Modern Day Missionaries

S07E11 How Hidden Anxiety Secretly Shapes Missionary Work Without You Knowing with Steve Cuss

• Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez • Season 7 • Episode 11

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What if the biggest threat to your ministry isn’t your workload, but your own anxiety? Have you ever found yourself over-functioning, trying to manage others' emotions, or carrying the weight of unrealistic expectations?

In this episode, Steve Cuss unpacks how chronic anxiety sneaks into leadership, relationships, and ministry—often without us realizing it.

Drawing from his experiences as a chaplain and pastor, Steve shares practical tools to notice, name, and diffuse anxiety, so you can lead with greater peace, presence, and resilience. Don’t miss this eye-opening conversation that could change the way you navigate the pressures of missionary life!


IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

✅ How to spot the hidden false needs that keep us overworking, over-explaining, and over-functioning.

✅ Why anxiety is contagious (and how to stop spreading it)

✅ A simple three-step tool to notice, name, and diffuse anxiety before it spreads.

✅ What to do when criticism hits harder than it should

✅ A simple practice to stay grounded when ministry feels overwhelming


QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU LISTEN:

🔹Where do I catch myself absorbing other people’s anxiety?

🔹How much of my stress comes from pressure I put on myself?

🔹What false expectations am I carrying in ministry?

🔹When do I feel the need to over-explain or prove myself?

🔹How would my leadership change if I felt more at peace?

Thanks for listening! Email us your questions at care@modernday.org

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Stephanie Gutierrez: Welcome to Modern Day Missionaries, a podcast by Modern Day Missions created for missionaries by missionaries. I’m your host, Stephanie Gutierrez.

What if the real weight you’re carrying in ministry isn’t just your workload, but your own anxiety? Today I talk with Steve Kuss about how anxiety sneaks into leadership, relationships, and ministry, often without us even noticing. He shares practical tools to help you spot it, name it, and break free from its grip so you can start leading with more peace and clarity.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Steve, thank you so much for joining us today.

Steve Cuss: Great to be with you, Stephanie. Thanks for having me on.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes, this is a treat and we’re talking today about anxiety, which is something we talk about all the time now. I was thinking, Steve, back to when I was growing up, or even a couple decades ago when we first became pastors we’re in ministry, nobody was talking about anxiety. I mean, if you dared mention it, it was like, “Go get prayer, get that out of you, because we gotta keep going forward.” Why do you think that shift took place? Why is it suddenly okay to talk about this and not just okay, important and accepted to talk about this when we never used to talk about it before?

Steve Cuss: Oh, I love that question. I think every generation, whether it’s fashion, music, or anxiety, I think they’re always looking at the deficit of the previous generation and figuring out how they can be the best generation. And you know, I’m guessing you’re a Gen X, like I am. Are you Gen X or millennial?

 

Stephanie Gutierrez: I’m right on the border. I’m in 1980. So I find myself with one foot in each.

Steve Cuss: So I think our millennials and especially our Gen Z population, I think they looked at the Gen X and the boomers and the Greatest Generation and they kind of shook their heads. I think they realized, “Look, the world’s much more complex now than it was, and we need more tools.” And so I think they’ve helped us become fluent in the language of anxiety. But I think you’re right, Stephanie, like, like it used to be, if you said you’re anxious, you’d get Philippians quoted back at you.

Stephanie Gutierrez: It’s the truth.

Steve Cuss: I’ve always had a problem with that because, if I can nerd out for a minute, Paul says “Don’t be anxious about anything,” and then in a different passage in Corinthians, he says, “I face daily anxiety about the condition of the churches.” And in the Greek word, it’s the same word. But in the NIV, in Philippians, they translated it to anxious, and in 1 Corinthians, they translated it to concern. And I think that did a great disservice to us. So Paul was anxious, of course he was and you know, people, when they think of anxiety, they think worry, but really what I help people notice is reactivity.

And I think everyone can relate to that. I think everyone can relate to the idea that, we get triggered, we get reactive, and then our coping mechanisms get us into trouble, and it kicks off our awareness of God. So, I think people are hungry to be well and hungry to be well with God, so I think anxiety becomes a great conduit to, to grow in our faith with God.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes. Okay. You right there mentioned worry and anxiety as two different words. That’s something not all of our listeners might be familiar with. Can you distinguish the difference between the two?

Steve Cuss: So, very briefly, I think colloquially, we think about the word anxiety and would say worry and fear. That’s what comes to mind. And if you’re a global worker and you do difficult things, you just may not be very prone to fear. But actually anxiety, that one word, it covers so much territory, too much territory. So, for example, I grew up in Western Australia and we have some of the deadliest snakes in the world in my own backyard. When my sister and I used to walk to schools, there was one section of the area we walked, and it was snake infested. Well, we were on high alert walking through that area and all you have to do is outrun your sister or outrun a snake. Those are the two goals.

