What if your anxiety is trying to tell you something?
You feel the knot in your stomach. The shame that shows up out of nowhere. The quiet voice that says you’re not enough. Most of us treat those feelings as problems to shut down. Push them away. Quote a verse. Keep moving. But what if they’re pointing at something? In this clip from episode 219 of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, Identity Exchange coach Chris Hantla makes a simple case. Negative emotions are a signal that you’re believing something false about yourself, about God, or about how the world works.
Stop smashing the check-engine light
Chris borrows a picture from Jamie and Donna Winship. When a check-engine light comes on, you don’t smash it and say you fixed the problem. You pull over and look under the hood. Your emotions work the same way. Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When fear, shame, guilt, or anger take over, the Spirit is getting your attention. Chris doesn’t pretend following Jesus removes conflict. Jesus was rejected, spat on, and killed. He walked through all of it with peace and joy. That’s the life Jesus offers. Most of us have no idea it’s on the table.
“It’s all up to me” is a lie
Where do these false beliefs come from? Chris points to middle school. Think back to yours. For most of us, that’s where we learned that nobody is going to show us how to do this. We’re alone. We have to figure it out ourselves. Chris calls this the separation worldview. It fueled his own religious upbringing with anxiety and a constant fear of disappointing God. Then he points to the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples looked at the hungry crowd and said they’d need a hundred years’ wages. They were right, if it was all up to them. Jesus looked at the same crowd and knew he and the Father are one. Same problem. Different worldview. Jesus made a promise to his followers. “I am with you always.”
Your next step
- Notice the feeling. Fear, shame, and anxiety are signals, not verdicts.
- Look under the hood. Ask what you’re believing about yourself, God, or the world that isn’t true.
- Name the lie. “It’s all up to me” and “I’m not enough” are two of the most common.
- Remember the promise. You are not doing life alone.
What feeling showed up in you this week? What might it be pointing to?
Listen to the full conversation with Chris on episode 219 of the Daron Earlewine Podcast.
Episode Summary:
Anxiety and fear feel like problems to fix or push through. Chris Hantla, coach at Identity Exchange, makes the case that they’re actually a signal — a check-engine light telling you that you’re believing something false about yourself, God, or how the world works. In under seven minutes, he unpacks the difference between living disconnected from God and living connected to him, using Jesus feeding the five thousand as the clearest picture of what changes when you stop trying to be enough on your own.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Negative emotions like fear, shame, and anxiety aren’t the enemy — they’re a signal pointing to a false belief underneath, the same way a check-engine light points to a problem under the hood.
⚡️ The “empire” worldview says it’s all up to you and you’re not enough. The “kingdom” worldview says you’re never doing life alone.
⚡️ When the disciples faced feeding five thousand people, they saw impossibility. Jesus, operating from oneness with the Father, saw a problem that wasn’t too big — because he wasn’t facing it alone.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Watch or listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Got a question about finding your identity or purpose? Email Daron at daron@daronearlewine.com
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Chris Hantla: We know we’re in a false identity when it’s producing negative emotion in us. Our natural state in the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We know these things. Most of us experience — and I’m not different from other human beings in this — these negative emotions: fear, shame, guilt, anger, and so on. If we pay attention to what the Spirit is doing by communicating through these feelings, he’s speaking to us through them. And what he’s speaking is: hey, you’re actually believing something about yourself, or about God, or about how the world works, that isn’t true. You’re operating in something false. We’d call this the empire and the kingdom — two stories running parallel through the scriptures.
God is saying, if you knew what it meant to come into the kingdom and follow Jesus as Lord, your life would be — it doesn’t mean free of conflict or persecution, Jesus promises those things — but watch how Jesus walked through people hating him, spitting on him, rejecting him, eventually torturing and killing him, with perfect peace through all of it. He walked through with joy — the joy set before him, he went to the cross. This is the paradigm for what we’re supposed to be living like. Jesus is showing us a way of being human in the truth of who he made us, and most of us have no idea this is even on offer as the good news of the kingdom of God. When Jesus says, “come follow me and I will cause you to become fishers of men,” he’s showing his disciples a new way of being human — because up to that point they’re living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, in total fear, self-protection, self-promotion. Constant anxiety, shame, “I’m not good enough, I’m not enough.” All of that produces negative feelings inside of us.
I love how Jamie and Donna teach this: if you’re driving down the road and a check-engine light comes on, you don’t smash the light and say, “fixed the problem.” You stop the car and figure out what’s going on under the hood. That’s what our emotions are doing for us. When we’re in perfect peace — this is the promise of scripture, “I will keep you in perfect peace whose mind and imagination is stayed on me” — my awareness is, I’m not doing life all alone. That’s one of the common lies we all believe: it’s all up to me, I’m alone, I have to figure this out by myself. That’s the separation worldview. That’s the empire worldview.
And we’re constantly bombarded with that message — life itself reinforces it. Especially something like middle school. I’ve got middle school kids right now going through a season where, on top of puberty and all the natural hard stages of that age, they’re learning some difficult things about their identity. Think back to your own middle school days — that’s where most of us learn, I’m all alone, nobody’s going to show me how to do this, I have to figure it out myself, nobody’s giving me the guidance or attention I need. We learn these messages growing up, and it’s pretty common for all of us. That produces immediate fear: it’s all up to me, I have to figure this out, I’m not enough for this, I don’t know what the right thing is.
That’s been my life. Growing up in religion was anxiety and striving to be something, to be perfect, to not mess up, to not disappoint God. All of that produces internal turmoil. And Jesus says: come follow me and I’ll show you a totally different way. I’m with you. That was his promise — I am with you always, I will never leave you or forsake you. How different.
I was reflecting on this the other day, and it struck me — here’s the difference between the separation worldview and the connected, kingdom worldview Jesus operated in and offered his disciples. Take the feeding of the five thousand, the story we all know. There’s a problem: the disciples notice they’ve been there all day and nobody’s eaten. They’re looking at it through a disconnected lens — it’s all up to me, what can I do here, I’m not enough. And that’s exactly when they bring the problem to Jesus. Jesus points it out and says, “You feed them.” Their minds immediately go to, we’re not enough — this would take a hundred years’ wages to buy enough food for all these people. We’re not enough for this. They’re looking at the situation as individuals disconnected from God, thinking, I don’t have enough, who am I.
Jesus is looking at the exact same situation through a connected worldview: I am in the Father, the Father is in me, we are one. So his response is completely different. He essentially says: for me as a human being, individually, without the Creator of the universe, this problem is exactly as you’ve described it — we don’t have enough. But with my Father — I and the Father are one — as we look at this situation, this is not too big for him. This is not too big for us.