Stop Imagining the Worst: God-Centered Tools to Overcome Fear - Dr. Geoff & Cyd Holsclaw

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Does it feel like you can't build connection or intimacy with God like others can?

There's a good chance that you, like so many of us, have tried it all, read your Bible,

gone to church more, prayed more, and delved deeper into self-awareness.

But you still struggle with discontent, anxiety, avoidance and doubt.

You still feel stuck.

No matter where you find yourself emotionally, relationally or spiritually, Jesus meets

you there and helps you move toward a place of peace and rest.

As pastors, coaches and educators, Sid and Jeff Holsclaw are very familiar with this

struggle.

And they are prepared to help.

This is the counterculture.

I'm sure I'm Tina Griffin.

Yes.

The theme of the week is on anxiety.

I'm with Dr. Jeff and Sid Holsclaw, co-directors of the Center for Embodied Faith.

Hey, how are you two doing from Grand Rapids, Michigan?

Doing great.

Yeah.

It's good to be with you today.

Absolutely.

Excited to have you guys.

I was asking how in the world do survive in Michigan when winter is 10 months out of the

year and you showed me your 14 sweaters you've got on.

So you're prepared.

You both got sweaters on.

Unbelievable.

Just to cut right to the chase, Jeff, you are Dr. Sid, you're becoming a doctor.

Explain to us the journey of this topic of anxiety.

What caused you to be passionate about helping people with their struggles on anxiety?

Were you two anxious people and you met some online dating site and that's what clinched

it?

Well, actually, we kind of come in all this from attachment, attachment theory.

We were kind of in what's called the classic anxious avoidant trap where maybe Sid is more

overt about her anxiety and I'm avoidant about my anxiety.

But I'll let Sid jump in on a kind of her journey.

Yeah.

I mean, largely the reason I care so much is just because I know how much I've received

healing in my life with God out of my anxiety.

I more like Jeff would say, my anxiety was more noticeable than his.

Really when it comes down to us, probably almost all of us struggle with anxiety and

one way shape or form, but mine was a little more visible and so it was things like trouble

sleeping worried about when he would get home late.

All these things that I didn't, I was fine when I was single living on my own, but suddenly

when there was this other person in my life that I felt attached to, that I was connected

to in this different way, I just had so much anxiety about our relationship and about

safety and well-being and just had a lot of things coming up for me that made me go,

okay, I don't think Jesus intends for me to live my life this way.

There's got to be something that he wants to do for me here to bring me out of this.

And so it was that work that I did that then made me go, oh, this is so accessible.

And if I had just understood some things that I didn't know, now that I know these things,

I want everybody to know these things.

Phenomenal.

Now here's a deal.

How do you know that your anxiety cross a line of, is there even a normal anxiety?

Like once you're married, it just shows how much you love him if you're nervous because

he's getting home later than he thought, or you can't get a hold of him on his phone,

where I would be like, all right, where is he?

What's happening?

And back then, I don't even know how to use GPS tracking.

I'm just learning how to use that for kids now behind the wheel.

I'm like, where is Jake?

Okay, you finally arrived at the destination without him knowing that I'm that worried.

But that could be natural normal.

Could it not to a degree?

What was unnatural about your anxiety state when Jeff wasn't home at a certain time,

or he, you know, like a certain situation?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's probably, it's normal to wonder where your people are.

It's normal to wonder why is this person late?

Oh, something could be happening.

But what wasn't normal is, you know, I was, and I think, you know, we're going to talk about

this later on, but my body was responding in a situation that it was like a life or death

situation.

Wow.

And, you know, he was supposed to pick me up from work and we tell this story in our book

at length, but he was supposed to pick me up from work and he had gone to the wrong building.

We didn't have cell phones yet, so he couldn't tell me.

And he ended up being, you know, several minutes late to pick me up.

And by the time he arrived to pick me up, I was alternating between all the decisions

that I needed to make now that he was dead.

And so all the things that I had to do to, like, try to figure out my life and also just,

like completely falling apart and collapsing, like, sitting on the floor, like, I have no

idea how to handle anything, which was a very extreme reaction for being late to pick

me up from work.

