Cultivating Peace: Understanding Anxiety, Control, and God's Design feat: Nichole Suvar

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life Audio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Hey Froend, Heather Creek Moore Here, I'm glad you're listening to the Compared to You podcast today. Did you know that body I of maagicues and anxiety and worry and stress all seem to go together. Maybe you've lived it. I know I have. Today, my new friend Nicole Suvar is on the podcast talking about what she's discovered as some of the key some of the helpful things to recognize if you want to live a life that is grounded and purposeful, reflecting the peace of God. She says she used to live overwhelmed, rushed and stretched thin by anxiety, but now she helps women slow down and understand what's beneath that overwhelm. You are going to love our conversation today. If you've ever lived life a little anxious or a lot anxious, Hey, I'm glad you're here for it. Are next forty Day Journey, which is a six week zoom program. It's super affordable, like seriously front It's fifty nine dollars for six weeks. That's less than ten bucks a week. And this could change the trajectory of your summer. It could change the trajectory of your life. If body image worry is what bogs you down. You grab my book, The forty Day Body Image Workbook. Actually, as soon as you sign up, you can start reading the first three chapters for free while you wait for your book to come from Amazon. But we meet weekly, we encourage each other, and you're going to get a completely different perspective on your body image issues. Like a friend, I have not had anyone go through the program that was like, oh, yeah, I've heard all this, I know all this. This is boring. I this is all stuff I've heard before. No, people are blown away by this different way of thinking. And if you're stuck here, I want you to join us. Be a part of it. Go to improvebody Image dot com. Look for the forty Day Journey tab. Literally we start tomorrow Wednesday, June third. You can join us even if you're listening to this a couple of weeks late. The replays are available Improve Budyman dot com forty Day Journey. Hope to see there, Nicole Suvar, thank you for being on the Compared to You podcast today.

00:02:17
Speaker 1: Yes, it's so good to be here. Heather.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to talk to you because you are you have a ministry you are talking about. You're writing about this topic that I just don't know anyone who is exempt from thinking about. And that's anxiety, worry, all the things that we have, the list of things we have to feel anxious about every day. And I'm excited for us to just dig in because I know you must have a story, Nicole, Like you don't write about this stuff without having a story.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, so can.

00:03:00
Speaker 2: You tell us what led you to a place where you wanted to do this kind of work and what's your what's your story?

00:03:07
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, yeah, my ministry is about mental wellness, is specifically anxiety and exploring God's.

00:03:16
Speaker 1: Design for mental wellness, okay, versus what the world has to offer. Yeah, so anxiety.

00:03:23
Speaker 3: You could probably say I'm an expert on it, just because, like an experts decided, someone who has at least ten thousand hours doing whatever the thing is. I have at least that many hours. My memories go back to when I was like eight years old, having panic attacks in school and not having a.

00:03:43
Speaker 1: Language for it. It just worry was really the word that would maybe I would use.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: And so even though like my stomach's up in knots, I'm my palms are sweating, I'm breathing really shallow. I could hardly think because my mind's just spinning. Those were the panic attacks. But my teacher like, for whatever I could discuss or tell them about it, it was.

00:04:05
Speaker 1: Just like, don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. Just calm down.

00:04:08
Speaker 3: Heard that language for years, and I know, for one part, it's just we didn't have that language back in the nineties.

00:04:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.

00:04:17
Speaker 3: And also I wasn't communicating the best just because I also didn't have the language for what really was going on inside me. And so it just I kept trying harder to not worry, to just calm down, and it was really hard and I really could not do it well. And that evolved into when I was in high school, all of that anxiety that was built up in me and not knowing where to go with it, it came out in control and perfectionism and having a plan for everything. And I also gave my life to Jesus. I thought maybe that would make it better.

00:04:53
Speaker 1: It did not in the way that.

00:04:58
Speaker 3: The I would tell others about because I still was feeling this worry and instead of the just calmed down, it's not that big a deal.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: It was, did you pray about it? Have you read your Bible?

