4 Simple Questions That Reveal The Causes of Worry and Anxiety

God has so many amazing things for you. He really cares about the things that you’re worried about and have occasional anxiety about. I want you to know that feelings of anxiety come with the territory of living in this world. But you don’t have to face them alone–God cares about every part of your life.

And when you forfeit the gift that he gave you, which is his peace, the peace that passes all understanding and you lay down your trust or you don’t believe God or take God at his word, he doesn’t just shake a stick at you and tell you what a bad Christian you are, but he redirects you. I’m thinking of Psalm 23, where he says that your rod and your staff, they comfort me, they guide me.

The things that I share are really meant to help you break up with worry and anxious thoughts and create a deeper and richer relationship with God. My goal here is to remind you that he’s on the ground with you. He cares, he knows, he sees, and he is actively on mission to do good in your life, through your life and in your daily activities, for the kingdom.

2024 is probably going to get a little bit dicey. We are in an election year. There’s going to be a lot of news articles and startling topics that are going to come up and focus on worst-case scenarios. And I just want you to remember that you are a citizen of the kingdom and you don’t play by the same rules.

I want to remind you that the rule and reign here on earth is not the same as the rule and reign from heaven. And God is in this. And this is why Peace on Purpose podcast exists, because worry really gets you distracted, and it gets you to question your faith. It can also drum up hopelessness and manifest in physical symptoms. How we combat that is to remember that it’s possible that God might be up to something good here.

To kick off a new year, a lot of people talk about what your goals and plans are for the year.

I noticed this funny thing on social media where we had kind of two camps of thought. We had some people who were like:

new year, new you 

crushing my goals

got my planner

so stoked

I’m going to be the best version of me

God’s going to do great things!

And then you had these people who were like…meh, I take a different approach– I hibernate. This might even be associated with negative thoughts, but daily life takes on a different pace and that’s ok. This is the time to rest. I’m gonna declutter. I’m not gonna take an extra week off. I’m not in a hurry. 

I find myself somewhere in the middle. Honestly, I wake up in the spring. I’m more of a goal getter in the springtime. But the winter for me is a time to rest and reflect. It’s a normal part of life. I take the time to ask myself a few questions as to what’s working, what’s not working, what would I do differently? And what am I open to? 

Debriefing has been really helpful for me in my, in my work as a solopreneur, so to speak. What I’ve noticed, too, is when I took the same principles from this debriefing exercise and I really put them into my life, that’s when I could really pinpoint the things that were going really well that I could celebrate and I could give God the praise for.

4 questions to ask yourself

The first thing I’m going to ask you is, what worked for you in 2023? What were some rhythms that worked for you and your family? What comes up for you when I say that? What were some of the ways you did things that made you feel happy? And what are some of the ways that you feel proud that you guys did last year? Is there a family member that made great strides and accomplished goals?

That might be a little bit harder to come up with what was working because your brain is, again, really good at finding all the things that went wrong. It’s trying to keep you from enduring too much pain. So if this question is a little bit tricky, that’s okay. I anticipate that it’s It takes a little bit longer to think of the things that you’re thankful for and that was working for you in 2023.

We now practice this same debriefing exercise with the whole family. We ask what’s working and what’s not working on a monthly, weekly and daily basis. We ask what would we do differently and what are we open to. We even do this when we get home from visiting at a friend’s house for the first time. 

I’m going to bring you back to the six common themes of worry for you in your life. There’s really only six things that you’re worried about. You can use this debriefing exercise over these six topics.

Most of us are going to lay down our peace over our money, our marriage, our parenting, our work or our career or business, our health, and strained relationships. Those are the the top six things that we as humans are thinking about and worried about.

What’s really great about debriefing is you can ask these four questions about each of those six topics. So when it comes to your money, what’s working? Your answer might look something like this: “it works that we have a $200 per week budget for grocery shopping.” You also need to ask what isn’t working. You might be saying, “well, $200 a week budget for grocery shopping is not working for us. Inflation is a real thing and we’ve really got to increase to $300 a week.” So what we were doing before is not working and it’s causing us to lay down our peace about our money. What would we do differently? And that’s where we can get into a discussion of re-working the family budget.

This is a good example of a debriefing exercise. 

The truth is, God is poised to give you wisdom when you need it. It’s really hard to get wisdom from the Lord when you’re freaking out over something. If you can look at just the data and if you can just say:

Question 1

what’s working?

Question 2

what’s not working?

Question 3

what would we do differently?

Question 4

what am I open to?

That’s when you can ask the Lord for wisdom and initiate some relaxation techniques while you listen for his answer. Tell the Lord this isn’t working and he’s gonna say, I know, I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me about it. He can help you learn how to multiply your money. This does not have to be a source of contention for you. Your nervous system isn’t the boss. 

I say that as somebody who experienced this as a source of contention. The money was an area that I never thought I was going to have peace over. But the truth is, when I asked the question, “what am I open to?”, the Lord showed me that if I would invest with the skills that he had given me as a gift and if I would be faithful with those things, then income would never be a problem.

That took years, by the way, but it started with that question of “what am I open to?”

Now let’s go to your marriage. Let’s run through the same thing. What’s working in your marriage? For example, date nights are happening. We’re being respectful of each other. We’re praying for each other. 

What’s not working? Here’s pretty common example for wives. I get in bed and I just hope my husband does not try to touch me. Anybody else ever feel that way? We’re just going to be really honest because when we ask ourselves these questions, it shows us where we’re laying down our peace. Then you can invite the Lord to help you realign your thoughts and your actions of your daily lives with his word. 