And that was my wake up call moment of, this is not, this is not how Jesus is normal.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I know what are the things I want to ask you today.

And of course, I'm, like, going out of order, probably, but my, but it's like Ron real

conversation here with what you just said, that isn't normal.

But was there anything traumatic in your past that would cause you to automatically snap

into the thought process of, oh my gosh, she's dead.

Like, did you have a lot of bad things happen to you where you're, you just think your luck

is, you're not on God's side?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, when I was, when I was 15 months old, my whole family was in a car accident.

My dad was killed instantly.

Oh my God.

And my mom had died suddenly the year before we got married.

And so I had those two sudden losses.

And so when people would always say, I'll see you later.

Don't worry.

I'll be fine.

I was always like, yeah, you can say that, but you can't promise that.

And so when him being late, my assumption was, well, the people that are close to me in

my life die.

So he must be dead.

Oh my gosh.

I have chills all over my body right now from what you said.

I did not know that part of your story at all, but I knew there was probably trauma related

that way.

Yeah.

Snap it into that.

That is horrific.

I'm so sorry about your loss.

Yeah.

Are you at the point now where if he is a couple minutes late, you can't get home for

a half a day.

Has God done a number in your life to have you breathe knowing that his life is in God's

hands?

Yeah.

I mean, if he was gone for a half a day, that's still not super pleasant, right?

But there is.

There is now a bedrock of trust and a sense of God is with me and he is going to take

care of me, even if it doesn't look like the way that I think it will.

And so yeah, there is a there is a level of trust and security now that God has worked

in my life that was not there.

Oh my gosh.

You two have to be in every single American home with the topic of anxiety because who

does not go through that at some case of point?

Phenomenal.

Well said.

Jeff, you're a pastor, professor, author for over 20 years, said you're a coach, pastor

and spiritual director also going towards your doctorate, um, dive in and deep now to

the questions.

Now that we know that is the reason why you're both talking about this topic, you begin

your book, landscapes of the soul, how the science and spirituality of attachment can

move you into confident, faith, courage and connection by saying we all get stuck in

our spiritual lives at some point, how does this happen and is there a remedy?

Yeah, well, kind of like what Sid was sharing is like she was getting stuck kind of, um,

inner nervous system, she wasn't able to kind of recover back to connection.

We talk about how God has made us for connecting, but also for protecting and these are both

good things, but then they get distorted by sin, they get distorted by trauma, they

get distorted, um, just by all sorts of things that happen to us.

And so for, uh, Sid, she would get and others who struggle with anxiety or other kind of

crippling fear, they get stuck in this protection mode and God meant for us to be in that mode

of protection when we're in danger.

And then that's most mobilized us and that's a good thing because God wants us to survive,

but God also wants us to thrive.

And that's where the connection comes in, God has made us for deep connection with other

people.

We're supposed to be connected to ourselves and then of course we're supposed to be connected

with God.

And so that ability to move as God has designed between the proper connection and then the proper

protection is what, um, our book is kind of at.

And then we kind of talk about using attachment about how different ways we get stuck in, um,

our protection strategies.

And so Sid's protection strategy then is more overt in her anxiety is she's checking in

on her people.

She's wondering where people are.

She's very good at reading social cues because the people in her life are so important.

And that's in a sense how she manages her anxiety is by pressing into those relationships

by pressing into what we call intimacy, the, the side of how God has made us to connect.

But then other people, they manage their anxiety kind of by going the opposite direction,

which we call the desert, which is I'm actually going to start slowly shutting myself off

from deep connection with other people.

I'm going to shut myself off even for myself.

So I'm not really aware of my own emotions.

And that is a wave of, um, pressing into what we call independence.

So you're, you're so independent that you lose the God's, God's purpose for us in intimacy.

And so those are kind of two strategies.

So one is what we call the jungle where it's the jungle of relationships and your hyper

vigilant.

Then the other one is the desert where you kind of slowly withdraw.

But someone in the desert like me, I could be very, um, like social.

I could be very funny, right?

Nobody would know that I'm withdrawing into myself and I'm withdrawing from others.

