Five Funky Dysfunctions: Worry
February 28, 2010
February 28, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 12:22-31
During the First World War, the army fliers developed this philosophy: “When you are in the air you will either be flying straight or turning over. If you are flying straight, there is no cause to worry. If you are turning over, one of two things is true: you will either right the plane or fail. If you right the plane, there is no cause to worry. If you fail, one of two things is certain: you will either be injured slightly or injured seriously. If you are injured slightly, there is no cause to worry. If you are injured seriously, one of two things will happen: you will either die or recover. If you recover, there is no cause to worry; and if you die, you can’t.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our worrying were solved as easily as that? Because we do worry – we worry about things big and small. Parents worry about children and children worry about parents; students worry about school, many worry about finances, almost everyone worries about what others think of them, we worry about health and health insurance, we worry about the next election and the last crisis, I’m quite confident that Jenny worried about being liturgist today, that Barbara worried about the anthem, and every week I worry about the sermon. And some of this worry spurs us to do our best. Worry seems pretty universal, so today’s gospel seems to be another one of those passages where we might think that Jesus just doesn’t get it – easy for him not to worry – he didn’t have to worry about saving for retirement, caring for his aging father, or how his career was going.
I may have shared with you before that one of my favorite comic strips of all time is a Frank and Ernest strip in which Frank and Ernest are chatting, and one says, “I know that the only thing to fear is fear itself, but lately I’ve been worrying about anxiety.”
I remember from when I was in high school the blurb on the front of the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church bulletin one week that said something like, “A certain man said, ‘I have had a great many troubles in my life, many of which never actually happened.’” Through worry, we live through troubles that haven’t even happened… A colleague shared the following:
“Stress management experts say that only two percent of our "worrying time" is spent on things that might actually be helped by worrying. The figures below illustrate how the other 98 percent of this time is spent:
I thought long and hard this week about whether to share some of my own experience with you this week – after all, the sermon isn’t about me – it’s about God, and I truly do not want it to be the ‘Susan show’. Nonetheless, I have grappled long and hard with worry, and so I finally decided to err on the sharing side this week. And then for the next few weeks, I’ll promise not to draw on my own life! (So feel free to come to me with your own stories about anger, addiction and self-image and then I can talk about you instead!)
I always was somewhat of a worrier as a child, but it was during my freshman year of college, after my best friend’s suicide, that my natural worrying morphed into full-blown anxiety. In my case, the worrying was not productive. I didn’t worry about whether I might pass the test and so study harder… I worried that I might choke to death while eating, or get rabies, or lose my mind. And within a couple of years, the anxiety wasn’t always attached to a specific possibility, but was a free-floating fear that clutched at my throat, chilled my blood, and woke me up at night. Oddly enough, this anxiety did not keep me from making some major life decisions, including going to work in a steel mill – first as a laborer, then as an electrician apprentice, marrying Carl, going to grad school to earn my MBA and become a CPA, having 3 children. But for about 20 years (ages 18-38), through all these life experiences, I was accompanied by worry that often took the joy out of life. And, in addition to the underlying anxiety, I also worried about whether it would adversely affect the boys, and worried that people would notice, so I spent extra energy trying to hide my worry.
During those hard years lived with too much worry, I learned some things that I’d like to share with you. I read as much as I could find on worry, but this was before anxiety was discussed much, and certainly before worry was in the popular press often. Nonetheless, I read a marvelous book by a psychiatrist named Archibald Hart – the book came out in 1986 and was about adrenalin and stress. This is where this week’s sermon on worry will intersect with last week’s sermon on hurry – Dr. Hart said that as our lives get more and more hurried and intense, many of us get used to running on adrenalin and like the feeling. The problem is, he said, that what was intended as a life-saving fight or flight response becomes our usual mode of being. He suggested that because of this overuse, at times the adrenal gland, which produces adrenalin, can get stuck in overload, producing adrenalin when it is not needed, which we then experience as anxiety, fear or worry. I can’t vouch for the medical information, but I can attest that the model works. One of the ways I learned to moderate my stress was to slow down, and additionally to engage in less intense amusement (watching less TV, and especially less intense TV), and even getting away from noise proved helpful for me. Let me assure you, finding quiet space at that time in our lives with three little boys was not always easy…but it helped. So developing some non-intense ways of relaxing can be helpful – yoga, knitting, canoeing or walking in the woods. Yes, meditation can also be helpful, especially since it helps us to develop the habit of mindfulness, living in the present moment, while worry is racing ahead imagining the future.
