Living with anxiety is more than a struggle. Anxiety can easily dominate our thoughts and our lives. When you feel a panic attack, the racing thoughts block out nearly everything else. Persistent anxiety is exhausting and makes even the smallest activity seem impossible.
I’ve struggled with anxiety at different times. Sometimes, it involves panic attacks that come and go, and other times, it feels like a constant and relentless weight that I can’t move.
There are a number of ways to treat anxiety, and the effectiveness of each is usually dependent on the cause. Regardless of the cause, hope is one of the most powerful tools I’ve found to fight anxiety.
Hope Isn’t Wishing
Many people confuse hope with wishing and use the two words interchangeably. Hope is completely different, or rather the Christian virtue of hope is completely different from wishing. Wishing is desiring something to happen. “I wish I would win the lottery, or I wish I could get the job I applied for.” These are desired outcomes that we want to have happen. Wishing is emotional, a desire for something in the future.
Hope is something entirely separate. Hope is better understood as trust or confidence. In our Christian faith, the virtue of Hope is focused on our confidence and trust in God. We aren’t wishing for God to help. We know that He is helping us.
Hope is the opposite of anxiety. While anxiety involves worry, fear, panic, and a complete lack of peace, hope is a peaceful assurance that in the end, everything will be good.
The Virtue of Hope
The core of the virtue of hope is our trust in God. This trust centers on our trust that God will lead us to eternal life. It is trust in the resurrection, trust in God’s mercy and trust that Christ has prepared a place for us in heaven and awaits us to join Him.
In the three big theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love, faith and love get a lot more attention than hope. In our time today, I think hope is needed more than ever. Although anxiety has many causes and each person’s situation is unique, our society has a sense of dread and a lack of hope. This is pervasive across our media, in movies, tv shows, and music.
Nihilism, the idea that our lives have no purpose, is common today. It is the opposite of the Christian faith where we believe God is at work at all times. Our lives have a purpose and our God is working for our good.
The pinnacle of the virtue of Hope is not in this life but in the next. We look towards heaven and being with God for eternity. Lacking hope makes fighting anxiety much more difficult. If we believe there is no purpose to our lives and no future for us but suffering and death, then it’s really hard to have any optimism. Hope isn’t wishful optimism, but confident and assured optimism.
Applying Hope to Anxiety
Now, I’ve tried to focus on hope for eternal life and trust in God during panic attacks, and I can’t say that it has helped much. A panic attack can be overwhelming and my faith, hope and love have not stopped a panic attack.
So, why am I writing about fighting anxiety with hope if I haven’t been able to stop a panic attack with hope? Isn’t this an admission that hope doesn’t work?
When fighting anxiety, there are several outcomes that we want. Certainly, I would love to never feel any anxiety again. It’s miserable and getting rid of it completely would be a great relief. That’s one outcome, but hope, medication, therapy, spiritual practices and other tactics or treatments aren’t going to do that.
The next outcome I would like is for anxiety to be lessened so that it is easier for me to carry. There are a number of medical treatments that can effective. Some involve medication, and others forms of psychological therapy. Additionally, some anxiety is caused by spiritual problems, and getting help in that area is beneficial. The three areas, biological, psychological, and spiritual, can all be disrupted, and treating them requires addressing the correct cause. If you have a significant biological problem, perhaps your brain does not produce or process a chemical you need, all the therapy in the world is unlikely to help.
The same goes for the other two areas. If you have a spiritual problem or psychological problem, a pill is unlikely to help and certainly won’t fix the problem. Additionally, a psychologist can’t offer what a spiritual director can, and a spiritual director can’t offer what a psychologist can. Getting the right help is extremely important.
In this, hope can complement the various things you are doing
Hope has helped me in a couple of ways. First, there are occasions when my anxiety was high and hope helped calm me a little. If I focus on placing my hope and trust in God often, it doesn’t beat down a panic attack, but it can calm me a little.
When I experience mild or severe anxiety, I turn to hope. Regardless of whether it is a discomfort that gives me the jitters, or it is completely overwhelming, with my heart racing, thoughts all over the place, and an inability to focus on anything, hope helps. One benefit of hope is reminding me that there is good to look forward to. Another is to remember that I don’t need to the strength to overcome anxiety, but can rely on the strength of God. Another benefit is simply to give me something to focus my thoughts on that doesn’t add to my anxiety and can distract me from it.
These may seem like small things, and they are, but I have found many times that they can make anxiety bearable when it seems to be impossible to function with.
St. Ignatius’ Eighth Rule
St. Ignatius, in his spiritual exercises, gives 14 rules for discernment. The rules provide incredible insight into the spiritual life and I have found them extremely valuable. The eighth rule can be applied to anxiety and hope, and provides great insight into another way to use hope to fight anxiety.
St. Ignatius wrote: “The eighth: let one who is in desolation work to be in patience, which is contrary to the vexations which come to him, and let him think that he will soon be consoled, diligently using the means against such desolation, as is said in the sixth rule”
This rule is specifically addressing spiritual desolation, not anxiety, although anxiety and spiritual desolation can often come together. Desolation is the experience of feeling completely disconnected from God, isolated from God, with an emptiness and dryness in our spiritual lives. Prayer seems empty and pointless, and God seems absent. This may sound like depression, and it is similar, but it isn’t the same.
We’re not going to get into defining and addressing desolation in more detail here and instead return to our focus on hope.
