Anxiety Paralysis
carrying what was never yours
Anxiety always starts with a hidden exchange in which I take on something that was never mine:
the power to fix someone else’s pain
the guarantee that nothing will go wrong
the responsibility to be strong for everyone
the ability to prevent all harm
These are God’s tasks, and the second I grab them, I become emotionally responsible for the impossible. No wonder I want to go lie down.
Anxiety often paralyzes us because we’ve taken responsibility for something that wasn’t ours in the first place. When something isn’t in your power, your brain can’t find any safe action to take, so it just shuts the system down: a primitive form of internal conflict resolution. The possum of fight-or-flight.
Maybe that’s why I used to get headaches so often, because my body was giving me a way to not do anything, without saying it out loud.
With a helper like that, who needs enemies?
But then I read this: “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing.” (John 15:5) And I started to realize: I don’t just have an anxiety problem. I have an abiding problem.
Anxiety: trying to hold what isn’t ours to hold
This was the moment I recognized what was underneath my anxiety paralysis, not fear, but a subconscious transfer of God’s task into my own hands. So, I picked up the book Abide in Christ, by Andrew Murray; it seemed like it would fit the bill. And it did! In it, he gave a metaphor about a father helping his son scale a cliff, and suddenly, I understood abiding:
Think of a father helping his child to mount the side of some steep precipice. The father stands above and has taken the son by the hand to help him on. He points him to the spot on which he will help him to plant his feet, as he leaps upward. The leap would be too high and dangerous for the child alone, but the father’s hand is his trust, and he leaps to get hold of the point for which his father has taken hold of him. It is the father’s strength that secures him and lifts him up, and so urges him to use his utmost strength.
And, there I saw it, in living color. I had been transferring the task of the Father to myself! Thinking I was holding myself up, carrying myself, lifting myself (and everyone else) up the cliff that God wants us to be obedient to climb, all the while totally ignoring that He never asks us to climb alone, but that He says, “For I am the Lord your God, the one who takes hold of your right hand, who says to you, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am helping you.’” Isaiah 41:13
So, I decided to stop pulling away from His hand. And with my hand back in His, I can move again because I’m no longer carrying the weight of my own safety, which I worry about when I focus on the outcome of what worries me.
Once I stop trying to hold myself up and let His strength lift me again, I can look for the next grip. Not because He isn’t with me, but because He is. And if I grab the wrong hold and lose my grip, I don’t go far. His hand doesn’t let go. He steadies me. He helps me start over or reach again.
The Next Grip
Today, the grip might just be turning on some worship music, taking a shower, going to the gym, or talking to a friend. Tomorrow, it might be writing an email without demanding control over how it’s received. But I’m not doing these things to fix the problem, I’m doing them because I’m still climbing, and these are the next handholds.
Abiding does not promise visible progress; it promises heldness. Sometimes you reach for the next grip and miss. And sometimes you wait for hours mid-climb, with nothing to show. The people you love may fall apart, and you won’t be able to stop it. But what feels like a fall is not the end, because we are all still in His hand. And if His grip is sure, none of this is fatal. We’re still held.
That doesn’t mean disengaging is safer; it means you reconnect to the source of safety, so you can engage without collapse.
Once the weight of what isn’t mine is reassigned, I can finally see what is.
Before You Go
So here’s where I’ll leave you:
Where have you taken on a task that wasn’t yours?
What can you give back to God today, not in theory, but in trust?
Where is the next grip?