Mother Siluana Vlad: Dealing with stress and anxiety
We accept our problems, we accept our pain, and we take them and our cares to God.
Question:
How can a faithful Christian respond to a stressful situation?
Mother Siluana:
There are two aspects here, and we need to differentiate between them. We need not be anxious. Anxiety produces what specialists call stress; that is, it creates a psychological state that causes us not to think straight, not see any solutions, not be able to rest, not be able to control our reactions. And this is a psychological reaction of our organism with physical consequences on our bodies. All kinds of hormones and other substances accumulate because we ‘order’ them to be produced since we need power and energy - but we don’t act on them.
If I become anxious, I produce certain hormones to give me the power to change that situation - and I don’t change the situation; I only complain about it. And I have a double burden with these substances that were supposed to be activated, to be put to work, to put me to work. It is a real art to care for everything without being anxious. It is the art of letting yourself be loved and profiting from those who love you.
We know to some degree how to discharge our stress when we are around people we love. I know my mother loves me enough so I can afford to talk to her more rudely or be angrier toward her. I know that my wife is more patient with me than my boss, so I unload the surplus of adrenaline I accumulated at my job when I get home because I know that my wife understands me better. Well, this is a bad thing for the person I love. But many people say: “It’s good he did this at home!” A woman told me: “How fortunate it was that my husband yelled at me and not at his boss! Otherwise, he would have been fired, and what would we do without his salary? At least I understand him, I love him and I am patient with him.”
We should learn from this and profit from the understanding and power of God’s love for us. We should tell Him everything, right at the moment when we feel tormented: “Lord, you said I should not be anxious, but look, I am afraid, I am restless, I can’t control myself!” Right then, at that moment, we should ask God: “Can’t You do something?” And we will be amazed to see how much God can do for us.
But we forget God. In moments of pain and suffering, we call on the devil or curse instead. A drink of alcohol brings me to a better state; a narcotic substance gives me a more comfortable psychological state. But this is as if we gave some chewing gum to a hungry man. He chews on it once, twice, for one week, two weeks, and then he dies of hunger, because chewing gum doesn’t nourish us. And so, the person who drinks should discover that he drank in vain because his sorrow didn’t go away; or he tranquilized himself in vain because his problem didn’t disappear. Whereas God offers us a much bigger comfort than alcohol. He offers us a state of ‘drunkenness’ - the Holy Fathers tell us that whoever dares to receive the Holy Spirit will experience real ‘drunkenness.’ God gives us much more substantial food that never perishes: His Body and Blood.
But no psychologist or counselor teaches us what to do so we don’t die of hunger or fear. And we need to take into account that we do get hungry, we do become afraid, because we are alive! There is no solution that makes us not feel stressed. I am alive! I am afraid, I get hurt, I become anxious, but not as one without faith. We go to the specialist. Who is the specialist for my problems? God. And instead of pretending I have no problems, instead of ingesting a substance that gives me comfort, I go to the doctor. What if I never went to the doctor if I kept having headaches and took painkillers instead? I will die, because the headache is a symptom of something wrong.
We accept our problems, we accept our pain, and we take them and our cares to God. When we attend Divine Liturgy, we hear, "Let us lay aside every worldly care." We don't lay it aside in the sense that we don't care. How can we not care when we have nothing to eat? How can we not care when we can't pay our electricity bill? We care, it hurts us, we are afraid. But we lay it at God's feet, at the foot of the Cross, and we say: "Lord, strengthen me, teach me, enlighten me, help me - with THIS, with what I lay at your feet." And then we will see how everything changes!
God wants to help us pay our rent, but we never ask Him except in the morning or in the evening, or on Saturday or Sunday, or when we were little. We haven't confessed since we were little, we haven't taken Holy Communion since we were little, we don't go to church, we don't tell our sorrows to God, but we would like to receive help. God doesn't give help by force. And so, at that moment, when you feel stressed, you say: "Lord!" (as Fr. Rafail Noica says, who teaches us so many good things), "Lord, I am stressed!" Or instead of grumbling and asking why something happened to me, I say: "Lord, why did You permit this to happen to me?" This is a very wise question. And God will clarify to you why He permitted that thing to happen.
Fr. Rafail and other Elders say that good things happen to us with God’s help, and bad things with God’s permission. And God permits evil so we learn a lesson. God allows our hand to be burned when we put it in a fire so that we don’t do it again. It is not a punishment, it is a warning.
By accepting pain, accepting anxiety, accepting sorrows, we are on a path to salvation. And the person who accepts the sorrow he experiences will discover that the sorrow is a door, a threshold, an entrance into something else. By refusing it, it remains a puddle; we stay in it by pretending there is no sorrow or that we don’t know what to do with it. Of course we don’t know, but God knows.
This is what I would like anguished people to understand: we have a difficult, tormented life. Nobody can change it. But we can receive the power to be strong in this hard life, to have joy also; to rejoice that we have lived and that we are alive. This is all! And God is present here, in this life, and He helps us. And I was very moved by what Fr. Rafail said in a recent conference: it is hell on earth now. But let us not forget that Adam lost God in Heaven and found Him again in hell! And we shouldn’t seek some imaginary Heaven with no cares and no sorrows, but the presence of He Who can take us out of hell. And He is here, and He takes us out! Now! Myself too! He takes me out of hell every day, and I am joyful!
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