Um, but deep down, that's kind of what's happened because that's how I've learned how to manage

my anxiety is just to like forget all about that body, forget about those emotions and

just do, do, do.

And all of this plays into our faith, of course, because the way that we manage those relationships

on a human level is also the way that we interact with God.

And so for example, if someone has more overt anxiety, like more of that jungle kind

of perspective, then it's like, God doesn't feel close today.

What did I do?

Well, what do I need to do in order to reconnect with God?

How do I need to get as attention?

How do I need to make sure we're close?

And someone on the more desert side of things, the avoidance side might be like, I don't

feel close to God, but I don't think God is it, God isn't close.

So as long as I read the Bible and I know his word and I know the rules and I'm obedient,

that's all that matters.

And so when we sort of run into these stuck places and our faith often, it's because

we're relying on these strategies and that gives us a distorted view of who God really

is.

That's so well said.

And I have to figure out where I am on the spectrum, but I can tell you that my husband,

Jeff, was on in the past, was on the trajectory of what you talked about.

And he realized that a couple of years ago, and I saw that, but I didn't know that.

We got engaged the fourth time I met in person, and it was a fast, quick relationship.

And that is exactly how he handled his anxiety for decades, no longer the case today, but

it's really funny because I notice when guests come on the program, where my husband's

at, but I have a hard time figuring out where I'm at.

So we're going to go to a short commercial break.

I'm going to dive in deep to figure out what my problems are with anxiety, more with

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During commercial break, I dove in a little bit deep there.

My problem with anxiety, and I know I'm getting better over the years, but would tend to be

what you struggle with.

People could easily tell I have anxiety, which I would cause other people in my household

to have anxiety as a result of my anxiety.

I know it spreads quick, go take a breather, we can tell that you're stressed, and then

sometimes it would be because one of them stressed me out, but then my anxiety just basically

drops the atomic bomb.

So Sid, Jeff, I need your book just as much as my husband does, like anybody else here

watching this program.

The one thing we need to turn to that I believe would help us tons is obviously to pray about

our anxiety and ask God to give us clarity, and then obviously read your book because

your book will dissect this major landscapes of the soul, which we're going to talk about

here in a couple of minutes.

But what are some examples of survival skills that we tend to use to cope at trauma?

And how do we unlearn those examples of survival skills that are inaccurate, false?

Well, so for the jungle, for someone who's like very hyper vigilant about their relationships,

they're really pressing into that side of intimacy, which is a good thing because God has

created us to pursue intimacy.

You often are really skilled, or you go to the tools of like social, emotional reading

people.

So that would be things like you walk into a room and you know how everybody's thinking

and feeling about every situation.

You can't turn it off.

It's like a radar.

You're always picking up, but you're like a sponge that just kind of soaks up all this

kind of social, emotional information.

You also, one of your go-to tools is what we call prioritizing relationships over rules,

where we were talking about bedtime routines and we're like, hey, we're going to do this,

this, and this.

We're going to have the kids, and then kids like, just the kids, one more board book,

we're like, you're snuggling, and it's like, and then the rules go out, the door, and

then I'm like, hey, I thought we agreed to something different than a couple of other

ones.

Oftentimes, people in the jungle will blame themselves when something goes wrong in a relationship

because their priority is to reconnect the relationship.

There's kind of this message that if like, well, if I just take responsibility for everything

that went wrong, then we can start moving forward again.

And then there's also this idea that when you have something that's wrong, you go toward,

you go to your people.

And in the desert, your survival skills are kind of the opposite.

So you really have the logical linear kind of mentality.

Let's get things done.

So another skill would be if something's wrong, I will fix it.

I'm going to do it myself.

I don't go to people.

People let me down.

I will fix it myself in the reverse of the jungle, which kind of blames themselves for

things.

If someone like me in the desert, I'm pretty good at blaming other people, right?

Because I know the rules.

I'm following the rules.

You broke the rules.

You screwed up with the really tragic thing in a marriage, though, is if you have someone

in the jungle who takes too much responsibility and you have someone in the desert who loves

to pass the blame, then you get this really bad matrix of not really sorting out.

