Hope and feelings of anxiety and depression

As I began the journey of addiction recovery, I had a false impression that when I found recovery I wouldn’t have feelings of anxiety and depression. False impressions are like the individual who built their house on the sand. When the storms and floods came, the house was washed away. (Matthew 7:26-27) I soon learned how true that analogy was. I fell into this trap so many times. I couldn’t understand why these feelings of anxiety and depression never went away. I continued to feel them even though I was working on my recovery.

Here is what I realized: the feelings of anxiety and depression served two purposes. First, these feelings are trials and temptations. Just because I was working on my addiction recovery didn’t mean that God was going to remove my trials and temptations. Rather, God was going to teach me how to be resistant to trials and temptations. The words of Elder Jorge F. Zeballos from the October 2022 General Conference ring true here: “The Lord always provides us with help when we face adversity, temptation, incomprehension, infirmities, and even death. He has said, “And now, verily I say unto you, and what I say unto one I say unto all, be of good cheer, little children; for I am in your midst, and I have not forsaken you.” He will never abandon us!” (Building a Life Resistant to the Adversary, General Conference, Oct 2022, link)

Second, the feelings of anxiety and depression are signals that I have a need not being met. This allows me to do a pseudo root cause analysis of my feelings. I realized that if I am anxious, sad, or depressed, I can identify what I am anxious, sad, or depressed about. For instance, there was a time that I was really anxious about work. I was worried that my effort wasn’t as good as I thought it should be. I was acting on fear. I was scared and didn’t know the outcome. This gave me the opportunity to gather my thoughts and approach my supervisor. I started with prayer and asked for an increase of faith in Jesus Christ. I told my supervisor how I was feeling and what my thoughts were. I learned that my perception of what was going on wasn’t true. In fact, it was the opposite! I learned a lot that day about analyzing my feelings.

At the end of the day, focusing on addiction recovery and conversion to Jesus Christ doesn’t mean a life free from anxiety and depression. Focusing on addiction recovery and conversion to Jesus Christ is the way we build a life to resist temptations to act out because of depression and anxiety.