Anxiety Attack

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

I remember walking through the halls of my high school slapping hands with my friends in exchange for letters between classes. We only had so much time to quickly find one another and allow our wrists to hug brief enough to jab the letter response into the other person's hand; smoothly enough that those around us would barely notice. Our method wasn’t unique. All friend connections in my high school exchanged letters in a cleverly folded and disguised transport service, but each moment you received or delivered a new letter you felt like you were a part of something deeply and meaningfully connected.

The content we wrote about was significant to us at the time. I am sure that now if we went back and read those letters, we would all have a different reaction. I imagine an emotional symphony made up of laughter, silent tears, sighs, and many other sounds of reminiscence connecting us to memories that lay dormant in our subconscious. I do believe that we would all agree that these letters allowed us to share in the most vulnerable, raw, and transparent ways. There was a comfort in putting ink to paper and paper to hand that unloaded some of our most intimate messages to be shared with friends or high school lovers.

We unloaded our emotional baggage onto one another, and I didn’t realize then what I realize now; it was therapy. The trust in the letter transport system was so intricate because you had to make sure that you didn’t mix up what letter you gave to whom as you might share a secret with the wrong individual. We held one another’s feelings and thoughts and the box that filled up in the back of my closet next to my diary was sacred and never to be touched by anyone but me.

One day, for some, had to be important reason I had my box of letters with me in the car. I remember it rained hard and the reservoir between the edge of the curb and the asphalt filled with water rushed downhill. I opened the door to get out and knocked my box of letters into the rushing water. The box inconveniently released its top and all the letters started to flow out of its mouth and into the water. Before I knew it, they were soaked and making their way down an urban river filled with rainwater and waste, the sewer. For minutes, I was so upset and sad that I had lost so many of my written memories, but moments after I was relieved because I was able to release the secrets in a way that kept them safe from exposure while unburdening myself from the weight, I didn’t know I bore by holding onto them.

This was my release.

I found a way to attack my anxiety without knowing it. I released it to friends without knowing how much it helped me mentally and emotionally. Then, when I lost all my letters I was released again from the weight of their secrets and unburdened from making sure they were never exposed. As an adult, I struggled to find a way to attack my anxiety intentionally, but The Spirit led me to find a healthy way.

As a young adult in college, I became increasingly serious about my walk with God and mimicked the elders in my church in how loudly and vehemently they prayed. I was so desperate to get it right that I did what they did. While mimicking them I found my own war cry. I would weep and cry out to God in ways that shocked me. I would go into prayer thinking I didn’t have much to say or share and once I laid before God and began to seek Him through words of worship and praise, I would start to weep. My weeping would turn from quiet whimpers to deep sobs and mumbles of supplication. I would get up feeling a little light-headed, probably dehydrated from crying, but lighter in my body, soul, and spirit. It made sense; from the science of crying to the spiritual truth that the burdens I carried were now in the most trusted hands they could ever be in I not only felt better; I was better.

This way my new release.

One Saturday while in quiet prayer during our weekly church prayer meetings, I was approached by the woman who was my co-pastor at the time. In the middle of my war cry, she crouched down next to me. I thought she was coming to tell me to quiet down even though I knew for sure I wasn’t the loudest one out of the group. After all, I learned from some of them what came very naturally to me in how I prayed. She told me something to the effect of: “Baby, you can’t hear the Lord with all that crying and emotion. You need to quiet yourself so that you can hear what He wants to say to you.” These words, even now, sound like wisdom. I often sit quietly on my couch and just commune with My Lord, but these words affected my prayer life.

My release was challenged.

These words clogged my release and when I got loud during prayer, I became more conscious of the people in the room than I was of God. This same person would often tell me I talked too much because I would confide in others that I thought were friends and they would behave inappropriately or share my business. I too shared their business because we were a church of cliques and pastoral favorites. Again, I did not know that I attacked my anxiety through emotional supplication and sharing with my clique. After some time, I only mimicked a war cry on cue with the others because then I knew it was okay to be loud or emotional. I kept all my pain to myself and only shared my trials with the pastors who weren’t equipped to help me and after a while, I stopped telling them because it became such a norm that it no longer mattered. My misery had no company. I lived in the secrets that clogged my mind, heart, and spirit. I held my burdens from my most trusted friends and my God.

Almost five years later I am writing in realization of how I attacked my anxiety growing up. Just to be clear, I have never been diagnosed with any anxiety disorder, and it was not until recently that I felt like I needed to get tested for it. I imagine that a combination of societal trauma and the release that I have only engaged in on occasion has kept me clogged with the emotions I am producing and the ones I absorb from those I care about. There have been some counterfeit releases like fatty food and TV binging, which only left me with more anxiety about my weight and whatever triggers the TV pulled on from my past.

This brings me to a moment I had in the last week where my anxiety was gradually increasing, and I started to think about the cake and ice cream I was going to get to make me feel better. I sat for some time as my anxiety attacked and for the first time, I silently asked God: “How do I release this?” He told me to pray, and it was better than I remember five years ago. I re-engaged my war cry.

I found my release.

I am a broken and drastically imperfect human, but I do my best to mind my words. The pen is mightier than the sword. What you say to a person stays with them whether your intentions are good or bad no matter if they remember it or not. I know I have used words to cut people from head to toe and I must live with the fact that there are many still affected by something I said to them.

The other thing to note is that what you say may not be how the person is hearing or receiving it. I believe that’s why God said in the book of Colossians chapter six verse four: “Let your words be seasoned with grace.” The holder of grace is God and seasoning is our yield to The Holy Spirit. My prayer is that I am diligent to be so connected to God that my grace seasoning is not just a coating covering the poison of my words, but that it is in the soil and root of my expression.