Well clinically, that type of anxiety is called acute anxiety. And most of us have experienced it. Maybe you’ve had to swerve to avoid a car accident. Maybe you’ve been held up at knife point or something serious. Anytime your physical body might be in danger, that’s anxiety, but it’s actually a type of anxiety. You get full of adrenaline, your brain gets really sharp, really quick; you kind of go into hypervigilance. But when you think about acute anxiety, it doesn’t last very long. And maybe you lose a child in a public place; that’s acute anxiety. You’re going to drop everything, go find your child.

My field is chronic anxiety. And what’s fascinating about it, Stephanie is chronic anxiety is never based on a real threat. It’s only ever based on a false threat that your body is telling you is real. My body can’t tell the difference between seeing a snake and letting someone down. I’m a people pleaser. And if I disappoint you, or if you’re angry at me, I don’t get a big dose of adrenaline like acute anxiety. I just get a few little drips of adrenaline. But because you and I have 30 to 50 false needs, we are constantly having an adrenal response because people’s false needs are getting not met. So the need to be respected, understood; your body is putting you in a heightened state when you’re not getting respect, you’re not getting understood, and then you get combative and reactive.

We could talk a ton about anxiety. There’s all kinds of other anxieties, but the thing to understand is every anxiety has its own rule book. It’s a trauma. Behaves very differently than acute anxiety, which behaves very differently than contagious or chronic anxiety. The kind of anxiety I teach is the only one that’s contagious. We catch it and spread it with each other. And because it’s based on false belief, I find that fascinating with our relationship with God.

Stephanie Gutierrez: It’s this one word anxiety, but anxiety, like you said, the acute, which is an emotion; it’s normal. If you don’t get a little scared of a poisonous snake, I mean, maybe you work with them or something and that’s okay for you. But for the most part, it’s a good thing. But chronic anxiety, I mean, like you said, when it’s coming as a result of false beliefs, that’s not serving us well at all. And there’s diagnosed anxiety as a result of trauma, like you said.

So, okay. For a listener who’s hearing this and going, “I don’t know, I mean, I feel really stressed out and anxious a lot. How do I know which one is the one that I’m operating in? And is it important for me to differentiate between those?”

Steve Cuss: I think it’s really helpful to understand what kind of anxiety you’re dealing with. Most people are dealing with several at once and that’s why it’s so overwhelming. Anxiety becomes like a big tangled ball and you just find yourself spinning and not making progress. So yes, there’s a couple of steps.

The first step is, if we could all just learn to stop using the singular word anxiety and just begin using the plural anxieties, that would change a lot because that would open up curiosity, which is the second tool. When you’re dealing with an anxious person or you’re overwhelmed with anxiety, curiosity is the power tool. So if you say to myself, “Oh, maybe it’s not anxiety, it’s anxieties.” Well, that opens the question, “Well, I wonder what kind of anxieties are in this situation?”

My wife is a trauma therapist; she’s a state licensed trauma therapist. I work with a lot of people in trauma, but I am not trained with clinical tools in trauma. So, once I’m detangling someone’s anxiety, when I discover trauma, that’s very helpful to me and them, because I know, “Oh, I can help you in some areas, but in that area, you need to go to a trauma specialist.” Some anxieties require mental health medication. And I know in some faith communities there’s a real stigma around that, but actually, mental health medication is a gift from God. If you need it, you should take it and thank God. It’s not a comment on your faith, it’s more of a comment on your chemicals.

So we start to now detangle depression and grief, which by the way, Stephanie, I know we’re getting a little complicated here, but depression and grief can often feel like the same thing. It’s hard. “Am I depressed or am I grieving?” Then we have, you know, acute anxiety when seeing the snake, the trauma, and then we have chronic anxiety. And chronic anxiety is the most common anxiety in humans. It’s the number one cause of burnout in leaders, because as a pastor, I wasn’t heading toward burnout because of workload, it was because I couldn’t handle all the criticism. Because the criticism coming at me was affecting my need to make people happy, my false need. And anytime you’re in chronic anxiety, you forget the Lord, you know like Jacob in the Old Testament, right? “Surely the Lord was in this place, I wasn’t aware of it.” And so then you start trying to operate God’s work on your steam. And now you’re exhausted and you’re heading to burnout.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That was one of the most powerful things you said in the book. I think it was in the very introduction and it caught my attention immediately. And you said, this material presumes that burnout and leadership fatigue have more to do with anxiety and relational stuckness than workload. And I think that’s the first time I’ve heard that. I think everybody thinks, “I just got to rearrange my schedule and take some stuff off my plate.” What are the implications of that? If it has more to do with anxiety than about rearranging our schedule.

Steve Cuss: Well, the best asset that any Christian worker has to offer the world is a well self. If you are well, and one of the definitions of that is that you enjoy God and you proclaim Him to others. You know, I work with so many Christian leaders that want to further God’s kingdom, their heart is good, but they have become well meaning hypocrites, and they are now proclaiming a God that they’re not experiencing anymore.

