Latest / WholeHeart Conversations / Understanding: The Key to Coping Well
Transcript
- 0:00Constance Lavonice: How do you handle the difficult situations in your life?
- 0:05Constance Lavonice: Are you going through a difficult situation now?
- 0:08Constance Lavonice: What effect is it having or has had?
- 0:13Constance Lavonice: How are you coping?
- 0:15Constance Lavonice: How have you coped in the past?
- 0:18Constance Lavonice: The Bible tells us to expect to have difficulties in this life.
- 0:26Constance Lavonice: James chapter one, verse two uses the word whenever or when.
- 0:34Constance Lavonice: It's not a matter of if, but when.
- 0:39Constance Lavonice: How do we cope or deal effectively with something difficult?
- 0:48Constance Lavonice: How we understand, make sense of our difficulties has an effect on how we cope.
- 0:59Constance Lavonice: If you're new here, welcome and thank you for joining.
- 1:03Constance Lavonice: You're listening to Whole Heart Conversations, a podcast for women that provides biblical encouragement to foster whole heart, spirit, soul, and body resilience.
- 1:18Constance Lavonice: I am your host, Constance Lavonice.
- 1:22Constance Lavonice: As I stated earlier, how we understand or make sense of our difficult life circumstances has an effect on how we cope.
- 1:34Constance Lavonice: We know when we're experiencing a difficult circumstance.
- 1:41Constance Lavonice: So I want to give you a model or a framework that's helpful to help conceptualize your own difficulties that will provide you with some clarity and help to develop effective strategies for resilience.
- 2:01Constance Lavonice: The model comes from cognitive behavioral therapy, but the truths behind it come from the Bible.
- 2:10Constance Lavonice: The Bible tells us that we are spirit, soul, and body.
- 2:17Constance Lavonice: Our spirit is the part of us that communes with God.
- 2:23Constance Lavonice: Our soul is our mind, will, and emotions, and we have a physical body, and they are all interconnected.
- 2:36Constance Lavonice: God has given us the ability to think.
- 2:40Constance Lavonice: We also can experience emotions.
- 2:45Constance Lavonice: We live inside of a physical body that allows us to engage in certain behaviors, and we can experience inside of our physical body physical reactions.
- 3:04Constance Lavonice: But for holistic purposes, in the center of this is the spirit.
- 3:13Constance Lavonice: So that's the framework.
- 3:16Constance Lavonice: We can think, we have emotions, we have a physical body which produces behaviors and physical reactions, and we also possess a spirit.
- 3:34Constance Lavonice: All of these six areas are involved in any experience that we have in life.
- 3:42Constance Lavonice: So when we're facing a difficult circumstance, we can seek understanding through our spirit, our soul, which includes our mind, will, emotions, and our body through our behaviors and our reactions or the symptoms that might present within our body.
- 4:08Constance Lavonice: When we do this, try to understand our problematic circumstance or difficulty through the way we think, our emotions, our physical body, the physical reactions, our behaviors, and also through our spirit, it makes room for effective strategies for coping well.
- 4:39Constance Lavonice: And since all of these areas are interconnected, our thoughts, our emotions, behaviors, physical reactions, and our spirit.
- 4:52Constance Lavonice: An improvement in one area causes an improvement in the other.
- 5:00Constance Lavonice: Or you can look at it this way: a small positive change in one area produces a positive change in the other areas.
- 5:16Constance Lavonice: So as we look at the model, the cognitive behavioral therapy model of understanding your current difficulty, and you may want to write this down.
- 5:31Constance Lavonice: First, at the top of the page, you're going to have whatever it is that's the life challenge or life circumstance that you're facing.
- 5:46Constance Lavonice: Write that at the top of the page.
- 5:49Constance Lavonice: And then underneath you're going to write the word thoughts.
- 5:56Constance Lavonice: What are your thoughts about this circumstance?
- 6:00Constance Lavonice: And then write down your emotions.
- 6:03Constance Lavonice: What emotions are you having?
- 6:07Constance Lavonice: And then identify your behaviors.
- 6:13Constance Lavonice: What behaviors am I demonstrating as a result of this current situation in my life?
- 6:24Constance Lavonice: And then physical reactions.
- 6:29Constance Lavonice: What am I experiencing inside of my body?
- 6:35Constance Lavonice: What reactions am I noticing?
- 6:39Constance Lavonice: What symptoms am I noticing inside of my body?
- 6:45Constance Lavonice: And then the last one is spirit.
- 6:49Constance Lavonice: Where am I spiritually?
