In this episode of the Redefining Your Superwoman podcast, Dr. Zoe Shaw opens with personal “win” and “fail” stories about a joint journal with her daughter and her son’s ignorance of fax machines, establishing a relatable, informal tone. She then pivots to the central claim: anxiety and depression are not indicators of weak faith. Using the biblical account of Jesus sweating blood (hematidrosis) in the Garden of Gethsemane, she illustrates that even the Son of God experienced severe anxiety despite perfect faith, citing Greek terms (ekthambio, adimoneo) that describe panic and deep depression. Dr. Shaw argues that mental health struggles are physiological and psychological responses, not spiritual deficits, and that modern medicine acknowledges them as real, treatable conditions. She encourages listeners to release self‑judgment, practice self‑compassion, and adopt CBT‑style techniques that are compatible with biblical teachings—recognizing feelings, questioning critical inner voices, and allowing emotions to pass. The episode concludes with a call to action: subscribe, text “strong” for weekly encouragement, and engage on social media, reinforcing a supportive community for women navigating mental health and faith.
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Have you ever been in a state of panic, fear, sadness, or hopelessness, and when you sought help, were you told, or was it insinuated, that your emotional or mental health issues are your own fault? That if you had more faith, if you trusted in God, if you did all the right things, that maybe you wouldn't feel the way you feel? Hi, I'm Dr. Zoe, and I'm here to tell you that's hogwash. Your anxiety or depression has nothing to do with your faith. Listen up and I'll tell you why. Hi there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm glad you're here. This is the place for developing your strength as a woman and helping you navigate difficult relationships in your life, including that sometimes difficult relationship with yourself. Being a strong woman is not about what other people can see, and it's not about how loud you are about it. It's a quiet knowing. This isn't therapy, but you may feel like you've been to therapy after one of my episodes. Here, we also explore the intersection of psychology and faith, all with the purpose of creating a new kind of strong. Welcome to Redefining Your Superwoman. Today's episode is Your Anxiety Has Nothing to Do with Your Faith, which I think is excellent news. But first, before we get started, I'm going to share my win and my fail, as I do every week, because we need to honor both of them. My win is that my 8-year-old daughter and I started a joint journal, and I I actually got this from my friend, Dr. Shawn Horn, on Instagram. Love her, you should follow her, @DrShawnHorn. And she was talking about a journal that she started with her daughter, and I thought, what a great idea! So I went and I bought this journal, and I was so excited, and I presented it to my daughter, and I told her, we are going to each write entries, and whenever one of us writes one, we can put it on our pillow, and the other person can write their entry, and we can kind of share this journal. It's a place for us to communicate with each other and tell each other our thoughts and secrets and all the fun things. And my 8-year-old daughter looked at me and she's like, Mom, isn't that just like texting? Why don't you just text me? Because she's also recently started texting me on her iPad. So I was a little dejected. And my friend, Dr. Shawn, her daughter is like 20 years old now. So yeah, maybe it's not so cool anymore, But we still started and it's still very cool because we are putting different things in than we would in a text, but it was just funny that she said that. But my win though is that we've started our journal. We've been doing it for, I don't know, maybe a week or 2 weeks now, and it's just really nice. And I encourage you to start a joint journal with your daughter or son if they are of that age where it may be a great opportunity to connect. My fail is also kind of a techie thing, which is, I mean, I guess the reality is our world revolves around technology. But my fail is that my 17-year-old brilliant son, and when I say brilliant, my 17-year-old, he builds computers from scratch, he codes, he does 3D animation, he's planning to major in mechanical engineering. So he's pretty smart. And he doesn't know what a fax machine is. I was blown away. We've had a fax machine in our house for probably the entire time he's been in our home, and I was just talking to, I don't know, my husband or him about moving the fax machine because we don't use it very much anymore, and my son looked at me and he's like, what's a fax machine? I thought he was joking, and I explained to him, a fax machine is a machine where you send faxes. He said, what are faxes? I'm like, are you serious? And so I had to explain to him what this machine was. He's like, oh, the copier, the printer? And I said, yeah. He said, oh, he said, do people fax anymore? Is that like an old thing? And then I felt like a dinosaur because apparently people don't fax anymore, although I still do. So I literally explained to my son what a fax machine is. This guy who knows all of the tech and trades in bitcoins and all that kind of stuff. And so I call it a fail, number one, because how did he live in our whole house this whole time and not know what a fax machine was? I guess he wasn't paying attention or just thought I was copying whenever I was using it. So I am curious, does anybody use a fax machine anymore? You can DM me on Instagram, send me a message, let me know. Am I the only one? So there's my fail. On to the topic: your anxiety and your depression has nothing to do with your faith. So I'm just gonna jump right in and tell you why your faith Has nothing to do with your anxiety or depression. Jesus, who was described as fully human and fully God, sweated blood on the night that he died. This