This is my story from debilitating anxiety to incomprehensible peace.
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At the age of eighteen, something began to change inside of me.
I had always been an anxious person, but I started to feel anxious all the time. The intensity of it would fluctuate, but it would remain 24/7.
My stomach churned and tightened into a permanent knot, causing frequent nausea. Breathing was hard and laboured, as though there was a heavy weight on my chest. Thoughts were uncontrollable, dwelling on worries and what-if scenarios no matter how hard I tried to redirect them. Future experiences were dreaded for days in advance. Friends were avoided because social anxiety was too much to handle. Escape routes were located in any crowded place, and breath was held on subway rides until the doors clanged open at each stop to relieve my claustrophobia.
I had no idea what was happening to me. In the past, my anxiety had always been circumstantially dependent. Now, however, it did not seem to be situational. Even though it began when I started university, it remained the same when my semester was done. There was no good reason to explain why I was consistently feeling so anxious. I had not heard much about mental illnesses before or their symptoms (apart from depression), so that never occurred to me as an explanation.
When I had my first panic attack, I knew that something was seriously wrong. I had a day off from school, and was about to sit down and enjoy a delicious breakfast that I had just finished cooking. Suddenly, my heartbeat sky-rocketed in terror as I realized that I could not get enough oxygen into my lungs. At first I thought I was having a heart attack. With each inhalation, it felt like only half of my lungs were filled. Taking deep breaths to try to increase my oxygen-intake, I started to hyperventilate. Gasping for air, I fought the faintness coming on as my eyes clouded over.
An hour later, the doctor at the ER told me that it had been a panic attack. The only advice she gave me was to try to relax and not stress as much about school. I didn’t believe her diagnosis. I didn’t have panic attacks. I assumed something was wrong with my physical health, and decided to focus on that.
I started eating healthier and exercising more. I took up yoga every night, attempting to calm myself down. I watched more movies and TV shows, seeking for temporary release from my own thoughts. And though each of these things temporarily helped to a certain degree, they didn’t do anything to fix the root problem.
Seven months later, the disorder had only worsened to the point when I decided that life was not worth living this way. Completely desperate and at the end of myself, I turned to the God I thought I knew. I begged Him to either do something to free me from it, or let me die peacefully in my sleep. This was not a suicidal thought or plan to take my own life, but a desperate cry of someone lacking a desire to keep on living.
A couple of nights later, I noticed a sermon on television by Charles Stanley called “Overcoming Anxiety”. My heart skipped a beat at the coincidence, and I knew I had to watch it. Sure enough, it felt as though the pastor was speaking directly to me. I knew it was God answering my prayer through this man. He pointed out the promises in Philippians 4:6-7, and how in that passage God promised peace to those who came to Him with their burdens. If I believed in the God of the Bible, I would have to believe His promises and that He doesn’t lie. Stanley explained that if I prayed for God to release me from anxiety, with petitioning (reminding myself that God did not want me to be anxious) and thanksgiving (for an experience like this to get to experience Him in a deeper way), God promised His peace that surpasses all understanding.
“Do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)
And at the moment that I finished praying this, a peace that I cannot fully describe filled my body. It started as a loosening in the pit of my stomach that melted away the tightness, slowly spreading throughout the rest of me. My breathing felt unrestricted and natural, my nausea disappeared. I was overwhelmed by this sense of calmness and freedom that was taking over me. That night and the next morning, I prayed the passage constantly. Each time I stopped focusing on and claiming the promise, tightness began to constrict me again. The whole ride down on the subway to my largest exam of the year, I repeatedly meditated on it. For the next few days, that prayer was at the forefront of my mind almost every moment. And the peace that I had begun experiencing remained with me, “guarding my heart and my mind” that I knew I could not guard on my own.
It was not a “one-time healing”, or a quick-fix. My whole mind had to be retrained. It was a constant clinging to this lifeline of a promise moment-by-moment for days. Anxiety continued to try to resurface and control me. Gradually, it became an hourly prayer. And then it became daily, weekly, monthly, and now occurs not as often (though still does attempt to resurface even now). The attacks lessened as I realized that they no longer had any power over me, because if they came I would just take them straight to Jesus.
After a whole eight months of perpetual anxiety, and at a time when I had even more reason to be anxious, I was experiencing God’s supernatural peace. I knew that it wasn’t anything I could have conjured up myself, and therefore knew that I was experiencing God’s power in my life in the most incredibly real way that I had ever encountered before.
Since that day, God has been making me a new person. His tender care for me, when I was in the darkest season of my life thus far, has captivated my heart with who He is. This experience was just the beginning of a relationship where He has consistently drawn me closer and closer to Himself. And after experiencing His power so incredibly in one area of my life, it has made me realize how many more of His promises are meant to be claimed that can lead us fuller into the abundant life He wills for us to live.
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