What Anxiety Doesn’t Want You to Know About Freedom

Or confessions of an anxious traveler

Cádize, Spain

A vacation, by all acceptable definitions, is supposed to include a lot of rest. Leisure. A pause from the pressure.

The Latin root ‘vacare’ literally means ‘to be empty.’ But nothing about this trip feels empty. It feels full—of people, of motion, of shifting time zones, of figuring out food and sleep and aging, not all at once, but always present like an annoying drip that you can hear but can’t seem to stop. This is not rest. This is not leisure. And it’s certainly not pressure-free.

Before we could do this trip, I had to overcome my fear of Cruising. Mission pretty much accomplished. Like in any 12-step program, I can say, “My name is Hayley and I am afraid of cruising. But it’s been 12 days since I last was afraid.” I am now pretty much at ease, in the calm seas we’ve had so far, this is not a prayer for worse conditions, I just wanna make that clear.

But that’s not the only travel challenge I’ve come to see and want to throw out of the house that is my mind. I’ve discovered a new one; this didn’t exist when I was in my twenties and traveling the world all alone. This is new growth. In the same way that weeds are new growth.

You might want to sit down for this, or at least open your mind to my madness. Because here it is. We got off the ship in Cádiz, Spain, a gorgeous Andalusian city, with hints of Baroque bones still showing through the city’s frame. The kind of place where you can almost hear Morocco calling from across the sea — and it is. A city stitched in stone, laced with narrow streets, capped by flat-roofed whitewashed houses, and cut through by stunning interior courtyards. Ancient cobblestone streets, cathedrals, and open-air markets adorn every corner. All wrapped in the gorgeous Spanish heritage and culture. A dream come true.

But my dreams are often nightmares, and this one is no exception.

I have long suffered from unexplained and chronic weakness, nausea, and faintness. I have tied it to my physical health for most of my life, since I can remember. But the more I walk through this voyage, the more I see it isn’t just my body — it’s my mind, my fear, my wiring. It wears the mask of sickness, but underneath, it’s anxiety playing its old tricks. And that’s why this trip isn’t a vacation in the truest sense but a spiritual gauntlet. A confrontation with my overprotective mind — the one that anxiously posts detour and do-not-enter signs at every turn.

So this is how it went today—Day 12.

I came off the ship buzzing with the energy of the unknown, like that sick moment before the curtain lifts, when you don’t know if you’ll shine or throw up on stage. Heat wrapped itself around me like a medieval torture device, and every cell begged me to retreat into the cool, predictable safety of the ship. I didn’t.

VICTORY!

Soldiering on. Traffic bearing down like a stampede — too fast, too loud, too much. I tell myself it’s fine, once we reach the old town, it’ll calm down. But that’s when the madness starts. We pass a municipal building, and I glance in to see a woman bent over a computer in her cubicle, when suddenly it hits me: this isn’t a movie set or a theme park. This is a real city with real people, paying bills, clocking hours, carrying on lives. And as an empath, I can’t help it — I start feeling their responsibilities, fears, and worries in my head.

I imagine the endless walking, the shopping that drags you stall to stall through a mercado, no clean aisles or checkout lanes. Quaint to some. To me, terror. The smells of fish turning in the sun, raw meat gathering flies, bodies pressing close. Their struggles, their weariness, their burdens — all of it piles onto me until I can’t breathe. The only thing to do is turn to Michael and say, “If we lived here, you’d have to do the shopping. I just couldn’t. I just can’t!”

So I do what I can to calm the nerves. AirPods in. Spanish music on. My pulse finally starts to slow. Phew. That was close.

But then my stomach alerts me to the fact that it’s starving. Which is ridiculous — I had an omelet at breakfast, and a pastry less than an hour earlier! Still, it screams like it’s a child who’s gone 12 hours without eating. So, we stop for fresh orange juice in a stall in the bustling open-air market. “Quisiera un zumo de naranja, por favor,” I say. And that’s just what I get. Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Cold. Sweet. Perfect.

My pulse slows down some more.

We keep walking, and I finally corner myself on the cobblestone with the question: “What are you actually feeling right now?” The answer takes me a minute. The first one comes easy: anxiety. But then I have to think. Fear. Hurry. I say.

