And welcome back to Real Life with Mike and Jason.

We're glad you're with us for episode five of season three.

Mike, good morning.

Good morning.

Last week in episode four, we talked about the lies we often believe.

It was a theme of the lies we tell ourselves.

And we looked through some common ones, but there's obviously many that we didn't address.

But we looked at things that were, again, pretty common.

I'm alone, or I'll always be alone in this, or I'll never be okay, or God doesn't care, he doesn't listen.

I keep praying and he doesn't answer.

And so we looked at how those thoughts can really fuel, for lack of a better word, anxiety, and how Scripture gives us the truth to hold on to instead.

And so one of the passages we said at the beginning and you alluded to it at the end was Romans 12:2, about letting God renew our minds, transform the way we think, but it's him doing it.

It's not us finding a unique way to think differently about things, but it's a work that the Lord will do in our lives.

And anxiety doesn't just live in our heads.

It shows up how we treat and how we treat people.

And so that's what our focus is today as we shift from last week, talking about the lies that we believe, the lies that we tell ourselves, and how then it impacts our relationships.

And it should.

It definitely shows up.

And this is the same with depression, with other issues, too.

But the anxiety that we're experiencing often will show up, too, in how we treat people and how we communicate and how we respond when we feel overwhelmed.

And so that's really what we want to talk about this episode is how anxiety impacts our connection with others and what it looks like to start restoring relationships in the times where we are anxious.

And what that looks like, too.

Proverbs 12:25, I was reminded of, and I love the way that it's worded.

It depends on the translation.

Some translations say worry and some use the word anxiety, but it means the same thing when you look at the word.

And so let's start with talking about what does anxiety do beneath the surface?

And Proverbs 12:25 again says that.

It says anxiety weighs down the heart.

And I think that's such a great description because that's what it physically feels like.

And I know I've struggled with anxiety.

That's what it physically feels because it's just a heavy weight, like a crushing weight, almost.

As a medic, I would often, matter of fact Many times when we had service members come into the clinic thinking that they're having heart issues, ended up it was more anxiety driven, their heart was completely fine.

But sometimes those symptoms can feel the same.

Like you have a hard time breathing, rapid heart rate, you feel like this heavy weight.

And so understanding that when we're struggling with anxiety, that's how we're feeling all of the time.

So how has that then changed the way we interact with people?

Because we're not feeling normal, we're not feeling good, we're feeling panicked almost.

And that definitely is going to impact how we respond to people, how we interact with people, or how we try not to interact with people.

So some common responses, I think, to just anxiety, when we think of what does it physically look like before we can talk about how we can restore those relationships, is we withdraw or we shut down and to understand that it's not because we don't necessarily like the person, it's that it's a defense mechanism.

Sure, we're trying to just defend ourselves the best way that we can.

Now obviously Jesus is the answer to that.

God's word is the answer to that.

But it's easy to understand why it happens because we're trying to defend ourselves.

And maybe it looks like we stop returning texts.

Maybe I was really good, which I don't really like texting or social media, but maybe I was really good at texting people and getting right back to them.

And maybe I just stop, maybe I start canceling plans and that's not very normal for me.

Or I avoid conversation.

And again, not because I don't care, but because I'm just trying to protect myself.

I feel so overwhelmed and.

And I just don't have the energy to engage.

And so it becomes easier, I think, to pull back than risk being vulnerable or misunderstood.

So let me ask you this.

What in your experience, Mike, what are some other ways anxiety can start to impact relationships?

Like things that we would see, maybe not under the surface, but responses or the way we would act.

It goes back to what you were talking about, even in depression.

And just dealing with anxiety, you think about, for me anyway, when I look at it, I see stress is a part of life.

Everybody's going to deal with stress, but anxiety is always our response to stress.

And everybody handles stress differently and our anxiety levels are different.

And so the way that it manifests itself, like you just mentioned, withdraw, you know, or shut down.

And I always think about our bodies.

What are the fight or flight response to, what kicks in that part of Our brain that's responsible for processing fear, you know, that's just a natural, God given, thank God mechanism that God's placed within us.