I also learned that exercising creativity can help – paint, knit, build things, write poetry or make music. Perhaps because there is often a playful quality to creativity – and it is a good use of imagination. People who worry are often people with a good imagination – they can imagine all kinds of things going wrong. Doing something creative is a more constructive use of that imagination! And it is taking on one of the habits of God the creator, instead of spinning our wheels.
Connecting with other people is also helpful – talking with a friend or a counselor. It is very tempting, when worried, to withdraw into our worries. But focusing on our worries takes us to a more basic level of our brains that is only concerned with life-or-death issues – it is often called reptilian thinking because reptiles really only are capable of thinking about survival. If we connect with other people, we are engaged in higher-order thinking that is typical of mammals, who not only think about living and dying, but about bonding, nurturing, relationships. Engaging in more complex thinking that only humans do can pull our thinking even further from the reptilian fear model – do crossword puzzles, learn a language, and yes, exercise your creativity or your sense of humor. We were created by God to be concerned with more than our own survival – and perhaps that is part of what Jesus was trying to get at.
We should recognize that worry is sometimes an appropriate signal. if you are worried when you consider a major purchase such as a new car or a big TV when you already don’t have any margin in your budget, the fear is appropriate. Listen to it. Other times, a little fear is the appropriate accompaniment as we stretch into a new challenge. I remember a girl who was competing in a junior high version of College Bowl called the Scholastic Showdown. As the kids got ready to compete, Elizabeth said to her mother, “”My stomach feels kind of funny.” Her mother responded, “Oh honey, those are just butterflies in your stomach…” as Elizabeth said, “I love that feeling!” See if you can make the butterflies your friends sometimes – they are helping you meet a challenge!
And also, recognize that worry is often not an appropriate signal, and you can live with the worry, as unpleasant as it is. One of my many fears is flying. I don’t particularly enjoy it, and it really scares me – I make myself fly because I don’t want to miss the rich experiences that I can only have by being willing to fly, but I always worry before I travel. Once when Jason was quite small, he and I were flying back from visiting my folks and my mom had given him a little wooden airplane. As we were waiting to take off, he was playing with his little airplane and went, “Faster faster faster faster whoosh…..BOOM (crash)!” And I still remember my racing thoughts: oh no is this an omen??? No we don’t believe in omens. It doesn’t mean anything, as I said out loud something more like, “Oh no sweetie, the plane doesn’t go CRASH – it flies through the air!”
No, our worry isn’t an omen. And although our feelings are a source of information, they can be misleading. The real breakthrough for me with my own anxiety was when I realized that my worry was just a feeling – and although it was a feeling I hated, it was a feeling I could live with. So I learned to greet the awful anxious feeling with the realization that it didn’t mean anything and was just going to be there with me for a while, but had no more significance than a headache. And I don’t know whether it was connected to my not granting the worry any power in my life anymore, but it was not too long afterward that it seemed to leave…although I’ll always be prone to worry, and even the old anxiety will occasionally make a brief appearance.
