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All indicators show anxiety is rising in America. Medications like Prozac are among the most prescribed drugs in our country. Surveys show Americans, rather than becoming more confident, are becoming more worried and anxious. Interestingly, studies also find that most of that anxiety is unfounded. Research claims:
- 40% of things we worry about never happen.
- 30% are worries about things that have already happened.
- 12% of people worry about what others might think or say.
- 10% worry about possibly getting sick without any reason to do so.
Yet only 8% of our worries can be traced to some real and present trouble. How do we then explain that 92% of anxiety seems to be free-floating and not connected to any objective reality? Why do so many of us feel burdened by anxiety?
Gerald May, a noted American psychologist, offers an explanation. He believes anxiety does not result from any exterior factors but rather from forces within ourselves. May concluded that when you look deep and beneath the worry, you find fear. Now that makes sense. If you are fearful of something, it is going to cause anxiety.
May continues and says that if you look beneath that fear, what you discover is hurt. People who are hurt have their confidence shaken and their security challenged. They become vulnerable and afraid.
If we go even deeper, we discover that beneath this hurt is love. It is our desire to love and be loved that opens us to hurt. In other words, what is on the surface that appears as anxiety is actually being caused by a trouble in our ability to give and receive love. If we have difficulty in loving and being loved, that causes hurt which causes fear which surfaces in anxiety.
Yet Paul tells us to "rejoice!" amidst our anxieties. We are to do so by realizing the presence of Jesus in our midst and by receiving Jesus into our lives through our repentance, our renewal of life, and our faithful doing of God’s will.
— Father Mark
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