And what that does is I look at these things obviously when we're anxious.

And if you really walk through this, if you struggle with anxiety, is to look at your own life and how you respond.

Because when we're on heightened alert, and that's what anxiety does, it creates height, a heightened alert within us.

It makes us.

And hopefully this will give people a sense of.

Give yourself some grace here.

Okay.

That we're more sensitive to what we would say is perceived insults and criticisms or rejection.

So what that causes us to do is to be overly defensive or reactive and not because you want to be.

It's always like Paul, Romans 7.

That's, you know, the wishing to do good.

I don't want to overreact.

But what's causing it, you physically, your body is helping you in a negative way to, to over respond.

And it's important that we get that because again, fear will do that.

You're just you, you.

And I love it when you think about this fear.

The positive side is you become very cognizant of what's going on around you.

One of the biggest, worst things, and I see this mostly with women and it's just because they use both sides of their brain more than men do.

Yeah.

Women have a tendency to overthink and sometimes assume the worst.

And again, and this is a.

Oh, what I would say was it's a strength pushed to an extreme becomes a weakness.

The strength for a lot of women obviously is they're great thinkers, they think critically, but they think also emotionally.

But when you combine all those things together and think under the guise of anxiety.

Right.

So everything's now heightened in that old expression, we become our own worst enemy there.

Sometimes you want to stop the process and in that it causes us to shut down.

And so one of the other negative things that.

That stems from this or grows out of it is we avoid then healthy conflict with other people.

The Bible says faithful are the wounds of a friend, but we just don't want to engage because now we're being dominated by fear in so many different ways.

And maybe we can talk about some of that.

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

And fear, I think, often drives many of the things.

I think that really the root of a lot of these reactions, like you said, isn't just the frustration because we get frustrated when we have anxiety with the physical things we feel.

But really the root of it I think is fear.

So when we feel anxious, we start again, like I said earlier, protecting ourselves.

And sometimes I think without even realizing it, that's why we start shutting down.

We start lashing out, we start retreating because we're afraid.

And what are we afraid of?

Well, we're afraid of being judged.

We're afraid of getting hurt.

We're afraid of losing control.

Or like you were saying, we're afraid of this scenario that maybe not even be based in reality, but it's something that I made up in my mind based on what I perceive as the worst possible outcome of what I think could happen.

And then I start living in fear.

That is the reality, instead of stepping back.

Yeah, I think it's behavioral scientists.

They'll tell us that 95% of even what we think about never comes to pass.

The things that we worry about.

Yeah, it's important.

But I think a key point right there, though, is I.

I think for most of us, when we avoid healthy conflict, the.

I think of the things through the years, what I've learned from people is it's the fear of losing the relationship.

The.

They're afraid that it's not.

Yes, they're going to be judged, they're going to be misunderstood.

But their worst.

They go to the end.

They think, man, this will cost me the relationship.

And it does, unfortunately for many people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because we're also.

The other side of it too, is how people respond.

And that's not something we have control over.

So that certainly plays into it too.

So if being with people, being in relationships and community matters, even though depression, anxiety tells us to withdraw, to isolate, to be alone.

And we started with discussing how these things can start to impact the relationships that we have.

And that could be friends, that could be family, spouse, mom, dad, children.

But does the Bible say then that there's any importance in living in a community or staying connected with people?

Which is.

So if it does, and we understand that there's an importance in community and connection, then we also have to understand that it's going to be important then to work on those relationships that maybe has experienced some damage because of the anxiety maybe that I'm experiencing and the ways that I've responded to it, is it important for us to, number one, reconcile those, to admit that, to try and begin the process of restoring those relationships.

And does the Bible talk about the importance of being in community?

Does it even matter?

Or is it just easier for me to self isolate and just deal with things on my own, Pray maybe to the Lord Read His Word, but not even involve myself with other people.

Yeah.

And I think if you go all the way back to the beginning, you know, when God created man and woman, he did it for compatibility and for relationship, not just with one another, but with God himself.

And one of the dangers that we face is when I think about heaven is all about community.

Jesus said in John 14, in my father's house are many mansions.

