A sharp twinge in the neck, the very instant another notification lights up the phone. Or that dull tightness across the chest, feeling as though someone had bound a strap around your ribs and pulled it taut.
We usually treat these two things quite separately. For the one, there are tablets in the bathroom cabinet; for the other, distractions, overtime at work, or reaching for the television remote. We want to be rid of the symptom, preferably at once, so the day can carry on.
Yet pain and anxiety are essentially two sides of the same coin. They make use of the very same wiring within us. They are not glitches in the machine, but the clear, unmistakable voice of our body.
When the Messenger Becomes the Enemy
Nobody enjoys pain. Nobody wakes up in the morning and rejoices over a throbbing knee or a burning stomach. But pain exists for a simple reason: it tells us a boundary has been crossed.
If we merely dull the pain with medication so we can carry on lifting the same heavy load, we do ourselves no favours. It is like unscrewing the warning light on the dashboard while the engine is already smoking. Pain relief certainly has its place in medicine. But when it serves only to force ourselves to push on, the body will eventually pull the emergency brake.
It is precisely the same with anxiety. Fear is the soul’s counterpart to physical pain. It does not appear without cause. It reveals where we feel threatened, where we are overwhelmed, or where we are walking paths that leave us breathless.
If we try to push that fear down, something entirely predictable happens: it gathers in secret. It builds until one day it breaks through with doubled force—be it as a panic attack or deep exhaustion.
Drawing the Line
In recent years, a great deal has been said about the importance of listening to one’s inner self. Yet an unhealthy imbalance soon creeps in. Before you know it, you find yourself tangled in practices that almost deify the body, or seek to imbue it with vague spiritual energies.
What I mean is something far more grounded. It is simply an honest, quiet taking-stock. I feel where my body is tense. I notice where the pressure sits. In silence, I ask myself what this ache or restlessness is trying to say to me. Nothing more, nothing less.
And at that point, the gaze does not linger on myself. I do not turn it into a meditation upon my own ego. Whatever I uncover within, I take directly to Jesus in prayer.
I tell him: Lord, this hurts. This is where I am stuck. This is where I dread what tomorrow might bring. This is not esotericism; it is faith lived out—a faith that does not despise the physical body, but honours it as God’s creation.
Walls Around the Heart
Some people have gathered so many wounds over the course of their lives that they have made a quiet resolve: never again. They build thick stone walls around their heart, layer by layer.
This rarely happens out of malice. Usually, it is an instinct for pure survival. If I let nothing close to me, so the reasoning goes, no one can hurt me ever again. But the sums do not add up.
When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Psalm 32:3–4
David describes this very state. When we conceal everything and wall ourselves in, our bones dry up. Walls do not merely keep pain out; they lock life in.
When a person hardens their heart, they lose touch with themselves and with others. They become unapproachable, numb to their own warning signs, and ultimately deeply isolated. It is this self-chosen loneliness that often makes people sicker than the original wound ever did.
What Is Ours to Carry—and What Is Not
One must guard against easy oversimplifications. Not every affliction is the consequence of a misdirected life or a hardened heart. We live in a fallen creation.
There are illnesses written into our genes. We carry burdens for which we bear no blame—the inherited frailties of a broken world. To tell a gravely ill person that they merely need to alter their mindset is heartless, and completely at odds with biblical reality.
And yet, so many of our daily struggles do stem from sheer exhaustion and neglect. From continually overriding our own limits. From the pride of believing we can live at war with our own bodies for years on end without ever being handed the bill.
When we cease viewing pain and anxiety as mere nuisances, our perspective shifts. We are allowed to pause. We are allowed to look. And we are permitted to lay the burden our body is signalling before the Cross, instead of dragging it along in silence.