Faithful Anxiety

Rev. Douglas Taylor

3-10-24

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/LaGRs84tPK8

The big summer blockbuster movie for kids scheduled for this coming June is Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” The original movie all about feelings debuted in 2015, almost ten years ago. The premise was that we all have a base set of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Now, with puberty, our protagonist also gets anxiety along with envy, embarrassment, and ennui! I do not doubt that I will be seeing this new Pixar at some point.

Because we can relate! We all get anxious and worried at times. And I don’t mean the level that gets to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Anxiety Disorders are real and some people have an experience of anxiety that is beyond what most folks experience and it is debilitating. What I want to talk about today is more that sense of anxiety that we all get.

As we heard in our reading this morning, “Anxiety is nervous apprehension about the uncertain future.” And we live in uncertain times. There is so much going on in our world and in our lives that can lead us to feel anxious.

When I was a young minister, I learned a great deal about how to be a Non-Anxious Presence. When counseling a person dealing with uncertainty, or leading a congregation through uncertain times, we were taught the importance of being a non-anxious presence. This phrase comes from Ed Friedman and the Family Systems school of thought. Life has a share of trouble for everyone. But we are alone, we can support each other in our trouble. And it can be surprisingly helpful, supportive, and empowering to be a non-anxious presence with people. To be a non-anxious presence is to be calm in the face of trouble – to not try to fix or save or move or defend anything. It is instead to simply be present to what is going on; to be open and curious with people.

It is not much of a leap to hear in this the message that anxiety is bad and that we need to tamp down and get rid of all our fear and anxiety. In her book When Things Fall Apart Pema Chödrön shares this story about facing our fears.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

            (When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön; pp33-34)

Fear and anxiety live on the same wedge of the emotion wheel. They are similar. This Buddhist story of the young warrior is written with ‘fear’ as the adversary. It is worth noticing the distinction made by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary in our reading this morning. (Excerpts from an interview) Fear, she said, is rooted in the present moment while anxiety is about an uncertain future. But the description from the story is still apt: “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face.”

Anxiety is a normal part of our lives – we worry about things. We all feel fear. When faced with problems and trouble, we can get caught up worrying about what might happen. Anxiety prompts us to imagine the worst, to borrow extra fear in the form of worry over uncertainty before anything has happened.

Shantideva, an 8^th century Buddhist monk said, “If you can solve the problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” Or as a contemporary proverb has it: “Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.” But the twist that anxiety plays on us is when you don’t know if you can solve it yet.

This leads us to have a lot of energy and attention around how to get rid of anxiety. Buddhist thought, however, leads us away from the idea that we need to stop having such feelings and experiences. Buddhist thought suggests instead that we embrace them, accept them not as good or bad but simple a fact. This way, when we feel anxious, we can – in good Buddhist manner – accept the feeling as simply something we are feeling.

When we can separate the experience from judgement, we can receive it as information. If we can receive it, even as it ‘talks fast and gets very close to your face,’ we can take a breath and be curious. What is this anxiety revealing to me? I won’t pretend this is an easy practice. In my own experience, the information takes a lot of interpretation and translation and usually just sounds like alarms and panic. But with practice, we can learn the language of our anxiety and what it has to offer.

When we can step back from the anxiety and take a breath, we open up the possibility that our anxiety is not just a stumbling block or burden. It can be information that reveals something important to us. Anxiety can be a source of energy for change in our lives and in our communities. 

A few years back there was an article in the UU World magazine by psychologist and author Robert Rosen entitled, “Do you have just enough anxiety?” Rosen suggest that there is a health level of anxiety, just enough. It is the “amount you need to respond to danger, tackle a tough problem, or take a leap of faith.”

