Finding Hope in the Midst of Anxiety: A Faith-Based Approach

By Mike Jacquart

If you’ve ever seen the movie High Anxiety, especially if you’re a Mel Brooks fan, no doubt you found it a funny flick. But anxiety is no laughing matter for anyone with a mental health diagnosis.

In fact, anxiety and depression are often co-occurring. People who are depressed often feel anxious and worried. One can easily trigger the other.  “When you get anxious, you tend to have this pervasive thinking about some worry or other problem,” explains therapist Sally R. Connolly in my book, Climbing out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness. “You feel bad about it. Then you feel like you’ve failed. You move to depression.”

Debilitating anxiety is much more serious than the anxiety we all go through as part of everyday life. Anyone who starts a new job is understandably anxious in the beginning. It’s the same for a lot of new ventures in life. But the anxiety that I experienced were unrelenting emotions that went on every day. They can last months, even years.

Case in point: many years ago I was placed on probation by my employer at the exact same time that my wife and I were house hunting. My wife said, “We need a roof over our heads regrdless of what happens, so let’s go ahead with it (buying a home).” “Easy for you to say, I thought to myself repeatedly. You’re not the one wondering whether you’re going to have a job six months from now.”

Combine worry with the ruminating thoughts that many of us with a diagnosis experience, and you’ve got a pit in your stomach that just doesn’t go away. Go to the grocery store, “how much should we buy, I might lose my job.” Go to church, “God, please help me keep my job,” not realizing that may, or may not have been part of His plan.

Long story short, we bought a home, AND I was in fact, let go. But it didn’t take long for someone with a lengthy writing background to quickly find a job as a reporter, something I had done before moving on to editing. My anxiety largely went away but now it switched gears to depression. I went through the motions, but I felt dead inside, listless and with little energy or hope.

This went on for roughly a year until, sick to death of work I could almost do in my sleep, I accepted a job as a grant writer for a nonprofit agency. Some of my friends thought I was crazy for leaving a job I was good at, for the unknown. And yet, as I wrote in my book, “how many people hate their job yet never quit because they’d rather complain than take a chance on something new.”

Only now, while my depression quickly subsided, excited over a new venture, my anxiety returned and with a vengeance.  These intense emotions went on nearly every day. Not just at work, but also on the drive to work, on the way home, you name it. I was fortunate if I was even able to relax at home.

Notice that I’ve only mentioned prayer and God once until this point. I’m not proud of the lack of trust I had in the Lord at the time, but it was reality for me. Fortunately, through God’s grace this would change roughly a year later when, due to budget cuts, I was laid off from my job as a grant writer.

This time, a faithful God and a loving supportive wife finally had my attention that there was something going on beyond losing jobs. I finally turned to my Bible for some answers, and especially encouraging was the verse in Jeremiah 29:11: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (NKJV). I memorized it and recited it to myself each day. At home, at the grocery store, in the car, wherever I was, the more I thought about the verse, the more I believed it and the better I felt. As I wrote in my book, “When you have been out of work repeatedly, hopelessness sets in.” The words “future” and “hope” were very comforting. In fact, it was not long before my ruminating thoughts changed from a desperate, “I’m unemployed, I’m unemployed” to a more optimistic, “God has a plan. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

The book of Proverbs (3:5-6) provided another hopeful scripture that I committed to memory. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And lean not on your understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and He will direct your paths. (NKJV). In this case, “trust in the Lord” provided a great deal of solace that kept me on the path of looking to God for answers. In terms of jobs, clearly leaning on “my understanding” was not working very well!

Since I was out of work with plenty of time on my hands, my wife convinced me to make an appointment with a counselor to discuss my struggles with depression, anxiety, and related feelings. After several sessions, I completed a questionnaire, which led my counselor to diagnose “mild depression and Attention Deficity Hyperactivity Disorder.” FINALLY, after years of wondering what was going on mentally, thinking it was mostly about being in the wrong job, I had some answers to my difficulties! I realized that I when I took a new job, depression and anxiety came along for the ride. They subsided during the “honeymoon period” when you’re excited as the new kid on the block. But when this period ends, the emotional issues resurface. They never really go away.

Eight months after my pink slip from the nonprofit agency, and on a prescribed medication that was improving my symptoms, I finally got a job! Recognizing I was still unemployed, a publishing friend of mine, owner of a small Christian publishing business, offered me a part-time position editing one of the newsletters his company produced.

It was not long before it led to more hours, and full time. As his only editor, I eventually took on editing responsibilities for all of the newsletters. I was grateful that my additional workflow increased gradually and not all at once. That would have spiked my anxiety, which I did not need as I continued my recovery into mental wellness.

Between being happier, better able to concentrate, and having few, if any of the ruminating thoughts that had so often “poisoned” my state of mind, I began to realize just  how much my dual diagnosis had plagued me in the past, not only on jobs but also in my personal life.

Since God is the only one who truly sees “the big picture,” I started to realize how God can, and does, make good things out of bad. I worked at my friend’s firm for fourteen years. The longest job I had previously was four years! Even more important were the lessons I learned in how to lean on God, and not just my thinking, thoughts that were often off track of a better plan for my life.

Obviously, not everything remained “good” since life does not work that way. It was during a down period after losing my beloved dog that God led me to Fresh Hope. Through the Lord and my supportive group, that misery is also in my rear-view mirror.

While every life journey is distinctive and every path to wellness is unique, help IS available. Make an appointment for teletherapy, or ask a friend to take you to (or log online) a Fresh Hope support meeting. As I learned the hard way, “You can’t keep doing things the same way, and expect different results.”

MOST important, don’t wait as long as I did to pray and ask the Almighty for help. Whatever it is, the issue likely won’t resolve itself overnight, but the wait will prove worth it. I know it was for me.

Mike Jacquart belongs to a Fresh Hope support group and the author of “Climbing out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness.”  https://www.amazon.com/Climbing-out-Darkness-Personal-Wellness/dp/B0BQ58KJH4   A retired magazine editor, Mike enjoys sharing his story of “pushing through” on blog posts, podcasts, and other presentations. For more information, contact him at michaeljacquart8@gmail.com.