So if you focus on being well, truly enjoying the God you proclaim, while learning to manage your false needs and surrender them to Him, you are essentially dying to self, as the Bible calls it. Now, you can be free. You’re not as easily triggered. You can tolerate more ambiguity, which is essential for missionaries. You have more tolerance for difficult people because they’re not affecting your false needs. You can actually be around, like I learned to be around very harsh critics without catching the need to impress them. And that took a lot of effort, but boy did that free me up. You know, whereas before I was chasing them down, trying to explain myself, in these terrible patterns with these people. And then I go home and I’d be hurt and angry and wounded. And man, better for me just to manage my false needs, give them to God. Now I’m free. So there’s a ton of implications to this.

And for your average missionary, this is a generalization. Your average missionary is more comfortable focusing on the need than on themselves. Like when we focus on ourselves, we feel very selfish. But I’m trying to convince people that focusing on yourself is sometimes the most selfless thing you can do, because bringing a reactive self into the room is not helping anybody. Simply being in the room and absorbing everyone’s reactivity doesn’t help anyone. But if you stay grounded and well, then step into that anxious space with that same stability, it benefits everyone. That, I think, is the simple goal.

Stephanie Gutierrez: I love that because you’re essentially saying the heart of the entire podcast and that is helping missionaries be well so they can serve well. And so we are on the same page, Steve, and I love this. And as you were talking right now, I thought about all the people pleasers who are listening right now, you know, hey, I’m a recovering people pleaser as well, totally get that, are listening to you going, “Oh my gosh. Steve got to the place where he actually is not affected by the criticism of other people.” And I mean, that’s amazing. I’m sure everybody wants to get to that point.

Steve Cuss: I was always affected by it, but it didn’t go in, it didn’t infect me. Like before, I would ruminate for days and I’d be anxious going into the meeting and then I’d have to talk to my wife for two hours afterwards. It still hurts. I’m still a human, but the damage was night and day.

I just want to clarify. I’m not like some enlightened Yoda, you know it’s more that I paid the price less so I could pay the price. I could sit down with a difficult person and it cost me a little bit, but before this work, it just felt like it never stopped costing me that they would take up all of the space in my head. You know, I’d be focusing on this one person.

Stephanie Gutierrez: I appreciate your clarification so that nobody here thinks that you are super human or that if we just follow these three steps, we will become super human unfeeling robots who can walk through life without being affected. Yes. Thank you. That’s a great clarification. And a lot of this comes from your work as a chaplain, as a lead pastor.

I’d love to touch on that a little bit. So people understand where all this came from. What was that like for you being, starting out as a chaplain, as a young man, I think 24 years old, walking with people in some of the most difficult moments of their life, then leading a church, which for anybody listening who has done that knows what that feels like. How did those two things shape your understanding of anxiety, both in yourself and in your understanding of the anxiety of those around you?

Steve Cuss: So I went into chaplaincy completely unaware of myself. I’m Australian; Australians don’t think we’re anxious. We really think we’re laid back and easy going and that was me. So I was very unaware. I didn’t know I had blind spots, shadow sides. I was just a young, white, enthusiastic Bible College graduate. And there’s nothing like death to make you run into yourself. You know, death makes you get to the end of yourself faster than I think in almost any other situation. And so, in the first 90 minutes of chaplaincy, I ran into myself. And then for the whole year, I just kept running into it, I just kept getting to the end of myself. And realizing, “Oh man, there is, I don’t have the depth required to sustain suffering. My theology has not been tested by the onslaught of suffering.”

It was, it was intense, but the head chaplain was this incredible guy who introduced us to this thing called systems theory. I write about it in the book. People don’t need to know systems theory, but the simple idea is that it’s a way of walking into any room and noticing the anxiety so you don’t catch it. It’s quite an incredible skill and I was so hooked on it. Once he kind of explained some of the basic concepts and system theory has like the superpower of being something you’ve never heard of before. And then someone gives you a few tools and it explains your whole life. It’s just wild.

And so I learned how to walk into a room and I thought I was noticing the anxiety of the grieving people, but it turned out what it mostly makes you focus on is your anxiety. And all of the anxiety that I’m spreading on these grieving people without realizing it and catching from them without realizing it and just being no good to anybody. So for example, if this helps Stephanie, chronic anxiety, the heart of it is false belief and I didn’t even know I had this false belief, but I believe if you put me in a room with someone that’s suffering, “I must say the right thing to make them feel better.”

And the problem is as a Christian, I believe God wants me to do that. I’ve not even detangled my anxiety from my faith. And, you know, for missionaries, I hope that your ears are lighting up at syncretism, right? In missiology, you’re taught to notice syncretism in cultures, the way we take out, for example, superstition and faith and put it together. Well what Christian leaders do is we syncretize our coping mechanisms and our faith. And we make these two different things one thing. And so, for example, for me, my brain, to this day, Stephanie, my brain cannot tell the difference between your need and my need to be needed.

So what that looks like is I rush in when I don’t need to, and God’s not telling me to rush in. I try to give you advice when you’re not asking for it, because my brain is so unreliable. I’m so chronically anxious. So chaplaincy was like special forces training, the most intense Navy SEALS training, of wrangling my false idols, my dependencies, my coping mechanisms. Every morning for 90 minutes, we were in a form of group therapy with the other chaplains and the supervisors. And every morning, we would all take turns being on the hot seat every day. What was yesterday like? Where did you run into yourself? What assumptions are you bringing in? And they would poke and prod at you every day for 90 minutes and then send you back into the ICU and the ER. And that’s how I grew.