He acknowledges that anxiety is usually unhealthy. Anxiety can interfere with our good judgment and normal functioning. Anxiety blocks our ability to respond, it can close us off to possibilities that would serve us well, it narrows our vision and focuses us on our fears, our inadequacies, our failures, and our feeling of insignificance. That is our anxiety talking fast and getting close to our faces. Anxiety can close us down or send us off frantically in strange directions. Too much anxiety is a bad thing for our physical and psychological health. 

This much is well known and acknowledged by psychology and common sense. What Rosen adds to the conversation is this: 

Too little anxiety … is the face of complacency. It comes from the belief that all is well, and an unfounded expectation that good times will continue unabated, with no need for change or improvement. Too little anxiety leads to passivity, boredom, and stagnation.

https://www.uuworld.org/articles/do-you-have-just-enough-anxiety

What are the things that trigger your anxiety? What makes you anxious? Often our anxiety is tangled up with our sense of self – but as often it is about the news and worries have about war and politics.

Buddhism teaches us to take a step back from the heaviness of our fears and anxieties. The step back is not a disassociation however – it is not a disengaging or ignoring. It is a way to keep your own footing and remain within your integrity.

To touch back on that Pixar movie I mentioned at the begin, I’ll illustrate my point. In the original movie, the five base emotions all shared a ‘control panel’ inside a person. Sometimes Anger would seize control of the buttons and other times, fear would jump in and deal with something when the others froze up.

So my invitation to you is to imagine your anxiety – when you feel it – has taken over the control panel. When I say we can take a step back, take a breath, and just receive the anxiety as information, it is like moving anxiety away from the control panel of our brains. I’m just saying don’t let anxiety drive the bus whenever possible. It’s still there, it’s still the alarm sounding, it’s just not at the controls.

It is important to acknowledge that what I’m describing is not a technique to get rid of your anxiety – it is a technique to give your anxiety a proper hearing without turning over the reins.

And I’ll also touch back on the idea of being a non-anxious presence – or at least a less-anxious presence perhaps. I’d like us to noticed that sometimes I am not sufficient alone to regulate my own anxiety and could benefit from having another person nearby to co-regulate with me. Simply from a physiological level – if I am with a person who is breathing slowly and easily, has a calm presentation, and is simply being present with me; then my breathing slows, my body begins to calm to match the calm of the person I am with. Co-regulation is a powerful way to keep anxiety out of the driver’s seat.

Having another person helps when I am struggling on my own. Perhaps you’ve heard this inspirational story before, it’s been floating around social media for a few years:

“I was 13-years-old, trying to teach my 6-year-old sister how to dive into a swimming pool from the side of the pool. It was taking quite a while as my sister was really nervous about it. We were at a big, public pool, and nearby there was a woman, about 75-years old, slowly swimming laps. Occasionally she would stop and watch us. Finally she swam over to us just when I was really putting the pressure on, trying to get my sister to try the dive, and my sister was shouting, ‘but I’m afraid!! I’m so afraid!!’ The old woman looked at my sister, raised her fist defiantly in the air and said, ‘So be afraid! And then do it anyway!’” https://www.facebook.com/lovewhatreallymatters/photos/a.710462625642805/1113400108682386/?type=3

Do it afraid. The trick is not to avoid all anxiety. The trick is to learn, instead, to acknowledge my anxiety but not let it determine my actions. Anxiety, like fear or guilt or anger or any other unwanted emotion, is information about what matters to me and what has a hold of my heart. But anxiety should not be given free rein on my response to situations. I can instead have faith that a little anxiety can be a healthy. It can keep me just uncomfortable enough that I’m paying attention. And there is always the option for us to support each other in maintaining our balance.

Change and uncertainty will always unsettle us and make us anxious. And if we always avoid anxiety then we will always avoid change and uncertainty in life. Allowing for just enough anxiety – allowing anxiety a seat at the table, just not a hand on the controls – we can lean in to the trouble, trusting our own centered integrity to hold us. With both faith and a little anxiety, we can respond to all the challenge and the beauty that comes our way.

In a world without end,

May it be so.