Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 22, 2021 | Mental Wellness Series: Women

Transcript

June 22, 2021 | Mental Wellness Series: Women · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Connie.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that's human is mentionable.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that's mentionable is more manageable.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's Mr.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Rogers.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I want to share tonight.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: My big idea for tonight is that we can get rid of some of the myths that hold us back from making what should be mentionable, which is part of our human experience of suffering, make it more mentionable and in that way, lessen the suffering.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it did really, I didn't know Josh personally.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've never lost a client to suicide, thankfully.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the third man I've known, you know, just as acquaintance in the last three years that's taken their life.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And suicide's actually gone down in the last year, 5%, but mental health issues have skyrocketed, anxiety and depression.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so much misunderstanding.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as we think about mental health, and we think about what it takes to be able to really talk about that in a way that we can offer people answers and solutions.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so thankful to be a part of a church body that really celebrates and welcomes that because it's something that I think we're uniquely qualified to serve.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're uniquely qualified to reach people.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there are some things that get in the way.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that COVID did is I think make mental health awareness heighten.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when people aren't distracted by what they're doing and what they're involved in, the stillness, you know, I found mixed responses at the beginning when I would have clients come in, some would say, it's kind of actually nice to not have to go, or I had a lot of anxiety going to work, and now I'm at home and that feels safer.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so depending on where someone is, the experience of it initially, I think we had uh different responses.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: If that felt isolating or if it felt like a little bit of a retreat.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But as it went on, you know, we began to see that the absence of connection and the absence of the things that we would normally use to distract, that people did become very heightened in so many ways.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And people that were at home, maybe their marriage issues they couldn't avoid anymore, and maybe without the activities, things, you know, uh escalated at home.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so there has been a lot more attention brought to it, which is really maybe a positive thing that came out of COVID.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So as I shared tonight, I'm gonna be talking about some of the myths and some of the things that I think keep us stuck from having real conversations.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when someone takes their life or someone is struggling and people say, we would have never known.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We would have never guessed.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that, you know?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard many people say, as I've worked throughout the years, if I had any other condition but this, it would be better.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I had anything else.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a reason for that.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why would someone say that?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why would someone say, you know, well, thank goodness it's not terminal?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness it's not gonna kill me.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness I'm not paralyzed, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something especially isolating and stigmatizing about mental health that keeps people really stuck.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um recently, Howie Mandel um in this article, another side effect of COVID, is there only one checker at every grocery store?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stand in line forever, because I normally not reading the people, but uh it was a really good one for mental health because he shares about overwhelming anxiety and OCD and how he's coped with it throughout the years.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's the he says he's used funny to get by, which made me think of Robin Williams, another funny guy, right, that suffered from mental illness until he took his own life.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's used funny to adapt.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Another way he's adapted to his anxiety and OCD is to build another house on his property so that when his kids would have germs or viruses, he could go live there.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not many of us could afford to do that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Another way he's adapted is to shave his head, to avoid the germs.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not many of us would do that, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But he's learned ways to cope.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But near the end of the article was a sentence that really struck me, and it was this one that I still haven't been open about how dark and ugly it really is.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about someone who has shared about their mental illness, who has a lot of resources enough to build a second germ-free house, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, I still haven't shared about how dark it is.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a word that comes up a lot when I've heard clients talk about their mental challenges, their depression, their anxiety, their trauma.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a word that I would use to describe the times that I felt overwhelmed by life or anxious and just in a dark place.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as Christians, as believers, you know, we are to be the salt and the light.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to go into the dark places and bring those things into life.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so if these conversations aren't happening here, and if uh someone can be involved in a church body, part of a community, and be struggling with mental illness like that, and yet we still have so much stigma around it that it's not talked about, it's not shared, then we are missing a large part of what makes us, you know, connects our stories in through our humanity.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I read that and I thought about uh another thing, Oprah had a, I didn't see it, it was on Apple TV, I saw clips of it, but you know, Prince Harry was talking about his struggles and his overcoming of uh flight anxiety and his mother's death through EMDR.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's my specialty, so that caught my attention.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I did read that part and watch that segment.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and other people that maybe were overcoming trauma.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think Lady Gaga was on there, Oprah was talking about her challenges.