Hope & Help For Your Anxiety
Audio Transcript
Friends, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's podcast. Today, we're getting candid. I’m not going off a script because I really feel like this episode calls for authenticity—just genuine, honest conversation. This is what I’ve walked through, what I’m still walking through, what I’ve learned, and the wisdom I’ve gleaned. But more than anything, I want to share the hope I have for you.
I want this episode to be both practically helpful and spiritually encouraging. I hope you walk away feeling equipped to take tangible steps forward in your battle with anxiety—if that’s something you’re wrestling with. And if you’re not, maybe you know someone who is, and you can pass this along to them. As always, I want to point you to the hope of the gospel, because it truly can be found everywhere.
So let’s dive in.
You may have noticed we’re a little off schedule—and that’s because life has been really hard. I was two weeks ahead on this season of the podcast, but RSV, a crazy busy calendar, unexpected schedule changes, people coming into town, and yes, crippling anxiety—those things just knocked me off track. But we’re back now, and that’s okay. There’s room for flexibility here. I know you probably didn’t even notice any of that!
Let’s jump in. But first—recommendations.
This week, I think the perfect recommendation is Get Out of Your Head by Jennie Allen—Stop the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts. If you haven’t read it, it’s wonderful and very practical. It really emphasizes the idea that you have a choice in what you think about. You can take your thoughts captive, and Jennie helps you redirect your thought patterns in a way that actually starves anxiety instead of feeding it—which is something we’ll talk more about in this episode.
I’ll also drop a couple podcast episodes in the show notes that I’ve found helpful on anxiety. I think one of them is a conversation between Jennie Allen and Sadie Robertson.
And finally, a song recommendation. This song has been really encouraging to me lately. It’s a newer one—I think it came out last year—and it’s called Still Waters (Psalm 23) by Leanna Crawford. It’s sweet and grounded in Scripture, and it’s such an easy way to remember Psalm 23.
Okay, diving in now—anxiety. We’re talking about it: how I’ve experienced it, how I’m overcoming it, my story, and some practical ways to starve it instead of feeding it. And of course, I’ll offer hopeful encouragement along the way.
First, my story.
If you had come to me three years ago and told me, “You’re going to be talking about your struggle with anxiety on a podcast,” I would’ve laughed. I would’ve said, “What? Not me. I’m not a worrier.” I truly didn’t worry about anything until I was face to face with it—and that was true of me all the way up until I was six months postpartum with my second baby. Wild, right?
Up until then, I had never struggled with anxiety. I wasn’t a worrier. In fact, I probably naively—and even insensitively—thought people who did struggle with anxiety were just natural worriers. And sure, I think some people might have a predisposition or a personality that leans more toward being uneasy or neurotic. But honestly, I just didn’t understand anxiety. I couldn’t empathize. I thought people were being dramatic.
Which is probably why the Lord allowed me to walk through it myself. That’s what He does, right? He lets us walk through things so that the comfort we receive from Him can then be shared with others. I feel like I’m able to do that now—hopefully through this episode.
So like I said, I didn’t have anxiety with my first baby. No postpartum anything. But with my second—who knows why, only God knows—it showed up. And what was interesting was that it came in the form of hypochondria.
Most of you probably know what that is, but if not—hypochondria is essentially a paranoia or fear about health issues. You become convinced that something’s seriously wrong with you or with someone close to you. You take something small and spiral into the worst-case scenario.
Between six to eight months postpartum, I didn’t even have a name for it. I just knew that out of the blue, I was suddenly worried about everything health-related. Mostly about myself, though it’s kind of flipped now.
I remember vividly—if I got a bruise on my arm (and I never get bruises), I would instantly think, “Oh my gosh, are my white blood cell counts low? Do I have some kind of serious health condition? Do I have cancer?” I would spiral like that over the smallest things. It’s wild to think about.
If you've never struggled with anxiety, it's hard to even wrap your mind around what it's like. I remember, during those first four to six months after it started, I began to piece things together and thought to myself, Okay, maybe what I have is postpartum anxiety. Maybe this is what anxiety is?
For me, it started in my thought life. That’s where I noticed the biggest change. As an example: I used to be able to look at two random bruises on my arm and think, Huh, I wonder when that happened, and move on without a second thought. That was it. I wouldn’t go down any rabbit holes.
