photo by Annie Spratt
An anxious spiritual style is a pattern of worriedly seeking closeness with God, fearing that the moment we relax we will backslide into separation. We’re convinced it's entirely up to us to maintain closeness with God. Which means we can never actually rest with God.
In some families, the child ends up feeling that keeping connection rests wholly on their shoulders, a feeling many of us have picked up in our faith communities as well. It prevents us from ever resting in the embrace of a loving parent, and pushes us to anxiously cling like they are a helium-filled balloon, just waiting to fly into the ether the moment we relax our white-knuckled grasp. It’s exhausting, but better than being abandoned to disconnection.
In healthy families, children trust that their parents will respond and rescue them from disconnection, at least most of the time. But what if you grow up in a family where it’s more likely that your cry will be ignored than responded to, moments of distance feel terrifying. You're unsure if you'll be rescued, or if you'll feel abandoned to the utter hopelessness of isolation. It’s a scary thing to be alone in a world where no one comes to save you from the painful feeling of disconnection. So we create a pattern of frantically calling out for help, and eventually focus all our energy on preventing disconnection from ever happening in the first place.
When we can't trust our caregivers to get close in our time of need, we have to scheme up our own map for closeness. Those early experiences of disconnection feel like the death of the relationship, and because we’re created for connection, a deep anxiety develops. We know that our parents care, but we’re not sure if they care enough. Skeptical that they will help up during the agony of disconnection, our best strategy becomes avoiding any distance at all. Our relationships begin to feel like helium balloons, constantly bobbing and pulling, threatening to fly away unless we grip tight the strings that hold them close. It’s safer to sit next to mom on the bench at the park than take the risk of playing on the playground. What if she’s not paying enough attention when you venture out on your own and get hurt or scared? The best bet is to cling to mom’s skirt, and endlessly keep a sharp eye out for the slightest sign of disconnection.
Researchers have referred to this as anxious-ambivalent attachment or preoccupied attachment, because we are anxious about and preoccupied with keeping connection - so much so that it’s hard to focus on other important parts of our life. I’m using the simple term “Anxious Spirituality” to describe this way of relating to God because it is driven by an anxiety that fears we will lose the closeness we desperately need.
The emotional intensity of the charismatic tradition can help us quell our anxiety about God's closeness, providing a space to call out and expect that God will show up. However, for some of us, as the intensity fades the anxiety about distance increases, wearing us out over time.
When we practice Anxious Spirituality, we worry about drifting, backsliding, or falling away from the faith. If we don’t keep the connection, who will? Many of us were told early on in our faith that this is what the Christian life is about. Taking on all the responsibility for our connection with God, we have to constantly double check that we are staying close, constantly gripping the balloon string. It’s easy to get locked in a pattern of being as expressive as we can in our spiritual life, trying to keep God’s attention. Or we might make sure to always have a quiet time, or to never miss mass, or to commit to battling whatever sin has become our vice. Then when we can’t do these things, we get the anxious unease that we might not be clinging hard enough. Like Mark Dever, president of 9Marks ministry says, “If you’re not at odds with sin, you’re not at home with Jesus.”[1] So we tirelessly work to make sure that we’re at odds at sin, in order to stay close to Jesus. We continually scan for the tiniest fracture in our connection. It’s exhausting, but it’s better than the alternative – being left all alone.
One study that examined connections between mental health and how we relate to God found that an anxious attachment style with God significantly predicted depression and anxiety symptoms.[2]
Rather than a loving embrace, relationship with God becomes a precarious balancing act that burns us out over time. We desperately want closeness, and we have learned early on that the best way to get it and keep it becomes anxiously grasping at those we love, including God. It’s a map we’ve received both in our families, but also from the church. We long to collapse into the lap of our Divine Parent, but we worry about relaxing too much. What if we fall asleep on God and then wake only to find that God has slid out from under us, slinking into another room, and we’re left feeling all alone? If the consequences are closeness or eternal separation, of course we’re going to practice anxious spirituality – it’s the only way we know to stay close.
Listen to Amy and I discuss this spiritual attachment style on the Attached to the Invisible podcast.
Interested in joining a community that engages and learns about attachment to God and secure spiritual practices? Find out more information about my patreon Secure Spirituality Community.
Notes:
[1] https://unlockingthebible.org/2018/04/15-unforgettable-quotes-on-holiness-from-t4g18/
[2] Hunter, 2017 https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2104/10140/HUNTER-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y