It is amazingly easy and convenient to feed yourself all the wrong things. You can cheaply fill yourself with highly processed, fatty foods full of refined sugar. It is possible to go days, weeks, months, or longer without eating a green, leafy vegetable or an omega-rich piece of fish. You can sustain yourself with a steady diet of fast-food combos and convenience store options. The question, of course, is for how long and at what price.

At The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, we treat the whole person, which means the emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual components of each individual. Over the years, we’ve learned how important the physical component is to treating issues like anxiety.

Think about examining what you’re eating and drinking. For you to get a balanced picture of your habits, I want you to do this for an entire month. What I’ve found is that people tend to be “good” when tracking for the first week or so but then revert back to reality. You can’t change what you’re doing if you’re not dealing with reality. So go for 30 days. Guidelines for doing this include the following:

Use a separate piece of paper for each day. Keep it with you during the day so you don’t forget to write something down.

• Track what you eat every day, both weekdays and weekends. Many people have different rules for weekends, and I want you to have the full picture. You need to see the pattern of your eating across a broad span of time.

• Continue to eat the way you always do. You may be tempted to modify your eating habits because you’re keeping track, but that will defeat the purpose. You need to be aware of what you’re doing, not what you wish you were doing.

• Write down everything you eat and drink. That means everything that goes into your mouth. Everything counts, including water. You need to know how much you’re eating and drinking and what. Track amounts. Whenever possible, write down the caloric values for each.

For tracking your food, I’d like you to use the categories of the food pyramid: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, oils, and discretionary calories. For tracking your fluids, I’d like you to use four categories: water, caffeinated, alcohol, and other.

If you’re being especially brave, write down what you’re doing each day in the way of exercise or moving your body. If you’re able, purchase a small pedometer and wear it. This will allow you to see how much you’re really moving your body each day. A healthy body and a balanced system contribute to your overall health and ability to stabilize and maintain your moods. You feel better and sleep better.

Do you have a physician? If so, call now and make an appointment, setting the date to correspond with the end of your tracking so you can bring in the results. If you don’t have a primary care physician, consider finding one and going in for a physical. Bring along your tracking. If you persist in doing this without a physician, be honest about what you’re doing and the changes you know you need to make.

There is an absolute connection between mind and body. They affect each other, for good or for ill. Proverbs 15:3 says, “A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones.” What you feel emotinoally affects how you feel physically. As you seek to live a more positive life, looking for the good, don’t neglect the health of your bones.

SOURCE: Chapter 13 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace

I’ve said it before in several ways, but I want to say it again plainly: you have grown comfortable in your fears and anxieties. In a perverse way, they have become the known, the predictable, your comfort zone of behavior and expectation. To use a phrase from the book of Job, your anxieties and fears are “miserable comforts” but comforts still. You are more comfortable giving them control over your life than you are giving your life over to God. You’ve allowed your anxieties to provide you with meager, miserable comforts instead of claiming the true comfort promised by your loving Father. Listen to him argue passionately in his own defense in Isaiah 51:

I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction?

For where is the wrath for the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread.

For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name.

I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand -

I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, “You are my people.”

Do not take meager, miserable comfort any longer in your anxieties; choose to believe God when he says, “I, even I, am he who comforts you.” He is stronger, more powerful, and mightier than the fears and anxieties that oppress you, no matter what lies those fears and anxieties tell you.

There is, of course, another part of this: you must allow yourself to be comforted by God; you must accept his comfort. To do this, you need to reject the tie – the relationship – you have with your anxieties. They’ve become so much a part of you that to reject them can seem tantamount to rejecting who you are. Again, in a perverse and paradoxical way, you’ve developed a relationship, a friendship, with your anxieties that must be broken. This friendship is not grounded in the spiritual realm, in God-reality, as it says in the Message; it is grounded firmly in the perceptions and deceptions, in the lies, of this world. Tying yourself to your anxieties ties you to this world.

To go with God, you have to give up these ties to the world, this relationship you have with your anxieties. James 4:4-10 clearly shows you can’t have it both ways. The world and God are in direct competition with each other for your heart and mind. You already know what happens to your heart and mind when the world – when your anxieties and fears – are ascendant. Day by day, step by step, choice by choice, begin to shift your allegiance from the world of your anxieties, worries and fears to God.

SOURCE: Chapter 14 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace.

Big fears are a complex connection of smaller components. Fears generally have a time line – a when. They have a reason – a why. They have a pattern – a what. They have an outlet, a venue for expression – a how. The type of counseling I use is called cognitive-behavioral. It’s a method that addresses each of these components – the when, the why, the what, and the how.

