Brave

by Sissy Goff

  But we run from those fears every day. I didn’t take speech in high school because I hated speaking in front of people. (Ha—now I speak in front of thousands of people for my job. God’s kind of ironic that way.) And often, when trying to help us, our parents help with the escaping. In fact, research says that the most common responses to fear and anxiety are escape and avoidance.1 Of course your parents love you and don’t want to see you in distress. And honestly, it’s kind of nice for you not to have to be in distress.

  Maybe you don’t like to be away from your parents, so you don’t spend the night at a friend’s house. Or go to youth retreats or summer camp, even though you’ve always kind of wished you could.

  Maybe you don’t feel like you’re a great athlete, so you stopped playing team sports where you could let the others down if you didn’t do well. Now you’ve stopped playing sports altogether, but you feel a little like you’re missing out.

  Maybe you get anxious in crowds, so you have pulled yourself further and further out of the social world of your peers. Now even going to school is hard.

  If you’re escaping in this way, my guess is you already know what I’m about to say. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Any time I’ve pulled myself out of a situation because I was afraid, which I have done plenty, I’ve been sad about it later. Now, I’m not saying you should be doing all of the things all of the time and be under that kind of pressure again. I’m specifically talking about something you secretly want to do but don’t because you’re anxious.

  What is one thing you haven’t done out of fear that you regretted later, even if you’ve never said it out loud?

  I believe all of us feel the best about ourselves when we’re doing hard things. Not all the hard things, but a few along the way. We feel best when we’re not letting our worries and anxieties prevent us from being who we can be. Courage brings confidence. But courage may feel impossible right now. It may be that you’ve pulled yourself out of enough things that you don’t think you’re capable of much.

  Anxiety is an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of yourself, remember? There is a better way, and it’s coming.

  Freeze

  If you lean toward the freezing side of things, you likely feel helpless. You see the scary thing looming. The closer it gets, the heavier your feet feel. You know you need to get the research paper done, but the deadline just passes you right by. You just can’t seem to make yourself do it. You’re not necessarily escaping or avoiding. You’re just paralyzed in a way that only makes you sad or frustrated with yourself later.

  I also see another phenomenon happen often in my counseling office. It’s when girls freeze more by choice than out of genuine fear. Maybe they do have some genuine fear at first, but the attention they get from that fear becomes more appealing than the confidence they would get if they worked through it.

  “I have anxiety” or “My anxiety has been really bad this week,” these girls say, almost as if it’s a badge of honor. Undoubtedly, there are girls who make those statements out of their own sadness and vulnerability, asking for help and wanting to share their struggles with others. However, for some girls, it’s not a source of pain, although they can make it sound that way. It actually becomes a source of pride. For these girls, anxiety isn’t something to fight. It’s something that has become part of their identity. It becomes a way others might pay more attention, or even see them as unique. They’re allowing it to become a part of who they are.

  Your primary job in these years—and for many more years to come—is to figure out who you want to be. You’re defining yourself. It’s part of that circle you drew in the second chapter.How do you want to define yourself? Have you thought about that question?

  I want you to define yourself by the gifts that God has given you. Yes, you may be anxious, but you are braver than your anxiety. I know that to be the truth.

  You may be sad. Depressed, even. You may have to be on medication for the anxiety or depression you’re experiencing. It still doesn’t define you.

  Don’t let something that’s temporary have the power to be permanent.

  Don’t let something that’s a small part of who you are define the sum total of who you are becoming.

  Don’t let a place where you’ve gotten stuck become a place where you live.

  I want you to define yourself by more. I want you to define yourself by the things you’re passionate about, the strengths God has given you, the things and people you love, the things that make you light up. I want you to define yourself by how deeply loved you are by a God who never wants you to be defined by anything less.

  One of my all-time favorite quotes is “You are the only you this world will know, and something about your life is meant to make something about God known in a way no one else can do.”2

  When you’re living in a frozen place—or are fighting or fleeing—you aren’t getting to experience the only you God made. You’re not free in the way you can be, even in the midst of this anxiety-producing world. There is a better way.

  The Less-Traveled Path

  “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost was my favorite poem when I was your age. . . . Still might be. Have you read it? It ends with “I took the [road] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”3

  I really do believe that this book—well, not so much this book as your bravery in the fight against worry and anxiety—can make all the difference. I believe it can free you to be you.

  Throughout the next section of the book, we’ll be talking about practical things that can help. We’ll be talking more about the Worry Whisperer’s most common tricks and your best tools in the fight.

  All of the tools are ones I use daily in my counseling office. Many of them are adapted from a type of therapy called cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT for short. CBT is the most widely researched type of therapy for anxiety.4 It works. But here’s the thing: You have to practice.

  From all of my years of counseling and all of the research I did to write these books, I think the most important thing I have learned is this: To work through your anxiety, you have to do the scary thing. And you’ve got to practice doing the scary thing over and over and over.

  You’re not going to do it without help. We’re going to do this gradually and together, and I’m going to teach you lots along the way that will help in your fight against the Worry Whisperer.

