Anxious Faith

What's the story behind Anxious Faith? This episode we're switching things up - we're hearing from James not as the host, but as the interviewee, as he shared about his and his family's journey through mental health struggles, and how those experiences led to starting Anxious Faith.

If you’ve ever wondered where God is in the midst of what you’re going through, James’ story is for you. And out of his story, God has built something beautiful: this community that we now call Anxious Faith.

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

If you’re someone who has been around the mental health space for a bit, whether from reading or hearing things or dealing with it yourself, you’ve probably come across the concept of gratitude. 

Gratitude is something that counsellors and psychologists suggest as a tool to help us when we’re struggling with our mental health, and you only have to walk into any stationery or book store to see how popular it has become – there are gratitude journals *everywhere*. And that’s for a reason – gratitude is actually something that can help our mental health.

But what about as Christians? Should we be following secular suggestions of ‘cultivating a mindset of gratitude’ by simply listing what we’re thankful for, or is there more to gratitude when faith is mixed in?

This episode we’re speaking with Stephen Unwin, who is actually part of the Anxious Faith team and an editor for Our Daily Bread Ministries. In his spare time, not that there’s much of it, he’s also studying his PhD around the concept of ‘Gratitude and Gift in the Christian Life’.

While Stephen hasn’t had to deal with mental health challenges of his own, his years of research into what gratitude is have shown how gratitude can help our mental health. 

In the first half of this episode we’ll talk about what gratitude is, what it looks like in a faith-based context, and where we see it in the Bible. After the break, we’ll chat more about how gratitude can be lived out not just during the good times, but even when we’re struggling or suffering. We’ll also explore some ideas for how we can practise gratitude in those hard times, so make sure you hang around till the end!

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Anxious Faith website

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on TikTok

Subscribe on Youtube

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

If you’re someone who is struggling with mental health challenges, be they anxiety, depression, or others, and you’re also someone of faith, surely throwing yourself into  learning everything you can about God, serving Him in every way possible, and making that the focus of your life is the way to deal with those challenges. 

Right?

This episode we’re chatting with Chris - who was part of Season 1 - and hearing more about his story. Growing up in difficult circumstances, and dealing with depression from a relatively young age, Chris thought that the more he could do for God, the better his mental health would be. As you’re listening, you’ll hear Chris unpack that Jesus isn’t the problem, but sometimes the way we get stuck in thinking of how exactly we have to follow him can cause problems for us. He’s the first to admit he was zealous - but probably zealous in the wrong way. And you’ll hear how as he began to understand this, he began to focus more on the character of God, and find some more peace along his journey.

With this episode we’d really encourage you to listen to the end, to see how God has brought Chris from his childhood experience to his life following Jesus today.

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Anxious Faith website

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on TikTok

Subscribe on Youtube

--

Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

With mental health statistics so high – especially in Australia – the odds are someone we know and care about will suffer from a mental health condition during their life. But what do you do if it’s your partner? 

What does that look like day-to-day? How do you support them? Or, even more broadly, how do you begin to tell someone you’re close to that you have a mental illness?

This episode we speak to Matt & Maddy, a young married couple who share how they’ve learned to navigate a relationship involving mental illness. Maddy has an anxiety condition; Matt has never experienced one, and they share what it was like going through the stages of their relationship, and how their faith plays a huge part in keeping them united and able to support each other.

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Anxious Faith website

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on TikTok

Subscribe on Youtube

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

Anxiety is never nice to experience. But is avoiding it always the best plan? What if we were able to stop avoiding the anxiety, and instead learn from it? This episode we speak to Dr Sarah, from  Season 2 Episode 1, but this time in her capacity and experience as a pastor's wife and church planter. Sarah shares about how we can begin to unpack what is beneath the fear that is causing the anxiety, untangle the emotions behind it, and ultimately evaluate what it's teaching us in the light of God's Word.

 Sarah's previous episode

Untangling Emotions by J Alasdair Groves & Winston T Smith

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Anxious Faith website

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on TikTok

Subscribe on Youtube

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

Opening up about our mental health can be difficult - but for some reason it can be even harder at church. Will people understand what I'm going through? Will my pastor? This episode we're speaking with Jordan, a pastor from Melbourne who has lived the experience first hand. We hear his story, but also what he's learned along the way about how he views God, and how God views him. From this pastor who has been through significant mental health challenges, we hope his story will encourage you to seek how to continue on the journey, even when it feels hopeless.

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Anxious Faith website

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on TikTok

Subscribe on Youtube

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

If you’ve struggled with anxiety, depression, or any other mental health challenges, and you’ve been open about it – there’s a fair chance that you might be labelled that way by people. 

Whether knowingly or unknowingly, to your face or when you’re just being described, you might be known as “that girl that has anxiety” or “the guy with depression”. It’s something we naturally do – we label and group things together – but sometimes, those labels carry a negative weight or connotation with them. Or, more than that, you might even just come to be known for those labels, rather than who you are as a person.

While labels can be helpful, they can also be damaging. In this episode, we’re chatting with Mary, one of the voices from Season 1 of Anxious Faith. We’ll hear more of Mary’s journey with mental health, and the labels she’s lived with. 

We’ll also learn about how we can begin to own those labels for ourselves, and the freedom that can come from being vulnerable with people about what the reality of your label is – something they may have never considered. We hope you’ll be encouraged by and take something from this conversation with Mary.

You can read a shorter version of Mary’s story, I’m Anxious and I Know It

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental health, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

Anxiety comes in all forms, and affects people in different ways. For some it’s something that is only a challenge for a certain time period, for others it’s something they have to face for their entire lives. If we’ve been through a time of struggling with anxiety, do we just write that time off, try and move on, and not let it impact us any more?In this episode, we’re sitting down with Pip. As someone who suffered (and still suffers) from anxiety in certain situations, Pip chose not to leave it all behind when she was more able to deal with the challenges it offered, but instead embraced her calling to study counseling and begin to use her own experiences to help others. 

Join us as we hear her story, and hear how she uses the anxiety she’s been through to better serve people now.

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with anxiety or your mental healthl, we’d really encourage you to speak to a doctor, mental health professional, or reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

Anxious Faith website - anxiousfaith.org

What better way to start Season 2 than by find out what anxiety is - from a doctor! 

Sarah is a GP here in Australia (and we’re referring to her just as Sarah for her privacy), who has seen a lot of patients coming to her for the first time because of anxiety, especially after all that the last couple of years have thrown at us. She shares from her knowledge of what anxiety is: what’s going on in our bodies when we feel anxious, why our bodies feel the way they do, and what we can be doing to try and help ourselves and our bodies when we’re feeling anxious.

What she shares isn’t specific medial advice for anyone, so if you are struggling with anxiety or your mental health in general, we’d really encourage you to speak to your own doctor about this, or to reach out to one of the organisations on our Help page.

Sarah's ways we can be helping our bodies deal with anxiety - A Converstaion About... Dealing with Anxiety

BONUS VIDEO: What might a first GP visit look like? - https://youtu.be/9mQtdA4Vczo

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Anxious Faith is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries