Question: I feel so stressed out! I am unable to accomplish enough. I am overwhelmed at work and home, and now I have started having really bad headaches and even pressure in my chest. Help! Do you know what may be wrong in my life?
Question: I feel so stressed out! I am unable to accomplish enough. I am overwhelmed at work and home, and now I have started having really bad headaches and even pressure in my chest. Help! Do you know what may be wrong in my life?
Megan Clunan answers: Yes, you are experiencing some level of negative anxiety in your life. Those thoughts, sentiments and experiences are all too common among individuals today.
According to current statistics, “anxiety is the most common mental illness in the U.S. today, affecting over 40 million adults in the United States.” Anxiety disorders cost the U.S. more than $42 billion total each year; that’s almost one third of the country’s $148 billion total mental health bill.
In fact, more than $22.84 billion of the costs associated with the repeated use of health care services is sought out by people who are experiencing the physical side effects of anxiety. Individuals who experience physical symptoms of anxiety often mislabel what they are experiencing as simply physical and therefore seek health physician after health physician in hopes of discovering relief.
Mental health-related issues that can stem from continued negative anxiety include: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Various Eating Disorders, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Various Phobias.
Potential physical effects, or psychosomatic disorders, as a result of anxiety include: Headaches – typically tension headaches which lead to migraines, chest pressure and heart palpitations, muscle tension, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, shortness of breath and irritable bowl syndrome.
Needless to say, anxiety has the potential to be very detrimental to ones mental and physical self. Therefore individuals must be proactive in fighting the anxiety-ridden lifestyle.
Meditation is one way in which we can fight anxiety. A recent clinical trial showed improvements in coronary heart disease risk factors, including lower blood pressure, among heart patients who practiced meditation.
Meditation does not mean one simply sits and thinks about nothing for hours on end. Rather, in mindfulness meditation the person focuses on a particular item, rolling that thought around in their mind for 10-20 minutes.
As believers, God has provided us with many good truths, many statements of hope, and many instructions, all of which are intended to help us live in confident peace rather than in an anxious free fall.
The Bible supplies truths that we, as believers, must take time to focus – meditate – upon, even if that time is just 10 minutes.
In the action of meditation we begin to fight anxiety while experiencing the energizing freedom of what it means to live in the peace of Christ.
All throughout the Psalms we see the psalmist meditating upon the Word of God – for example, Psalm 1:2, Psalm 39:3, Psalm 48:9, Psalm 77:12, Psalm 119:15, 23, 27, 48 – and we should follow in his example.
I challenge you, this week, to begin taking 10 minutes out of your day to meditate on the simple truths of God’s word. Isn’t it time to take hold of the life that is truly life?
Begin today by meditating on God’s word.
Doing so will help shift your focus away from what everything around you is saying you must strive toward and onto His perspective for your life.
Megan Clunan, who has a Masters of Arts degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, is a student counseling intern at The Celebration Hope Center in Metairie.