The Truth about Mental Health: Redefining Anxiety

When one of my kids was in kindergarten, I went to pick them up from school and saw the teacher shaking her head at me from across the long hallway.

It wasn’t an angry shake or even a disappointed shake. It was really more of a I-wish-this-world-was-less-hard kind of shake.

Neurodiversity is part of our household in more ways than one. Sometimes people think differently, respond differently, and I’m convinced even taste differently. But the trick of neurodiversity is getting to know either your own or to understand those you love. Sometimes neurodiversity looks like creativity and depth. Other times, it looks like triggers and confusion.

That day with the kindergarten teacher, I listened to her tell me a story of my child’s experience in a world that doesn’t always understand frazzled nerves and a pinched sensory systems. Sometimes the room is too bright, too loud, too harsh, too…everything.

As the tears rolled down my cheeks, she told me the story of a small child so overwhelmed by the swirl of life around them that they hid in a cubby, folded themselves right up into it, because it felt safe.

His teacher was nothing short of amazing and she expressed my own sentiment perfectly –

I don’t want my child to be any different. I just want it all to be less hard for them.

There have been many a day in my own life I’ve wanted to hide in a cubby. Maybe you have felt the same way.

Similar to the spectrum of autism spectrum, anxiety, and our own journey with it, can vastly differ from person to person.

Today on the podcast I offer a flexible definition of anxiety. I’ve been researching and working on a fuller lens to understand anxiety since graduate school. On the podcast you’ll hear the wisdom and research of books and academic articles, observations in my own life, treatments proven mild to mostly effective for anxiety, and my observations as a therapist. It’s not meant to be a complete definition, but an open conversation, a re-contextualizing of anxiety and how we understand it, especially with God’s grace in mind.

I’m hoping that this will help us to:

– be more mindful for the sake of those around us with anxiety or sensory struggles

– help individuals understand the “why” of different components of treatment – in particular medication, therapy, and connection

– move toward better long term treatment of anxiety by encouraging expanded research concerning the definitions we utilize

– offer better spiritual care for anxiety, mental health, and working toward ending the stigma and trauma that can come when we misapply a lens God never intended for our mental health

Because some days we all want to hid in cubbies.

The Truth about Mental Health … it’s time to redefine anxiety.

*No small children were harmed in the writing of this article. Permission was granted by my child to share this story.