In this episode, Lou Huesmann unpacks a Substack post by Kathleen Smith called "Turning Off Your Anxious Scanner." In it Smith talks about the anxious habit of "scanning" - the emotionally driven monitoring of others - where, she states, the boundaries between our responsibility and others' blur. Lou connects scanning with overfunctioning - looking for something to fix in someone else - and points out that anxiety triggers us to focus on others and try to control them.

He shares, "I think it's easy to see people as characters - actors - in our own story and then to treat them as such as opposed to seeing them as people who inhabit their own unique stories." We get anxious when we perceive that others are not playing the role we want them to play in our story, so we try to fix them. Lou, and Smith, challenge us to learn how to show up differently in the midst of our anxiety and share some suggestions for doing so.

Lou wraps up by reflecting on the life of Jesus and how he always connected with people within their own unique stories, never anxiously scanning their behavior as if they were merely characters in his.

This episode was recorded on November 7th, 2025.