The other way of thinking that has been very helpful to me has been to realize that many of the bad things I worry about will, indeed, happen. Every single one of us will die. Some of us will die early. Some will die later than we want. We will lose loved ones. We will experience disappointment; most of us will fail at some time or another. We will disappoint ourselves, embarrass ourselves, and many of us will experience broken hearts from which we will wonder whether we can ever recover. And we will move on and we will, eventually, be fine. We’ll be changed, in some ways perhaps we’ll be better for some of the hard things we endure, while other challenges will really damage us, but we will be well. The worst thing in life isn’t all the things we worry about – a worse thing is missing out on life while we are trying to be safe. God is always with us and will see us through hard, even horrible experiences – and the small and big losses we have may be a pathway to a deeper trust in God, a greater sense of God’s presence, and a keener sense of solidarity with the pain of others.
Nonetheless, even when we know all that, sometimes we still worry. And telling ourselves not to worry is rarely helpful – after all, if you were told to think of anything but a large purple ostrich, you probably couldn’t think of anything else. I brought something today to help us all remember one way to worry a little less. [Hold up empty glass.] How can I get the air out of this glass? Can I pour it out? Pound it out?? {upending glass, pounding on bottom…] The only way I can get the air out of this glass…is to replace the air with something else [pour water into glass].
With what should we replace our worry? Jesus suggests we should think more about the things of God: Instead, [he says] seek God’s kingdom, and all these things will be given to you as well.
And Paul gives some more specific advice just after the passage Jenny read this morning – here is that passage again, with the additional verse: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” We can be giving thanks in all circumstances, focusing on the things for which we feel gratitude. We can think about the good things of God, and work on those things in our own life – for God’s favorite working material is the human heart, and when we genuinely are more concerned with sharing working for justice and giving thanks for the ways we have experienced God’s love in creation and through our own life – God will honor our intentions.
Finally, we will worry – it is normal, it is human, and we shouldn’t shame ourselves for it. That is to say – worrying about our worry is scarcely a step forward. Let us just draw nearer to God, and be drawn out of ourselves into the deep love of God and God’s love for the world. It is for this that we were made…thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 12:22-31
During the First World War, the army fliers developed this philosophy: “When you are in the air you will either be flying straight or turning over. If you are flying straight, there is no cause to worry. If you are turning over, one of two things is true: you will either right the plane or fail. If you right the plane, there is no cause to worry. If you fail, one of two things is certain: you will either be injured slightly or injured seriously. If you are injured slightly, there is no cause to worry. If you are injured seriously, one of two things will happen: you will either die or recover. If you recover, there is no cause to worry; and if you die, you can’t.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our worrying were solved as easily as that? Because we do worry – we worry about things big and small. Parents worry about children and children worry about parents; students worry about school, many worry about finances, almost everyone worries about what others think of them, we worry about health and health insurance, we worry about the next election and the last crisis, I’m quite confident that Jenny worried about being liturgist today, that Barbara worried about the anthem, and every week I worry about the sermon. And some of this worry spurs us to do our best. Worry seems pretty universal, so today’s gospel seems to be another one of those passages where we might think that Jesus just doesn’t get it – easy for him not to worry – he didn’t have to worry about saving for retirement, caring for his aging father, or how his career was going.
I may have shared with you before that one of my favorite comic strips of all time is a Frank and Ernest strip in which Frank and Ernest are chatting, and one says, “I know that the only thing to fear is fear itself, but lately I’ve been worrying about anxiety.”
I remember from when I was in high school the blurb on the front of the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church bulletin one week that said something like, “A certain man said, ‘I have had a great many troubles in my life, many of which never actually happened.’” Through worry, we live through troubles that haven’t even happened… A colleague shared the following:
“Stress management experts say that only two percent of our "worrying time" is spent on things that might actually be helped by worrying. The figures below illustrate how the other 98 percent of this time is spent:
- 40% on things that never happen
- 35% on things that can't be changed
- 15% on things that turn out better than expected
- 8% on useless, petty worries
- 98% of the time our worrying doesn't accomplish anything, yet we continually worry. We worry about our treasures, our homes, our possessions. We worry about finances, about children, about parents. We worry about our health, our futures.”