is a severe anxiety reaction. He's not the only person in history to sweat blood. It's a physiological response called hematidrosis. Hematidrosis is a condition in which the capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to spill out blood, and this occurs under conditions of extreme stress. What happens is that severe anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system to invoke the stress, the fight-or-flight response, to such a degree that it causes hemorrhaging of the vessels supplying the sweat glands. Remember, our minds and our bodies are intimately connected. Acute fear and extreme stress can cause hematidrosis. Mark DeJesus explained in his article, Did Jesus Get Stressed? that the word ekthambio is a Greek word to describe Jesus the night before he was crucified. The word translated into English means to utterly astonish or to be struck with amazement or terror. Another word, adimoneo, was used to describe him, which means to be troubled, but it goes even deeper. It actually means to be in great distress, in deep anguish, and in great depression. In fact, this is one of 3 Greek words that is used to describe depression. And of those words, this word, adimoneo, is the strongest word to describe a great sense of depression. So in his humanity, Jesus was feeling panic and depression. He was praying fervently, and he was so angry at his disciples because they were able to sit there and sleep like babies while he was drowning in emotion. Now medical doctors have explained that when your body is in such a stress state that this phenomenon of hematidrosis can occur. But in that moment, His body was not in any physical danger. No one had touched him. Everything was calm around him in the garden. His disciples were trying to stay awake, but really they were just sleeping peacefully. So his body was not in a stressed state. His mind was stressed out. Did you hear that? His mind. This was a psychological, not physical, response to fear. And this isn't a sermon, although I kind of feel like I'm preaching a sermon, but really I'm just trying to get you to understand That this is important because a lot of people equate anxiety, depression, psychological disorders to mental weakness, to an inability to control yourself, to a spiritual deficit or a lack of faith or a lack of relationship with God. But if this was the case, then Jesus would not have been stressed, right? He was a man of great inner strength— perfect, actually— and he had a perfect relationship with God Because he was in fact God. It was his human psyche that was stressed, even though his faith was cast iron. Now, if that can happen to the Son of God, then there's no lack in you that it happens to you. Remember, anxiety is about the future, not the present. In the present, Jesus was safe. He was feeling anxious about the future. He knew what was going to happen. His humanity was experiencing an episode of what I would call clinical Anxiety. If Jesus himself could be so severely anxious that he would be sweating blood, knowing in his logical mind he was going home to be with God soon, then your experience of anxiety or depression or any psychological disorder has nothing to do with your lack of faith or any lack thereof. Too many people of faith say, if you just believe more, if you put more faith in God, you wouldn't feel anxious or depressed. Listen up. No one told this to Jesus because it's not true. Our humanity dictates that we will have disorder in our bodies and our minds from time to time, and sometimes chronically. We have modern medicine and understanding of how to treat physical and mental disorders because they are real and sometimes unavoidable consequences of simply being human. So sis, Release yourself from feeling less than. Release yourself from believing the lie that your faith is not enough. Release that negative self-talk that says you have to do better and be better. You are human. Your anxiety or depression is an expression of your human state, and you are good enough. Now, this is not a call to sink into or give in to your fears or sadness. I am never about that, and there's nothing productive in that. I'm not about excuses, but rather putting things into their proper perspective. My goal always is to help you have a more intimate relationship with yourself, and that includes treating yourself well, not gaslighting yourself, not blaming yourself, but instead holding room for your humanity. How can you hold space for yourself today? How do you imagine that Jesus held space for his anxiety that night in the garden? I imagine that he might have used many of the CBT techniques that we use today because they are actually biblically based. But more importantly, he didn't place judgment on his humanity. He felt his feelings, and he recognized that this too shall pass. So if you are experiencing the crushing fear of the future or the dragging sadness of your past, If you find yourself criticizing your own difficult emotions, try asking yourself, who's saying that? Whose voice is that? Because those critical words that you assume are the truth are a function of the true brokenness of simply your humanity. They're learned ways of thinking and defense mechanisms that may have helped you survive, but they only serve to hurt you and hold you down now. Let's not do that anymore, okay? Bring your fears and your doubts, your hurts and your worries to God. But if they remain, and they may, don't judge them and don't judge yourself. Feel them and let them pass like a wave and watch them crash and dissipate, because they will. When you get your bearings, think on good things. Your anxiety and your depression is not because of a deficit in you. You, my beautiful friend, and all of your humanity are good, and that is good enough. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and text the word strong to 38470 to get my weekly encouragement. I look forward to connecting with you amazing women on social media throughout the week. Have a super week. Bye.
