Jesus experienced a panic attack too and understands our emotions

Jesus experienced a panic attack too. He experienced grief and deep sadness. He experienced anger and also joy.

Jesus had emotional responses and physical responses to his emotions too. He understands panic attacks and anxiety. He understands your emotions. He understands the struggle of feeling so anxious that it manifests physically. In Luke 22:40-46, in the garden of gethsemane just before he was to go to the cross, Jesus prayed earnestly and asked for another way. An angel strengthened him in that moment, but he still had a physical reaction of sweating blood (called hematohidrosis) from pleading and wrestling with this emotion he was feeling.

One thing to note is that a panic attack doesn’t mean you are panicking. Jesus wasn’t panicked. He was in anguish which is a step higher than anxiety. He was sweating blood which is a rare medical condition brought on by severe anguish/anxiety. A panic attack is a physical manifestation or reaction to anxiety. Our bodies respond physically to our emotions at times. Jesus was in deep anguish that had a physical reaction which falls in the panic attack family. So he understands the panic attacks we experience because he has experienced the most severe type of panic attack as we would call it in today’s world.

Jesus understands and empathizes with our emotions and our mental health struggles. He came to Earth not only to die for our sins, but to experience life as a human so he could relate to us and be a friend. I think Christian culture can often get it wrong in regards to mental health and our response. There’s stigma around mental health that if you struggle then you must not be close enough to Jesus or you just have to pray it away.

But as I remembered Jesus’s own experience with emotion and his experience in the garden of essentially a panic attack (defined as a physical response to intense/ severe anxiety), I realized that you can be close to God and in prayer and still feel pain and struggle. You can know all the scriptures and spend time with God, but sometimes the emotions and mental health we struggle with are something we endure and trust God to stay with us through the struggle and not a problem to brush off and fix overnight.

When we dismiss someone’s mental health struggle or judge them for how they deal with that struggle, we damage their healing process. I know for me, I’ve had smaller panic attacks out of no where before where I was crying and physically shaking because of an anxiety trigger and in that moment all I could do was endure, pray and let it pass. I’ve been so stressed before that I got shingles in my ear and on my face in my twenties (something typically only people over 50 get). I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life. I’ve heard the classic responses like “why do you have anxiety, just trust God more” or feeling like people think I can’t handle stuff because of my anxiety (which isn’t true). It’s an often misunderstood lonely place to struggle with mental health especially as a Christian.

We shouldn’t be embarrassed or shameful for our mental health struggles. We shouldn’t be shameful or embarrassed by physical reactions of panic attacks or physical responses of shaking or crying. Jesus understands and he gets it. He cares and he sees you. It’s a daily battle and one that takes constant work. God cares about your mental health and there is no shame in Jesus name!

Let’s be the generation that breaks mental health stigmas especially in the Christian culture. If you don’t understand a certain mental health area, take the time to research it or ask empathetic questions. Don’t assume you know what anxiety, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and the many other types of mental health are in our world. Instead, seek to understand and remember if someone were physically ill you wouldn’t question it or dismiss it. Breaking the stigma starts with us in our own communities and if Jesus understands our struggles and emotions, we as believers should seek to model him.