You know that feeling. It doesn’t arrive with a bang, but with a whisper. A cold, slick thought that slides into the space between heartbeats. Suddenly, the world doesn’t just look different—it feels different. The air gets heavier. The walls lean in a little closer. Your own breath feels like a borrowed thing.
Maybe it’s a phone call you’re dreading. A diagnosis hanging in the air. The sheer weight of a tomorrow that feels like it’s built on sand. The numbers in the bank account that never quite add up. The quiet, aching fear that you are not enough—will never be enough—for the people who need you to be everything.
Your mind becomes a projector, flashing every worst-case scenario on the back of your eyelids. It’s a storm in the bones. A yoke that feels tailor-made for your shoulders.
And the well-meaning voices? They tell you to “just don’t be afraid.” It is as if fear is a switch you can flip off. But you can’t. And their advice becomes another layer of failure, another reason to feel afraid of your own fear.
What if I told you that the goal as believers isn’t to never feel afraid? The goal is to know what to do when it comes, not be ruled by it, and find a still point in the turning world.
It’s not about fighting the storm but finding the anchor.
Here’s what to do when fear overwhelms you.
We do this funny thing, don’t we? We treat our fears like vague, shapeless monsters. We say “I’m anxious” or “I’m stressed.” But that’s like saying, “There’s a thing somewhere.” It gives the fear all its power—the power of the unknown, the unnamed.
The ancient poets and psalmists in the Bible didn’t do that. They were brutally, painfully specific. They didn’t say, “I feel sad.” They gave it a name, a texture, and a taste.
The psalmist said in Psalm 22:14, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.”
Poured out like water. Bones out of joint. Have you ever felt that? So unraveled, you feel liquid? So out of place in your life that your structure feels broken?
That’s naming it.
So, your turn. Get a pen. Get a notes app. It doesn’t matter. But speak it. Write it. Give the giant a name.
Name it. Speak its name into the light. In the light, things are always more minor than they seem in the shadows of our mind. You take the whispering, generalized terror and turn it into a specific, manageable problem. And a problem can be faced. A monster is just something to flee from.
Naming is the first act of courage. It’s you saying, “I see you. Now, let’s talk.”
Once you’ve named your fear, your mind will start writing the story around it. And oh, it will be a masterpiece of tragedy. It will spin tales of inevitable loss, of certain ruin. It will project a future where this fear has won, and you are left with nothing.
Your mind is a powerful author. But it’s a terrible editor. It believes its own first drafts.
Your job is to hand the pen to a different author.
This is where the words of the Most High come in. Not as a platitude. Not as a magic spell. But as a counter-narrative. A more actual story about who you are and where you stand.
When the fear of lack whispers that you will go without, you introduce a new narrative, found in Philippians 4:19, that says, “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
When the fear of being alone screams that you are abandoned, you remember the older story in Hebrews 13:5 that says, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
When the fear of the future paralyzes you, you read the truer draft from Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
Please don’t mistake this for positive thinking. This is narrative replacement. It’s an act of defiance. Because instead of allowing yourself to drown in the deep oceans of fearful thoughts, you are consciously, deliberately choosing to listen to a story of provision over a story of poverty. A tale of presence over a story of abandonment. A story of purpose over a story of chaos.
You are trading your small, fearful story for a grand, eternal one. And it changes the very air you breathe.
I love to think of fear as almost always a time traveler. It lives in the future, imagined, or the past; it can’t forget. It rarely lives in the present moment. Because the present moment, when you really look at it, is often… okay.
Are you safe right now, in this exact second? Are you breathing? Is your heart beating?
The future is a phantom. It doesn’t exist. The only place you can ever live from is right now.
There’s a profound reason the Bible says in Matthew 6:11, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Christ didn’t pray, “Give us this year’s bread.” Or next decade’s bread. Daily bread. The sustenance for the 24 hours in front of you.
On the other hand, Christ always asks, “What will I do in ten years?” However, the soul only needs to ask, “What is needed of me in this next hour?” The burden of a lifetime is crushing, but the burden of a single day is often manageable.
So, fellow believers, anchor yourself in the now. Feel the chair under you. Listen to the computer's hum. Notice the rhythm of your own breath. This is real. The horror movie your mind is projecting onto the screen of tomorrow is not.
Your calling isn’t to figure it all out. It’s to be faithful in the next right step. Just the next one. That’s it. And that, you can always do.
We are not disembodied spirits. Fear doesn’t just live in our minds; it inhabits our bodies. The clenched jaw. The tight shoulders. The shallow breath. The coiled spring in the gut.
You can’t think your way out of a physical state. Sometimes, you have to physically lead your soul out of it.
It sounds too simple. But it’s a deep, ancient magic.
When the waves of panic start to rise, don’t try to reason with them. Breathe. Deeply. Intentionally. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow. The breath is the anchor to the present. It is the proof you are still here.
Go for a walk. Not to get anywhere, but to move, to feel the ground under your feet, to remind your body that it is strong and capable and made for motion, not for freezing.
There’s a psalm for this, too. Of course there is. Psalm 121:1 “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
Sometimes, you literally have to lift up your eyes and change your physical posture. Look away from the screen, from the four walls closing in, and look at the sky. Look at a tree. Remember, there is a world beyond the confines of your fear.
Your body can preach a sermon to your soul that your mind could never articulate. Let it.
We are forgetful creatures. We forget our own history. We forget the last time we felt this afraid—and how we made it through. We forget the prayers that were answered, the needs that were met, and the doors that opened at the very last second.
Fear makes amnesiacs of us all.
The antidote is to remember. To actively, forcefully, recall the evidence of goodness in your past.
Build an altar, not of stones, but of memory. Keep a journal. A note in your phone. A mental list. Catalog the moments you were provided for. The times you were comforted. The instances where the thing you feared most didn’t come to pass—or it did, and you were given the strength to endure it.
When a new fear rises, visit your altars. Read the entries. Touch the stones of your past deliverance.
This is the oldest faith practice. The whole of the Psalms is essentially this: a cycle of fear, crying out, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and finding hope. The writer is in despair, and then he says, in Psalm 77:11, “I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.”
He doesn’t feel better immediately, but he chooses to remember. That act of remembering becomes the bridge from isolation to connection, from terror to trust.
Your history of grace is your most potent weapon against the prophecy of fear.
You must realize that this isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a practiced turn. A habitual reorientation. It won’t mean you never feel the chill of fear again. But it means you’ll know where to find the warmth.
This is like waking up with that familiar knot in your stomach… and then reaching for the journal to name it. It sounds like the whisper of an ancient verse over the louder shout of a modern anxiety. It feels like the solid ground of the present moment under your feet, even as your mind tries to drag you into the quicksand of tomorrow.
It’s not the absence of the storm. It’s a deep, settled knowing that there is an anchor—that you are held by a narrative of love that is older and sturdier than your newest fear.
The goal of all these was never a life without fear. The goal was to live a life where fear is not the governor of your soul. Where it can be in the passenger seat, maybe—a nervous backseat driver—but it is never, ever allowed to hold the wheel.
You can acknowledge the presence of fear. You can even thank it for trying to protect you. But then you must speak to it with the quiet authority of one who knows a more actual story.
“Peace,” you will say. Not to the ocean around you, but to the soul within you. “Be still.”
And it will obey sooner or later, in the midst of it all.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Maya Karkalicheva