Leading With a Limp: Anxiety, Depression and the Ongoing Desire to Lead Well

I read Edwin Friedman’s excellent leadership book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, in 2019. In it, Friedman posits that the key differentiator of effective leaders is that they are able to function as a “non-anxious presence” in the midst of anxious and stressed out teams. It really struck a chord with me and became a sort of shaping metaphor that guided my course into what looked like the hopeful waters of 2020.

And then, well, 2020 happened, and leadership became anything but non-anxious, and I ran out of capacity alarmingly quickly.

In August of 2021 I began to experience crippling anxiety and related depression that impacted my physical and emotional functioning to the extent that it became difficult, or perhaps impossible, for me to do my job. This ultimately manifested in some significant and truly terrifying panic attacks. I sought help and encouragement from a counselor and reached out to my wonderfully compassionate boss, who encouraged me to see my physician to see if additional help was needed. The doctor (as well as the counselor) agreed that I was struggling with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and that the best path forward was to seek treatment with counseling, medication and an immediate reduction of stress.

I was deeply ashamed.

I wasn’t carrying anything heavier than anyone else, and was supposed to be someone who was able to point his congregation away from their anxiety and toward the certainty of the hope that is found in Christ. “Do not be anxious about anything” goes one of my favorite passages, and yet here I was, unable to obey that instruction to even the feeblest of extents.

My doctor (who is a wonderful Christian man who prayed for me regularly in his office) explained that what I was experiencing was not primarily a spiritual failure, and not even an emotional failure, but a physical one. My body had run out of capacity to process stress and so was now just leaving the taps on all the time, and the building of my life was flooded. I needed an interruption to the flow, a gap in the hyper responsiveness of my physiology so that truth could get in, and take root, and grow into something that gave me the oxygen my lungs and my soul so desperately craved.

Today, nearly eighteen months later, I am doing a lot better. I am able to function and flourish in my job, even in the midst of stress, and I am starting to understand my own responses to stress in a way that keeps me from simply allowing myself to get to the point that I got to in 2021. I have started speaking about it with other leaders, and have realized that many have been going through the same thing. This is my first attempt to normalize some of that largely secret struggle and to share some of the things that I learned in the hope that they may be of some benefit to others.

Here are ten things I learned when my attempts to be a non-anxious presence landed me with an anxiety disorder:

I Am More Than My Physical Body, But I Am Not Less

Being embodied is such a peculiar thing if you think about it, and yet it is our only way to interface with our world and our experience of it. Sometimes though I don’t give my physical reality enough thought. Being hyper-aware of your body’s response when it isn’t doing well is actually helpful in learning to pay more attention to physical health in everyday functioning. By God’s grace, I have learned some important physical lessons in this season, lessons with consequences that reach into all the other areas of my life.

I sometimes eat to cope more than I eat to fuel.
I sometimes drink to cope more than I do for simple pleasure.
Working out hard is an essential part of healthy living for me, and yet I struggle to do it.
Sleep is the body’s miracle recovery drug and when you don’t get enough of it, then very little else will work well.

I am paying more attention now to how the way I feel relates to how well I am looking after my physical form.

Stress Is Cumulative

There was no single significant stressor in 2020 and 2021 which should have set me off, but rather, as I look back, it was an accumulation of stress over a period of years that eventually got big on me. Immigration and all that goes with it is a stressor that you face every moment of every day for the first few years in a new country. We had such a dream process that I actually felt too guilty to acknowledge the pain of it. My body however was keeping tally. Then came leadership transitions, COVID, elections, racial justice movements, church disunity and the public failing of people I respected. Add to that then came personal family suffering with the illness of my beloved father-in-law and my wife needing to be back in South Africa for a prolonged period to deal with it and I reached a tipping point that I didn’t even realize I was near to. Unaddressed stress and unspoken trauma doesn’t just mysteriously go away. It lingers, and multiplies, and waits until it has an opportunity to overwhelm. It will be dealt with, the choice is just whether you want to deal with it when you have good capacity or whether you want it to emerge when you have none. I delayed too long.

Mental Illness Is Not a Sin

Generalized Anxiety Disorder. That is what it says on my chart. It is a disorder that I remember well from when I studied psychology and how to make a diagnosis of the DSM-V. I have definitely sinned in some ways that contributed to that diagnosis. I have also used that diagnosis as an excuse for some sin in my life. However, the condition itself is not a sin, and neither is the treatment for it.

Medication Isn’t A Simple Fix, But It Can Be Really Helpful

My doctor really had to persuade me that it would be okay for me to interrupt some of my dysfunctional physiological responses, but I am glad he did. We started with some low dosage meds to allow me to sleep and those felt like a gift from God’s common grace to be honest. I am still on some very low dosage daily meds to help me to manage my levels. My hope is to come off of these soon, but I am very grateful to have had them.

I have viewed it like I view any other illness that inflicts us while we still dwell under the curse. We pray to the Lord for supernatural healing, we pursue wellness with all that we have, and we rejoice that medication can be used to help our bodies to fight some things they are unable to fight on their own.

