce of contentment of hope that Hannah was clinging to.

The Scripture says that “her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb (1 Samuel 1:6 ESV).” Not only did Hannah likely feel the emotional grief of not being able to give her husband a child and the fear of cultural shame or disgrace, but now she also likely felt the mockery and embarrassment of not being “as good as” the other woman, a feeling that is so familiar to humanity.

Inadequacy, shame, self-criticism, and insecurity are all too common for mankind, and all of these lie at the root of much of the anxiety that we feel. This was certainly the case with Hannah. She looked at herself, and she looked at her counterpart, and she looked at her situation, and she felt less-than. She felt distressed. She was emotionally and mentally weighed down A burden rested heavily on her mind and her heart.

How do we know this? Because of what took place when she went with her husband up to the tabernacle to worship the Lord.

1 Samuel 1:9-10
After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly.

As the story goes on, Hannah continues to pray in her great distress. She is crying out to God and weeping, in obvious anguish and emotional suffering. And Eli, the high priest, takes notice of her, watching her lips moving but no words coming out of her mouth. Thinking that she must be drunk, he approaches her and confronts her, telling her to put the wine away and sober up. Totally oblivious to her emotional state, Eli assumes that this broken woman is simply not in her right mind and needs to go home. But Hannah does not accept the condemnation. She is desperate, and she is quick to reveal the anguish that has been residing in her heart.

Notice her response starting in verse 15: “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.”

There is something very interesting to note here, as it pertains to this idea of Hannah carrying and grappling with anxiety and distress and where that might have been coming from. As we will see from this and another Scripture, her anxiety was not just an emotional response to a tense situation. There was something far more pervasive and intrusive at work within her that caused her such suffering on this particular day.

The word “anxiety” in this English translation comes from the Hebrew word that means “musing or contemplation.” It’s actually the same Hebrew word that is used in Psalm 104:34, when the Psalmist writes, “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.”

What this indicates is that Hannah’s anxiety was, at its core, a state of mind. Her anguish and “vexation” (from the Hebrew word that means “trouble and frustration”) was the result of the constant contemplation of the problems she was faced with.

Her meditation caused her vexation.

Mental health professionals call this “rumination.” It’s the act of “engaging in a repetitive negative thought process that loops continually in the mind without end or completion.”

Hannah’s troubles were real. She was facing circumstances that seemed impossible. She was constantly being provoked. Her feelings weren’t being validated by her husband. And Eli the priest thought she was just a drunk. It’s no wonder why one of the first statements out of her mouth was, “Don’t see me as a worthless woman!” I wonder if Hannah had begun to see herself that way, or if that was a fear that she continually battled in her mind – that because of her disgrace, she had less worth and value.

It’s easy to see, as we connect Hannah’s situation with her emotional response, that her problems affected her thinking. And this is partly where her suffering came from. She got sucked into a dark place in her heart and mind, with negative thoughts and constant rumination on her problems and struggles. As a result, she felt distressed. Her mood was disrupted. This was likely all she could focus on.

This is exactly what anxiety is. It’s not just the emotional response to stressful situations. As stated earlier, there are eight core human emotions. Anger, sadness, and fear are a few of those. It’s normal to feel nervous or a little worried about things. It’s normal to feel sad about circumstances. It’s normal to feel angry when provoked and mocked.

But these emotional responses evolve to become problematic when they are allowed to take center stage in our hearts and minds, when they creep into our thinking and become the things that we focus on the most.

When our problems and our emotional responses to those problems become the focus of our contemplation and meditation, this is when problems arise.

So, what is the solution? How do we prevent ourselves from being taken over by the type of negative contemplations that lead to anxiety and distress?

To answer this, we should return to that Hebrew word for “anxiety” that Hannah uses in this verse, the same word that is translated as “meditation” in Psalm 104.

To combat the type of rumination and thinking that leads to anxiety, we have to address our “meditation.” What are we meditating on? What are we fixing our hearts and minds on? What is at the center of our emotions and thinking, acting as the constant focus of our attention?

The psalmist said that he wanted his meditation to be pleasing to the Lord. He wanted the focus of his heart and mind – the thing that he contemplated and ruminated over – to be something that would be pleasing to God. This implies that it would be something that would foster rejoicing and hope and faith and confidence. And this would start in his thinking.

When we choose to dwell on things that are true and based on faith, we tap into the power that God makes available to us to overcome anxiety and handle our struggles with greater clarity, hope, and peace of mind.

The Apostle Paul gives this very principle in Philippians chapter 4. Notice his words in verse 6:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

He doesn’t just say to stop being anxious. If it were that easy, none of us would ever have the difficulties that we often have. Paul understands that simply ceasing to do something is not feasible, and in awareness of that, he provides a next step. He gives us the way to not be anxious, and it isn’t based on personal commitment to just stop dwelling on things, as if someone was giving a person the advice to just “let it go and get over it.” That just doesn’t happen.

What does Paul recommend? He gives us an “instead”. He says, “Don’t be anxious. INSTEAD, here is what you can do – pray, seek God, tell him your requests, and have gratitude in your heart.” And, when we do these things, what is the promise? Verse 7 – “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Beyond this, one verse later, Paul gives us another antidote to the anxiety that plagues our minds and weighs us down. Again, he doesn’t just tell us to stop thinking about negative things or to let things go and shut them out of our minds. He gives us another “instead” that, ultimately, leads us to overcome the distress and discover the freedom that God wants for us.

In verse 8 he says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable….think about these things.”

What is Paul saying here? What is the antidote to anxiety and the path to peace?

 

CHANGING OUR THINKING.

When we choose to meditate on things that are true, when we change our perspective, when we stop fixating on the problems and the fears and instead let our minds dwell on things that bring peace, we can be delivered from the type of anxiety that we so often wrestle with.

It’s about replacing our anxious contemplation – those fears (worst-case scenario), those beliefs about ourselves and the world and our problems (“I’m worthless. This is too big. There is no way to fix this.”), and all the stories (based on both the past and the future) that we allow our minds to fixate on. We don’t just try harder to force these thoughts out of our minds. Instead, we ask for God’s help to focus our hearts and minds on “meditations that are pleasing to Him”, like the psalmist did in Psalm 104.

So, we stop and ask ourselves questions like:

What does God say about me in this moment?

What does God say about this situation?

What truth can I meditate on as I move forward through this problem?

When we come up with good answers to those questions and, with God’s help, begin to ruminate and meditate on those instead, it doesn’t take long for those anxious feelings to subside.

Will the problems automatically go away? Not likely. Will we still have to face the circumstances that have caused such anxiousness in our hearts and minds? Probably.

This is not a cure-all for life’s problems. And Jesus never said that we would go through life without those difficulties. In fact, what He did say was this: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33 NIV).”

He doesn’t promise us that we won’t have troubles and struggles in this life. What He does promise is that we have His presence and His peace to keep us from the type of internal distress over those troubles.

We don’t need to beat ourselves up when we experience anxiety. And we don’t need to start thinking that anxiety is our own fault because we just get stuck in our heads. What we do need to understand is this:

Anxiety does come from what is swirling around in our heads, and that is a response to the circumstances and provocation that we face. To combat it, we need to let God reach into our minds and set us free, changing what we dwell on, and allowing our beliefs to be wholly shaped by His truth, not by our situations or fears.