When I ponder how delicately the Lord has balanced our emotions with our physical, spiritual, and intellectual health, I am awestruck! We are so intricately made, that usually there is not one simple answer to a problem in any of these areas of our health. A low thyroid can make us depressed, a physical trauma can impact our emotions, and an emotional trauma can even affect our bodies! Yet we often travel through this life not acknowledging these exquisite connections which give us our sense of well-being.
Our culture wants to sell us pharmaceuticals to fix all our problems. Almost daily, I sit with my 96 year old father and watch Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, (now, that’s love) and out of that hour, we probably sit through 15 minutes (or, what feels like an eternity) of advertisements for medicine! Pills for this, and pills for that. I chuckle when I hear them quickly whisper the side effects and ‘possible death’ which can occur! My point is that perhaps if we recognized all the intricacies to our situations, we might discover there are solutions other than pills.
Before I go on, let me make myself clear: I believe medicine for physical and mental health is extremely helpful and necessary in many situations. I am not suggesting medicine is an evil tool—rather, it can address both physical and emotional issues which need to be balanced when other treatments do not work. But from my perspective, it is not the first thing to use, at least, not without exploring other options.
When we recognize the relationship between, for example, our physical bodies and our emotional states, we can address a lot of issues by better understanding the interactions between these components of our health. Let me give you a personal example, to help explain my point.
Many years ago, I was experiencing terrible anxiety with numerous panic attacks. I had gone through a number of emotional experiences (sudden losses to death, and divorce) and found myself being blitzed, from out of nowhere, by horrible and debilitating panic attacks. For those of you who do not know what panic attacks are, let me describe the feeling: imagine you are driving down the road, singing to the radio (let’s make it an ‘oldie’, like Simon and Garfunkle’s 59th Street Bridge Song (‘Slow down, you move too fast’…) and all of a sudden, your heart shifts into a rapid, pounding pace, as if you are running uphill at the 10th mile in the marathon. You start gasping for air, hyperventilating, and begin to feel tingly and desperate. Because you have no idea where this has come from, (you weren’t feeling anxious before) you now feel like something terrible is happening, you might even be having a heart attack, and you want to find someone to grab onto, to make you feel safe. You pull over to the side of the road, terrified, and sit this out until it passes. And it eventually does. But it leaves you baffled and frightened.
Probably in the period of 10 years I was having these attacks, I went to the ER 3 times. The first two times, the MD handed out valium and basically treated the ‘panic attacks’. The third time, a thoughtful MD identified these episodes as ‘panic attacks’, and that I should probably get some ‘cognitive behavioral counseling’ to help me deal with them. And then he gave me valium. Not knowing about counseling at that time in my life, I decided I better find out about this ‘cognitive behavioral counseling’ and see if I could get help. I was evaluated by a psychiatrist, who immediately wanted to put me on antidepressants, which can often help with anxiety and panic. I decided I wanted to understand the dynamics of panic attacks first, and then if I needed meds, I would use them.
Thus began my introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy, which is nothing more than a process of informing, and bringing understanding to, your thinking process, eliminating misperceptions and lies in your thinking, and addressing issues with this new information. The impact of changing one’s thinking is that behavior also changes, because it is directly affected by the changed thoughts. What I learned at that time was this: our bodies and minds are very connected, and that one influences the other in extremely effective ways. Panic attacks are one form of expressed anxiety; panic comes from a perceived sense of danger, often at an unconscious level. That is, something not recognized can trigger a sudden response in the brain and begin an autonomic reaction in the body which we cannot stop (like an automatic response—for example, white blood cells racing to an injury in the body—you have no decisive part in the body’s response). God put this autonomic response into our brains' processing to protect us. We call it ‘fight or flight’.
I see a great example of this on summer nights, when I drive up my long driveway. Suddenly, a rabbit is zig-zagging back and forth in front of me as I creep up the drive. He is reacting to the perceived ‘threat’ of my car and headlights, and zigs and zags to avoid me. He doesn’t think about it, he just does it automatically. He is in ‘flight’ mode, a survival mode for him, and when a natural prey is pursuing him, it is an effective way to avoid being caught!
A panic attack is an example of the same thing. The mind perceives something dangerous or threatening. To put it simply, once the mind determines ‘danger’, the body automatically shoots adrenaline into the bloodstream. Once adrenaline is in the bloodstream, the heart beats faster, to prepare the body to expend the energy needed to fight the perceived threat or flee for one’s life! You can bet that little bunny’s heart beats fast when my car is following him up the driveway!
Once I learned about the truth of how God created an autonomic response in my brain for surviving a perceived threat, I began to understand that the panic attacks were not to be feared (despite how uncomfortable they were). I learned that my fear of them was, in fact, fueling them, and so just gaining understanding helped diffuse my own participation in fostering them with my fear. And I understood this sense of ‘threat’ I apparently felt, was directly related to these sudden emotional events in my life, over which I had no control, and which were extremely heart breaking.
God is good. Once I understood this relationship, the panic attacks began to subside. I continued to have them, but fewer and fewer, and certainly with less fright packed into the experience. I can say today with gratitude to the therapist who walked me through this, and to God who created this ‘emergency’ survival system in our brains, that it has probably been over 25 years since I have had a panic attack. And in this case, medicine was not necessary.
So much of counseling is learning. And much of that learning is understanding how we are interconnected at the intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual levels. We are indeed, fearfully and wonderfully made, as the Psalmist says. I challenge you to consider what ways your mind, body, and spirit might be interacting to participate in any distress you may be experiencing. There are few easy answers, but there are answers to help put things into perspective, and to help bring healing.
Blessings,
Priscilla Ortlip
MSW, LCSW, ACS
Founder and Executive Director
The Christian Counselors Collaborative
www.acac.net/counseling
Disclaimer: I am a professional, licensed clinical therapist in the state of PA, but this blog is not a therapeutic venue—anything I state here is not for treatment or to address anyone’s specific emotional or mental health need. If you are experiencing immediate distress, call 911. If you would like to consider counseling here at ACAC, please call Tom Laird at 1.855.222.2575.
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