If it wasn't so, I would tell you, I go to prepare a place for you, we can all be together.

That's.

You know.

What was that song, Big House.

I forget the band that sang it.

It was like lots and lots of room.

And people love it because that's what it's about.

And hell is about what it's isolation, separation.

Separation, isolation, aloneness.

It's not what the world makes it out to be like.

It's a big party with all of your friends.

It's complete isolation.

Obviously, going back, I think of verses like Genesis 2:18.

And the Lord God said, it's not good for man to be alone, but I'll make a helper who is right for him.

From the very onset, God has told us that we need one another.

I love.

We go to this verse all the time in Ecclesiastes.

Solomon and his wisdom, he said in Ecclesiastes 4, 9 and 10, he said, two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.

I love that if one person falls, he says the other can reach out and help.

But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

And I like in the new King James Version, because it says, woe to the man who's alone.

He says when he falls, it doesn't say if he falls.

Right.

And so we need people.

When I.

When I became a believer through fellowship of Christian athletes, the very first chapter that I ever read or studied in the Bible was first Corinthians, chapter 12, where it talks about.

For in fact, the body is not one member, but it's many.

But though it's many, it's one.

And Paul uses this analogy, talking about the body of Christ is just that Jesus is the head.

And then all of us make up the different parts of the body.

And we're all knit together, we're all connected.

You know, we're not disjointed.

And so it's a beautiful picture that God has for us, that he wants us to live in community, to understand.

I love that.

Galatians 6.

To bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the love of Christ.

That that's what it's all about.

Jesus didn't come to put something on us.

He came to.

To rescue us, to save us, and to help us.

When he left and went back to heaven, he said, I'll pray to the father in John 14 again, he said that, and he'll send another, the comforter, the Paracletos, who will be with you and he'll help you.

He'll be there to bring my words to remembrance.

He'll give you the strength and you'll be aware of my presence.

And you think of so many different relationships.

Probably as a man, one of my favorite in all the Bible is David and Jonathan love that.

Yep.

Yeah, just the loyal, the loyalty of that.

That here's Jonathan as the heir to the throne.

And yet he sees God's hand upon David and willingly serves him and loves him.

And you know, it says, and Jonathan loved David from that day forward as himself.

And there was this deep love.

And then when Jonathan died in the battlefield, David's first words in his, his memory of Jonathan, he said, jonathan, how my love for you is greater than that, even of that of a woman.

And people obviously misconstrued that through the years, but he was just talking about this deep love that, that there was no reason.

Jonathan wasn't getting anything out of loving David.

It wasn't for like, he wanted favor from him.

He just simply enjoyed the connection, the friendship and the fellowship.

New Testament we see one that we quote most often is book of Acts is Paul and Barnabas.

And I love that we tell people all the time, you, there's three people you need in your life.

You need a Paul who can disciple, you need a Timothy who you can disciple.

And you need a Barnabas that a son of encouragement, somebody that can come alongside and encourage you and also to be a Barnabas for other people.

People.

We live in a.

We.

I say it all the time.

We live in a broken world with other broken people.

And so people need encouragement.

Our hope with doing this podcast is to encourage people that, hey, all these things, like you said, anxiety is a.

It's a part of life.

We all struggle with it in varying degrees.

The.

The problem is that people with it, they suffer alone because they don't think anybody can relate.

But yet the Bible tells us that there's no temptation that's not common to man.

We struggle with the same issues.

So I love the fact when people open up and start to share, there's healing and there's hope.

And so that's why we're Doing this to begin with.

Yeah, absolutely.

So to just for this episode, we start with how, how does anxiety or does it impact relationships?

And it certainly does.

You've seen it, I've seen it.

And if you struggle with anxiety or you've known somebody that struggles with anxiety, you've probably seen it firsthand.

And so we went from that, we transitioned into, is it important then to not pull away from people?

Do we need to be with people?

Do we need to be in community?

And we would agree definitely that you do.

So then let's now speak to the person who maybe has struggled with anxiety or struggling with anxiety right now and it has started to impact relationships in their lives.

Mike, how can they begin to start restoring some of those relationships?

