Scripture
1 Peter 5:7
Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
Prayer
Adult:
Dear God,
Life can take over. Sometimes it can make me feel shaky and sick inside. It can make me lose sleep. The anxiety can take over. God, I hate the anxiety. I know in the Bible it says it’s a sin to lose sleep and to have anxiety because we should rely on you. However, I don’t know how to lose the anxiety because it takes over my body. It takes over my soul and mind. God, help bring me peace. Help me let it go. I love you!
Child:
Dear God,
Please take away this bad feeling I have. The feeling which keeps me up at night or makes me sick. Let me be ok. Thanks God.
Activities:
Anxiety is a feeling of being on the edge. It causes the inflicted to search for a quick fix of pills or whatever keeps you from jumping. You look for all the wrong cures in all the wrong places. Although anxiety can be a chemical mix-up, it can also be self-inflicted. It keeps you up at night, speaks crazy talk in your head, or brings an uncomfortable energy into your life. When I’ve experienced anxiety is when I think I should be in control. There is a sense something is not right either in my career, my relationships, etc. There is usually some reality to why I’m feeling this way, but it is never as bad as my mind tells me it is. My mind races with the worst outcomes ever and I believe them. It is a feeling of complete failure, hopelessness, or being out of control. You think life is over. There are so many instances when anxiety has creeped in my life from when I was told I needed to step up and learn the routine, to big tests such as the GRE, to relationship break-ups, to being mediocre in critical presentations, to first days on a job and not feeling like I swept them off their feet, etc. Again it was all lies in my head. This week’s activities is to work on the lies within your head.
Adult
- Journal about a time when you were anxious. Think about your thoughts at the time and what actually happened at the end. Think about how your thoughts were unrealistic. What can you change the next time you become anxious?
- Include God as part of your healing regimen. This means carve out time to actually talk with him.
- Spend time trying to relax whether this is taking a bath, drinking a glass of wine, meditating, or taking a yoga class
- Ask yourself even if the worst happened would it be as bad as you are making it out to be in your head?
- Don’t just sit in your anxiety – do something productive and to take your mind off of it whether this is running, swimming, mowing the lawn, etc.
- Practice breathing exercises where you lie down, take deep breaths, and concentrate on your breathing
- Concentrate on a happy place whether this is the ocean, the clouds, in a meadow, etc. Think about what it looks like, feels like, and sounds like.
- Keep a tracker of your emotions. Use smiley, frown, and angry faces to depict your moods for the week. At the end of the week, see what days you had smiley faces and think about what made you happy.
Child
- Practice breathing techniques with your child and tell them to use these techniques when they are anxious
- Ask them to make up a story and use the scenario they are anxious about
- Talk about reality thinking. This means taking scenarios they are anxious about and turning it around to positive instead of negative thinking
- Give your child examples of when you’ve been anxious and what happened in the end. Let them know what you thought would happen never happened.
- Model good behavior this week – eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep
- Conduct activities to utilize your child’s mind and not concentrate on the anxiety such as puzzles, crossword games, legos, building a car model, etc.