00:05:07
Speaker 3: And so I took on another burden of not only am I not able to worry, but now I can't do it because the Bible's telling me I shouldn't, but I am. So I must not be a very good Christian because I keep struggling with this. And it wasn't until I was thirty six years old and I was, for the third time of my life, suicidal and I had a friend who told me, you need to call a mental health hotline. She could see that she could see in me, even though I didn't know what it was. And I called the hotline and for the first time in my life, I had the words, this sounds like you have anxiety. And it was like the clouds had opened up like and it wasn't a burden. It was finally a relief to have like some validation to what I had been feeling my entire life. And at that point I went to a doctor I started seeing I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder as well as severe depression major depression.

00:06:07
Speaker 1: And started on That was when I finally started on the road.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: To healing and as I'm learning more about these diagnoses that I now have, learning to heal, and finding that when I was open and talking about it with others, I was getting a lot more of like, oh, that sounds like me, I have that same thing, and realizing like this is the way that I can turn these ashes into beauty, Like this is how God can flow through me in this, and that I can help others realize that it's okay to struggle with anxiety, like this is life outside of Eden.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: We are in exile.

00:06:40
Speaker 3: We're gonna experience it, but it's what we do with it, and burying it deep and living in shame is not what we need to do. We need to keep taking it to Jesus, and he has tools by his design, he has tools to help us thrive despite this anxiety.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: That's so good. And I love how you said like we just didn't have language for it. Yeah, because I would have never told you that I had any anxiety problems even I could have. You know, I knew I worried about my body a lot and was constantly thinking about body image, food things, but it wasn't until I was forty. And I don't I don't want to go down the rabbit trail of like, you know, related health things. But at forty I got my tonsils out because I had some random things going on, and my doctor was like, well, she's like, you know they're taking tonsils out of kids now for pandas. If you're familiar with pianidas, yes, but you know, so kids with pandas like super like there's a level of a high level of anxiety there and it's generated by the amount of strap in their body. And so I have a lot of strap in my body. And so she's like, we could just try it. It worked works for those kids because we were just trying to get the strap out and I got my tonsils out in the goal and I was like it was kind of weird. It was like, oh, I'm not like thinking I can't wait till my last activity of the day is over so I can just be at home anymore. And like I didn't realize all of well, even the clock checking. Later I learned, you know, if you can check the clock one hundred times in an hour, that actually could be inside, right, So like I do. It is interesting to think of about the people that are in our age range that just have never thought that that could be a problem, right, Like, and we might use the language that we're a little worried, but to even think about it being anxiety is a different thing. Whereas younger people, I think are more versed in that language. How do you know when anxiety has crossed the line into maybe I need additional help.

00:09:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, Because there's a part where you can be concerned, Like it's okay to be concerned about things. I think that's a part of how God built us too, because we need to be concerned about our children and our health or so that we will feed our bodies and care after our children and go to jobs because we are Like there's a level of concern that we all need to live with just to keep us safe. But when it rises to the point that it's anxiety, it's those thoughts that keep coming over and over in your head.

00:09:34
Speaker 1: They actually keep you from living a life that you want to live.

00:09:40
Speaker 3: They might keep you from going places that you would you would like to go, but there's these other things, these things that you're worried about that make you anxious, that keep you from going. Or maybe if you go and you don't enjoy it at all because of all of this anxiety. So there's all these things that can keep you from really enjoying the gifts that God has around you, because, yeah, it weighs so heavy on you.

00:10:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I think for like listeners of this show, one of the challenges is that anxiety is focused on whether it's anxiety diagnosable or worry or concern, it's really focused on image. Right, It's what will other people think of me? If I go to this place? What will they think of me? Do I look okay? Am I the right size to fit in with this group of people? Am I dressed the right way? Will people like me? Or will people judge me for my body or the way I look? Right? And it's all of this like bag of kind of centralized. I mean, we've probably a lot of us are able to multitask, so we're probably anxious about other things too, but it kind of centralized around some of these things. And I think there's a connection, you know, even with eating disorders and some of this, Like have you observed any of that?