And then when I went to graduate school, I studied theology. I got a master’s in theology, but I took some psych classes and I had this incredible counseling professor who taught me some deeper systems theory. I got hooked; I just started reading everything. I’ve probably read more systems than almost anybody I’ve ever met. And as a pastor it helped me survive because I had 50 percent of my attention on the mission and vision and 50 percent of my attention on the dynamic. What’s going on between people, what’s going on between me and another person. And I find that’s where most Christian leaders struggle. They feel so much pressure to fulfill the vision, they’re neglecting the dynamic, which is the thing that either enhances or destroys vision and mission.

So, I’m trying to train leaders to put about half of their effort, especially in the early days, on team building, culture, and the patterns in our relationships that are not helpful. So that was kind of how it helped me as a lead pastor. And then I started teaching my staff and my elders. I created a class. I kind of replicated the chaplaincy experience a bit. I remember my first class, I had four of my staff and I just said, “Hey, way back in my chaplaincy, I was trained in this thing that has always helped me. I’ve always had it in the back of my head. But I’d like to see if I could teach it to you.” The problem is we got so much laughter out of this. I said, “The problem is it worked for me because my context was death and cancer and trauma. I don’t know if it’s going to work for you. Like is church leadership dramatic enough to kind of get you to the end of yourself?” And we found out quickly. Oh yeah, Christian leadership is plenty traumatic. So to this day in our church, people still go through our nine month cohort and it transformed our team and it was, it was incredible. And that was what my first book was based on was that cohort that we taught for years.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh my gosh. The Managing Leadership Anxiety book.

Steve Cuss: Almost all the tools in that book are stuff we’ve been teaching at our local church for 10 years by that point.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And it’s so good. I hope everybody picks up a copy of that and the Expectation Gap. They’re both outstanding.

Would you be able to tell the story of your first day as a chaplain? I love that story. Some of what you’ve been saying about or maybe to illustrate that contagious anxiety and what was going on there. And then maybe illustrate that with a different experience you had down the road where you were able to hold space and do it.

Steve Cuss: Yeah. So, you know, my first day on the job, just to put a little context of it, it’s so funny, but my first day on the job was the last day of my honeymoon.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Like literally, we’re not talking about a job honeymoon experience; you’re talking about your actual wedding honeymoon.

Steve Cuss: We’d been married six days. Someone had lent us a little mountain cabin in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. It was amazing. We had a wonderful time. And then we’d drive down the mountain. We had one day in our little single wide trailer; we were in student housing in our little Bible college. My wife had one more year of school. And we were a one car family. So at 7:30 in the morning, we left together. I’ve got my overnight bag because I’m doing a 28 hour overnight shift. My first day on the job was a 28 hour shift.

So, for people not familiar with this, you know, most people are familiar with medical students doing a medical residency. What they don’t know is, ministry students can do a chaplain residency, and that’s what I was doing. So we had six chaplain residents starting their first day. But I was the only one with no previous chaplain experience. Usually, if you’re doing the full time year, you have to have previous experience. You also have to have a master’s degree because the prefrontal cortex still isn’t developed, right? I’m still kind of an adolescent. So there’s six students, two supervisors, a few other staff chaplains, it was quite a big operation. We show up, this is the 90s, they put four beepers on my belt because I’m the on call guy. We all took turns at 28 hours. Normally you’re doing a nine hour shift, but five or six times a month you do the 28 hour marathon. And so that was my start.

So Randy, the supervisor, is just touring us through the hospital. We had a little reception in the cafeteria, doughnuts and coffee. Turns out that was just fattening us up before the slaughter, you know? Like, I’m having my doughnut; this is pretty great. And then Randy’s walking us through the hospital. It’s 660 beds, there’s a helicopter, it’s a whole thing. And one of my beepers went off and we all stopped. Like, we’re all just orienting. We all stopped and I turned to Randy and I’m like, “Which one’s the blue beeper?” Because I had four beepers there for different parts of the hospital. I’m trying to get it all figured out. And he says, “Oh, that’s the code team. Off you go.” And that was like the first time I realized, “Oh, what? Like there’s no manual or video courses? What do you mean off you go?” And I said, “Well, what do I do?” And this was in front of all the other chaplain residents and he said, “Well, we’re all about to find out, aren’t we?” And then I was like, “Oh, Oh, wow. Well, what if I make a mistake?” And he looked at me very kindly and he said, “Oh, this year, you’re going to make hundreds of mistakes.” And three minutes later, I’m in an intensive care waiting lounge with 12 screeching people. And it was just me and these people and I had no idea what to do. And anytime I don’t know what to do, I feel really stupid. So one of my false needs is to look smart.

