Do not worry? Mindfulness for the distracted mind.

Matthew 6:25-26, 34 

 "For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body as to what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not worth much more than they?...So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own."

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Philippians 4:6

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."

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There is something that has been bothering me recently about how I have heard some Christians interpret these verses.  Namely the trouble is when people begin to emphasize the imperative sense of "Do not worry." or "Do not be anxious."   When they do this, it seems they think that we should not experience worry or anxiety at all as people of faith.   Instead I watch as people begin to judge themselves and feel ashamed about their anxiety.  Worry becomes something to be worried about and anxiety is something that generates an even greater sense of anxiety.

I decided today to dig into the original meaning, context and spirit that these verses were written in. The Greek word that we usually translate as "worry" or "anxiety" is merimnaō which according to one source literally refers to "a distracted mind".  Another interpretation I found was "to be unduly concerned by."  The interesting thing to note about this word is that it is used in multiple contexts within the New Testament - both with positive and negative connotations.  This is important!

Let's take a moment to talk about worry and anxiety from biological point of view.  Anxiety is an emotion that is closely related to fear.  We actually have a part of our brains that is devoted to generating and processing this emotion of fear; it's called the amygdala.  When our amygdala is affected we move into fight or flight mode.  This is a survival instinct: it is there to generate the energy we need to take action immediately!  If I see a car careening towards me while I'm out for the walk I need that energy to dodge out of the way - I might need to move faster than I can process what is going on! (Freeze and fawn also exist but they are most adaptive in situations where fight and flight are not possible).   Anxiety is an emotion that also activates the amygdala, kind of like a low-grade fear; I've even heard anxiety described as "energy with nowhere to go".  

It is important for us to know this biological reality because God created the capacity within our minds for anxiety and worry.  Wouldn't it be silly for God to give us this reflex and then tell us to not be anxious?  It would be like we have been doomed to fail!  To interpret these verses effectively, then, we need to realize that there is both a helpful and unhelpful context to feeling anxiety.  All emotions exist for a reason, a God-given reason.  Accessed in a healthy way they give us important information about our environment and lives that helps us to be pro-active, that helps us find the wisdom that we need to respond effectively.  Interpreting the verses I wrote above as "do not feel the emotion of anxiety" does not match the reality of how God created us.

Now, let's talk about worry.  Worry is often treated as being synonymous with anxiety, but interestingly enough it does have an important distinction.  Worry is one of the few words in the English language that both can be used to describe an emotion and a behaviour, in fact it links the two.  The word "worry" conjures the sense of a person going through things in their mind over and over again, to be cognitively preoccupied with a concern.  Anxiety by contrast can take place without thoughts - I can feel a knot in my stomach, or a fluttering in my chest, I can find it hard to breath and I might not know what is going on in my mind to stir that emotion.  When I look at the meaning of the original Greek word "a distracted mind" or "to be unduly concerned by" this seems to highlight the thinking component that is inherent to worry.  It suggests that the way to change our physical experience of worry is to change our thoughts. 

Change our thoughts?  Anyone who gets caught up in worry spirals knows that this is easier said than done!  Yet, there is something in literal Greek definition of worry, merimnaō, that hints to what we can target in order to experience relief from unhelpful worry and anxiety.  The problem is not in thinking about the things that concern us - sometimes we need to do that!  The problem is actually when the concerns that we have distract us from being able to participate in the rest of life.

So, how do we deal with a distracted mind?  The answer lies in developing the capacity for mindfulness.  Mindfulness is a word that refers to the quality of non-judgmental attention that we bring to the present moment.  It is a skill with several skill subsets, of which I will name four:

1.  Observe - when we use this skill we are simply noticing, and the noticing can take place externally (i.e. seeing what is going on in our environment with our five senses) or internally (i.e noticing what thoughts are going through our head or what emotions we are feeling in our body). Often we get distracted unintentionally - our mind wanders off without permission and we don't even notice!  The first step then in dealing with a distracted mind is to notice where our attention is at.
   
2. Non-judgmentally - this skill means that we choose to not judge what we are noticing. We recognize worry is in itself not wrong, and also sometimes we can be preoccupied with worry in an unhelpful way.  Rather than focusing on what we think we "should" or "should not" do or what we think is "good" or "bad" we recognize whether the action that we are engaging with is helpful or unhelpful, and we don't judge ourselves for doing the action, instead we focus our energy to problem solving what would be more helpful for us.  A simple non-judgmental thought you can use when noticing yourself worry is "Oh! There my brain goes worrying again! :) " and then non-judgmentally shift your attention back to what you were doing before the worrying started.
   
3. Participate - when we participate we are throwing ourselves into whatever activity we are doing with 100% of our attention.  If we are having a conversation with friends we are 100% present and not in judgmental or analytical mode.  We are not preoccupied with what we are doing later after the conversation, or what happened earlier in the day - we are fully engaged.  One fun way to know if you have fully participated in an activity is if you lose complete track of time because you were so immersed in whatever you were doing.
4. One-mindfully - When we do things one-mindfully this means we are intentionally putting our attention into only one thing.  This skill overlaps a bit with the others - we can observe one-mindfully or we can participate one-mindfully.   For example, if we are chopping carrots for dinner then we are focused only on chopping carrots.  We might intentionally direct our attention towards the feel of the carrots in our hand, the feel of knife on the cutting board; we focus on the movement and the act that we are engaged in, breaking it down into its smallest components.  We might not lose track of time when we do things one-mindfully because sometimes it can take a lot of attention and effort to make our mind slow down and take things one at a time.  But, if we develop this skill we actually develop the capacity within ourselves to control where we direct our attention (and it does get easier with practice!)
   

From a mental health perspective, the Bible has a lot of great advice in terms of how to deal with anxiety and worry effectively.  Being focused on the present moment instead of focused on the future (Matthew 6:25-26, 34), prayer and gratitude (Philippians 4:6) are all mindfulness practices that I will sometimes bring into therapy to help clients shift their emotional experience away from anxiety.  If we choose to look at these verses as prescriptive rather than imperative, we may find the insight we need to bring about the change to shift our distracted mind from worry towards what we actually want to be focusing on in the moment.