00:10:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, with just my own experience, I have a daughter who's in recovery of having an anxiety disorder or sorry, an eating disorder, and there's definitely. When we get anxious, we want to get under things under control. And so when we have this anxiety rising us that we try to find the things in our lives that we can control.

00:11:17
Speaker 1: And what is one thing that we can control? We can control how much food we put in our bodies or not.

00:11:22
Speaker 3: There is this feeling that we get that finally, I that we think is a false sense of peace or calm because I have these things under control, therefore I must feel peace. But it's manufactured because it's something that we've created ourselves. And so yeah, I would just explore, like what things in your life are you controlling and when you control them that you believe that you feel better, that you feel more at peace because of that control. I think those those are the things we need to stop and look at a little closer, because some of those things may not be what we're supposed to be controlling, but they're actual supposed to be trusting God to be doing.

00:12:02
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay, but Nicole, trusting God persona stuff? Ooh that's hard, Like yes, oh yes, controlled, Like I just can't like snap my fingers three times that okay, I don't not worry about it anymore, Like yeah, what's the first step and really think control.

00:12:20
Speaker 3: Right, because that just saying love just trust God is just like those people were telling me in third grade, don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal, like, just trust God. So sometimes you have to do practical things that you actually act out with your body, because there's something about when we move our body in a certain way, we also are communicating with our brain, with our whole self, like what we're doing.

00:12:46
Speaker 1: So sometimes it's a brain.

00:12:48
Speaker 3: Dump of everything that I'm anxious about or all of these things that I think I need to be in control of, like you physically write them all out down on paper, and then it may be reading them out loud and saying that out because sometimes when we say him out loud, we're realizing, like they may they maybe seem a little less what making more sense less sense when we say him out loud.

00:13:11
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's it's.

00:13:14
Speaker 3: Once we have him over and down, we pray over it and we ask God we need to keep inviting God into it. It's this is not gonna be a one and done. This isn't going to be like just flipping the light switch and it's all over. But it is a daily bringing to him, but wish for one part We think like daily.

00:13:32
Speaker 1: This sounds exhausting.

00:13:34
Speaker 3: But the beautiful thing about our Father is that when we are daily bringing something to him, he daily wants to take it back, like his mercies are new every morning, which means every morning he's he is willing and able and ready to take whatever thing we picked back up and think that we need to control.

00:13:52
Speaker 1: He is ready to take it back.

00:13:55
Speaker 3: And I found like that is anxiety for me, is kind of like that thorn Paul talked about, like that thorn in the flesh that he asked God to remove and he did not. Because I see it as if I did not have this anxiety, there would be that part that I would not keep coming to God.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: Every morning.

00:14:11
Speaker 3: I have to come to him because I will wake up some mornings and I just have dread. It's that generalized anxiety that's resting on me. It just I feel like something's gonna happen, and I don't know what it is, but it feels like dread.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: And instantly when you.

00:14:26
Speaker 3: Have that happen, you're like, Okay, so what can I do? What are the things that I can control so that I feel better? Before I even start doing that, I need to say, God, I need you to go ahead of me, I need you to be near, I need you to be the one in control, and I want to follow you.

00:14:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's good. Can I back it up just a second though?

00:14:46
Speaker 1: Sure?

00:14:48
Speaker 2: I wonder if part of the challenge here is actually even identifying the dread actually even because I think some of us have lived with that like oh feeling in the morning for so long we don't even notice it anymore, right, like like it's just a friend, or that's just me, or that's my personality or whatever you want to say, right Like, is there is there a step in there to kind of notice that?

00:15:14
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:15:15
Speaker 3: For oh, to even like notice it? I was thinking, like for me, I have to sometimes start following the route, Like what exactly is there? Is there a conversation I had?

00:15:28
Speaker 2: Yeah? What insty?

00:15:29
Speaker 3: Yes, was there a conversation? Is there something on the calendar coming up that is weighing on me? Is there something in this day that I that needs to be done and I'm not.

00:15:38
Speaker 1: Looking forward to it?

00:15:39
Speaker 3: Like sometimes it's just a phone call, right Like it could be something small, but it feels so heavy. So I think for me it's not. That's for helping me try to identify it.