By understanding when things started and why, you gain context. When you develop a strategy for changing your behavior, you change what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, allowing you to replace those old, negative patterns with new, healthier ones.

PROGRESSIVE EXPOSURE

The way to combat the progressive nature of fear is to combat it with another form of progression – a technique called progressive exposure or systematic desensitization. The escalation of fear makes it seem impossibly big; to tackle it, you’ve got to cut it down to size. Then, starting small, you progressively work your way up the ladder of your fear, becoming if not comfortable at least tolerant of each progressive rung.

Here are some steps I recommend for progressive exposure:

1) First, this has to be something you’re willing to do, but it doesn’t have to be done alone. Systematic desensitization works very well in conjunction with regular counseling. Your therapist acts as a coach and encourager, helping you prepare for, execute, and debrief after each step or rung of the process. If you’re not able to work with a professional, sometimes you can call on a trusted friend to partner with you.

2) Before you start, practice relaxation techniques and identify those that work best for you. Be comfortable with them in lower-stress situations, integrating them into your routine so they will be available to you when the stress stakes are higher.

3) If you experience several specific fears or concerns, start with the one you feel most able to tackle first, generally the one that causes you the fewest physical reactions. Then map out the course of your fear. Start at the bottom run and chronicle each aspect until you reach the top:

• thing or activity you fear
• where the fear starts
• what happens and what you’re feeling
• where it leads, as in what you’re worried will happen
• what actually happened

4) Keep a journal. There is so much to be gained by taking on the challenge, and, realistically, unless you take the time to write something down, you’re likely to forget it.

5) Give yourself the gift of time. It’s the progress that matters, not the pace.

6) No cheating. You will experience discomfort as you work through the process. In the past, you may have developed coping strategies that involve masking or numbing the discomfort. These are cheats and will negate your effort and work.

7) Don’t be a hero. You don’t need to do this alone. The more debilitating the anxiety, the more you may need to work with a trained professional or, at the very least, a trusted friend or relative.

SOURCE: Chapter 11 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace.

One of the main strategies to reduce your anxiety level is to de-clutter your life. The first step to doing so is to examine what you’re doing and start doing less.

How do you feel about that last sentence? Does it make you anxious just thinking about doing less? Are you worried that you’ll choose the wrong thing, that you’ll make a mistake and drop something urgent? Are you arguing with me, even now, countering that you’d love to give something up but you just can’t, that everything you’re doing is important?

If so, take a deep breath and calm down. Those are your anxieties talking. They’ve hijacked your brain and are in full defense mode. They’re not speaking from the truth; they’re speaking from their false perceptions.

DE-CLUTTER YOUR THOUGHTS

Before you are ready to get rid of the clutter in your life, you need to get rid of the clutter in your thoughts. This isn’t something that will come naturally to you; quite the opposite, you’re going to need to wrest control of your mind back from your anxieties. You’re going to need to value your peace of mind, your sense of self, and truth more than you value your anxieties.

You may think you don’t value your anxieties, that all you want to do is get rid of them, but consider something for a moment. We tend to hold on to the things we value.  If you didn’t really value your anxieties on some level, you wouldn’t have held on to them this long.

TRACK YOUR TIME

How you spend your time tells a great deal about what you value. Try keeping track.

First, think about your typical monthly activities. For a 30-day month, write down how many hours you spend sleeping, working, getting to work, taking care of household chores, fulfilling family obligations, etc.

Next, think about what you do with your “discretionary” time and just how much time that actually is. For example, during a 24-hour day, most people spend a third of the time sleeping, a third of the time working (for most days), leaving a third of the time. I’d like you to monitor what you do with that other third – that discretionary time.

Ask yourself some questions:

• How much time do I really have for myself?

• Which activities are ones that I have deemed important?

• Which activities are those other people have required me to do?

• For each of the activities listed, decide whether you like doing it. Is it an activity that brings you pleasure? Why? What do you value about the activity?

• For each activity listed, think about stopping it tomorrow. What is your immediate reaction? Can you see yourself in the future not doing this activity? Does the thought of stopping this activity make you anxious? If so, why?

• Are there any activities you would like to give up but don’t feel you can? Which ones? Why do you feel obligated or compelled to continue doing them? What do you think would happen if you stopped?

• As you looked over your list, were you surprised at how much or how little time you’re actually spending in a given area? If so, which ones and why?

It can be startling to see how you really spend your time. Think about what this says about your anxieties and your priorities.

SOURCE: Chapter 9 in Dr. Jantz’s Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace.