“How do you tell the difference between the Holy Spirit’s prompting and anxiety?”
Seven questions to help you discern
Today’s post is quite long, so if you’re reading on email and it cuts off, just hop on over to the home page to keep reading.
Rachel Joy Welcher asked this question over on notes: “How do you tell the difference between a Holy Spirit prompting / discernment, and good old fashioned anxiety?” It’s a great question, especially for those of us who struggle with things like self-doubt, worry, and fear of doing the wrong thing.
First, let’s define our terms. A ‘prompting’ of the Holy Spirit tends to mean some interior movement, push, nudge, urge, or sense that we should do something, or not do something. It may or may not be accompanied by emotions, positive or negative. ‘Anxiety’ is a bit of a catch-all phrase, but I’m using it here to mean the feeling / emotion of concern or worry or even in extreme cases, panic, about some specific thing or even just in general about the state of things. (For our purposes here, ‘good old fashioned anxiety’ is not the same thing as OCD or a specific psychological diagnosis, although there may be some overlap.)
Second, let’s clarify our boundaries. It is not possible for a human being, under normal circumstances, to have 100% complete certainty about what God is doing in his or her soul. That’s because (a) we’re fallen human beings who struggle with “darkened intellects” and “weak wills” (to borrow language from the tradition.) It’s also because (b) we’re finite, which is a design feature, not a flaw. A finite creature—even without sin—can never fully comprehend the mind of God. So we’re not aiming for, or expecting, total and complete certainty in every case. Instead, we’re aiming for “pretty sure.”
With that in mind, these questions are designed to help you move closer towards being “pretty sure” you can tell the difference between the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and ‘good old-fashioned anxiety.’ This practice of discerning between God’s voice and our voice, or other voices, takes time! It’s not a skill that can be learned overnight. One of the best things you can do is find someone truly wise and ask to talk with them about how they do it. You can also keep track of your own experiences and inclinations over time through journaling. (If you’d like to learn more about journaling for discernment, I’ve got a free workshop for you here.)
1. What is this prompting me towards, and what is it prompting me away from?
The Holy Spirit always prompts us towards good and away from evil. If the thing you’re being inclined toward is evil, that’s definitely not the Holy Spirit.
Anxiety is all over the map, but generally prompts us to avoid anything painful or uncomfortable, even if that thing is a good thing. So pay attention to the object or goal of the prompt, and the motivation for moving away from or towards it.
Here’s an example: If you see someone drowning, you have to help them, even though it’s scary. The Holy Spirit is never going to prompt you to just let someone drown in front of you. That desire to run away? That’s anxiety. Now, you may not be able to swim, in which case your duty isn’t to try to rescue the person by swimming out to them and also drowning yourself needlessly – but you can throw them a life preserver or call for help.
2. Is this prompting accompanied by peace?
One of the first rules of discernment is that God’s Spirit speaks peacefully, through peace. “Peace” in this case, does not mean “the absence of war” or even “the absence of difficulty.” It is not the same thing as feeling emotionally happy. Peace is something that dwells in the deepest parts of us, far beneath the surface level of emotions which tend to change like the weather. Peace might be described as a deep spiritual settledness or deep spiritual rootedness, a calm beneath all the emotions, be they positive or negative. Emily P. Freeman uses the phrase “being deeply okay.”
True peace can co-exist with urgency, but not with panic. True peace means acting from a place where we acknowledge that God is bigger than any situation, and that anything that happens to us – good or bad, has been at the least permitted to come via His loving hands. (This is because, while He never wills evil for us, He also doesn’t want to take away our free will and therefore our ability to love. He honors our freedom and becomes one of us, to be with us in the mess that we’ve made with it.)
If you’re trying to discern whether something is a prompting of the Holy Spirit, ask if it’s coming from and with a spirit of peace. Peace tends to be insistent, consistent, and persistent – strong enough to withstand the surging waves of emotion or anxiety.
Here’s an example: you might find yourself in a situation where you feel an almost urgent need to speak to someone. You might not even know what to say – just an insistent sense that you ‘ought’ to say hello. You might feel nervous or worried about looking stupid, but underneath those anxieties is a strong prompting to walk over to them for seemingly no reason. The sense underneath the surface level emotions is stronger and more insistent, and even the negative emotions can’t drown it out.
3. Have I dealt with the anxiety through standard natural human means?
There are a lot of normal, human things that are important for us to do when we sense that anxiety might be rearing its little stressed-out head. Take a walk. Eat protein. Take a nap. Drink water. Deep breathe. Cry. Touch grass. Disconnect from everything digital. Phone a friend. Handmake something. Read good literature. Listen to good music. View good art. Hug someone. Light a candle. Sit in church. Pray.
The list goes on, and if you’ve reached a point where you don’t do these things regularly, or you’re spinning out trying to discern who or what is speaking, hit pause and do something. Put the question aside and address what might be anxiety with all the normal and natural remedies possible. Wait a bit, and see what happens.
The Spirit of God is gently insistent and hard to ignore, like a loving mother trying to gently wake a sleeping child. Anxiety tends to be annoyingly demanding and hard to ignore, like a toddler having a whiny tantrum. A prompting of the Holy Spirit won’t go away if you take a nap, but anxiety might.
This is also an opportunity to assess whether you’re choosing to live a life that cultivates anxiety. If you’re always online and lack real (in-person!) friendships; if you work so much you never sit down to eat a nutritional meal; if you rarely pray, spend time in silence, or walk in nature – if you’ve been ‘so stressed out!’ for years, you might be cultivating anxiety as a way of life. And it’s hard to hear the still small voice of God when anxiety is the norm and not the exception. (Again, we’re not talking about serious diagnoses here.)