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're sharing and they're bringing awareness to it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things he said is once I started to share, I began to realize I was part of a very big club.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are struggling, you are part of a very big club because millions and millions, 40, 40 some million, you know, um, people with just anxiety alone.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh uh this is a huge issue, and yet one that people don't want exposed.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to talk about those reasons why, because when I talk about what it really is and the things that we need to be underware, maybe aware of and a new lens that we can look through, I think we need to address some of the things that we might not even know we believe.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the subconsciously held things that we believe about mental illness or about people who have mental illness, we might not even be aware of.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna go through those, and I hope by the end you can really leave here being able to reflect on some of the notions that you might have for your own mental health as well as those in your community.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the misconception, the first one, is that suffering indicates a lack of faith, that it indicates a lack, you know, it's a spiritual failure to have mental illness.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know any stats on this, I haven't looked it up, but I can tell you from my 20 years of experience, and at this point, I get primarily people who identify as Christians.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I it's a very biased sample at this point.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: It hasn't always been that way, though.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that there's a particular type of shame that walks in with the person who has a faith.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's because there's anything wrong with our faith, but there are messages out there either that we internalize or that are unintentionally given to us that are really shaming.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So just this week, somebody who is reading a book and it's a Christian book had some pages on anxiety.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she sent it to me and said, I didn't know what to make of this.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, what do you what are your thoughts about that?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, according to this author, he said, sin is anxiety is a sin.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sin because, well, before I tell you, let me ask you this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you would say you believe God cares for you?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, keep your hands up.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Believe God loves you.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if you believe God loves you, according to this author, you could not have a mental illness.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you have anxiety, he said it is sin because you do not believe that God cares for you, you do not trust him.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying to God, I don't trust you to care for me, and I don't believe in your providence.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So this author is saying this in this book, and I haven't read the whole book, so I I don't know, but I can I can only share my experience as a therapist and tell you that I have known many faithful women who have hit the age that happens whenever you start having hot flashes, and all of a sudden they have anxiety.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, did the hormonal change shift their anxiety?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've had faithful women who've, you know, been in a car accident and all of a sudden they have PTSD.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do they lack faith also?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have people with brain injuries, my daughter included, she doesn't have anxiety, but her specialist kept referring to it as anxiety, as anxiety.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, She didn't just correct you though, she didn't have anxiety.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: She's having like these focus problems.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, I'm talking about the medical condition.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the medical condition where her brain is in constant overdrive, fight or flight.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's anxiety.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, people with head trauma, do they lack faith if they have anxiety?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do people who get anxiety as a result of thyroid disorder, cardiovascular disease, do those people too lack faith?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when someone comes to our small group and says, I've just been diagnosed with liver failure, do people ask them, are you sure you've given that over to God?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're just not trusting him enough?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we get these messages, probably well-intended messages.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, are you really praying about it?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying they're not good responses because as Christians, we want to go to God with all of our suffering, with all of our hardships, with all of the things that hit us.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't want to feel the shame of acknowledging that we have an ailment, that other people then look at us and say, you must be less than.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you can remember an experience that caused you shame.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a superficial one, but back when I was in high school, freshman, my high school is about 2,000, so you know, no matter how tall you are, like you feel really small as a freshman.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so excited for my first pep rally.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we walk in and we gathered like the nights before to make these big banners, you know, the kind where you roll out the paper and they're like the 10-foot banners and uh decorate the gym.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I walk into the gym, and on the sophomore wall of the gym, I can still see it's probably 12 foot long.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, maybe 20.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed really big.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It said, kill the roach.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And my name is Rochelle, but I knew it was for me because there was a sophomore girl who I'd never met, didn't know, and someone had told me when I came to high school she was gonna beat me up.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't like me.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: We liked the same boy a year earlier.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I married him, but um, but I was filled with shame when I walked in that gym.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't done anything wrong, I didn't know her, I wasn't even seeing him at the time.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I felt like everybody in that gym knew that that sign was just for me.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wanted to crawl out.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no way of taking it down.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I hadn't done anything wrong, so it wasn't the kind of shame we get when we should have shame, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: When we've we've lied or we've talked bad about somebody or we've betrayed one of our values or we've hurt somebody.