00:15:51
Speaker 1: I think to like it's it can be.

00:15:52
Speaker 3: Hard to understand that we're living with that dread if that's all we've ever known. Because even for myself, when when I had that finally made that call to the hotline and they said, like, this sounds like you have anxiety and you're suffering from depression. When I finally had saw a doctor and I did go on medication for a time just to kind of get things balanced out, like all the hormone things that needed help that I was, there was a point in time that I was like, oh, is this how.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: Everybody else lives?

00:16:23
Speaker 3: Like I really thought everyone lived with like this level of anxiety, but they.

00:16:26
Speaker 1: Just could manage it better.

00:16:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, But realizing like, oh no, other people can like think clearly and don't have all these ruminating thoughts, Like I think like when some of that was removed.

00:16:37
Speaker 1: Is when I could notice it.

00:16:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think that like somebody's living in it and not even realizing it. I think maybe it's even just to start, like let's try to find follow the route and follow the trail and see if there is something in there, because when you can start identifying it, bringing it to God, seeing what part is his to control? What part is it you can address right now. Then you might start to sense some of that lifting. And then you're realizing like, oh, I was living with that hanging on my back all this time.

00:17:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really good. And I'm thinking, you know, even for like folks with eating disorders, well specifically anorexia, Like that's one of the challenges early on is if your brain is underfed, your body's underfed, your brain is underfed, You're not able to think rationally and logically, I should eat more food. I should not be so worried. I should apply the word of God to my struggle. Like you you like just don't have the capacity to work from your prefrontal cortex and think about these things like you need to. So yeah, that's that's that's good. Yeah, and I as I think about like for me, it's the when I feel my stomach sink, that's my like, oh what just made my stomach sink? Like what like what happened? And doing what you do with like the root, you know, identifying the root. It's like, yeah, okay, what was it? Something that's on Instagram? You know, Was it that text message I just got, or like you said, is it this meeting I have coming up? Like? So that's I think that's really really helpful. Like our body does talk to us those kind of things. So, yes, but you talk about returning to God's design, what do you mean by that?

00:18:28
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, I mean you just mentioned like Instagram, Like you can scroll Instagram and it won't take very long until you've got all of these people that are telling you all of these hacks for the best.

00:18:40
Speaker 1: Way to.

00:18:42
Speaker 3: Like just even for your mental health, or maybe it's organizing something or getting something under control.

00:18:46
Speaker 1: There's so many things out there, and some of them are good.

00:18:50
Speaker 3: But when we are making those our main things and we're neglecting what God has had from the very beginning for us, we are missing out on so much and so so in my book that's coming out June second, Okay, yes, it's I don't have.

00:19:07
Speaker 1: To hold it all together cultivating that.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: Say that again, we hear it say loud from the rooftop.

00:19:15
Speaker 3: I don't have to hold it all together, cultivating the piece of Eden when feeling overwhelmed, and in this book we go back to Eden and we are looking at these different attributes of Eden. But even though the fall has happened and we are in exile, we are no longer in eating. Although our bodies were created to live in Eden, to live in that garden, and we're exiled, and God has, in his gracious goodness, has left some of these parts of Eden that are here on this earth for us to access.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: And when we.

00:19:49
Speaker 3: Are intentional and cultivating those in our lives, we can access his peace, we can understand him better, we can grow and thrive. And that going back to the cultivating means you need to be intentional. So cultivating that's doing the things that you're supposed to do, and you're allowing God to do the things he's supposed to do. It's all about control and outcomes, because He's never asked us to be control of the control of any outcome. Like he is the one who provides, he's the one who gives the increase. He's the one who ultimately is at the end of that outcome, in the success. But our part, just like with a garden, you have to go get the seeds, you have to till up the ground, you gotta plant the seeds, you gotta water it.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: But then and that's it.

00:20:37
Speaker 3: The sunshine is not yours, the rain is not yours. The blossoms that come and the fruit and the vegetables.

00:20:43
Speaker 1: Like that is all God. That's all of.

00:20:45
Speaker 3: The increase in the provision. We just have to do our parts of the cultivation.