And if you think I’m stupid, I get really anxious. I get quite combative actually. So for example, if somebody’s trying to trick me, I’ll get quite aggressive because I’m trying to prove you can’t trick me. I’m smart because I felt stupid all of my childhood and my teenagehood. So, you know, we all have these coping mechanisms as kids, and we think that we’ve outgrown them, but they’re all just laying dormant like a freaking virus. And when you don’t get your false needs met, they show up and infect you. So, I’m feeling stupid, and any time I feel stupid, I feel exposed. Like, “Oh wow, everybody knows the stupid guy’s on display.” I also noticed that I’ve got 12 screeching people in front of me. Behind me there’s 40 or 50 waiting for their loved ones. They’re in the recliners in the, in the larger waiting area. And they are catching the anxiety of the screeching people. And I’m catching the people behind me’s anxiety because I’m an overfunctioner. If you put me in any environment, I will take more responsibility than God has asked me to take. And I will feel responsible for your experience and so that was what was going on with the people behind me.

Well, the charge nurse came barreling out of the intensive care, and she beckoned me out of this little room, and I could tell by the look on her face, I’m in trouble. Like, I’ve only been here 20 minutes, but I’m in trouble with this nurse, and she did, I read her right, she told me off. She didn’t ask my name, there’s no opportunity to say, “Hey, I was just on my honeymoon,” but, you know, there’s none of that. And she actually smacked her hands like she was my mum. And she said, “Come on, chaplain, we’ve got a lot of patients waiting for the bed. We need the family to visit their dead mum. I need to get the sheets changed. I’ve got patients. Let’s go. And she turns on her heels and walks away.” And as I’ve talked about, I’m a people pleaser. So I’m feeling stupid. I’m an overfunctioner. I’ve let someone down. I’m now clinically known as flooded, you lose track of reality. You’re now in a false reality, which is why you can’t notice the Lord, because God is in truth, right? Jesus said you can know the truth and when you’re in truth, you’re free. When you’re in a false reality, you’re bound. I was bound.

And so now, instead of walking in the room and being able to see what the situation requires, I can only act out of my reactivity. So I hustled the family in. They were  screeching as I took them into the ICU; they were unhinged in shock. I’m sure a lot of your people have been in these situations. The last thing that should have happened is getting them in. They needed two or three hours. Now, it went badly.

You asked, “Okay, what’s the contrast?” Well, it took about a month to be fully experienced. And every morning we’re debriefing and I’m very quickly learning, “Oh, I’ve got these false needs that are taking over.” And I start practicing every day, “Okay, I’m going to walk into the room and notice what’s going on in me.” And so a month later, if this had happened again, I would have walked into that room, the people would have been screeching, I wouldn’t have known what to do because every situation is different, but I would have known about myself that I tend to feel stupid. I would have noticed it rising up. I would have given it to God and died to it. I would have actively prayed, “Lord, you know that I had this false need and I’m giving it to you. So I can focus on this poor family, I can help them.” Rather than catching the anxiety of the people behind me, I would have put it back on them. I would have called a meeting, and I would have said, “Hey, I bet this screeching is really uncomfortable for you. I just want you to know, as the chaplain, in my experience, this is going to go on for about two or three hours, and I’m not going to stop it. We just have to let it ride out. Why don’t you get out of here, go get a shower or something. Have a meal, and we’ll find you if we need you.” Now they can be responsible for themselves and I don’t have to worry about them. When the nurse had come barreling out, I would know about myself that I’m prone to give people what they want because I’m a people pleaser. She would have pressured me to get the family in and I would have defined myself. I would have said, “Now ma’am, I am not bringing that family into your ICU. And quite frankly, I don’t think you want them in there.”

Maybe that would have stopped her long enough to thank me. She might have said, “Oh yeah, you’re the right chaplain, sorry.” Or she might’ve sworn at me and told me where to stick it. She might’ve asked me to meet with her boss who was pressuring her, but either way, she can be responsible for her. My job is this family. And then I could have walked into that chaos and it was chaos. People were throwing up, people were headbutting the wall; it was unhinged chaos. I could have walked in being connected, aware, and present, rather than anxiously needing to make everything better. That’s a long story, but that’s kind of the journey that I encourage everyone to go on.

Stephanie Gutierrez: But it’s a powerful story because there might be some younger missionaries who have not yet experienced something like that. But for the most part, we’ve all walked through things like that multiple times. And so I’m imagining everyone thinking of a story where they’ve had a similar experience and identifying with that. So Steve, I want to ask you, you talked to that first time about being caught in that false reality and that feeling of being flooded in which essentially you’re experiencing kind of a disconnect from God, not because he isn’t there, but you just cannot, you’ve lost touch with reality.

But then you talked about shifting and changing; when you got to that point, was it because you were more proactive on the front end, or if somebody’s already caught in that place of flooding, they’re full on in that false reality, are they able to get themselves out? Or is it like, “Well, too late, man you’re too far gone. Deal with it on the back end.” What does that look like practically?

Steve Cuss: It’s such a great question, Stephanie. So we teach everyone a three step process, and it’s first to notice anxiety, and that takes quite a while, days or weeks, and then name what’s generating it, and now you can diffuse it. So notice, name, and diffuse. That’s our little three step. We try to figure out how we can make this really simple. That’s it.