I thought long and hard this week about whether to share some of my own experience with you this week – after all, the sermon isn’t about me – it’s about God, and I truly do not want it to be the ‘Susan show’. Nonetheless, I have grappled long and hard with worry, and so I finally decided to err on the sharing side this week. And then for the next few weeks, I’ll promise not to draw on my own life! (So feel free to come to me with your own stories about anger, addiction and self-image and then I can talk about you instead!)
I always was somewhat of a worrier as a child, but it was during my freshman year of college, after my best friend’s suicide, that my natural worrying morphed into full-blown anxiety. In my case, the worrying was not productive. I didn’t worry about whether I might pass the test and so study harder… I worried that I might choke to death while eating, or get rabies, or lose my mind. And within a couple of years, the anxiety wasn’t always attached to a specific possibility, but was a free-floating fear that clutched at my throat, chilled my blood, and woke me up at night. Oddly enough, this anxiety did not keep me from making some major life decisions, including going to work in a steel mill – first as a laborer, then as an electrician apprentice, marrying Carl, going to grad school to earn my MBA and become a CPA, having 3 children. But for about 20 years (ages 18-38), through all these life experiences, I was accompanied by worry that often took the joy out of life. And, in addition to the underlying anxiety, I also worried about whether it would adversely affect the boys, and worried that people would notice, so I spent extra energy trying to hide my worry.
During those hard years lived with too much worry, I learned some things that I’d like to share with you. I read as much as I could find on worry, but this was before anxiety was discussed much, and certainly before worry was in the popular press often. Nonetheless, I read a marvelous book by a psychiatrist named Archibald Hart – the book came out in 1986 and was about adrenalin and stress. This is where this week’s sermon on worry will intersect with last week’s sermon on hurry – Dr. Hart said that as our lives get more and more hurried and intense, many of us get used to running on adrenalin and like the feeling. The problem is, he said, that what was intended as a life-saving fight or flight response becomes our usual mode of being. He suggested that because of this overuse, at times the adrenal gland, which produces adrenalin, can get stuck in overload, producing adrenalin when it is not needed, which we then experience as anxiety, fear or worry. I can’t vouch for the medical information, but I can attest that the model works. One of the ways I learned to moderate my stress was to slow down, and additionally to engage in less intense amusement (watching less TV, and especially less intense TV), and even getting away from noise proved helpful for me. Let me assure you, finding quiet space at that time in our lives with three little boys was not always easy…but it helped. So developing some non-intense ways of relaxing can be helpful – yoga, knitting, canoeing or walking in the woods. Yes, meditation can also be helpful, especially since it helps us to develop the habit of mindfulness, living in the present moment, while worry is racing ahead imagining the future.
I also learned that exercising creativity can help – paint, knit, build things, write poetry or make music. Perhaps because there is often a playful quality to creativity – and it is a good use of imagination. People who worry are often people with a good imagination – they can imagine all kinds of things going wrong. Doing something creative is a more constructive use of that imagination! And it is taking on one of the habits of God the creator, instead of spinning our wheels.
Connecting with other people is also helpful – talking with a friend or a counselor. It is very tempting, when worried, to withdraw into our worries. But focusing on our worries takes us to a more basic level of our brains that is only concerned with life-or-death issues – it is often called reptilian thinking because reptiles really only are capable of thinking about survival. If we connect with other people, we are engaged in higher-order thinking that is typical of mammals, who not only think about living and dying, but about bonding, nurturing, relationships. Engaging in more complex thinking that only humans do can pull our thinking even further from the reptilian fear model – do crossword puzzles, learn a language, and yes, exercise your creativity or your sense of humor. We were created by God to be concerned with more than our own survival – and perhaps that is part of what Jesus was trying to get at.
