Anxiety is something everyone experiences from time to time. Anxiety is a normal human response to stress. This kind of stress isn’t bad. Anxiety acts as your body’s built-in alert system. In healthy doses, it boosts motivation, sharpens focus, prevents procrastination, and keeps you safe by preparing you to react to threats. However, chronic anxiety is harmful physically and mentally. Chronic anxiety on the other hand is a persistent, excessive state of worry or fear about everyday situations that disrupts daily life. Symptoms include:

• Uncontrolled worry
• Obsessive thoughts
• Irritability
• Feeling of impending doom
• Rapid heartbeat
• Shortness of breathe
• Muscle tension
• Headaches/Unexplained pain/muscle aches/stomachaches 
• Sleep disturbances
• Difficulty concentrating

These symptoms can be mild to debilitating, depending on the severity of the anxiety.

5 causes of anxiety:

• You use worrying as a coping strategy.
• You don’t know how to stop worrying (and believe it's out of your control).
• You are constantly paying attention to uncomfortable and scary things (and believe that this is helpful).
• You spend a lot of time analyzing your anxious thoughts and feelings.
• You often try to control or suppress your anxiety.

One thing to keep in mind is that depression and anxiety often go hand in hand.They hang out together. So while addressing anxiety we need to explore depression and treat both simultaneously. I think we don’t talk enough about our anxiety/depression, and this needs to stop. We need safe people around us that we can speak with about these issues. We must be silent no more. 

The Bible is full of stories regarding anxiety and depression. In fact some of the most influential people in the Bible struggled with one, or both these issues. Moving forward I will share some of the stories, along with some of my personal struggles. I pray that through this process you will find hope and encouragement. No one should travel this path alone. Lets journey together along the path.