  Remember, he’s a liar, but he’s smart. He’s going to try to come at you on every level. First, he’s going to come after your body, where he tries to make the panic take over and set off all kinds of false alarms. Next, he’s going to come after your mind, trying to make you believe that you can’t do this. He’s wrong. Finally, he’s going to come after your heart. He’s going to try to convince you not to do the scary thing. That you’re not ready quite yet. That you’re not capable. He’s going to fight you hard, but you are brave, bright, and more than capable. He doesn’t stand a chance.

  But you will only beat him if you practice. Can we just go ahead and make an agreement? I’ll teach you everything I know to help you fight Mr. W. W., but you’ve got to agree to try and to keep trying. He’s had a lot of years to convince you that his voice is true. It’s going to take more than a minute to convince yourself that it’s not and for you to experience the freedom that’s coming and the confidence that can come when you’re taking the less-traveled path.

  You’ve got this.

  What are some of the things you’ve learned so far?

  What would you tell a friend who’s struggling with anxiety?

  A Few Brave Things

  to Remember

  Most of us lean toward fight, flight, or freeze when we get anxious. These reactions can happen involuntarily or by choice.

  Fighting means we jump headfirst into whatever we’re afraid of, including sometimes setting up the very thing we’re most afraid of.

  Fl
eeing means we do everything possible to avoid the thing we’re afraid of. We flee by denial, distraction, and escapism.

  Freezing means you’ve either been paralyzed by or allowed yourself to become stuck in your worry and anxiety. It feels like it helps to worry and be anxious. The problem is that it only helps in the short run.

  We feel the best about ourselves when we’re doing hard things. Not all of the hard things, but a few along the way. We feel best when we’re not letting our worries and anxieties prevent us from being who we can be. Courage brings confidence.

  CBT is the most widely researched type of therapy with anxiety. The CBT tools in this book will help, but only with practice.

  To work through your anxiety, you have to do the scary thing. And you’ve got to practice doing the scary thing over and over and over.

  4. Help for Your Body

  Let’s pretend again that you’re sitting in my counseling office. I’m in my cozy counseling chair, and you’re on the couch, with Lucy sitting next to you. Actually, she’s not sitting. She’s waving. Have I told you that Lucy waves? It’s her best trick—she holds up her little paws and waves on command. And not on command too. If we were in my office, she’d be waving at you right now, trying to get you to pet her or get me to get up and give her a treat. She does that at the beginning of every counseling session, which can sometimes be more than a little distracting. Okay—back to our session. I’m in my chair. Lucy has calmed down and is cuddled up right beside you.

  I want you to tell me more about the last time you got anxious. Picture the scene. Think about what was happening around you. Where were you? Who was with you? Was there any conversation taking place? What did you hear? What did you see? Now think about what was happening inside of you. When do you remember the anxiety taking over? What did it feel like in your body? What did it do to your emotions? What did you do next? How did you work through it? I want you to write the answers to those questions below, just as you would if you were talking in my office with Lucy and me.

  The more we learn about the Worry Whisperer’s ways, the easier it is to fight him. In this section of the book, we’re not only going to break down his ways, but also what you can do to help. We’ll talk about the Worry Whisperer’s best tricks and your best tools to use in the fight.

  We’ve already established several things about the Worry Whisperer:

  He’s a liar.

  He’s an isolator.

  He’s confusing.

  He’s smart, in a sneaky kind of way.

  Part of his sneakiness is that he’s going to try to come after you on several fronts. We traditionally think of anxiety as an emotion, but it’s very much of a physical thing happening inside of our brains and bodies too. It’s part of what makes it so confusing and hard to tell that it’s truly the Worry Whisperer. He comes after us before we even recognize that it’s him.

  The Worry Whisperer’s Tricks for Your Body

  A False Alarm in Your Brain

  I want you to hang in there with me, because we’re going to have a little science lesson for a minute. Consider this Anxiety Brain 101.

  When you and I are sitting here in my office (we’re still pretending), we both have blood flowing throughout our brains, including to an area called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is what helps us do a lot of important things, such as think rationally and manage our emotions. Next, I want you to imagine something that frightens you. Say someone interrupts our quiet conversation, banging on the door and screaming. The blood flow in your brain would change immediately. The blood vessels would constrict, shifting the blood away from the prefrontal cortex and to the amygdalae. The amygdalae are two tiny almond-shaped regions toward the back of each side of your brain. The amygdalae work as a unit, so for our purposes, we will refer to them as one—the amygdala. But it’s good to know that there are two, doing double duty together to store and interpret emotion. The amygdala has several purposes. It is connected to anger, aggression, fear, and even bonding with someone you love. The amygdala doesn’t think or reason. It reacts. In fact, it reacts before your prefrontal cortex even has time to think, and it is the perfect playground for the Worry Whisperer.

