A new book promises to help everyday Catholics who are struggling with anxiety.
“This isn’t written for therapists in their treatment of people, but really to try to bring to the everyday reader, the average person, some direction for how to deal with anxiety,” one of the authors, Dr. Lianna Bennett Haidar, a licensed clinical psychologist, told Our Sunday Visitor.
Readers can find that direction and more in “Anxiety: A Catholic Guide to Freedom from Worry and Fear,” written by Dr. Bennett Haidar together with her father, Art Bennett, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and her mother, Laraine Bennett, who has a master’s degree in philosophy. The Bennett parents are perhaps best known for their books about temperaments. Their latest book, from Sophia Institute Press, will be released April 15.
Dr. Bennett Haidar and Laraine Bennett spoke with Our Sunday Visitor about “Anxiety,” which opens by exploring the impact of anxiety and its alarming rise. Bennett proposed writing the book at a time when her husband and daughter were seeing an increase in anxiety as mental health professionals.
“But beyond that,” she added, “in our personal lives, in the people that we know, it seems that there has been this significant spike of anxiety — or maybe a continual spike of anxiety.”
Working within the Diocese of Arlington, in Virginia, Dr. Bennett Haidar said she hears from clergy that they are seeing growing mental health needs in their parishioners. Seminarians, she said, also want to learn more about mental health issues and when to refer people to therapists.
“From the family level to the parish level and even the diocesan level, I think we’re having to come up with creative responses for dealing with the anxiety that we’re seeing,” she said. “That’s another reason that we wrote this book, because we want people — your average person or even your priest — to have a resource.”
Of course, “the book is not meant to be a substitute for your mental health therapist or your spiritual director or your doctor but a supplement to aid everyone in their seeking for greater understanding of their own anxiety,” Bennett said.
Reframing our fears
In addition to looking at the social phenomenon of anxiety, the book includes practical advice for responding to anxious feelings. The authors warn against unhelpful strategies that worsen anxiety while encouraging readers to “lean into” anxiety and embrace, among other things, a strategy called reframing.
“It’s our response to the anxiety that is often the problem, like avoiding the things that make us anxious is going to only cement that fear,” Dr. Bennett Haidar said. “But learning to lean into … whatever it is that’s making us anxious is really the best way to kind of conquer them and not allow them to rule our life.”
Along the way, the book weaves in personal stories, cites Scripture and highlights saints who experienced anxiety. One of those saints is St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite nun known for her “little way” of childlike trust and confidence in God’s merciful love.
“Her experience of anxiety was pretty dramatic,” Bennett said. “It was at a certain point in her life when her mother had died — she was very young — and then her older sister, Pauline, who became her second mother, left to go to the convent.”
“This is at a time in history or psychological development, where they didn’t quite understand the effects that this could have on a person,” she added. “They didn’t know what it was, and she thought it was a demonic attack.”
A response from the Church
Dr. Bennett Haidar said that people of faith benefit from certain mental health protections.
“Aside from scrupulosity, which is a very particular form of anxiety and related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, in general … being Catholic, being a practicing Christian, going to church, those are all [generally considered to be] protective factors against things like anxiety and depression,” she said at another point. “However, I think that the rate of anxiety is just skyrocketing in our culture and our society.”
Bennett wanted the book to be an answer for people of faith. Catholics struggling with anxiety and reading Scripture might wonder if they’re doing something wrong when they come across St. Paul saying “have no anxiety at all” or Jesus teaching “do not be not afraid” since “even the hairs of your head have all been counted.”
“We wanted to explore all of that,” Bennett said. “There’s actually something we can do about this.”
The book comes after the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops introduced a new campaign in 2023 to raise awareness around mental health and remove the stigma of mental illness and mental health challenges.
“If somebody has cancer, we’re not thinking, ‘Oh, you must not have prayed hard enough’ — which we did not always understand,” Dr. Bennett Haidar said. “We have in the past, as Christians sometimes, assigned morality to struggles that people have had.”
“Now we’re understanding better the complexity of mental health issues and anxiety in particular,” she added. “The USCCB addressing mental health issues is significant, but then also on the diocesan and the parish levels, I think that’s where really some change can happen.”
A message for those struggling with anxiety
Dr. Bennett Haidar shared her immediate message for those who might be struggling with anxiety.
“The first thing to know is that you’re not alone in this struggle, that there’s not something inherently wrong with you for struggling with anxiety,” she said. And “not only is it OK, it is the best thing to do to reach out for help either from a friend or your parish priest or even a therapist.”
“The more resources that you can bring into your life if you’re struggling, the better,” she added.
She cited St. Irenaeus, an early Church father, who is quoted as saying, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”
“It’s really hard to be fully alive when we are crippled with anxiety,” she concluded. “It is not a moral failing to struggle with anxiety, but it is something that it’s OK to reach out for help.”