So the first place to notice it is after. It’s hard to notice anxiety when you’re anxious. It’s just really hard to do. But everyone can debrief and that was the gift of the 90 minutes every morning. Every morning for 90 minutes, we debrief the day before, and whether I’m in the hot seat or one of the other residents was in the hot seat, which I much preferred, I can do my own work even while they’re on the hot seat. So is that, as they are debriefing what happened, I’m still figuring out, “Well, how does that relate to me?” So when I said to you, “You know, I can’t tell the difference between your need and my need to be needed.” Some of your audience might have been like, “Okay, that’s mine.” Well, that’s very helpful because now you can think back. Don’t worry about what’s coming up ahead, just think back. “When was a time recently where I was reactive? I wonder what I needed that I didn’t get? Oh man, I needed respect, I needed to look competent.” You know what I mean? “I’m a third culture person, I’m still not fluent in the language, I look like an idiot again, I need to look competent,” all of these things.

So you do it in the debrief, and then the next step, oddly, isn’t to do it in the moment, that’s still the hardest. The next step is to go from debrief to proactive. So what you’re gonna do is practice, and say, “Okay, on Wednesday, I have to go translate this thing and I’m still not feeling very competent.” Fantastic. This is good practice for me to notice. And so now you’re going in with a little bit of homework. It’s kind of a game. Now, this whole process, depending on how deep your false needs are, can take weeks or months. So you have to be patient with yourself. But one of our trainers named Jimmy Carnes has a wonderful metaphor for this. He said, “Managing anxiety is like the second time through the haunted house. The first time through, you don’t know where the guy with the chainsaw is that he’s going to jump out behind the curtain. But the second time,” and Jimmy says, “if you just keep going through the haunted house again and again and again and again, like one rider, you end it, you go right back in line.” He’s like, “You won’t be freaked out anymore because it’s all predictable. And even if the chainsaw guy jumps out, you might have a little physical reaction, but you’re not really freaked out.”

That’s what managing anxiety is like. Once you know you’re a people pleaser, you can never not know it. Once you know you’re a perfectionist, now you can debrief. Okay, “When in the rearview mirror did my perfectionism really bite me in the rear end? Okay, what’s coming up that might be pressuring my perfectionism?” And so what I did as a chaplain is I practice every day.

“Okay, I need to be in this room and tell this person their cancer diagnosis.” One of the great misnomers on hospital dramas is that it’s always the doctor. No. Sometimes the social worker, the chaplain, sometimes the doctor as well. Sometimes the doctor’s afraid, and so they want the chaplain there to say it, and then the doctor’s just there to give the science. Okay, I have to look someone in the eye and tell them stage 4 cancer. It’s awful. Okay? That goes exactly against my false need to make people feel better. But this person deserves my most present, connected self. “Alright, I’m gonna walk in, Lord. You’re, you’re already there.” And so there’s all kinds of tools we can explore. But one of them for me was the simple phrase, God is already in the room. This helped me so much. I used to think I was bringing God into the room, which is so ridiculous. And if you’re a global worker, if you’re a missionary, I find this incredibly helpful as well. You’re not bringing God. You are entering a space where God is already at work. And that just relaxed me a little bit because I’m not alone now. Okay. I have to do this difficult thing, but God’s already here at work, so I can relax into God’s presence and do difficult things.

So, those would be some tangible tools that people could try.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That is so good. You’re joining him in what he is already there, ready, willing, doing, rather than trying to drag him in and force him to do something that’s such a powerful way of shifting a mindset in that moment. And I also love what you said about the debrief, cause that is so practical. And we do love to get practical here on the podcast and I’m just picturing teams or even families. Sitting down, even if it’s once a week, maybe they can’t do that every day, but once a week, and really talking about a difficult moment, what came up for them, and how they might be able to do that better. I mean, that’s powerful stuff, and that’s something that anybody could do. And can you say your three things again that everybody has a name?

Steve Cuss: It’s first notice, and then name, and then diffuse. So it’s always notice first; it’s the safest practice, because nothing changes. You’re just noticing you’ve got half your mind on the dynamic and half on the content, you know, on the actual situation, just noticing, and then you’re trying to get to the, “Okay, what’s driving me? What false needs are not being met?” That’s harder work; that’s slower work. And then now, by the time you’ve noticed a name, you’ve already diffused most of it and then we have some diffusion tools as well for you and for you to use with people.

My wife and I, we tried as much as we could with our kids once they were 10 and older to not manage the anxiety while we were all anxious, but we did debrief a ton. Once Lisa and I were back to center, and once our kids were, and sometimes that would take a couple of days, we would say, “Hey, can we talk about what happened a couple of days when we were trying to get you out the door for school on time and you were frustrated and we were frustrated, we noticed the anxiety was really spreading. We’d like to revisit it.” And it’s, it’s disarming for kids because they’re not in trouble; like we are in as much trouble as they are. Hey, like I’ve said this so many times to my kids, “I’m not proud of how I reacted or how you experienced me. I do not like that that was your experience for me, but I’m not blaming you, but part of it is the way that you didn’t pack your lunch the night before, the way we asked you to. And now you’re behind and we feel anxious,” but that’s a whole different experience than in the heat of it. It gets very combative, you’re disconnected. So debrief is a very simple, powerful tool. In my experience and Stephanie’s, most Christian leaders don’t put nearly enough time into running dynamics. They put way too much time into the mission. And if you put more time into dynamics, mission will flourish.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Ooh, that’s good. More time into dynamics and missions will flourish.