The problems in a marriage where one person takes all the blame and the other person is

glad that they're taking all the blame.

So those things, those things aren't great.

I know we just explain tons of marriages that happen there and people get in these really

bad kind of spirals.

But we talk about, well, how do we move forward is a lot of times you don't need to unlearn

those skills.

Some of those skills are really good skills.

Going to your people when you're in trouble, you know, being flexible about your rules and

relationships and trying to hold those things together.

So we really talk about trying to integrate the best of the desert and the jungle and

that's what we call the pastor is that God's leading us to the best of independence but

also the best of pursuing intimacy and practicing those two things together.

And so that's kind of what we call the pastor, which is like secure attachment with God

where God's leading all of us.

Yeah.

And the biggest thing that's super helpful to understand really simply is that like survival

strategies basically just mean you're limited in your choices, right?

You learn to survive because like you have this like default response and you're kind

of stuck there.

And so the way through is to learn new strategies that balance and complement and to build your

capacity to be able to sort of flexibly adapt so that you have choices and you're not just

stuck with this one default strategy.

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SID, 30 seconds or under, we were talking during commercial break.

Tell us how joy fits in perfectly with what you guys just shared.

Yeah, well, we talked about the need to be able to learn to shift between connection and

protection.

And a big way to do that is by understanding joy.

So if we think of joy as the experience of being with someone who's glad to be with

us, God is always glad to be with us.

There's joy in his presence.

And so the more we savor joy and learn to experience God's joy, the more we can return

to that joy when we find ourselves in a state of connection.

And that increases our capacity to be able to be flexible and to be able to return to

a place of calm and joy.

You are phenomenal.

You two are just something else.

We got to hang out sometime.

Even though you're in Michigan, I would say let's hang out in Nashville.

So I don't freeze the death up there.

You too.

Phenomenal book.

And it is a five star on Amazon landscapes of the soul, how the science and spirituality

of attachment can move you into confident faith, courage and connection.

Give us a quick testimony on what happened with someone that read this phenomenal book.

Well, people have said like they've known about attachment science before and that this

was the book that helped them finally make sense of their attachment with God in a way

that they had not understood before.

We've had several people say things like, I finally understand why it's been hard for

me to connect with God and I'm starting to experience him in a new way.

That's phenomenal.

I want to grab the book now and shove it underneath my pillow.

Does it absorb through a pillow at night?

I don't know.

We haven't had anybody give testimony as of us most this yet.

Oh, wonderful.

Maybe I read the audiobook too.

So if you want to listen to her reading the whole thing and you can get it as the audio

version.

Phenomenal.

Okay.

Well, I got to absorb everything you guys just said seriously.

And I'm going to like shove it underneath my husband's pillow and see what Luke gets.

I'll be like, I had this weird dream last night, man.

Next up, phenomenal website, got to check it out now, embodied faith.life everybody embodied

faith.life.

You also have a phenomenal podcast we can get right through your website.

Correct?

Yes.

Tell us what you talk about and what you have available on your website.

Yeah.

Well, we are really all about having Jesus centered attachment based and kind of neuroscience

informed resources for discipleship and spiritual formation.

So you can see all of our like sub stack links, our podcast.

And then we also do several cohorts and training programs all about learning how to attach

more deeply with God.

You guys are phenomenal.

Thank you so much.

Everybody check into the podcast for episodes this week on anxiety.

And I wore this shirt for you to stronger than the storm.

Oh, yeah.

Everybody out there?

Perfect.

So check out these people.

We don't have to live in fear, anxiety, throw it out the window.

If Sid can do it, if Jeff can do it, you can too.

You guys rock counterculturemom.com.

We shoot it.

You share it.

Go to that website now counterculturemom.com, click on the show tab.

You two keep at it.

I'm watching you.

Sid, go get them with that doctorate degree.

Thanks.

Thanks for joining us for the counterculture mom show with your host, Tina Griffin.

For over two decades, Tina has traveled the globe exposing how pop culture is glamorizing

harmful behaviors without showing the consequences and how these messages are wreaking havoc on

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