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of shame we should have when God wants us to turn to repentance.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when we have shame and we want, regardless of why we have the shame, whether we did it or whether somebody else has accused us or is judging us, shame makes us want to crawl away.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us want to withdraw.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us want to not be seen.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, why isn't something that is this prevalent talked about?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is because of shame.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of the shame that it carries.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of messages out there that perpetuate this kind of shame, just in the way that we speak about it, the way we think about it, you know, we can hear people say, oh, they've lost their mind, you know, they're crazy, they're quite not right, they're really not stable.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of messages that we send to suffering people, or that as the person who is suffering, that make us afraid to share about what we're going through.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so the misconception needs to be that yes, it are there spiritual reasons why we can be anxious and depressed.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say that there aren't, because there are, and clearly, God wants our response to anxiety to be to cast it upon him and to take it to him in prayer and petition, you know, with thanksgiving and all those things.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a physiological component, there are things that shift in our body and change that can insult our brain chemistry in a way that we experience these symptoms.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so in Job, you know, at the end, when God is saying to his friends, you know, hey, you've really kind of misjudged Job here.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Twice, two times in Job 42, he says, and you've spoken what's not right about me.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then a couple more sentences, and he says again, and you've spoken what is not right about me.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I read a few commentaries on that, and kind of the general consensus of what they were saying is because those friends were judging Job by his affliction rather than by his conduct.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very different thing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so to make to make judgments about somebody's heart and where they are with Christ and where they are in their spiritual walk based on something that they're suffering really is not our place and doesn't do anything for us or for them.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in the very end, when everything is set right, it says the friends comforted and consoled Job for the troubles he had suffered from the Lord.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that, and and if we want to be people who bring the light, we need to make sure that that's where we stand in that, that we comfort and console those, that we encourage them in their face and that faith and that we lead them back to the, but that we don't make judgments about them that make them feel like it's not okay to share, it's not okay to ask for help, that they have to keep it silent, that they have to be scared.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because when they do that, then you know, and then they blame it on the church, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I felt shamed, so the church is bad.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want anything to do with that because what we most want to do, I mean, I wanted to avoid Amy every time I saw her in high school, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because every time I saw her, felt shame.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the second one is that mental illness is a random chemical imbalance.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: This one, um, I think you know, when we don't know what to do with something sometimes, um, but we were not born with Prozac and Xanax deficiencies.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just not the issue with this, right?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are and with everything that's not true, there's usually a little bit of truth, like the apple looked good for eating, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But um there's a little bit of truth, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Chemistry is a big deal in our brain.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: We do have neurotransmitters when those are disrupted or something happens.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then um, yes, that those neurotransmitters do influence our brain.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But to say that it's a random chemical imbalance that is it implies that we're just broken.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: That there's just nothing we can do about that, because everybody in our family has that.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a random chemical imbalance.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's really been very disproven, actually.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that if you take this medication, that it's gonna go away.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying medications never help, but long term they're not effective.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there's correlations between violent crime, suicide, and even homicide that come because when people don't have a liver enzyme, when they're missing a liver enzyme and they can't metabolize the medication, there's no testing before medication, there's no testing after medication, there's a lot of side effects to this, and it doesn't actually get to the root of the problem.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when we have two options, bad or broken, you're either sinful and weak, or you're bad, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're broken, like you just can't do, yeah, bad or broken, you can't do anything about it.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: What it what what does that what does that message does that send people?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: How does that inspire them to know that they do have a sound mind, they were born with a sound mind, and that the renewing of the mind is promised to us, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't give them much hope.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't inspire much action.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about a random chemical imbalance, I'm broken.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't want to go to the extreme of saying everything's wrong and it's so bad and I'm never gonna get any better, we also don't want to accept mental illness.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I, you know, when I liked Howie Mandel's article, but really when we have to orchestrate our life around an illness, if that's the only option we can adapt to it, but so many times there are other methods of healing, there are other things we can do, and that when we adapt our mind around fear, then we start to believe the fear.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's reinforced in our brain.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to leave every time my kids are sick, I have to live in another house.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only way I stay well, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: That reinforces that pattern that that's all I can do.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then before long, our the neuroplasticity of our brain believes, believes this rhetoric, believes this is how I have to stay safe.