How to Deal with Anxiety: The Christian's Guide to Anxiety Treatment

If your anxiety treatment isn’t working the way you hoped, the problem may not be the treatment itself — it may be that you haven’t identified the anxiety triggers actually driving your symptoms. The missing piece may be something you haven’t connected to anxiety at all, which is why changing medications, adding supplements, or trying another stress-management strategy may not be enough. In this episode of The Christian Clinician, Dr. Tanya Paynter looks at some of the less obvious contributors to anxiety that don’t always get much attention in a conventional anxiety workup. Instead of assuming every case of anxiety needs the same solution, she walks through how patterns in your symptoms can help point you toward the kinds of anxiety treatment that are more likely to fit what’s actually going on. Could a supplement that seems perfectly reasonable on paper be the wrong choice for you once your nutrient status, genetics, and everything else you’re taking are considered? Could something as ordinary as when you have your coffee, how you use your phone, or where you feel anxiety in your body offer clues about what’s driving it? And could two episodes that you both call “anxiety” actually be coming from very different places? Some of the clues can be measured. Others require paying attention to patterns you may have never thought were relevant. And some take the investigation in an entirely different direction — into the things you believe about yourself, the relationships around you, and even assumptions about God that you may consciously reject but still react to as though they were true. In This Episode, You’ll Explore: Why conventional anxiety treatment doesn’t work for everyone How to start identifying your underlying anxiety triggers Which labs are worth discussing with your healthcare provider Why expensive specialty testing isn’t necessarily the best place to start One five minute practice that can point you to what you’ve been missing How to distinguish biochemical anxiety (anxiety as a result of a physical imbalance) from anxiety tied to thoughts, emotions, or circumstances Identifying how control may contribute How beliefs (sometimes unconscious beliefs) about yourself and God can become part of the anxiety picture How relationships impact anxiety (are yours helpful or harmful?)

High-functioning anxiety doesn’t always look like anxiety. It can look like productivity, overthinking, perfectionism, staying busy, taking care of everyone else, and feeling responsible for outcomes you were never meant to control. In this episode, Dr. Tanya Paynter talks with licensed professional counselor Ashley Hageman about anxiety in Christian women, the need for control, shame, over-responsibility, faith, and why “just have more faith” can make things worse instead of better.

Why am I anxious for no reason? If you've tried everything — cut the caffeine, managed your stress, worked on trusting God more — and anxiety is still your default, it's time to dig deeper. In this episode, Dr. Tanya Paynter explores overlooked physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational contributors that anxiety conversations almost never explore — including food sensitivities, supplement interactions, blood sugar, genetic factors, toxic relationships, and the beliefs about God your body holds onto even when your mind thinks you've settled them. If anxiety feels like a mystery you can't solve, this episode is your starting point.

Dr. Paynter says: "I have people coming to me saying some people say I should be on the carnivore diet, and other people are swearing it has to be vegan — and you have testimonies for both extremes. What am I supposed to do with that?"

Many Christian women are dealing with chronic symptoms — anxiety, fatigue, hormone imbalance, thyroid issues, gut problems, insomnia, or just feeling "off" — and can't find answers in labs, supplements, or treatment plans alone. In this Season 4 opener, Dr. Tanya Paynter introduces Theophysiology: the framework that will shape the entire season. If your physical symptoms are the last thing to manifest, not the first, then healing requires looking at all five areas of health — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational — and understanding how each one shapes the others. If you've been doing everything right and still don't feel well, this episode is your starting point.