Anxiety in Community: The Addictive Connection

Facing separation anxiety is one of most painful experiences of grief and brokenness. Consequently, many people avoid experiencing the feelings associated with their separation fears. In order to cover the "black hole" of emptiness caused by abandonment and separation, individuals turn to a virtually unlimited number of addictive substances and compulsive behaviors.

Several years ago, while immersed in numerous readings about alcoholics and the effects of addiction on their families, I consulted with a 150-year-old congregation nestled in a beautiful resort community on the Great Lakes. The pastor called me and asked for a consultation. He explained how the congregation was beset with uncontrollable anxiety and conflict. Overwhelmed by the congregational anxieties, he had submitted his resignation as pastor, effective in 90 days. As consultant, my role was to calm things down and enable him to have a "healthy" exit.

The consultation began with a MinistryHealth.net seminar entitled "Understanding Anxiety: Emotional Process in the Congregation." As we discussed anxiety, I shared how much of what happens in highly anxious congregations is very similar to what happens in alcoholic families.

A "Eureka" Moment: We’re Addicted!

In one of the most memorable "eureka" moments of my consultation ministry, six congregation leaders (of 25 in attendance) came up during the break and asked, "Tom, do you do alcoholic counseling? My spouse is an alcoholic." These individuals came forward because they began to recognize that the anxiety their congregation was experiencing had dynamics nearly identical to those of their alcoholic families. Apparently, these anxious leaders brought their family anxieties to bear in the congregation’s relationship system. As they did, their anxious patterns of behavior permeated the church at virtually every level of its functioning.

After the seminar, the congregational chairperson described how she had been married to an alcoholic and was currently married to a husband who was rabidly anti-alcohol in any form whatsoever. "What happened? I don’t understand it," she said. I responded, "When you changed spouses, you didn’t escape addictions. You simply changed addictions. As your first husband was addicted to alcohol; your current husband is addicted to being anti-alcohol. Each extreme will bear the same addictive dynamics."

At the end of our discussion she, like others who came forward, realized they had brought an anxiety-based pattern of behavior into the church. As these dynamics were identified and discussed, the leaders began to develop a consensus on how to change themselves…and the church.9

The next finding that emerged from our interaction was that the highly anxious dynamics of distance and closeness played out in this church. Locked into relationship patterns common to alcoholics and other addiction-prone individuals, the leaders of this church were unable to talk, trust, and feel. Thus, they acted out their anxieties in ways that resulted in serial pastoral force-outs, a continued inability to develop healthy ministry vision, and the development of leaders who were not able to maintain a healthy sense of boundaries and self-differentiation.

Having infiltrated the highest levels of this church, the patterns of anxious, addiction-driven behavior became, in themselves, addictive. One might even say that the membership became intoxicated by the emotional dynamics of the anxiety. Sadly, they nearly brought this 150-year-old community of faith to an end.

Fortunately, through subsequent consultations, this congregation was able to begin to unravel its anxiety, retain its pastor, and begin creating a healthy "talk, trust, and feel" congregation. A key to renewal for this church was that its members were able to withstand the anxiety necessary to change from an unhealthy, anxious-based system to a healthier level of functioning.

The greatest joy for those in this congregation was that once they began the path of recovery, they realized that the pain they experienced was really a gift of God. The unhealthy addictive dynamics they so painfully experienced led them to a sense of spiritual brokenness, and it was this brokenness that led them to develop healthy, healing connections with the community. They invited an Alcoholics Anonymous group to meet in the church, they started support groups for grief and depression, and they made dramatic inroads in providing for the homeless in the region.

Three years later this congregation appears to be healthily focused on its mission, is supportive of its pastor (who retracted his resignation), and is making significant progress in helping individuals in the community deal with anxiety in healthier ways.

Churches that "act out" are not uncommon. Those who are willing to painfully work through the process of introspection and growth, however, are not nearly so common. But when such growth occurs, congregations can begin to sow the seeds of long-term renewal and anxiety reduction.

9. See Fisher's "The Ten Commmandments of Dysfunctional Families," article no. 64, online at ministryhealth.net.