John Delony - Redefining Anxiety: What It Is, What It Isnt, and How to Get Your Life Back

Anxiety in a mans heart weighs it down,
but a good word makes it glad.

Proverbs 12:25

M y eyes shot open at 2:35 a.m. Again.

I sat straight up in bed, heart racing, bitten with anger and frustration.

I woke up almost every night between the witching hours of 2:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. It was maddening. It didnt matter whether I took prescription sleep medicine, made a lavenderinfused essential oil potion, did deep breathing and yoga, or tried any number of the faux pop-psychological offerings the internet had to offer. Without fail, I would collapse from exhaustion sometime after 10:00 p.m. and be wide awake a few short hours later.

I remember getting to a point where going to sleep was so frustrating that I would get anxious thinking about waking up anxious.

This was not a life.

On this particular Texas morning, my body ripped me from sleep, letting me know it sensed danger and disconnection. Of course, there was no immediate danger. I was healthy, my wife was asleep next to me, my beautiful child was asleep in the next room, and my stable job was not going anywhere.

But my body sensed danger. It always sensed danger. Or disconnection. Or a lack of control.

This set my heart racing and my stomach flooded with a familiar warmtha confusing and damning mix of brain chemicals that caused me to either fight, flight, or freeze. The regulators inside my mind and body no longer cared for nuance or truth. Feelings ruledand on the inside, everything was spinning a hundred miles an hour.

Sadly, this wasnt just affecting me. I knew my anxiety was burning up my work relationships, my marriage, my relationships with my new son and my friends. I was electric. I kept thinking bad or stressful things were coming, and I was frustrated that no one around me saw the dragons.

And make no mistake: I was doing a heros job holding things together. On the outside, I was doing great.

I had three degrees, including a PhD. Professionally, I worked at a university where I managed multiple departments, hundreds of staff and paraprofessional employees, and millions of revenue and expense dollars across a dozen or so accounts. I was on call 24/7 and made hospital visits in the middle of the night a few times a week. I responded to students mental health breakdowns, and hugged parents through tragedies. I was responsible for crisis response across the thousands of students living on campus, taught graduate courses, and had an amazing family. I was a leader at a faith-based university, in the midst of my own deep faith crisis, a fledgling member of a local church, and I was desperately trying to emerge from a cocoon of old beliefs, privilege, and bad theology.

I wasnt stupid. I wasnt irresponsible. I loved everyone and I always showed up. I was living the dream.

But I couldnt shake this feeling that I was malfunctioning. That I was breaking apart in my own skin.

After lying in bed for hours that morning, waiting for the sun to come up and burn off my catastrophic thoughts and my intrusive memories, I got out of bed, got dressed, and headed to work.

I began to walk across campus to my office... when I just stopped. I couldnt take another step forward. I paused for several moments in the Texas sun, spun around, walked to the parking lot, and hopped into my wifes little Corolla.

Without a word to my team or my wife, I left campus and drove several hours awayto a completely different citywhere I had a close friend who also happened to be a brilliant medical doctor. I arrived at his office and burst past his receptionist, past his lab testing area, and crashed into his office.

He looked up from his desk and said, Delony? What are you doing here?

He was as surprised to find me standing in his office as I was.

I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye and said, Dude... something is wrong with me. Im losing my mind. And I need help.

Soon after that day in my friends office, I began a long, windy road to figure out what happened. I had to know what was wrong with my brain.

I went to therapy. I took medication. My wife and I took a huge pay cut so I could take a new job. I learned some things at Harvard and spent a year with a professor who helped me practice meditation. I got a second PhD, this time in counseling. I worked with SWAT and police teams as a crisis responder, counseled clients, and traveled across the country speaking to other counselors, academics, and everyday folks like you and me. I spent time reimagining friendships and reconnecting with loved ones. I sought out mentors and submitted to their wisdom and insight. My family suffered multiple tragic losses, we had a second child, and I almost imploded my marriage a few timesbut we hung on and tilled the soil deeply and forever.

And I discovered something that changed my life: anxiety is not the problem.

Anxiety is just a symptom.

Anxiety is a signal.

Ill say it again: anxiety is not the problem.

If you were to read the statistics, you would think that anxiety had suddenly descended upon the human race, like a dark, heavy plague. Currently in the United States, anxiety affects more than forty million adultsand that number is only increasing and often highly under-reported.

Were being told there is something broken inside of us. That were broken and only a professional can fix us. We are a diagnosis, an insurance code, a label. But thats not the whole story.

Now before you get indignant and say mean things about me on the interwebs, and before you call the League of Diagnosis Defenders (not a real thing), hear me out.