4. Have I checked my habitual inclinations?
The choices we make shape us. Character is forged through a thousand tiny daily decisions.
If you’re habitually inclined towards damaging or sinful behavior, it creates a disposition towards evil, which means that going against the evil will feel uncomfortable – perhaps even anxiety-inducing. But if you’re habitually inclined towards the good, going against the good will feel uncomfortable – perhaps even anxiety-inducing. So your habits and habitual dispositions matter.
Here's an example: maybe you’ve been in the habit of watching p*rn, which creates a disposition to see other people as objects of sexual gratification. If you decide to quit, it’s very likely that anxiety will raise its head and make you feel nervous, scared, lonely, bored, and maybe even like a loser for giving it up – after all, everyone does it! It’s not so bad!
On the other hand, if you’re in the habit of going to church on Sundays, and one weekend you decide that you just don’t feel like it and ‘deserve’ to be lazy for once, it’s very likely that you’ll start to feel uncomfortable, and even guilty. Guilt for sin is a gift! It’s the voice of conscience telling us we have done something wrong and need to change our behavior. But that discomfort can be mistaken for anxiety, which is why it’s so important to always start by examining the object of our action, as well as our habitual dispositions.
5. When does it show up?
Pay attention to when this interior urge shows up. Is it when you’re praying, reading the Bible, in nature, with good friends? Or is when you’re tired, hungry (hangry!), lonely, bored, overwhelmed, fresh off a disappointment? To borrow a question from the Ignatian tradition: is it coming to you in moments of consolation or desolation?
If it consistently arises when you’re in a negative place, that’s often not a good sign. It doesn’t mean that a negative situation can’t be the occasion for feeling something – but that something, if it is the Holy Spirit, will also persist and happen in moments of consolation.
Here’s an example: You might see someone on the street experiencing homelessness, and you might feel upset. Maybe it sparks some anxiety about being homeless, yourself. You wonder if maybe you should start donating regularly to or volunteering at a soup kitchen. Is this a prompting of the Holy Spirit? It could be. It certainly passes the “good object” test – it’s a good thing to donate time and/or money to help others. But to have a better sense of whether or not that immediate reaction was a call, it’s good to wait. Does it keep recurring in prayer? Does a friend mention her own volunteer experience out of the blue? Do you get a flyer in the mail asking for donations? A confluence is usually a good indication of a prompting. And of course, the best thing to do if you’re not sure is just to try it out.
6. What’s happening in my body when I experience it?
We are body-soul unities, and although these different aspects of ourselves aren’t always in perfect harmony, it’s important not to completely ignore our bodies in discernment.
When you’re thinking about it, what happens in you, physically? Do you get heavier or lighter? Do you have more energy or less? Whether or not the thing feels difficult, do you sense that you, in particular ‘must’ do it, or do you feel like it’s a good thing and someone should do it? Do you feel called or drawn towards it, like a magnet, regardless of how easy or difficult it may be?
Anxiety tends to produce recognizable physical symptoms: a racing heart, shallow breathing, dizziness, nausea, heaviness of limbs. Again, the prompting of the Spirit of God is accompanied by peace, which means that it tends to persist despite these physical phenomena, although sometimes it can be strong enough to push them away.
7. Do I have experiences I can learn from?
Unless you’re brand new to the spiritual life (welcome!), you’ve probably had moments where you felt fairly sure that something was the Spirit of God prompting you. Not every experience is exactly the same, but often there are similar threads running through them.
If you had to describe a ‘pretty sure’ scenario from your life, how would you describe it? Are there any similar characteristics to the present situation? On the other hand, if you’re pretty sure you’ve experienced anxiety, what was that like? Was there anything in it similar to your current situation?
Anxiety has a tendency to confuse us. Very often we have strong negative feelings – fear, worry, doubt – and if we examine them carefully we can see that these feelings are often about something other than our current situation.
Here’s an example: you might feel a prompting to leave your present job. This is scary, because in the past, you’ve been unemployed and you never want to experience that again. You might even feel physically sick thinking about it. If the prompting is from the Holy Spirit, it’s going to persist underneath all those uncomfortable feelings, and when you sit down calmly and examine carefully what’s going on inside, you’ll be able to name many of the reasons you feel anxious – those reasons will be tied to your past experience and fear of repeating it again, not to this one particular prompting to leave your job. If you can isolate the feeling of prompting (which takes practice!) you’ll notice peace about that. It’s the ‘what ifs’ and ‘oh no, not agains’ that are making you anxious.
Foundations Matter
Of course, there’s no perfect way to know with 100% certainty what is God’s voice and what are external voices. But where we’re starting from matters. Do we believe that God loves us and wants to provide for us, ultimately with the gift of Himself? Do we believe that discernment is some kind of guessing game where we can very easily mess everything up because God will only whisper once and if we miss it, it’s our own fault? Or do we believe that God wants a relationship with us, which involves ongoing, loving, patient, communication? Whatever our presuppositions are, we bring them to the discernment process, so it’s important to examine our foundations, too.
If you found this helpful, you might also like these related articles:
How Do I Know if I Can Trust My Desires in Discernment?
How Do I Know if I’m Open to Hearing God? (Part I)
How Do I Know if I’m Open to Hearing God? (Part II)
What about you? Do you have experience distinguishing between a prompting of the Holy Spirit and anxiety? What have you learned?
Just what I needed ❤️
So so much wisdom here Kerri. I love these questions. I will return to this again! Appreciate you.