St. Ignatius makes a very useful recommendation for spiritual desolation that we can apply to anxiety. He says that we should be patient and think about how we will soon be consoled. This is where hope comes in.
When I experience anxiety, I turn to hope and trust that these attacks will be short-lived. I’ve experienced hundreds of anxiety attacks. They have all ended. Some lasted days, others as short as an hour. None of them went on forever.
I know with certainty that the next anxiety attack I have will come to an end. I have complete hope and trust that the anxiety is temporary and will be short-lived. As St. Ignatius writes, I will soon be consoled.
This is really important to remember. In the middle of an anxiety attack, it feels like it will never end. It is easy to think we are stuck, without a way to fight and with no end in sight.
I have found that changing the outlook to an assurance that this is temporary is extremely effective. It makes the anxiety easier to carry because I know I don’t have to carry it for long.
Exercise and sports have been important elements of my life. I love to compete and push myself physically. When trying some difficult training task, perhaps running sprint intervals, doing pushups, or some other activity, it is extremely hard to push at full strength if I don’t have a goal or end in sight. Instead, if I know I need to push just another 100 feet or one more minute, I dig deep and push harder than I thought possible.
With anxiety, it is the same. If you know with certainty that the anxiety is short-lived, you will find that it is much easier to push through the suffering.
Assure yourself during any anxiety attack that it is almost over and won’t last much longer. I don’t care how long it actually lasts. I’ve had anxiety that lasted for days or weeks. I can’t face a week-long anxiety attack and fight it. I can fight for the next five or ten minutes. As long as I am confident it will be short-lived, I only have to persist for five or ten minutes. When that time is over, my hope tells me that I’m that much closer to the end, and the end of the anxiety is near.
Does this lessen the anxiety? Although I have a ton of personal experience with it, it is hard to answer this question. I know I am strengthened by my hope. The level of my anxiety might decrease, but even if it doesn’t, my strength to overcome it increases. The net effect is that the anxiety is easier to overcome.
Fighting a Panic Attack
Several years ago, I was fighting severe anxiety at work. My job was stressful and anxiety was nearly daily. It often lasted all day. I was still learning how to fight it and had not found a medical, psychological, or spiritual solution. At times, it was overwhelming and debilitating. Despite that, I had a family to provide for, so I was motivated to persevere.
One day, I was working through my emails. I read a compound sentence in one of them. By the time I finished the second half of the sentence, I forgot what the first half had said. I reread the first half, forgot the second half, and read it again. I did this at least half a dozen times before I realized what I was doing.
This was not some gigantic complex sentence with a lot of specialized technical terms. It was two phrases of about 15 words each with an “and” between them, and I couldn’t focus long enough to comprehend it.
It was incredibly humbling and depressing to think that I couldn’t understand a sentence in an email. I was ready to give up. I felt like I had reached my breaking point. My anxiety was extremely high, and the idea that I couldn’t think clearly enough to read a sentence meant I couldn’t do my job. That just added to my fear and anxiety. In my panic, I considered going to my car and never coming back. That wasn’t a viable option. I had a family to provide for and had to persevere.
Instead, I got up from my desk, I told myself that this panic attack that was making it impossible for me to think clearly was temporary. I only needed to outlast it and I would be able to return to my work tasks. I resolved to take a break: bathroom, water fountain, and a walk around the office. The entire time I took a break, I focused on my hope that the anxiety will end soon. I prayed to God for strength and help and trusted that I was close to some relief.
Every step I took on that short break was focused on how my anxiety attacks are short-lived and always end. I kept telling myself this would be over soon, and God would not let this go on forever.
If you expect me to tell you that magically all my anxiety was gone when I sat back down 10 minutes later, then you probably haven’t had many severe anxiety attacks. I’ve never had one just stop. This was no different. I still had anxiety when I sat down.
Instead, something else happened – something that I could work with.
When I got back to my desk, I was confident I would be able to do my work and the anxiety would fade soon. It wasn’t gone, but there was a strength in that confidence and hope that allowed me to get back to work.
The day was still miserable. It was a fight every minute to accomplish anything, but through the rest of the day, I knew that this would get better soon. That gave me the strength to persevere.
If you struggle with anxiety or other problems like addictions or depression, I think it is essential to be confident that the attacks will be short-lived. I’ve used the same hope with depression. Anxiety for me usually lasts a few hours or maybe a day. Depression seems to linger longer. Some bouts of depression have lasted weeks or months.
It doesn’t matter. When these fights begin, I focus on how I know with certainty that they will be short. I remind myself I have the strength to ride out a short panic attack or depressive episode. Just like a short sprint to just get to the next telephone pole, I sprint through the next five or ten minutes of whatever is attacking me. Regardless of how long the attack is, I can almost always muster the strength to get through a few minutes. After that few minutes, I know I’m closer to the end and gain strength in the fight.
This doesn’t mean the fight isn’t exhausting. It is, but hope is like a shot of energy that helps.
It’s important to know that there is no one right tactic for anxiety or other mental health issues. Some causes are biological, some psychological, and some spiritual, so the treatment needs to treat the cause.
Finding the right treatment or cure is different from my suggestion to use hope. My suggestion will help you fight through an attack when you want to give up, but I’m not offering or suggesting a cure.
This has been a very effective way for me to live with anxiety. It has given me strength. Finding a treatment that reduces anxiety is one side of the fight, and using hope, trust and confidence to increase your strength is the other side. Get stronger with hope and weaken your opponent with treatments that match the underlying cause. Putting both sides together, you can overcome anxiety.