But suddenly, my thoughts changed. Now I’d see the same bruises and spiral: Oh my gosh, I have a bruise. Why? I never get bruises. Is something wrong with me? Do I have cancer? Am I seriously ill? Am I going to die? It was wild—totally foreign to me. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Once I finally realized, Oh, this is anxiety. This is what people mean when they talk about anxiety, I was able to start researching it, talk to others who had struggled, and little by little, it began to subside. I don't remember it being a major problem again for a while.
Then, around a year postpartum with Sutton—before I got pregnant with Tatum—I started noticing anxiety would creep in more around my period. The rest of the time, not so much. I can’t say I really remember struggling with anxiety while pregnant with Tatum. At least not to the degree I’ve experienced postpartum with her.
So flash forward: I gave birth to Tatum on October 7th. And within the first three weeks of her life, I was extremely anxious. I was consumed with fear that I’d lose her. That my family would die in a car accident. Driving anywhere with them felt terrifying. I was so afraid something awful would happen. I even avoided going places with them sometimes because the fear was so overwhelming.
The anxiety came in waves. Some days were okay, but then others would hit hard. But for the first six to eight weeks—maybe longer—I had this persistent fear that I would lose one of my kids, or that something bad was going to happen to our family. It was just this underlying dread that wouldn’t go away.
Then came December—the night of a Christmas parade. I had my very first panic attack. I haven’t had one since, thankfully, but this was the real deal.
To summarize: my husband was in the parade, and I thought, Yeah, I can totally do this on my own. I can take all three kids to a Christmas parade in 20-degree weather. Nope. That was way too much for me. The whole experience was stressful, chaotic, and I was completely maxed out.
We got home, and my husband and I had a disagreement about the night. I won’t go into details, but I ended up going to bed early. I was already frustrated, and on top of that, I had some intense neck and back pain from breastfeeding—moms, you know what I’m talking about. That new breastfeeding posture can really mess with your body.
So I'm lying in bed, upset, thinking about my neck pain, when suddenly my arm starts to go numb and tingly. And then I spiral: I’m having a stroke. I’m going to die. If I fall asleep, I won’t wake up.
It felt so real. This wasn’t just a fleeting thought—I was convinced something was truly wrong. My heart started pounding out of my chest. I got a hot flash. I was flushed, sweaty, and I had to get out of bed. I needed water. I needed to move. Something felt off.
Before waking Jeremy, I did the worst thing you can do—I Googled my symptoms. Don’t do that. But I did, and it was like a lightbulb went off: This is a panic attack. Every symptom matched. Even the irrational thoughts—you’re dying, something terrible is happening. That was me, exactly.
So I curled up next to Jeremy and told him, I think I just had a panic attack.
Since then, over the last four months (as I’m recording this), things have ebbed and flowed. Some weeks are harder than others. Some days are heavier than others. But I’ve learned a lot about what triggers my anxiety, what helps keep it at bay, and what makes certain days significantly better than others.
The "Perfect Storm"
Let’s talk about what I’ve come to call the “perfect storm”—those days when everything combines to create a high-anxiety situation. Talking with friends and processing out loud helped me identify six key triggers. But the top two that I noticed immediately were:
Poor sleep
One night, I barely slept. Tatum was up constantly. It was rough. You know how with a newborn, a 3–4 hour stretch is considered good? Well, this was every hour, hour-and-a-half. It wrecked me.Caffeine
After that terrible night, what did I do? I went straight for the coffee—and had two cups that day, which is a lot for me. By the afternoon, I noticed a serious spike in my anxiety. Interestingly, I’ve found that my anxiety is almost always worse in the afternoons and evenings. Mornings tend to go okay, but around 2 or 3 p.m., my thoughts get more anxious.
So I did a little test: got a good night of sleep, avoided caffeine the next day—and I felt so much more in control of my thoughts. It was eye-opening.