Steve Cuss: If you’re in an area where there’s other missionaries, how often can you meet for a couple of hours where each of you takes turns debriefing? What’s going on? What’s going on under the surface? Where am I anxious? You know, chaplaincy was 90 minutes every day. That’s pretty intense. In our church, we do two hours every other week. And, you know, obviously with some missionaries, you’re so spread out, you might only be able to get together twice a year. Great. Can you get together for three days? Make sure you’re playing, make sure there’s a lot of play in there. And just a few hours every day you ask, “How’s the last quarter gone? Where have you run into yourself?” You know, we’ve got tons of tools we can help people do that with.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah. And I want to make sure that we talk, we touch on that at the end of the episode, because you do with Capable Life, you have so much available that people can take advantage of. And I’m so happy that you went to your families because it’s, I feel like you read my mind. That’s why I wanted to go because so many families have kids dealing with anxiety and that was just so great what you mentioned there about not trying to deal with it at the moment.  Doing it looking at it later, because how many times we’re in the moment, we’re stressed out, they’re stressed out, as you have been so good to point out, anxiety is contagious. So it is just spread like wildfire throughout the house. And then we think we have to fix it at the moment. And really you’re just trying to kind of manage at that point.

Okay. Let’s say you’re all spinning out of control. What is something you could do in the moment in addition to that debrief afterward?

Steve Cuss: It’s so funny. I have no advice for the moment. No help whatsoever. I just went through it. I think you should try to not kill each other. That’s probably the win. But, if people are relating to this right now, they can debrief right now in their head.They don’t need to sit down with a spouse or a kid. They’re already saying, “Oh, Friday. Great. Stay there for a minute.” What you’re looking for is predictable patterns of behavior. Anxiety always turns predictable over time. If your kids only have trouble getting out for school once in a while, that’s not a problem. That’s normal kid behavior. We still have a child at home, two of ours are gone, but in the teenage years, there were occasions a couple of times a year, we let our kids sleep in, we let them skip half a day of school, they were overwhelmed with homework, we’re like, “Why don’t you just skip tomorrow?” There’s no problem there because it wasn’t predictable and recurring. But, if every morning your kid won’t pack their lunch, if every morning you’re frustrated, now we have a predictable pattern, so what you can do is map it out like chess. He does this, I do this. Now, anxiety always wants you to focus on the other person, rather than take responsibility for yourself.

So this is where the debrief gets painful, because you’re wanting to say, “That blasted kid of mine, if he would just do as he’s told,” that’s no help at all. But if instead you say, “Well, he didn’t pack his lunch, I wonder why I angrily packed it for him. Why, when he’s not being responsible, am I over functioning? No wonder he doesn’t pack his lunch when he knows that I’ll rescue him.” You know, you start getting curious, but you’re only concerned with your side of the equation. So like with our kids, I often had to repent to my children and say, “I don’t like that your last experience of me before you leave for school is a grumpy dad. You leave and I feel bad, I bet you didn’t like it. What’s that like for you?” And then they kind of think they’re off the hook. Oh, dad’s to blame, “And yeah, dad, we don’t like it.” “Okay, I also don’t like that. I need to do what I believe I need to do to get you out the door. Maybe that’s not true. That’s my belief. What is your part of what you think you’re falling down on?” Well, this is quite disarming, because again, I’m not blaming. I’m inviting them to reflect.

And it doesn’t always go well, but there’s also advanced stuff. Like I’ve said to my kids before, “Hey, when you get ready for school tomorrow morning, you’re going to find the most hippie father you’ve ever met. I’ll be on the couch watching Netflix. Be late, don’t be late. That’s fine.” Well, all I’m doing is putting the anxiety back where it belongs. Because I’ve located part of what I’m adding to the system is my reputation as a parent. Part of why I’m anxious is my kid’s attendance is linked to my view of myself as a successful dad. It gets really deep. So just in the debrief, you start to see, “Oh, there’s 12 dynamics going on in this one encounter. No wonder we’ve all lost our minds.” So unfortunately Stephanie, on a podcast, we move a bit too quickly. Usually we do this kind of work if you come to do something like a five day intensive with us or, we have a workbook that has eight tools and a lot of people take months to go through it because this is slow, slow work. But just to give you a taste, that’s kind of what it looks like.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes. I mean, like we said, I think we could talk for hours on all of this. We’re just giving everybody a taste and then we’re going to give them where they can find out more. And we’re just hoping that this stirs their thinking. But I really enjoy how you pointed out looking for patterns of anxiety. Where does it keep cropping up? Because we can do that in our families. We can do that in our teams. We can do that in marriages. What are the things that are continually coming up? And if we take a deeper look at those, how can we find out how we can do those better? And then just let it go for the moment.

