Korie Robertson, Rebekah Lyons Celebrate Freedom from Anxiety
By Movieguide®️ Contributor
Christian author and speaker Rebekah Lyons recently got candid about her personal struggles with anxiety with Korie Robertson.
“[W]e moved to New York City and within four months of our time in New York City, I started having panic attacks rooted in claustrophobia that began on planes. And they continued in trains elevators also in crowds.” Lyons told Robertson on the podcast WHOA THAT’S GOOD. “So that lasted about a year and a half, which eventually became panic disorder, but I wouldn’t again had language for it at the time.”
“I was just very, very desperate and the old Rebekah who could kind of do anything and take a mountain, just really found her frailty and really crashed,” Lyons recalled.
She said a point of breakthrough for her was one night she had a panic attack, and unable to speak, her husband Gabe prayed for her, as usually he would when these attacks happened, then she got her strength to pray herself.
“I’m literally just clenching his arm and he begins to pray for me and I’m, all of a sudden I get my voice and I raise my hand. I just said, ‘Rescue me. I cannot do this without You.’ And I just was done,” Lyons told the TODAY show.
The mother of four had to lean on God again in 2020 during COVID lockdowns that affected the oldest son Cade the most who has Down syndrome.
“He was struggling with what all of us [were] struggling with, but he didn’t have words,” she told Robertson. “So we found his window of tolerance just kept diminishing, diminishing, diminishing and so much that he would take his unrest out on himself and so he would, you know, hit himself, slam his head into walls or headboards.”
Again Lyons found comfort through prayer as she walked through the woods and prayed to God that he would lift the quarantine, although not through the answer that she wanted.
“[I]n my spirit … I felt the Holy Spirit just saying, ‘Not yet. But I’ll be here for as many willing walks as you need,” Lyons said.
She went on to state, “I realized in that season like okay, God’s got resilience that I need to learn… And what I know is that adversity awakens resilience but you have to have gone through it.”
The author also revealed that daughter Kennedy also struggled with anxiety as a teenager. One of the ways that she helped her children cope with this is to limit their time on their cell phones and social media.
“[A] lot of times anxiety happens at night, right? It happens if kids are in their home in their rooms with their phones and they’re on Instagram or they’re scrolling,” Lyons said. “So we definitely have always had our kids leave their phones downstairs we have the ARO box where like everyone plugs in and … you can even gamify who has it in the box the longest.”
Lyons also encourages her daughter to take walks as a way to manage anxiety.
“And one of those first things is I say, ‘Just get up, move your body, get outside, like just stop the spiral in your room or on your phone, put your phone down, don’t even take it with you for your walk to take a picture of you going for a walk; like just go outside without a device.’”
Lyons also uses instances to impart spiritual wisdom into her children’s lives.
[T]hat’s where we start… ‘Okay, what does God say about where you are right now’ And I’ve got 30 verses for anxiety on my website that people will go to and keep it in their backpack or keep it in their briefcase; for her, she has it available to her in her room.
Movieguide®️ has previously reported on the link between social media and mental health in teenagers:
[F]rom 2011 to 2021, the CDC found, “the percentage of teenage girls feeling sad or hopeless had increased from 36% to 57%, while the percentage for teenage boys had increased from 21% to 29%.”
Pinsky expanded on this, saying, “I think within 10 years we will look at these things—these phones right here with me in front of the desk—the way we looked at tobacco at one time in the past,” emphasizing that one’s “mental health is enhanced” with reduced screen time.
“I have lots of friends that actually specialize in screens for adolescents, and they all do the same thing with their kids,” Pinsky said. “Limit [social media use] to an hour, max two hours a day.”
Lyons said her latest book about the lessons she’s learned about perseverance and mental health, BUILDING A RESILIENT LIFE, was for her children, but later realized, “I was like, wow, this is for me. This is for all of us. This is a story and this is a theme that we’re gonna all have to navigate in the days ahead.”