Here are the other four things I’ve noticed contribute to the perfect storm:
Lack of nutrition
Skipping meals, not drinking enough water, running on caffeine and adrenaline—that’s a bad combo. Sometimes I’d go until 11 a.m. or noon without eating, just busy feeding the kids and forgetting myself.Hormones
This one’s kind of a given. Postpartum hormones are wild, and we can’t always control that. I’ve learned to ride that wave the best I can.Triggers
There’s usually something that sets the anxiety off. If I’m already a little anxious, and then something happens that makes me feel unsafe or out of control, I spiral fast.Isolation
This is a big one. Being stuck at home during the winter with sick kids and not seeing people—huge factor. We are not made to live in isolation. We saw it during COVID, right? Mental health struggles skyrocketed. Community is so important, not just for distraction, but because it feeds our soul.
When those six factors come together, that’s the perfect storm for me. Maybe it resonates with you too. I’ve talked to a lot of people who say the same.
True Anxiety vs. Anxious Thinking
I’ve also come to recognize a difference between true anxiety and anxious thinking.
I didn’t struggle with anxiety until I was 27, so I have a pretty stark before-and-after comparison. When I talk about true anxiety, I mean a chemical, physiological issue. It clouds your judgment. You have irrational thoughts and paranoia. You don’t feel like yourself. You don’t feel in your right mind. And the next day, when it’s passed, you look back like, What was I thinking? That made no sense.
That’s given me so much empathy for people who live with mental health issues daily and need medication. It’s real. When your mind isn’t functioning clearly, it’s scary.
Then there’s anxious thinking, which feels more like a mindset. You’re not necessarily sleep-deprived or hormonally imbalanced. You’re just stuck in a thought pattern of worry. And in those moments, you have more agency—you can take your thoughts captive, redirect them. But sometimes you choose to sit in the worry. You’re not spiraling chemically, you’re just struggling with control or fear.
I’ve experienced both. There are days where I can’t seem to stop the spiral, and days where I can but I don’t.
I also wonder—and this is just me thinking aloud—but I think sometimes I live with this low-grade anxiety all day, especially when I’ve had caffeine and poor sleep. There’s no real trigger, just a lingering unease. Like my heart is elevated and my thoughts are just off.
Practical Help
Now I want to share some practical things that have helped me—not things I figured out all on my own, but things I truly believe the Lord has graciously shown me. Through conversations, research, and just paying attention to the patterns in my life, God has given me wisdom to navigate this.
And I really believe a lot of these practical things are expressions of His common grace—whether it’s nutritional habits, sleep hygiene, or even medication. These are good gifts that can help us walk in wellness, by His mercy.
But also, how amazing is it that we have tools like Google and access to so much knowledge about the brain and body? We can understand how things work and what contributes to the anxiety we’re experiencing. It all, always, goes back to the Lord—His kindness and His grace toward us. But let’s talk about what I call the perfect storm and how I started tackling it.
1. Cutting Out Caffeine
The first thing I did was cut out caffeine. I had a particularly bad day—one of those moments where I just knew, I never want to feel like this again. I was so paranoid and thinking so irrationally. I told myself, “I’ve got to cut this out.” No matter how poorly I slept the night before, I started praying and asking the Holy Spirit for supernatural energy instead of relying on coffee or stimulants. Caffeine absolutely made things worse.
And I noticed a night and day difference when I cut it out. I even watch my intake of dark chocolate and decaf coffee, which can still have small amounts of caffeine. Even that can affect me a little.
2. Getting Restorative Sleep
Next, I worked on getting quality, restorative sleep. Our pastor recently shared something that blew my mind. There was a sleep expert—I think he was on the Joe Rogan podcast—who said we conduct a biannual experiment every year called daylight savings. He pointed out that heart attack rates remain consistent throughout the year, except on the days we adjust the clocks.
On the day we lose an hour of sleep, heart attacks go up by 24%. On the day we gain an hour, they decrease by 21%. Isn’t that wild? Sleep matters.
So whether it means going to bed earlier or waking at the same time daily, do what you can to get quality rest. Now, as a mom with a newborn, I know that’s not always possible. I’m in an unpredictable season, so I’m just riding that out the best I can.
3. Nourishing Your Body
Getting good nutrition is also key. I focus on eating a lot of protein and healthy fats because they help with energy and brain function. I’ll make a protein-packed smoothie or eat eggs in the morning. I try to avoid just eating carbs or sugar all day, because that spikes my blood sugar and leaves me running on adrenaline, which only makes anxiety worse.