What am I open to? Again, it’s that tender heart thing of like, here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not working, here’s what I would do differently. And what am I open to? Marriage is a tender topic. Especially if you’re in a really hard marital season, but this debriefing exercise is really helpful and can illuminate to you where you’re laying down your peace in your marriage.

What about parenting?

• what’s working?

• what’s not working?

• what would you do differently? 

• what are you open to? 

This is a really simple one for me to talk about because I have gone through many seasons of postpartum and other lifestyle changes. And there are things that work for me during postpartum, and there are things that don’t work for me in postpartum.

When I think about debriefing, the realm of parenting is probably one of the easiest ways for me to do it. 

Those sneaky symptoms of anxiety come at me with something like this scenario: I was doing this routine with my five year old and now they’re six years old and I noticed that they’ve grown and the things that I was doing last season just don’t have the same effect. The child has changed for no apparent reason and I need to reassess.

Maybe they’re fighting me more often and parenting has become a really hard place lately and includes chronic worrying. When you stop and ask yourself the 4 key questions, you’re kind of stopping and saying I need to work on this. These feelings of stress don’t get to determine how this day goes. 

Life is busy, yes, we’re going to be parenting in our day, we’re going to be putting out fires, we’re going to be serving the kids food, we’re going to make sure that they have everything for school, we’re going to make sure that they have what they need, and we’re going to deal with conflict resolution and all those things. But if we’re so caught up in the day to day that we don’t reflect and work on our parenting, then we can often lay down our peace because we’re feeling frustrated. Then we lash out at our kids and then we feel bad. We may even have a physical reaction to this like a rapid heartbeat or shortness of breath–a health problem that cannot be overlooked. One of the easiest ways to begin the process of having a peaceful experience in parenthood is to ask ourselves those questions.

What’s working? What’s not working? What do we need to do differently? And what are we open to? I’ve noticed for me, and I’ll just kind of be vulnerable here, my daughter is 12 and she’s having her own opinion. How dare her? She’s starting to have her own thoughts about things. And I’ve just noticed what’s not working for me is trying to control everything she does. She is really coming into having her own personality and thoughts, as well as experiencing physical changes.

And the way that I’ve been raising her up until this point is no longer going to work because she’s now a young lady. I am not enjoying my motherhood experience because I’m wanting to control this. I’m not wanting to let go of her being younger. I’m probably grieving some of that and watching her blossom into a young woman and knowing that all these great things are ahead for her. I need to realize and realign and be honest with myself that the things that I was doing that were great for her in one season are not going to work in this next season. I need to be open to that and I need to be honest with the Lord and I need to ask for his help in parenting. When we do this we can get our peace back immediately. It starts with acknowledgement.

What about in the area of work and job performance? This is a big one for a lot of families right now. I sense a lot of Christian families are wanting to be together more often. They’re wanting to be more financially sovereign. They’re wanting to do small business. If you had $100,000 in the bank and all your bills were covered this month, what would you be doing for work?

That is a really good way to jolt the system and, and kind of reorient yourself and ask yourself if I had a different circumstance, would I be doing this current job? This is what helps open the door to that last question, which is, what am I open to? And I really do believe the Lord is knocking on a lot of hearts this season. How do we get away from traditional jobs to having multiple streams of income that we can be in control of? I think that that’s a great question. 

Let’s look at health. What’s working? What’s not working? What would you do differently? And what are you open to? 

When it comes to strained relationships with family members or friends, ask yourself what’s working? What’s not working? What would you do differently? And what are you open to? I got a lot of feedback on my last podcast episode when I talked about awkward family conversations. We just acknowledged that some of our family members are unhealthy and emotionally immature.

The Lord is definitely doing a shake up in family circles and family units and getting them to be more realigned with kingdom principles. Social situations really bring this to light. I talked about that more in my last episode.

If a particular person texts you or calls you or comments on your social media and your heart begins racing, that’s your invitation to debrief. Something in that relationship is not working and God wants to talk to you about it. And it’s good. Again, you never have to lay down your peace. The more peace you have, the more wisdom you are open to, the better decisions you make, and the more steadfast you become. I really, really believe that Christians are going to learn to be grounded in 2024 when stressful events are happening all around us. 

It’s going to be beautiful and it’s going to be awesome. I encourage you, take these four questions and run through anything that comes up for you. The six different areas of life: your money, your marriage, your parenting, your health, your work, your career, your strained relationships. All of that–debrief it.

Ask the four questions when it comes to taking a look back on your 2023, debrief your last week and how you handled everyday situations, debrief your last month, debrief your Christmas. Anytime that you hang out with somebody or experience stressful situations, I would encourage you to do this as a family or with a trusted friend. When we get in the car, we’re debriefing and talking through the different ways we could do things next time. It’s become a practice now. 

It’s kind of like sharing our highs and lows, but it helps us to make really good decisions. In the future. we’ll be wise to stop and ask ourselves what needs to upgrade, what needs to change, what are the ways I laid down my peace and become plagued with excessive worry, and how can we be curious about that? The good news is that when you start to do this and you implement this habit regularly, you will notice an increase of peace because awareness is the first step in breaking up with worry.

If this blog post blessed you in any way, please share with a friend or head on over to the Peace on Purpose podcast for more. Thank you!! –Mama LB, your Cognitive Behavioral Therapy practitioner and sourdough-baking mama of 7