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we avoid and when we adapt, rather than moving into it because it's too painful to talk about, or we don't know what else to do, or someone listened to us for 15 minutes and said, Well, take this pill, you know, mental health diagnosis is not easy.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't even like them.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even give them really.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I try to understand it and know what they're dealing with, but someone may come in saying, I have job stress, and you know, a month later they tell me that they have, you know, um a sexual trauma history that's never been dealt with.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, do you have job stress that's keeping you up at night, or do you have unresolved trauma?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when someone in 15 minutes tells their symptoms and gets a medication, there's not a real understanding of what is the story, what is going on in their life.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Our minds are very complex.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're not broken.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're not broken.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're our our symptoms make sense and we have to get to the bottom of it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So believing that's just a random chemical imbalance, there's nothing you can do about keeps us stuck.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is if you could just think about it a little bit differently.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just see the bright side.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and again, a little bit of truth to it, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I know a positive perspective helps me, you know, when I'm feeling really down.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I read scripture and all of a sudden everything expands and I go, oh, this this is yes, this is God's perspective on this.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It reframes it a little bit, right?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So positive thinking, we 70% of our thinking is negative a lot of times.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we do want to focus on positive thinking and be really conscious of what are we saying to ourselves.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing about this 5% of your thinking, 5% of what you do comes from your prefrontal cortex.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we gain new knowledge.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we make executive function, this is where we have decisions.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: 95%, our subconscious brain, our reptilian brain down here is one million times, as a scientifically proven, one million times more powerful than your cognitive brain.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when you have a belief over here, maybe your cognitive brain says, I know God loves me.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've read that in Bible study, I know John 3.16.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But something in your subconscious, limbic brain, going all the way back, that subconscious has developed before the age of six, says that I'm not worthy because nobody ever looked at me or the way people treated me or what people said to me.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I just have this feeling of unworthiness, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be addressed.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when we are when we are slapping positive affirmations up here, and they're hitting on an incongruence in what our subconscious brain holds, guess what wins?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our subconscious brain every time, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our subconscious brain wins.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we can change our subconscious mind.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Again, God's word is always true, the renewing of our mind.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can we can renew our mind, we can change these things, but not if we don't address them.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times, what's held in our subconscious, what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about others and feeling is held in our subconscious brain.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a place where we really need to activate change.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone's telling you, just calm down, or why don't you just think it like this, or why are you always looking on the negative side?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, do what you can, monitor your thoughts.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying those aren't helpful strategies, just saying if they aren't working, you know, we need to understand that there might be something that's a little bit deeper that could offer you uh freedom from that, um, and you're not getting that because we're up here.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the things when we think about our body and our brain.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we we have a bunch of cells in us, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're just this whole community of cells.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so Bruce Lipton is a cell biologist, and I'm reading this book right now called The Biology of Belief.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, this is kind of fascinating to me because he's basically saying what shifts our cells?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: What shifts our cells, and so we think about our brain, what shifts our cells, because we know we start out with a sound mind, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets a blank slate.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is such a thing as generational trauma, though.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've shown that that's passed down in the cells.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the three things that can really change us, change ourselves, and that we need to be aware of and that we can look at and say, what is the cause of dis-ease, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, mental health is brain health, is physical health, and it's mind and it's brain and it's body.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mind, brain, body.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so these are the things that can change a cell in a petri dish and in your body and in my body is trauma can change a cell.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Chemistry can change a cell.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know our thoughts change our chemistry?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: After 17 seconds of having a thought, your body starts to respond to that thought, and your cells actually take form to shape around that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the thoughts that we have, your stress response, right?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you are stressed out, all of a sudden cortisol spikes.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we get if people are in trauma, they get a response, a chemical response that numb their whole body.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: We get adrenaline.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of chemical changes happen in our body that change our cells.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're under stress for a long time, our body changes in response to that.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the things that we can change, and that's how we can be really intentional about our mental health, is just to be aware of these things, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And just start reflecting on our body and our experience.