  If someone did that, interrupted our time and started banging and screaming, what would you do? Jump up and run across the room? Scream yourself? I’m sure that Lucy and I would both jump toward the door to try to protect you, although I’m not sure either of us is very scary. But there it is again. Fight or flight. Freeze too. The amygdala is the part of your brain that reacts immediately (within a fraction of a second) with a fight, flight, or freeze response.

  God designed you that way. Rather than something being wrong, it’s a survival instinct. In fact, you have this amazing sympathetic nervous system that comes online when your amygdala is activated. When it does, several things happen:

  It increases your heart rate.

  It increases your breathing rate.

  It increases the blood flow and glucose to your muscles.

  It decreases your digestive activity.

  It dilates your pupils.

  You truly are fearfully and wonderfully made. God designed your body to respond to threats and keep you safe. In less than a second, He is using the amygdala to get your body ready to run faster, fight harder, and even see the enemy better.

  The problem is that the amygdala is notorious for false alarms. The amygdala attaches emotional significance to situations and forms emotional memories. A psychologist named Catherine Pittman says it’s like adding a Post-it Note to a memory.1 Have you ever had a reaction to something that wasn’t truly a threat? I think I have a very overactive amygdala, which means I have a high startle response. I scream way too easily. I embarrass myself lots. In fact, I often round the corner quickly at Daystar and scream when I see a co-worker. Of course, the co-worker is not a threat. Somehow, though, my amygdala has attached a Post-it that says when someone comes up on me quickly, it’s dangerous. My amygdala is wrong. Yours is, at times, too.

  Write about a time when your amygdala sent you a false alarm.

  Amygdalae are helpful in dangerous situations, but they’re not to be trusted. In chapter 6, we’re going to talk about the only proven way to retrain the amygdala. For now, though, we just want to calm it down. We can’t train it if we can’t calm it down. Unless that calming happens, our bodies soon join the chaotic chorus of the amygdala, and then we (or our bodies) are really in trouble.

  A False Alarm in Your Body

  In this section of the little girls’ book, there is a cute outline of a girl in a superhero cape. I tell the girls to draw a picture of where they first feel anxiety in their bodies on that little superhero. In fact, it’s one of the first questions I ask girls of all ages who worry when I meet them.

  I have little girls who tell me their tummies start to hurt. Some tell me their hands get clammy. Others tell me their chests get kind of tight. One girl told me she felt it first in her bow. Not sure on that one, but it sounded awfully cute. Most girls your age talk about having stomachaches or headaches. Some have talked about feeling light-headed and having trouble breathing. One girl even told me that her math problems would kind of swim in front of her when she got anxious during a math test.

  What about you? If you had to draw in your outline of a superhero (which is you, by the way), where would you first draw the anxiety? Why don’t you draw yourself in a superhero outfit here and write in where you feel anxiety and what it feels like?

  It’s important to pay attention to how anxiety affects your body. The amygdala doesn’t communicate in words but in the physical sensations it creates. The bummer is that the amygdala really can cause you to feel sick. The headaches and stomachaches are real, even though your doctor may have told you that there is no medical basis. And now not only are you having headaches or stomachaches, but you feel panicked about getting panicked because of how bad it makes you feel. The great news is that we can make it stop. We can’t necessarily make the a
nxiety-provoking situations stop; those are just part of living in a fallen world, a world this side of heaven. But we can quiet the false alarms that anxiety causes. We can stop the anxiety-provoking situation from having so much power in your brain and body. The earlier we can stop the process, the easier it will be to fight the Worry Whisperer on all fronts. Because, as you know, the longer the alarm sounds, the farther its reach. And pretty soon, it’s not just our brains and our bodies reacting, but it’s our emotions too.

  An Emotional Siren

  Alarms are loud. They don’t go off without wreaking some degree of havoc. Your amygdala is just the same, and it likely has been since you were little. I meet with lots of parents of anxious little girls. The two things these parents say to me the most are these:

  She is SO emotional. Most often angry, but there are tears too. Definitely tears.

  When she gets that emotional, there is no way I can talk her out of it.

  Maybe you remember. Your mom would tell you that it was time for bed when you thought you had thirty more minutes. You would try to convince her that you needed more time and suddenly find yourself on the floor, screaming. Or she would brush your hair for dance, and she just could NOT get those bumps out of your ponytail and it made you mad. Your parents were right—once you were upset, there was no talking you out of it. At that point, your alarm was going off with a lot of emotion and likely a lot of noise. Do you remember? Your homework right now is to go ask your mom or dad if they remember you having meltdowns when you were little. What would cause them and how did you behave during a meltdown?

  What about now? When do you get the most emotional? Is it because of something you don’t expect or can’t control?

  Anxiety loves control and hates unpredictability. Your amygdala kicks into high gear when your parents tell you to do something right away, when you thought you had more time. Or the plans change when you weren’t expecting them to. Maybe you still hate change or surprises. I see girls who don’t even like Christmas or birthday gifts, because the gifts don’t end up being what they expected. It’s not that they’re spoiled or don’t like the gifts they received. They just had one thing in their minds, and it ended up being something different. Unpredictability.