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You've recently gone public about your dealings with anxiety. Tell us about that.

Norman That's what I mean about stripping away these ideas of self-reliance and self-dependence. The whole struggle with anxiety has really done that for me in the past couple of years. Again, this idea of faith as an accumulation of spiritual accolades, we could be so quick to define our faith by what we've accomplished, instead of by what God has accomplished. The whole struggle with anxiety has really paralyzed me in a lot of ways, but it's one that has reminded me of being made strong in our weakness. It was something that I had a lot of shame in at first, something that I really didn't really admit at first. But once I did, once I confessed to the idea that I'm really not OK here, that I can't figure this out on my own, then God really began to heal it.

When did you stop and say, "I need to do something about this"?

Norman It's been a long time coming. It's been one of those things that happened randomly and one of those things that I never really knew how to define. Just about a year ago was the first time that I really sat down with a guy I've been receiving counsel from for years and years, and just confessed for the first time: "Listen, I don't know what this is or if it's going away, but it's something that I need to figure out." I confessed that I had no control over it. That was sort of the beginning of the process. So about a year ago was when I began to become healed from it.

How bad was the anxiety? How did it manifest itself?

Norman For me it manifested itself really sporadically, but mostly in the context of singing songs, which was a great irony. This whole thing that I do, singing and playing songs, has been the constant in my life and the thing that's always come natural to me. But it manifested itself when I was up on stage. It had nothing to do with being afraid of being in front of people; it had everything in the world to do with trying to sing these songs and not feel like I couldn't find the breath to sing it and get light-headed.

I never really put my finger on it that it was anxiety. I didn't know what it was. I tried everything in the world to try to fix it—I tried drinking more water, not eating or eating too much before shows, all these different things. And in the long run, I just realized that it was anxiety and it was something that was outside of my control. It didn't happen every time; it was infrequent. But when it happened it was really paralyzing.

I can't imagine trying to get through a set while trying to deal with that.

Norman Yeah, it became something that really brought me down in a lot of ways to where I just had to eventually say, "OK, God, if you don't want me to play music anymore, if this is what you're trying to tell me, that's great." For the first time, I was willing to lay it all aside if that's what it meant. And right about that time was when I really began to confess it to others around me, began to get help for it, and then it finally began to turn around. It was a long and agonizing battle, for sure.

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