Anxious Much? Series

Technicolor JOY: Philippians 4:4-7

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

09-10-2023

Hola

When I first finished seminary, I worked in a large psychiatric hospital's needs assessment call center. I would take calls, set up assessments, and answer questions from patients, family members, and doctors.

Every once in a while, we would receive a “mystery call.” This was a fake call from someone at the corporate office to evaluate our skills. Most of the time, they were so bad that we knew right away that they weren’t real.

We were told what day a mystery call would come in but not the time. I had worked most of the afternoon and night and all the calls were legit so we assumed the call would come the next morning.

Five minutes before I ended my shift a call came from one of the units, in-house. I had a friend who worked on that unit so when I answered I said, “Hola! It’s time to party!” Then I heard, “My mother has been hearing voices. What should I do?” It was the mystery call!

I went home that night and told Maxine that I was going to be fired the next morning. I tossed and turned all night wondering how I could be so stupid to answer a call that way. I came very close to having an anxiety attack.

The next morning, a woman walked into our office and asked to see Jefferson. I took a deep breath and started to apologize.

She cut me off and said that they were going to have to work on the system to transfer calls because she didn’t actually hear my greeting but she gave me a 5/5 because I did such a good job on the call.

I spent 15 hours worried about something that God had already taken care of. Anyone else ever experienced that?

The Pandemic of Anxiety

It’s estimated that over 40 million Americans deal with mild to moderate forms of anxiety.

Anxiety is a normal emotion. We all feel it. A little bit of anxiety is good for us. It keeps us sharp and on our toes.

I’ve been preaching for many years but I always feel a little rush of anxiety right before I get up to preach.

I felt a LOT of anxiety right before I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.

Anxiety becomes a problem when it is pervasive. When it is overwhelming. When you can’t shake it off.

It is characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some possible contingency.

A woman feared for years that her house would be broken into. One night they heard a noise and the husband went down to investigate. He found a young man trying to crawl through the window. They both froze. Finally, the man said, “What’s your name kid?” The kid stuttered: “Brad sir.”

The man replied, “Well Brad. Come with me upstairs. My wife has been waiting years to meet you.”

Chronic anxiety can disrupt your sleep patterns, cause high blood pressure, lead to more depression, and can lead to heart disease.

The average age of diagnosis is 10-11 years old. In fact, it’s been said that the Millennials and Gen Z are the most stressed generation ever.

The amount of stress that a typical high school student deals with today is the same level as a psychiatric patient in the 1950s.

Social media plays a huge part in this stress and anxiety. Never before has a generation been so bombarded with information and so “connected” while feeling incredibly isolated.

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a pandemic among our teens who feel that can never measure up to the Instagram influencers.

Anxiety is caused by the amygdala in our brains firing and dumping stress hormones that cause a flight or fight response.

As I’ve said, that’s normal.

When I was robbed at gunpoint in college, I experienced fear and anxiety.

That’s healthy. When that happens, your brain can take up to 16 hours to stabilize again.

But if your brain is constantly flooded with these hormones, anxiety can become a constant, chronic reality.

It can become so bad that the symptoms can mimic a heart attack.

During my days working at the psychiatric hospital, I would do assessments on patients in the ER.

Many times, I got to sit by the bed of a bewildered patient who thought that they were dying of a heart attack only to discover that they were physically fine. They had experienced a panic attack.

Some people worry about the past. Some worry over the present. Some worry over the future.

One researcher proposed that 85% of the things we worry about never happen.

Out of the 15% that do happen, 79% of people found that they handled it better than they thought and that they learned valuable lessons through the events.