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're in a body of water, whether that be a lake or an ocean, and you, you know, you have your sight on the shore and you know where your beach towel is or whatever, and then you're out there and you're treading water and you're not trying to go anywhere, but eventually you'll have moved in one direction or the other, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, time goes on and we um you know, we age or something, we things change in our body.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to do anything to activate that.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the nature of what happens.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so with our mind and our brain, there's a lot we can do, but if we recognize that there are things in our world that impact us, there are things in our world that take us away from that sound.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's injury, there's disease.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the more we are aware of those things, the more we can strengthen them, and the less shame we have, the more we can reflect and talk about them.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, when we have shame, we just want to avoid, right?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So thinking about this, thinking about what changes our body, um, you know, and the subconscious mind and how we can use that to really, what do I believe about that?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have to pause, we have to reflect, we have to be aware of internally what's going on so that you can understand, so that we each can understand our story.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: The symptoms will always tell the story.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when Connie made the comment about her hot flash, right?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: What did her hot flash indicate?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, I don't know, but something happened in her body, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some chemical change happened in her body, and all of a sudden she felt hot.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And because she knows what that is, she wasn't too alarmed by it, right?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: No one told her she was bad, she didn't think she was all of a sudden dying.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: People with a panic attack oftentimes don't know what it is and all of a sudden think they're dying and call 911.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually how people find out they have a panic disorder.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: They end up in the ER saying, I have a heart attack, and they say, No, you're actually having a panic attack, right?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know what's happening, they can't make sense of it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's alarming.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the suffering has this alarming.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: We suffer, we grieve.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I've been watching, uh, my daughter and I are watching Little House on the Prairie.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's hooked on us.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're watching it every day.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's crying in every single episode.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I love it.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's so tender, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because life was hard, and they're always losing a field or a dog or something.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's emotion, you know, suffering, life is hard, and suffering is part of that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the emotion tells the story, just like the hot flash tells the story of what's going on in the body.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're aware of these changes that happen, and we can start to look at them and we can start to reflect, we can start to make sense.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, discernment, like that, being still and reflecting.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And again, the renewing of the mind is a very active process, right?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying we should do something we should be involved in.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do not conform to the world.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Muhammad Gandhi has a saying that says, I don't let anybody with dirty feet walk around in my mind.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: How many people have had people with dirty feet walking around in your mind?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that feeling of unworthiness or inadequacy or a lack of safety is a direct result of how a response that you had to treatment that was done to you that was not your responsibility, that you did not have to carry, but yet at the time you didn't have another decision to make.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing about the renewing.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: When we recognize these things, we recognize that he gives us the opportunity to bring what's subconscious up to the conscious and make a different decision and say, that was theirs, not mine.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we get to change.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: We get to change how we think, we get to change how we respond.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, we realize that we're not bad and we're not broken, we're just suffering.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that there's freedom in knowing that there's nothing wrong with that, that it's part of our humanity, it's part of our human experience.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if we look at how much suffering is included in scripture, right?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to be emotionless, we're not supposed to not have pain, we're not supposed to not know sorrow, and we don't always get answers for why.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm saying we should investigate, we should explore, we should reflect, I know there are things that are far beyond our comprehension in just in Job.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to know why all the time.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: We don't always know why.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But we do know, our I believe that we are supposed to be still, we are supposed to reflect, we are supposed to renew our mind, and we're not supposed to accept that we're just broken and we're just damaged and we're just bad, and all the women that we have been in our line are this way, and we have no choice about it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: We do have choices in our response.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say what's the story, emotions have three parts.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have what's in our body, the physical experience of it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma, we know, is especially stored in the nervous system.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a hard thing to understand conceptually, but it really is.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you want more information on that, The Body Keeps the Scores, an excellent book by Bethel Vanderkolk.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: But um, the trauma is stored in our nervous system.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, right now, if if someone attacked me, I would have fight or flight and I would want to run or I would want to fight.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that impulse to act on that action would help discharge that from my body.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: If I were a child in that situation and I could not fight, and I could not flight, and I had to be frozen in that, that the cells of the body and the nervous system store the impact of the trauma.