A Christian Response to Anxiety

Anxiety and Relationships: A Christian Response to Toxicity

By Christopher Kolker, MD

Relationships shape far more than our social lives. They shape the way we think, the way we see ourselves, and often the way we experience anxiety. After more than twenty years practicing medicine and teaching students, I have seen this truth play out again and again in patients from every background imaginable.

Some arrive overwhelmed by panic attacks. Others cannot sleep because their minds never stop racing. Some feel emotionally exhausted, carrying tension in their bodies every hour of the day. Yet beneath the surface, many are carrying something deeper than stress alone. They are carrying wounded relationships.

Anxiety rarely grows in isolation. More often, it grows quietly inside environments marked by criticism, manipulation, instability, resentment, fear, or emotional distance. Sometimes the source is obvious—a controlling marriage, a hostile workplace, a broken family situation. Other times, the damage is subtle and develops over the years until the person barely recognizes how depleted they have become.

This is one of the reasons I explore relationships so deeply in Christian Medicine and Anxiety. Many people search endlessly for symptom relief while never addressing the relational and spiritual wounds feeding the anxiety underneath. Medication may help. Therapy may help. Lifestyle changes may help. But healing often requires us to look honestly at the people, patterns, and fears shaping our inner world.

I remember one patient who reminded me of this clearly.

Jerry was a hardworking middle-aged construction supervisor who appeared strong on the outside. He showed up to appointments with a tired face, tense shoulders, and a constant edge in his voice. After his divorce, his life became consumed by anger and worry. He worried about money. He worried about his children. He worried about whether his ex-wife was turning the kids against him. Even when nothing was happening, his body remained in a constant state of alertness, as though danger was always around the corner.

At night, he could not sleep. During the day, he replayed conversations in his mind over and over, imagining different outcomes, different arguments, different ways to regain control. Eventually, that anxiety spread into every part of his life. He became impatient with coworkers, isolated from friends, and spiritually disconnected from God.

What made Jerry’s anxiety especially painful was that much of it revolved around relationships he could no longer control.

This is where many people find themselves. Anxiety convinces us that if we think hard enough, worry long enough, or control tightly enough, we can protect ourselves from pain. But the opposite usually happens. The more tightly we cling to control, the more fear grows.

Toxic relationships intensify this cycle.

Some relationships are built on constant power struggles where one person must always “win.” Others survive on guilt, unpredictability, or emotional manipulation. In some families, love feels conditional, offered only when expectations are met. In workplaces, people may feel trapped in environments where their value depends entirely on performance and approval. Over time, the nervous system adapts to this instability. The body begins living in survival mode.

The brain’s fear circuits strengthen. Thoughts race more quickly. Rest becomes difficult. Even small conflicts begin to feel threatening because the mind has learned to expect danger everywhere.

And eventually, many people stop trusting others altogether.

That isolation creates another problem. We were not designed to live emotionally alone. God created human beings for a relationship with Him and with one another. Yet wounded people often withdraw because relationships themselves become the source of pain.

From a Christian perspective, this brokenness points to something even deeper.

We live in a fallen world where selfishness, pride, fear, and sin damage human connection. People disappoint each other. Families fracture. Trust breaks. Instead of loving one another well, we often try to control, protect, manipulate, or use one another for emotional security. Anxiety grows naturally in that environment because our hearts were never meant to carry the burden of replacing God with control.

This is why anxiety is not merely psychological. It is also spiritual.

Fear shifts our focus inward. We obsess over ourselves, our wounds, our future, our fears, our need for certainty. Over time, anxiety slowly steals peace because it pulls our attention away from God’s faithfulness and places it entirely onto unstable circumstances.

I have seen this happen in high-achieving professionals, overwhelmed parents, young adults with traumatic childhoods, and even devoted Christians who quietly battle fear behind closed doors. Outwardly, they appear functional. Internally, they are exhausted.

But there is hope.

A Christian response to toxic relationships does not mean pretending abuse is acceptable or remaining trapped in destructive situations. Scripture calls us to both love and wisdom. Jesus Himself loved deeply, yet He also withdrew from toxic crowds, confronted sin directly, and sought time alone with the Father.

Healing begins with honesty.

Sometimes we must step back and prayerfully evaluate the people and environments shaping our lives. Which relationships bring peace, truth, accountability, and grace? Which relationships constantly produce fear, confusion, resentment, or emotional chaos?

Many believers struggle with guilt when setting boundaries, but healthy boundaries are not the absence of love. In many cases, they are an expression of wisdom. Loving someone does not mean enabling destructive behavior or sacrificing your spiritual and emotional health indefinitely.

At the same time, healing also requires rebuilding healthy connections. One of the great lies anxiety tells people is that they are safer alone. But isolation often deepens fear. This is why Christian communities matter so deeply. Genuine fellowship reminds us that we are not abandoned, forgotten, or fighting alone.

I have watched patients slowly begin to heal as they reconnect with a faithful community: a trusted pastor, a Bible study group, a mature Christian friend, or a church family that offers encouragement without judgment. Often, the process begins small. One conversation. One prayer. One safe relationship at a time.

The deeper transformation, however, happens when people stop trying to carry every outcome themselves.

Jerry’s breakthrough did not come when he finally controlled his circumstances. It came when he slowly surrendered them to God. He stopped obsessing over every decision his ex-wife made. He stopped trying to manage the future of his adult children. He began focusing instead on his own faithfulness, his own relationship with Christ, and his own spiritual growth.

That surrender changed him.

Not instantly. Not perfectly. But gradually, the fear loosened its grip.

One of the central truths I emphasize throughout Christian Medicine and Anxiety is that anxiety and genuine love move in opposite directions. Fear collapses inward. Love reaches outward. The more we grow in love for God and neighbor, the less room anxiety has to dominate the soul.

This does not mean Christians never struggle with fear. They do. But healing becomes possible when we stop treating anxiety as merely a chemical imbalance or emotional inconvenience and begin seeing the full picture: body, mind, relationships, and spirit together.

Practical steps matter. Prayer matters. Sleep, exercise, counseling, healthy relationships, and wise medical care all matter. But lasting peace begins when we root our identity not in fragile human approval, but in Jesus Christ.

The world will always contain broken relationships. People will fail us. Some wounds may take years to heal. Yet even in a toxic and anxious culture, God still restores hearts, renews minds, and teaches people how to live in peace again.

You were not created to live trapped in constant relational fear. You were created for love, truth, and communion with God. And often, the first step toward healing is simply being willing to confront the relationships and the anxieties you have been carrying for far too long.

Christian Medicine and Anxiety: The Etiology And Treatment Of Anxiety For All Who Proclaim Jesus Christ As Their Savior by Christopher Kolker, MD explores these struggles through both medical insight and biblical truth, offering readers a Christ-centered path toward healing that addresses not only symptoms, but the deeper spiritual roots beneath them.