…you mustn’t be frightened …
if a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,
any misery, any depression, since after all
you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

…difficulties are magnified out of all proportion
simply by fear and anxiety.
From the moment we wake until we fall asleep
we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands,
and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf: 
With sorrow and with grief…
God will not be distracted.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters from Prison

During my decades as a primary care physician for a university health center, my clinic days were often filled with young adults who were so consumed by anxiety they were immobilized in their ability to move forward through life’s inevitable obstacles and difficulties. They were so stuck in overwhelming feelings, they couldn’t sleep or eat or think clearly. They tended to self-medicate, self-injure and self-hate. Unable to nurture themselves or others, they withered like a flower without roots deep enough to reach the vast reservoir untapped beneath them.  In epidemic numbers, some decide to die, even before life really has fully begun for them.

My role was to help find healing solutions, whether it was counseling therapy, a break from school, or a medicine that may give some form of relief. 

My heart knows the ultimate answer is not as simple as choosing the right prescription – light and cloud shadows differ for each person – it can feel like the sun is blocked forever, all that is left is rain and snow and gray.

I too have known anxiety and how it can distort every thought.

We who are anxious can depend upon a Creator who is not distracted from His care for us even if we have turned away in our worry and sorrow, unable to look past our own eyelashes. 

Like a thirsty withering plant, we need to reach higher and deeper: asking for help and support, working through solutions with those helpers, acknowledging there exists a healing power greater than ourselves.

So we are called to pray for ourselves and for others. Self compassion and caring for others can disable anxiety and fear by transforming it to growth, gratitude and grace.  

No longer withering, we just might bloom.