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we get body memories, and then we get a signal from the environment that that situation feels like, looks like, must be like.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the person says, I don't know why I'm afraid of the dark.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I'm afraid to go in a crowded room.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And probably the most powerful thing you could say, it's what I say to every single client, um, is your symptoms make sense somewhere.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I might not know right away.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we figure it out.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Usually we do.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had anybody, I'm like, oh, you're just crazy.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, never.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like never.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It always makes sense.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your symptoms always make sense somewhere.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are things out there that that we that again we don't understand just suffering that comes upon us.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: But your symptoms and how our bodies respond to it, they always make sense.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when when someone is frustrated with themselves, someone said to me, and I can share this because she's not a client, um, it's a business colleague I have, and we were working on a project, and I was telling her what I do, and she said, Um, that's interesting because every time I, I'm she's I'm so embarrassed to say this, but you know, every time the doorbell would ring, I would hide behind my couch, and it's just so embarrassing to say that.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I just said, Your mind is so brilliant.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: You knew that that reminded you, your brain stores that information.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she'd had a domestic violence situation years before.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she just was just like still, and she said, Nobody's ever said that to me.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that was all I said.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: It made sense.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't give her any therapy, it wasn't a client relationship, but I just said it made sense.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're not crazy, you don't need to be embarrassed about that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's part of the human experience.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when we can hear that it's part of the human experience and that it makes sense, and we can just say, I'm sorry you're hurting.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not just out of charity.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like when we do that, another thing I always get from people a lot of times is saying, Oh my gosh, how do you doesn't that get tiring seeing depressed people all day?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, it's fascinating.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating hearing the stories of what every single person is unique, their story is unique, their mind is unique, their emotions are unique, their resilience is unique and how they overcame and how God weaved his way through there.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they can't see it, I see it because you see their strength.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when we have people not, you know, like not sharing their suffering, we also don't get to see the beauty in that, the beauty in their story and the depth.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I would far rather spend a day with people in their authentic form sharing what makes them real than to be with people who I only get to know this much.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you when you only get part, when you don't, when you limit, if we took it, if we took out of the Bible all the stories of suffering and anguish and desperation and you know, fear, what would there be?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how would the light contrast if we took out all the suffering?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to stay stuck in suffering, but we don't want to be afraid of knowing the story behind it that God uses to bring his people to him and to show his glory through their sufferings and through their hardship.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So don't ever think that your story is too ugly to share or that it's it's gonna be too um, too, I don't know, embarrassing.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not embarrassing to suffer.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people that cause the suffering should be embarrassed by what they've done.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not talking about that in this talk.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about conduct, we're talking about affliction and suffering and how we can encourage people.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So just be interested to know.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to be a therapist to be interested to know.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're struggling, don't be afraid to share.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: People might not know how to respond, but that doesn't mean you're wrong for sharing, because there's a certain amount of freedom that just comes from being able to say, this is what it is, this is what I'm struggling with, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And know that it's not going to kill you.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's the wrong ears that it falls on, that they don't know how to handle it, they don't know how to respond, that's okay.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've gotten feedback.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the feedback, let that feedback be that that wasn't the right person, not that it wasn't the right share.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about what to do with our, if we're gonna get rid of the stigma and we're gonna get rid of, I want to give you some practical things for thinking about like a process of healing for mental health.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think first, you know, we should, we should think about faith as our response to, not the blame for, right?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Unless it's warranted and you know that there's a spiritual thing there.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not for someone else to judge, but if you know between you and God that things aren't right in your life and you need to, you know, be in a state of repentance and work on something that's causing anxiety, then, you know, but even if it's not faith, going to faith and saying, you know what, going to faith could always, is always the right response.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: But to do it in response to what when he says casting the anxiety, going to him, don't tire of going to him.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some things, some prayers, you know, are long in the waiting.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes there is long suffering.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's not till we get to the end of that that we can look back and see, and there was an answer there, and there was an answer there, and there was a provision there, and there was a provision there.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he is present in that.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also want to be able to validate, and this is kind of, you know, validation is part of just saying, This is what I feel, and it's okay.