A message I shared with someone who kept falling back into addiction when anxiety hit
Someone shared something with me that I understand very well.
They said, “I get this feeling of anxiety out of nowhere. When it shows up, I end up falling again. I don’t want to, but I can’t seem to stop it once it starts.”
What I Learned Through Experience
There was a period in my life when I felt off more often than not. There wasn’t always a reason. I kept walking with God the best I could, but the pressure kept returning.
I constantly asked Him for help, but the answers didn’t seem to come.
And then, one day, in a moment of exhaustion and frustration, I asked
“Why is this happening?”
“Who are You?”
That last question changed everything.
It was after that when a period of unexpected freedom began. During this time, I started to see what was really happening.
And what I realized was:
Some of the anxiety I had been carrying wasn’t mine.
I had been misreading things, thinking every emotional disruption was my problem. I thought I was failing because I couldn’t seem to get free from it.
But the truth is that some of what I felt came from what was around me. It did not come from what was inside me.
That realization changed how I approached everything. Because I no longer treated every disruption like proof I was broken. I started recognizing that I was sensing things without understanding what I was sensing. And because I didn’t understand, I took responsibility for it like it was my own.
And that confusion was part of what pulled me off track.
What Helped Me Begin to See
I studied the lives and decisions of people in Scripture. I watched how they moved. I observed how they responded to God and pressure. It wasn’t from a sermon or a devotional. It was through personal study. By walking things out in my own life, I began to recognize a pattern.
There are moments in Scripture where people are affected by what’s happening around them, either emotionally or spiritually.
Why This Matters When Addiction Is Involved
Unexplained emotions can hit someone unexpectedly. This is especially true if addiction has been part of their life. These emotions can become the perfect setup for a fall. You’ll feel off. When nothing makes sense and there’s no apparent cause, it becomes too easy to drown it out or self-medicate.
And that’s when the old pattern shows up. The one you thought was done with. The one you buried.
But it didn’t start because you rebelled.
It started because you were overwhelmed and didn’t have the language for it.
That’s what I told the person I was speaking to.
Because it helped me.
It helped me realize that I wasn’t just someone who kept messing up.
One of the most important shifts for me was learning to wait when something was bothering me. I learned to ask God what it was before I acted.
Sometimes, it was something in me or something I had picked up from the people or the environment around me.
I learned that as we progress and move beyond each issue, we can still experience triggers. When we do, it may be normal to internally ask, “What’s this for?” and “Why is this coming on?” because it’s not having its prior effect. Without anyone to explain it to me, I began to wonder if some of it was real. Was salvation real because I’m different, I changed? Was I being toyed with?
A scripture spontaneously came to mind, saying God knows who leaves a meat offering behind, and I understood the connection. The feeling wasn’t mine; I sensed that it was for the sake of others still stuck in the same places. It was so that I could share how the lord can bring them through. That all came to me after I had begun to share with people in places where I hadn’t received help. I wanted to fill that gap as much as possible so they wouldn’t have to endure the same wait.
Jesus mentioned in a parable that he wants us to multiply what he’s given us.
If you find yourself in the same position and experiencing the same issue, this might be a key for you. Especially if you had similar ideas as I did. You might think, well I’ll share after these other issues are taken care of. You might wonder, “how valuable can what I have to share be?”. These other issues are still in my life.
You don’t have to wait until you reach your idea of complete is reached to help another.