Know My Anxious Thoughts

The Best of You

Dr. Alison Cook

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.9 • 958 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to The Best of You Every Day. Today’s Scripture is: Psalm 139:23–24 Topics covered: How to notice what’s really happening inside you—anxiety, stress, and hidden emotions. A gentle approach to self-awareness and emotional healing How to stop avoiding your inner world and let God meet you with insight, peace, and direction instead of shame. Get a free map of your soul here. Go Deeper: Episode 186: Stuck Overthinking? A Simple Practice to Interrupt Stress, Overwhelm, and Habit Loops Episode 167: Can I Pray My Anxiety Away? Connect with Dr. Alison on Instagram: @dralisoncook Join 80,000+ Soul Menders in Dr. Alison’s free email community for ongoing reflection and support. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Allison.
0:03.4	Today's scripture offers us a wiser way of being human as we step into the day.
0:11.8	There's a prayer hiding in plain sight in the final verses of Psalm 139,
0:16.9	one that many of us admire but hesitate to truly pray.
0:24.4	It's short, simple, direct, and if we're honest, it's a little bit terrifying. Because this prayer asks God to do something most of us
0:30.0	spend a great deal of energy avoiding. It's to look closely at what's really going on inside of
0:35.9	us. Today, we're going to sit with this prayer and
0:39.5	explore what it might mean to actually mean it. Today's scripture is Psalm 139, 23 through 24.
0:49.9	Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any
0:57.6	offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. This is one of the most vulnerable
1:07.2	prayers in all of Scripture. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. That line alone
1:14.9	contains enormous courage, because most of us spend our days doing the opposite. We try to manage
1:22.4	impressions. We curate what others see. We curate what we let ourselves see about our souls. We tend to
1:31.7	explain things away. We try to justify our reactions. We tend to minimize our struggles. And sometimes
1:39.8	we simply stay so busy that we never have to slow down and ask the deeper questions
1:45.7	about what's really happening within us. But the psalmist dares to ask God to search him.
1:53.0	Not as some public performance, a piety, this isn't for anyone else. This is for the sake of his own
1:59.4	soul. This is a holy, private moment between him and his
2:04.6	God. He's asking because he knows he can't fully see himself. He asks because he knows something
2:11.8	about the human condition. We aren't always reliable interpreters of our own hearts. We can be very close to our own lives and still miss what's happening inside of us. We might feel irritable without wanting to admit what it is that we're resenting. Restless without naming what we're grasping for, reactive, without realizing we're protecting
2:36.8	something we don't want to face.
2:40.0	Sometimes we walk through an entire day feeling off.
	...

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