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am sad, I am embarrassed, I am scared, I am lonely, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to identify it and then notice what is your response to that?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a voice that says, quit being such a crybaby?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are people that have it worse, or you know, quickly distract yourself with something else.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or when you have that emotion come up, can you validate and can you say, it's okay?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to feel scary.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, like we talked about earlier, emotions being in the body, sometimes the physical response to having emotion is very scary to people.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is you, if if having an emotion causes a very scary body reaction, because maybe it wasn't okay to have emotion when you were young, or maybe that emotion is like the tip of the iceberg, and there's a big, a big well of emotion that you feel like if I even go there a little bit, it's just gonna, I'm not gonna be able to get back to shore.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take me out to sea.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel that, you know, then that's feedback, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then that tells you there's something here.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: What did I then we can start reflecting?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: What did I learn about emotion?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: What was my experience?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: How was sadness experienced in my home?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: What happened when I was afraid?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: When I was sad, who comforted me?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we can start exploring what happened around that.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And once you start exploring, journaling is really good for this.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Once you start exploring, it's like once you look down and you say, I am going to, what do I know about this?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do I think about this?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do how do how am I gonna reflect on that?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then stuff starts coming up, right?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: You won't even want it to, maybe, but you will start making connections.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain will go, oh, that's what that is, right?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's that discernment.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like being able to really be with ourselves and connected to our spirit.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Once we start doing that, we will start making connections.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if this feels scary because.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if this could be this.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you need professional help to help you do that.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't, but always being able to reflect.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, no different than maybe if we have kids, we would look at them and they're throwing a fit, and you know, as all good moms want to do, make excuses for them.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: They must be tired.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: They must be tired.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or they always act this way after they've had this or they had too much sugar, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, like we're reflecting, we're interested in what what's going on with you.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we need to be interested in what's going on in our mind and our body and spirit when we can get rid of the judgment.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe there's something we need to be aware.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is there something in our environment?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, blue light, uh, too much computer time.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I've been going to bed late, you know, and I'm on my computer till midnight, and maybe that's not helping me sleep, right?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I maybe I'm drinking caffeine too late in the day.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it always has to be something deep and dark.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our chemistry is responding.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my husband will share, like he had a lot of, he had a lot better emotional regulation after he figured out some of the foods he was eating.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was having like an allergic reaction to, right?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because he would just get so irritable and he'd say, I am so irritable, I have no idea why.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I wasn't very understanding because, you know, but he just noticed, like, I don't know why I'm getting so irritable, right?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he had his, you know, eventually got figured out.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he had an autoimmune disease.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so we've been down that path.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've had to be with our own health journey and and and with our daughter's head injury, always be thinking, what is going on?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And seek out a lot of people.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: You might not always need to do that.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: It might be you read something, you go, oh, you know, I started exercising and I feel better, or I started eating, you know, fewer uh things with fewer things from a box, started cleaning up my diet, or started going to bed early, I started walking a little bit, I started hanging out with people who treated me well, I started, you know, not being on my uh apps all the time, I took a meet social media break for a month, and these things shifted.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if we don't reflect on our emotions, if all of a sudden the emotions come on, we shut them down or we numb them, and we don't do this reflection piece, then we don't know where to take action.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And taking action and being intentional about your emotional health, about your relationships, your relationship with God, your relationship with other people, how you spend your body, or how you use your body, how you spend your time, all of those things can make drastic shifts in how we experience our emotions.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the good thing about experiencing emotions is that when people get in a pattern of numbing and they shut down, you can't just shut that valve off like to both.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: We actually shut off to joy.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when we protect ourselves from feeling the pain through numbing, we don't get the joy either.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the joy is what gives us resilience.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: The joy is what allows us to absorb life's hurts.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: In any given moment, we have two options to step forward in growth or stay where we are in fear.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you if you're in this place or you know someone is that even though it's scary, to step forward in growth and be intentional.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.