00:20:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. That's a good way to think about it. You also talk about peace, not peace being cultivated not achieved, I think is the way you say it. I love that because I think women with body of magissues especially Okay, just like insight here if you haven't walked this personally. But our belief system is that I will achieve peace when I get my body a certain way, when I get the look that I've been trying to get for, and I work with women up to their seventies, like I've been trying to get this look for sixty years, since I was ten years old. That's when peace will come. But that's not how we achieve peace, is it.

00:21:36
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, the peace was never ours to make.

00:21:41
Speaker 2: Oh. I love that.

00:21:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, But that's another part of like being outside of Eden, we have grappled and taken it on for ourselves, and so then we have all of these things that we believe we need to do in order to get that piece. That's us trying to manufacture it. My God is the perfect piece. He is the creator of peace. Nothing else brings peace like our father does. Like it's that peace that passes all understanding. And it's because of that because we in our human minds what we believe piece is is like this piece here on earth, but it's so small in comparison to what he has to offer for us, and we miss out on so much when we have our own to do list instead of looking to him to be the one to give us our peace. And that that comes down to what are we willing to give to him with open hands. So when you control things, you hold on with tight fists like you need to, like you think of like a race car. If he's going super fast, like you got to tight fists, you have to clench in order to control it. But that isn't that was ever our job, Like we were given stewardship, like that was before the fall. God gave Adam and Eve's stewardship the garden, like to tend the garden, to care for the animals.

00:23:04
Speaker 1: So that part is that's.

00:23:05
Speaker 3: The stewardship that He has asked of us, like what is what is He given in our lives that we steward and you steward with open hands. But then after the fall has happened, we've twisted stewardship into control and we've start taken it all and believe that we are in charge of it instead of keeping God at the center of the provision of the outcomes.

00:23:29
Speaker 2: Spot on, spot on. Yeah. I mean we talk about that a lot. You know that the stewardship message as it pertains to take care of your body, I think has been super twisted in Christian Yester, Yeah, by the church. Unfortunately, I love the church, husband's and pastor, but we have taken what it means to steward and exactly what you just said, we've we've made that about the control. When that's I think why eating disorders are an epidemic, a silent epidem perhaps inside the church, because we congratulate the woman who can go a day without eating for how much quote unquote self control she has and how well she's stewarding her body. It's like that's that's not it. So I really appreciate you, yeah, breaking that down and you know, to just circle back it's the peace that we're all looking for, right, that's what we all desire. We just want to make the buzz and the noise and the aha go away. We're looking for that piece and we can't. We can't make it happen on our own, can we.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: We can't make it happen. And you are not going to find it anywhere in the world.

00:24:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't come when you wear a certain size, or get a certain house, or marry a certain person, or have a certain number of children, or have this children, be a certain kind of successful or any of the things that the world promises us. Yeah. Oh, Nicole, I am so excited about your book. There's a lot of themes in it that are similar to things I'm writing about right now. My book won't be out for a year, so you guys need to go read this book todays, tell us the name one one more time because I just love it, and then talk to us about where we can connect with you.

00:25:19
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't have to hold it all together, cultivating the Piece of Eden when feeling overwhelmed, And you can find me on my website Live with intent dot org and there's a tab on there for books All of my books are on there, and my latest one being this one.

00:25:36
Speaker 1: I'm also on Instagram.

00:25:38
Speaker 3: I post a few times a week, generally something that has to do with God's design for mental wellness and encouragement to live in Him, cultivate His goodness instead of what the world has. And you can find me at Nicole Jsuvar over there too.

00:25:52
Speaker 2: Awesome, and I'll make sure we've got links to all of that in the show notes. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

00:25:59
Speaker 1: This has been so good. Heather, thank you.

00:26:01
Speaker 2: Love it and thanks for all the good work you're doing, and thank you for watching or listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and by the Compared to You podcast has proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast network. Mark Great Christian podcast. Go to lifeaudio dot com. Have you left a review yet? Your reviews encourage us so much. Leave review wherever you listen to your podcasts