Religion on the Mind Anxiety & OCD Across Generations (#359)
Nov 10, 2025
In a thought-provoking discussion, Sarah Billups, an author and podcaster known for her insights on spirituality and anxiety, delves into the generational transmission of anxiety. She shares fascinating stories about her neurotic Jewish father and how family dynamics shape our fears. Sarah critiques how the church absorbs cultural anxiety and examines the polarization in today’s society. Highlighting her journey through Ignatian spiritual exercises, she introduces 'holy indifference' as a counter to OCD and emphasizes navigating loss in an increasingly anxious world.
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Three-Level Model Of Anxiety
- Sarah Billups frames anxiety at three interconnected levels: individual bodies, the church body, and the body politic.
- She argues a single spiritual practice (Jesuit holy indifference) can address all three systems by shifting posture toward outcomes.
Family Medical Anxiety Shaped Early Life
- Sarah describes her father's pronounced medical anxiety and Jewish family patterns shaping her own nervous system.
- She connects family history and Holocaust-related epigenetic studies to her experience of inherited worry.
How Anxiety Passes Between Generations
- Dan summarizes three transmission routes: genetic heritability, epigenetic changes, and modeled family behavior.
- He emphasizes genes plus early environment shape a baseline but later agency and practices can alter trajectories.