We should recognize that worry is sometimes an appropriate signal. if you are worried when you consider a major purchase such as a new car or a big TV when you already don’t have any margin in your budget, the fear is appropriate. Listen to it. Other times, a little fear is the appropriate accompaniment as we stretch into a new challenge. I remember a girl who was competing in a junior high version of College Bowl called the Scholastic Showdown. As the kids got ready to compete, Elizabeth said to her mother, “”My stomach feels kind of funny.” Her mother responded, “Oh honey, those are just butterflies in your stomach…” as Elizabeth said, “I love that feeling!” See if you can make the butterflies your friends sometimes – they are helping you meet a challenge!
And also, recognize that worry is often not an appropriate signal, and you can live with the worry, as unpleasant as it is. One of my many fears is flying. I don’t particularly enjoy it, and it really scares me – I make myself fly because I don’t want to miss the rich experiences that I can only have by being willing to fly, but I always worry before I travel. Once when Jason was quite small, he and I were flying back from visiting my folks and my mom had given him a little wooden airplane. As we were waiting to take off, he was playing with his little airplane and went, “Faster faster faster faster whoosh…..BOOM (crash)!” And I still remember my racing thoughts: oh no is this an omen??? No we don’t believe in omens. It doesn’t mean anything, as I said out loud something more like, “Oh no sweetie, the plane doesn’t go CRASH – it flies through the air!”
No, our worry isn’t an omen. And although our feelings are a source of information, they can be misleading. The real breakthrough for me with my own anxiety was when I realized that my worry was just a feeling – and although it was a feeling I hated, it was a feeling I could live with. So I learned to greet the awful anxious feeling with the realization that it didn’t mean anything and was just going to be there with me for a while, but had no more significance than a headache. And I don’t know whether it was connected to my not granting the worry any power in my life anymore, but it was not too long afterward that it seemed to leave…although I’ll always be prone to worry, and even the old anxiety will occasionally make a brief appearance.
The other way of thinking that has been very helpful to me has been to realize that many of the bad things I worry about will, indeed, happen. Every single one of us will die. Some of us will die early. Some will die later than we want. We will lose loved ones. We will experience disappointment; most of us will fail at some time or another. We will disappoint ourselves, embarrass ourselves, and many of us will experience broken hearts from which we will wonder whether we can ever recover. And we will move on and we will, eventually, be fine. We’ll be changed, in some ways perhaps we’ll be better for some of the hard things we endure, while other challenges will really damage us, but we will be well. The worst thing in life isn’t all the things we worry about – a worse thing is missing out on life while we are trying to be safe. God is always with us and will see us through hard, even horrible experiences – and the small and big losses we have may be a pathway to a deeper trust in God, a greater sense of God’s presence, and a keener sense of solidarity with the pain of others.
Nonetheless, even when we know all that, sometimes we still worry. And telling ourselves not to worry is rarely helpful – after all, if you were told to think of anything but a large purple ostrich, you probably couldn’t think of anything else. I brought something today to help us all remember one way to worry a little less. [Hold up empty glass.] How can I get the air out of this glass? Can I pour it out? Pound it out?? {upending glass, pounding on bottom…] The only way I can get the air out of this glass…is to replace the air with something else [pour water into glass].
With what should we replace our worry? Jesus suggests we should think more about the things of God: Instead, [he says] seek God’s kingdom, and all these things will be given to you as well.
And Paul gives some more specific advice just after the passage Jenny read this morning – here is that passage again, with the additional verse: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” We can be giving thanks in all circumstances, focusing on the things for which we feel gratitude. We can think about the good things of God, and work on those things in our own life – for God’s favorite working material is the human heart, and when we genuinely are more concerned with sharing working for justice and giving thanks for the ways we have experienced God’s love in creation and through our own life – God will honor our intentions.
Finally, we will worry – it is normal, it is human, and we shouldn’t shame ourselves for it. That is to say – worrying about our worry is scarcely a step forward. Let us just draw nearer to God, and be drawn out of ourselves into the deep love of God and God’s love for the world. It is for this that we were made…thanks be to God. Amen.