4. Hormones & Underlying Health Issues
Hormones are tricky—especially postpartum—but if you’re in a place where you can look into it, maybe get a hormone panel. Look into your adrenals, your thyroid. I’m not a holistic doctor, but I do wonder if underlying issues could be contributing to anxious thinking.
5. Isolation
We touched on this already, but it’s worth repeating: isolation will only make anxiety worse. If you’re alone a lot, find a way to change that. Get plugged into a church or small group. Build a support system. Tell someone you’re struggling. You don’t have to go through this alone.
6. Controlling Your Triggers (Especially Googling)
This was a big one for me. I was talking to my mentor about my anxiety, and she said something that stuck with me: We were not meant to have all knowledge at our fingertips. We weren’t designed to have instant access to infinite information. It’s not healthy.
So, avoid Googling everything you think about—especially symptoms. That’s what sent me into a spiral one day. I Googled something I didn’t even know existed, and suddenly I was terrified I had it. If you can’t control the trigger, you can control what you're feeding your thoughts.
The Spiritual Tools
Let’s talk about the spiritual side. These are the tools I lean on when I’m in the thick of it—whether it’s a panic attack, a hard day of anxiety, or a tough week.
1. Scripture
It might sound obvious, but I think we overlook how powerful it is to say Scripture out loud. When I’m overwhelmed with anxious thoughts, I go straight to God's Word. I have to replace my anxious thoughts with truth.
Verses like:
“You have not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.”
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God…”
“My peace I give you. My peace I leave with you. I do not give as the world gives…”
If you can memorize these, great. If not, write them on your hand, on a sticky note, or put a poster on your wall. Keep them in front of you. God’s Word is not just helpful—it is supernatural. His Spirit really does bring peace that surpasses understanding.
2. Prayer
Praying instead of worrying—it sounds simple, but it's transformative. Sometimes on hard days, I’m just saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” On other days, I can pray more fully, asking Him for help, wisdom, comfort, and a sober mind.
You can’t actively worry while you’re praying. Try it—you’ll see what I mean.
3. Worship
My mentor also shared something so powerful: You can’t worry while you worship. That hit me like a lightbulb moment.
That day, I immediately started putting it into practice. When I caught myself spiraling, I began to sing. Whether it’s a worship song like “Still Waters” or reading a Psalm aloud, worship shifts something in your soul. Even if you don’t feel like it, that’s when you need it most.
Starve Your Anxiety
Here’s the reality: you have to starve your anxiety. Don’t feed it. Starve it through practical steps—cutting caffeine, eating well, getting sleep. Starve it spiritually—through Scripture, prayer, and worship. Starve it by replacing lies with truth.
You can do something about it. That includes evaluating:
What are you consuming? (News, social media, true crime?)
Are you living in unrepentant sin?
Are you holding onto idols?
I’ve realized that at the root of much of my anxiety is idolatry—particularly around my kids. It’s hard to surrender them to God because deep down, it reveals a belief that I think I know better. That maybe I love them more than I trust Him. That’s tough, but it’s real. And I think a lot of parents wrestle with this daily.
Some idols are easier to lay down, but the good gifts? Those are harder. That’s where we must keep asking: Do I love the gift more than the Giver? Do I trust the Creator more than creation?
Final Thoughts & The Hope of the Gospel
I just want to leave you with this: We live in a world that promotes anxiety. With phones, tech, and constant access to terrible news, we’re already set up to feel overwhelmed. So we must be intentional to actively pursue peace.
You can’t just coast and hope anxiety disappears. You have to fight back—spiritually, practically, and sometimes even medically.
But above all, we have the hope of the gospel. Jesus died for our sins, but also to redeem our stories. He restores us into right relationship with God and right thinking. One day, there will be no more anxiety. None.
He gives peace—not as the world gives—but true, lasting, supernatural peace. He is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is good. I’ve seen it in my life, and it will be true in yours too.
So if you’re in the thick of it, remember: You are not crazy. You are not alone. And there is hope. You do have power, by the Spirit of God, to take thoughts captive. To renew your mind. To live in peace.
If this episode helped you in any way, I’d love for you to leave a review or share it with a friend. I love you all. I’m praying for you. And I’ll see you next week.