Philippians 4 Is Still True … So Is Matthew 6

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The Scriptures command us to not just give in to anxiety, and they also give us the tools to fight back against much of its impact in our lives. So how do we explain that a believer might still have crippling and chronic anxiety? Well, perhaps CH Spurgeon might help us. He was way ahead of his time with thinking about mental health when he said …

“We do not profess that the religion of Christ will so thoroughly change a man as to take away from him all his natural tendencies; it will give the despairing something that will alleviate that despondency, but as long as that is caused by a low state of body, or a diseased mind, we do not profess that the religion of Christ will totally remove it.”

In other words, my Christian faith when rightly applied should reduce the level of anxiety that I would otherwise experience were I faithless. But, it is no guarantee that it will remove it from me completely. It gives me wonderful and supernatural tools to fight and to ultimately win, but it never promises that it will not be a fight. 

I am commanded to not be anxious. And I am covered in grace when I am anyway. I cling to the tools of Philippians 4 and I fight back against anxiety through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Thank God for the peace that surpasses all understanding that He continues to grant to me.

Counseling Is Essential

A counselor has functioned as a non-anxious presence for me in my quest to get back to stability and flourishing. Having someone outside of your circumstances who is able to listen to you and share truth with you is a precious gift that we would be extremely foolish to turn down.

When We Believe the Gospel, Then We Can Really Celebrate in Our Weakness

I am not used to being weak, but I have had no choice in this season. My good friend (and aforementioned boss) got to see some of this when he came to see me at home when I was at my lowest, and as the two of us sat on a bench in my front yard, all I could actually say was … “I am not okay.” I haven’t known what to do with the shame that comes from such profound weakness, but through it all God has taught me the truth of what Paul expressed in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12, where he feels the freedom to boast in his own weakness, knowing that his weakness only serves to display the strength of Christ’s hold on Him.

So from now on I want to speak openly and freely of my weakness, knowing that the strength of Christ shines in my inability, and is sometimes less obvious or even obscured in displays of my ability.

The Lord Is Near

The spiritual experience brought about by this season has been great. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have never doubted God’s love, mercy or favor for a moment. In fact, I believe that the Lord has used it to grow and mature my faith and I am very grateful for that. It is true that He is near to those who are broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. I have experienced that truth in all of its richness and power.

Psalm 138 has been such a soothing balm in this season. I love it, and am committing it to memory.

1 I will give you thanks with all my heart; 

I will sing your praise before the heavenly beings., 

2 I will bow down toward your holy temple 

and give thanks to your name 

for your constant love and truth. 

You have exalted your name 

and your promise above everything else., 

3 On the day I called, you answered me; 

you increased strength within me., 

4 All the kings on earth will give you thanks, Lord, 

when they hear what you have promised., 

5 They will sing of the Lord’s ways, 

for the Lord’s glory is great. 

6 Though the Lord is exalted, 

he takes note of the humble; 

but he knows the haughty from a distance. 

7 If I walk into the thick of danger, 

you will preserve my life 

from the anger of my enemies. 

You will extend your hand; 

your right hand will save me. 

8 The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. 

Lord, your faithful love endures forever; 

do not abandon the work of your hands.

- Ps 138:1–8 (CSB)

Sometimes You Need To Change the Soundtrack of Your Life

My friend Justin said something so beautiful and profound at a prayer meeting I went to when I was feeling really low. He said that just as a soundtrack in a film impacts the mood of what you are seeing, the thought processes in our minds set the scene for how we see the world. This is part of why the Scriptures call us to guard our minds so often. We have a background hum which dictates a lot of what we think and how we feel as a result.

I realized in that moment that I default to a soundtrack of melancholy, nostalgia and introspection. That can be a beautiful thing, and wonderfully creative outputs can flow from that, but it also comes with a danger, and that danger in me is that the film of my life would be a hopeless and dark piece. 

I have a melancholic spirit. It’s okay. Spurgeon had one too, and he described it like this …

“All our birds are ravens … when one is born with a melancholy temperament, he sees a tempest brewing even in the calm. Desponding people can find reason for fear where no fear is.”

What this means is that I need to be aware of the background music of my life and how I am allowing my mood to be impacted by the sound. I need to fight back occasionally by changing the music, dialing in some more light, and allowing unbridled hope and optimism to break through on gloomy days. 

We Need Each Other, As We Really Are

I can do a pretty good job of pretending to be better than I am. I can do this with strangers, friends, family and even my wife. But it doesn’t help at all. It doesn’t allow people to love you as you really are, and so even the love that show you doesn’t feel like love because it is actually love for a character that you have deceived them with.

I am learning that it isn’t just okay to be not okay, but that it isn’t okay to pretend to be okay. It is unloving, and unwise, and really unhelpful.

I have received nothing but love and support from those who I have let in. What a marvelous miracle it is to be known, and to be loved.

I am so very thankful for the love and support that a weak man like me has received in the midst of his weakness. This bruised reed hasn’t been broken, and this flickering flame is turning back into a steady light. I would encourage you to get professional help if you are struggling. Don’t do it alone. You can’t do it alone.

Reach out to me if I can help.
Ross