Touching Lives With Dr. James Merritt

As we continue our series on feelings and emotions, today we are going to look at anxiety. I would define anxiety as a lethal combination of worry and fear that dominate your mind, saturate your heart, and devastate your soul. We are abiding in fear. It is that feeling that continues to linger long after the actual threat or fear has dissipated. It is a far greater intensity than just worried. People use worry and anxiety interchangeably. However, they are very different psychological states. According to Psychology Today, “Worry tends to be more focused on thoughts in our heads, while anxiety is more visceral, in that we feel it throughout our bodies.” The good news is a man with flesh and blood, sitting in a Roman prison, facing certain death, knowing he probably wouldn’t get out of that prison alive and not knowing what day he would die understood anxiety. In a book called Philippians, he gives us a four-step process on how to calm your nerves.