What are some practical steps maybe that they can take to help?

Where do they start?

Just admitting it.

We go over this every week in 180 in our recovery ministry is admit that there's a problem, talk about it, be open up.

Whether it's first open up to yourself.

Yeah.

And coming to that place where you go, you know what?

I get this.

And then talking to other people, take ownership of it.

Sometimes in life we tend to blame other people for the things that we're going through.

And the beauty of God is there's grace and there's mercy, there's forgiveness for our failings.

And once we, we own it and once we acknowledge that there's a problem, then if this was a step, I'd say then look to have a conversation with people, even if it's uncomfortable.

I tell if you've ever come into my office for counseling, I always say, there's two things I know about you before you ever came in this office, and they're good things.

One is that you're humble because the Bible says that a proud person will not be humble.

God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

And by virtue of the fact that they even are coming into the office, I know that they're being humble.

And then I also know, I say, hey, but you're also being wise.

You might not think that you're wise, but you're taking a step of wisdom here.

Because the Bible says, you know what King Jesus said before he goes out to battle, doesn't sit down with his men and determine how he might win the battle.

And having that conversation, like I said, even if it's a hard one, but, but speaking the truth and love, as the Bible says, and then maybe the most intimate thing that, that a person can do in this life it's greater than sexual intimacy, is spiritual intimacy.

You want to break through to me to the hilt.

Where you become connected to people is to pray with them, to go to God and to just pour out your heart and not worry about, you know, the things that you're saying.

Just.

You're taking those things to God with another person.

And it's amazing.

You'll find the people that you pray with the most are the people that you're closest to.

Amen.

Yeah, absolutely, too.

Absolutely true.

So just as we close and just some encouragement for you.

If you're listening to this today, to this episode, and maybe you're feeling a little uncomfortable, that's okay.

These things aren't.

They're not easy to talk about, and sometimes even they're harder to work through because you feel like there's no hope.

You feel like physically, you feel like you can't breathe and that it'll never be okay.

And so reaching out.

And I understand reaching out, apologizing, rebuilding trust, it's not always smooth.

And obviously you can't control other people's responses.

And it takes time, but it's worth it.

And you don't have to do it alone.

The Lord is with you if you just call on him.

And so you don't have to fix everything at once.

If that's you today, start with just one relationship.

Lord, have I hurt anybody?

Who comes to mind?

Who does he bring to mind?

And maybe just start by praying for that person and just see where the Lord leads.

To be honest with yourself, Pastor Mike was saying earlier as step one, you got to be honest with yourself.

The things that I'm going through, the anxiety that I experienced, has it impacted other relationships?

And you know what?

It's the same question that you'd be asking in season two with addiction.

Has my addiction impacted relationships?

And probably about 99.9% of the time, it has in some way.

But remember that God is in the business of restoration.

God restores, and that's just who he is.

He takes what's broken and he brings it back to life.

And he didn't just send you into this process.

He's there with you.

And so you're not alone.

And I want you to really know that you're not alone, that God's with you, that he's working.

And I love the hope that we see in verses like Romans 15:13 that says.

It says, I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him, that you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you're not going to find true, lasting hope apart from the Lord, apart from God.

So just as to wrap this up again, anxiety, just like addiction, doesn't define you, it doesn't define your relationships.

But it certainly impacts you and it can impact relationships.

So here's a again, here's a challenge for this week.

Think of one person, just one, and start reaching out to him.

Pray for him, reach out to him.

Start rebuilding.

If there's a relationship that has been hurt and it could just be a conversation, it could be a message, simple act of kindness, prayer, whatever it is, but just give it to the Lord and He'll guide you.

And just as a reminder, as we close again next week, we will not be here will be the following Thursday.

So it'll be a couple of weeks before we post our last episode.

But that last episode is going to be episode six and the title is A Hope that Holds Up.

So we close this whole season three with a message of hope that is only found in Jesus Christ.

We pray that this episode blessed you today.

Thanks for joining us.

If it did encourage you, share it, that's the best thing you can do.

As always, you can email us real lifecbakersfield.com but thank you again so much for joining us and we'll see you in the next episode.