Why? Because my brain is spinning my typical travel trope — the one where this isn’t a visit, it’s a relocation.

Suddenly, I’m not a tourist strolling cobblestones, I’m a new resident drowning in bureaucracy, hauling groceries through mercados, filling out forms in a language that slips through my fingers. It’s not a walk anymore, it’s a move. And I can feel myself collapsing under a life I don’t even live.

I know this must sound like the ramblings of a crazy person, but I’m just hoping that’s what all of us would sound like if we could dump our thoughts out on the table for our friends and acquaintances to examine like this.

Honest. Messy. A little alarming.

It seems that something has taken root in my mind, and it’s not fruit. My natural and good gifts of empathy and imagination have been left unchecked for so long that they have been overrun with what can only be described as weeds: the over-identification that strangles, the fear that spreads like ivy, and an imagination that chokes out new life like a wild vine, all convinced they’re protecting me from catastrophe.

Weeds aren’t polite guests; no, they move in and take over. And the longer they go unchecked, the more they start to feel like the whole garden. That’s the trick anxiety plays — it convinces you the weeds define the landscape. So instead of seeing fruit for what it is, you only see the weeds wrapped around it. Empathy becomes anxiety. Imagination becomes panic. Gifts get perverted into threats. And once you believe that, panic feels inevitable — because what was meant to nourish you now looks like it might devour you.

If you’re anything like me, when the panic rises, your first instinct is simple: “Get me out of here!”

That’s mine. Escape is relief. But this trip isn’t a vacation I can escape from; it’s a crucible. A proving ground. A holy wrestling match.

And that is my challenge: Will I let the distortion of my gifts keep distorting my soul? Or will I do the hard, sweaty work of tending them again — pulling the weeds, naming the lies, and handing them back to God so His glory blooms in the ground I thought was ruined?

Of course, you all know the answer, don’t you?

We’re not going back. Not now, not ever. That way of thinking was a cage, and I’ve served my sentence. I’m free, and freedom means I don’t get to run and hide anymore. I do the work. I face it. Freedom isn’t the absence of anxiety; it’s the refusal to bow to it.

I realize that for those of you who don’t suffer with catastrophizing, rumination, doom-casting, and the like, this may sound like madness. And maybe it is—to you. But to me? It’s Wednesday.

Your anxiety may not have mine’s style, consider yourself lucky, but it shows up in its own costume — worry, control, avoidance, people-pleasing, overthinking. Different shapes, same chains. In the end, anxiety is just a lie dressed up as truth, a master we never meant to serve.

To a tourist, maybe this trip looks wasted on me. But I don’t care about collecting sights. I care about collecting freedom. For me, it’s not about the view, it’s about the fight — the miracle of God’s power being made perfect in my anxiety.

So how was the rest of the gauntlet?

Well, the spiral didn’t vanish by itself. It never does.

I felt the heat, the noise, the press of people, but somewhere between the orange juice and the tea (yes, the boba tea! My favorite), between the music in my ears and the questions in my head, I started to turn the corner.

I named it. I told myself the truth: This isn’t sickness, it’s anxiety. This isn’t moving, it’s walking. This isn’t curse, it’s weeds. And naming it took the teeth out of it. What felt like a monster shrank back into what it really was — a shadow with no bite.

Little by little, my body caught up to the truth. The nausea ebbed, the weakness lifted, and I found myself not just surviving the streets of Cádiz but enjoying them.

I’m sorry it took me so long. It must look like God has handed me a get-out-of-jail-free card, and I’ve stayed clutching the bars, too scared to step out into the sunlight. Truth is, I spent decades perfecting anxiety — practicing fear like a craft, rehearsing disaster until it became my second language. I can’t expect to unlearn it in a day.

Paul knew this tug-of-war. “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). That’s what anxiety feels like — knowing the truth but defaulting to the lie. But he didn’t stop there. He pressed on to the greater reality: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free” (Romans 8:1–2).

That’s the hope I cling to now: I may stumble, I may relapse into worry, but I’m no longer condemned to the old cycle. Anxiety may still knock, but it doesn’t own the house. Christ does.

So no, I won’t pretend it’s instant. The memory of the prison door is strong. But the door is open, and every shaky and slow step toward freedom is still freedom.