Man, in those crazy moments when it’s all falling by the wayside and everything’s explosive. I mean, just call it to Jesus in that moment, “Lord, help us get through this next 10 minutes and then give us grace to figure it out afterwards. Help me not to say anything that will cause trauma or damage or screw my kids up. Lord, just keep us all alive. And help us get through to that next moment,” but that’s so good.

And, and you talk about the four spaces of anxiety. That’s another thing which I might have you mention briefly. And then there’s actually a free video course that you have where you explain what those four spaces are. Would you mind explaining those or just mentioning them really briefly and then people can find out more about those?

Steve Cuss: For sure. What anxiety does is it takes a lot of little things and makes it all one big overwhelming thing. So we’re constantly just trying to detangle it. And even what I just shared about like the dozen or so dynamics in getting your kids out for school. It’s all these little things like my reputation as a dad, all wrapped up in packing lunch and you know, it’s crazy, right? It’s crazy.

So the four spaces is a detangling tool, it’s a noticing tool, it’s one of the first tools we teach. There’s four spaces where anxiety exists and spreads. The space inside me, which is the one we spent the most time on. The space between me and the other is a second space; that’s getting your kids out the door on time. The space inside the other, which is when your brain is now in their brain, you are thinking about what they are thinking about; you’re assuming meaning and motive in them that you don’t actually know, that’s third space. And fourth space is the space between others, that’s the space when you walk into the room, you’ve changed the mood. So there was already an existing dynamic and then you show up and now things change. This would happen to missionaries a ton. If you’re a minority in a different majority culture, just by entering the room, you change the room. But also, you can also notice that if you’re already in the room and Jim walks in and he’s kind of an Eeyore; and so when Jim comes in, his bad mood comes with him. And suddenly, like the whole room just cools down. That’s the fourth space. So if you can learn to notice the spaces, you can be a really powerful leader because you can be managing the anxiety in all the spaces.

And the real rule is you spend almost all the time on first space because you’ll be blown away by how much anxiety you’re adding to the system without realizing it. And you try to stay out of the third space because that’s the only space where only God can change another person, but we spend so much time trying to worry about wanting someone else to change and so the third space is like holy ground. But yeah, we’ve got a free video course for people. They can just watch it and learn how to notice the four spaces.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That’s perfect. And we’ll post a link to that because it’s excellent. And you break down even a little bit more for people. And you know, you actually explained it so well in such a short amount of time, but people I’m hoping actually still left with questions so it’s something they can do. They can watch as a team, they can watch it as a family and have some of those discussions and you have so many tools. And so I’d love for people to find out how they can connect with you, how they can dig more into, I mean, so much of what you talked about today. There were so many great things that you mentioned.

How can they find out more?

Steve Cuss: They can go to CapableLife.com and we have free and paid resources there. So the four spaces video, I think there’s three free courses that we give away. We have two, and then we always rotate a course just for fun. So you can sign up for three, and these are very brief, actionable videos; they are self assessments, it’s real simple. You can buy an access pass to our 18 courses and our six masterclasses. These also give you permission to get our free Zoom. So right now, as you and I are talking, my wife, who’s a clinical trauma therapist, is in a Zoom with people with access passes. Well, I don’t know how many countries we’re in right now, but we are, or have been in 29 countries. So we have a lot of missionaries that join because they like to get on these monthly Zoom calls with me or my coaches or my therapist wife. One of our coaches is a social worker and a spiritual director. One’s an Enneagram specialist for those who love that. You can ask questions and I mean, normally it costs a ton of money for that kind of stuff. And it’s all included in there. Your access. And then we have workbooks for people who want to do group work. You can order workbooks. It’s eight tools. Each tool has a little video attached to it. Everyone gets their own access to the videos; they’re super affordable. So that’s all on CapableLife.com. If you have no money at all your two options are my podcast is free and it’s less organized, of course, but you can listen and chase episodes. Then we do have a small scholarship, and global missionaries are part of our target audience. If you’re a missionary, we have set aside money to either, if you can’t afford our workbooks, we can mail them to you at our cost; and our intensives, if we can only help a few, but you can fly in for one of our intensives. So, people can submit an application on CapableLife.com. There’s a support link there, and they can apply for a scholarship.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That’s beautiful that you guys do that. I really appreciate that. And there is that free course that they can take as well on the four spaces of anxiety. So there is so much that you can do and your podcast, “Being Human” put out by Christianity Today is excellent, and you go into depth on a lot of this as well. I really enjoy it. You and Lisa do such a fantastic job.

So, then the books we talked about, which I’ve got both “Managing Leadership Anxiety” and then, on Kindle, “The Expectation Gap.” And those are both chock full of things that people can do. And I love your resources too, because they are personal. You can do work on yourself and then they’re so applicable for teams and for missionaries who are living very much in those two spaces. So there’s so much you can do.

Steve, thank you for joining us today. This was rich. This makes me excited to dig in even more to so much of what you shared. We really appreciate all that you do to serve people in ministry, missionaries, people worldwide and their teams as well.

Steve Cuss: good. This was a genuine pleasure, Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me on.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Thank you, Steve.

People on this episode

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Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez

Host
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Luke Eubank

Producer