Working with Your Anxieties and Stress
Frank Basler
with Frank Basler*
Four 1½ hour sessions†
†This series is being rescheduled. If you are interested in attending, please contact Frank Basler with the meeting days and times that would be most convenient for you.
Jesus says, “…stop worrying about your life...." (Matthew 6:25). Why does it seem that it gets harder and harder to follow Jesus on this — the economy? The media? Workplaces doing more with fewer people?
This four week series will use three resources to help you work with your stress and anxiety: the Bible (especially the Sermon on the Mount), insights from the literature on stress, and — especially — what you already know works for you and the “best practices” of other participants. Here’s the sequence we’ll follow:
Session 1
It may be possible that you already know what you need to do to manage your stress and anxiety. Perhaps there is a part of you that knows — especially if St. Paul is right in saying “Christ” is within each of us. Session 1, then, will explore the stressors in our lives and what each of us has already discovered helps in reducing them.
These “best practices” which we share in common for working with our anxieties and stresses will guide our agenda for the following three sessions. What follows is a tentative outline, which will likely be modified:
Session 2
What guidance does the Bible provide in showing us how to reduce stress/ anxiety? We’ll focus especially on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Chapters 5 through 7. Perhaps you’ll find, as you work with your stress and anxiety, that you are already having important experiences of the “Kingdom of Heaven” without being aware of it — experiences and practices which can be amplified.
Session 3
Guidance from the sciences. If you’re willing, I’ll assign each of you a topic to explore on the internet on what medical and social sciences have to say about stress and stress reduction. We’ll share your learnings during this third session, then look for connections/congruence between what the Bible says and your own best practice or prior wisdom.
Session 4
Action planning. We’ll use the first part of this evening to continue any of our earlier discussions and explore insights from the first three sessions. Then you’ll have time to do some private thinking about what you intend to do more/less as you work with your anxieties and stressors in the future. Hearing others’ plans will give you additional ideas that you may want to incorporate into your plan.
Let’s explore your unique ways of being in “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Write Frank to register or call him at 203-345-5682.
* Frank has taught stress management in corporations. A graduate of Union Theological Seminary, he is a student of the mystics and has been trained as a psychotherapist.