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8-Minute MindShift Wk 14 · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I'm in a cool spot, different spot, if you can tell by the environment.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I know I'm starting just to tat early, but it's because I wanted to risk giving you motion sickness to look at where I am.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm in the mountains of North Carolina, and uh we have a an extension of Southeastern University at our church, Seacoast, and uh I'm up here to do a uh uh retreat for the students, and uh so wanted to get this out there for you guys this morning.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're gonna talk about today is uh kind of an area that's a little tricky for some people because it doesn't sound as as profoundly, deeply spiritual.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: But let me remind you of something I told you from the very beginning.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I've been at this a pretty long time, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm uh I'm not a youngster anymore.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh feel like one, but I'm not.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what what I strive to do is merge or bring together what I call uh biblical spirit-led Christianity and all the power and insight that comes with that, but I also like to bring together what I call sanctified psychology.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is to to bring together uh concepts and information and just dynamic stuff that helps me understand people and help people.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we're gonna talk about something that I've found over the years has really helped people in some uh some really powerful ways.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um have you ever met someone, and it could be yourself, that uh solid person, easy to get along with 90% of the time, whatever, you know, balanced in a sense, appears to be, but every once in a while, or maybe with some regularity, they're uh last week we talked about your buttons being pushed, and they can go from zero to sixty, like when they get in a confrontive or backed into a corner kind of situation, the claws come out and they can act in ways, say things, uh portray emotion in a in a ferocious way.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I don't know about you, but over the years I've wondered, gosh, man, what is that?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, with with with like I said, committed Christians.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so over the years I've wrestled with um, gosh, what could that be?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've studied more and more, one of the fields that I've drifted into and love to read about now is the brain.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's obviously several factors that could come into play, but but one of the factors is the brain itself and the way it's made and the way it operates.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: We introduced the idea last week that uh from Genesis 3, the fall on, uh, we, you know, God knew we were going to need um to be able to survive in a hostile environment.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I believe he equipped the brain with the the proper uh parts to do the job that needs to be done.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want you to imagine a couple comes into counseling and they have this repeating cycle of pushing each other's buttons, getting really, really, I'm not talking about a little bit angry, I'm talking really, really angry and saying hurtful, awful things to each other, and then they simmer down and and really never come back to to fix it because they don't really understand how it happened and where it came from.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I want to introduce to you today is uh a part of your brain called the lizard brain, and I know that's gonna bother some of you because that's a concept taken from you know evolutionary theory and all, so don't get hung up on that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just easier to remember, to be quite honest with you.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain has three layers, in a sense, and this is oversimplified.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a brain specialist, please forgive me.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: The outermost layer is the one that only human beings have, and that's the part that we we think methodically and we we we logically work things out, we reason things out.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Slow but accurate, helpful, you know, regulated.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: It it really nice part of the brain to kind of make your life smoother and more predictable.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: The next layer is what you might call the emotional layer, and that's really where we connect emotion to facts and experiences.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we we we store memories, and there's lots to be said about why uh the part emotions play in the formation of memories.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then the third is what we call the lizard brain, and I'm gonna read a little bit to you from uh just an article off the internet.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The lizard brain is the most primitive part of our brain.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's at the top of our spine, and it's a command control for the human body.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's pre-verbal, and goodness we could say so much about that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it tells our body what to do and when to do it automatically using chemical and electrical signals.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I want you to catch here is thinking slow, emotional, you know, a little bit faster, a little bit sloppier, and then you get to the this part, the third brain, the survival brain, and it's really fast, but it's really sloppy.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's its primary job is to keep the trains running on time, your heart rate, your respiration, and all that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, um all the all the routine functioning of your body is done by the lizard brain behind the scenes without your uh knowledge or intervention.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh here's the main functions of this part of your brain: the fight, flight, or freeze.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Fight, fight, or fleece.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we freeze, and that's what we want to talk about.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: When when you feel threatened, do you fight?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you run or do you freeze?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And back to our couple.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what both of them have been had been hurt in different ways in their childhood.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: The way that the wife happened to be hurt and the way the husband happened to be hurt, almost perfectly uh opposed each other in the sense of triggering each other.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what happens with the lizard brain.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're out in the yard and you're uh mowing the grass, and out of the peripheral vision, you see a thin, dark, squiggly thing, and the next thing you know, you wake up ten feet away, and you almost wonder, how did I get here?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, the little squiggly thing appeared to your brain to be a snake.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what happens when information comes into your brain, it it's split.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And one leg of it goes to the thinking part that can just slowly begin to think, okay, what should we do in this situation?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: The other piece goes to the lizard brain.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It goes to the part of your brain that determines whether you're in danger, real or perceived.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's important the lizard brain signal gets there faster.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's programmed to respond faster.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm mowing the grass, I out of my peripheral vision, I see this dark squiggly thing, and my lizard brain takes over, shuts the rest of my brain down, and says, I got this, and next thing you know, I wake up over here, and my thinking brain catches up and it says, Oh, that might be a snake, we shouldn't jump.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've already jumped.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what part of me did that?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's that part of me that's built in by God to help us survive in a hostile environment that protects us against real or perceived danger.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's where it gets interesting.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: What if it wasn't a snake, it was just a stick?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that lizard brain is really fast but a little bit sloppy.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to our couple.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime either one of them feels like this situation's going toward where I've been hurt before, what they do is subconsciously, subrationally, the lizard brain kicks in and they go into fight-flight mode and begin to pummel the other person, not from the slow methodical part of their brain, but from the I'm gonna deal with this threat right now and get it out of my face.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Afterwards, they they can't believe some of what they said, they can't believe different ways that they hurt themselves.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've known lots of Christians that just got caught in that kind of a spiral, didn't understand it, and didn't know what to do about it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I get it, and I feel like over time, God's led me to down the roads of study that I've been, and I feel like this explains some of why we can act in ways that are very contrary to our normal everyday behavior.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, in our eight to ten minutes every day, I can't give the problem and the solution.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna talk, and that's part of what we have the four things we're going through.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Own your emotions, don't let the ants ruin your picnic, slow down, and you're gonna find that that's an important part of this, and then build a support system.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about how you can begin to identify uh where is my problem, what drives it, where's the what's what's the energy that drives the cycle I'm stuck in, and um how can I break it and replace it with a healthier cycle.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I believe part of what many of us are up against is not choices per se, but the hardwired brain that's inside our head, between our ears, and how God created it to function.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the way it works can sometimes work against us when we're trying to change.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk more about it and uh love you guys.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed this little moment up in the mountains and uh I'll see you next week.