- 6:53Constance Lavonice: So for example, Mary, I'll just say Mary.
- 6:59Constance Lavonice: Mary has recently been diagnosed with a health problem.
- 7:06Constance Lavonice: We can say fibromyalgia or systemic lupus, which tends to be common with women more so than men.
- 7:18Constance Lavonice: So she's diagnosed with a chronic health problem.
- 7:23Constance Lavonice: And as a result of this life circumstance or difficulty, she starts to think, hmm, this is horrible.
- 7:34Constance Lavonice: Why me?
- 7:36Constance Lavonice: Why am I experiencing this?
- 7:40Constance Lavonice: My life will never be the same.
- 7:43Constance Lavonice: Those are the thoughts.
- 7:46Constance Lavonice: So think about what are the thoughts that you're having.
- 7:50Constance Lavonice: And then she identifies her emotions.
- 7:53Constance Lavonice: What are her feelings?
- 7:55Constance Lavonice: And she identifies that she's depressed, she's discouraged, sometimes she's angry, sometimes she's irritable.
- 8:07Constance Lavonice: So those are the feelings, the emotions.
- 8:11Constance Lavonice: And then next, she looks at behaviors.
- 8:15Constance Lavonice: What is she actually doing as a result of this?
- 8:19Constance Lavonice: And as she examines it, she finds out that she's been pulling back from her friends and her family.
- 8:27Constance Lavonice: And she's been avoiding certain situations.
- 8:31Constance Lavonice: And then she also starts to examine physical reactions.
- 8:41Constance Lavonice: What is happening within her body?
- 8:44Constance Lavonice: What are some of the what we call symptoms in clinical practice?
- 8:51Constance Lavonice: And some of those reactions or symptoms, physical reactions, are difficulty sleeping, restlessness, and insomnia.
- 9:03Constance Lavonice: Spiritually, she notices that she hasn't been praying, she hasn't been reading her Bible, and she hasn't thought much about communicating with God.
- 9:16Constance Lavonice: Once Mary wrote this down on paper, she was able to see the connections.
- 9:23Constance Lavonice: Because of the life circumstance being diagnosed with a chronic illness, her thinking changed.
- 9:32Constance Lavonice: She began to think, my life will never be the same.
- 9:37Constance Lavonice: And because she was thinking this way, it led to depression, discouragement, anger, and irritability.
- 9:48Constance Lavonice: The behaviors, because of her thought process and her emotions, led her to pull back from family and friends.
- 10:01Constance Lavonice: She noticed the physical symptoms or reactions, difficulties sleeping, and restlessness and realized her spiritual condition, no desire for God.
- 10:19Constance Lavonice: When Mary made the decision to make just a small positive change in one area, she chose her thoughts.
- 10:29Constance Lavonice: It produced a positive change in the other areas.
- 10:36Constance Lavonice: How did she do that?
- 10:38Constance Lavonice: Instead of thinking, my life will never be the same.
- 10:44Constance Lavonice: Mary reframed her thoughts too.
- 10:49Constance Lavonice: This is just an opportunity for me to live better.
- 10:53Constance Lavonice: And as she did that, her emotions started to change.
- 10:58Constance Lavonice: She became more optimistic.
- 11:01Constance Lavonice: Her behaviors changed.
- 11:04Constance Lavonice: She started to engage with her family and her friends more.
- 11:09Constance Lavonice: And she started to connect, build connections, and be rewarded with those connections.
- 11:16Constance Lavonice: The restlessness that she was experiencing began to subside.
- 11:21Constance Lavonice: And she began to pray and have a desire to communicate with God.
- 11:27Constance Lavonice: So I want to challenge you this week.
- 11:30Constance Lavonice: If you're experiencing a difficult life circumstance or a personal problem, write it down and take an assessment of your thoughts, your behaviors, your mood, the physical reactions, and your spirit, the condition of your spirit, your relationship with God.
- 12:00Constance Lavonice: And make a decision to make one small positive change in whatever area you decide to choose.
- 12:11Constance Lavonice: It could be your spirit, or you can start with your mood, how you're feeling, and make a decision to experience or practice the opposite.
- 12:25Constance Lavonice: Or I would recommend starting with your thoughts.
- 12:30Constance Lavonice: How are you thinking?
- 12:32Constance Lavonice: Because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
- 12:37Constance Lavonice: Proverbs 23, verse 7.
- 12:40Constance Lavonice: Or even better, start with your spirit because Proverbs chapter 4 tells us that God's word is life to those who find them and health to your whole body.
- 13:00Constance Lavonice: So choose one of these areas and decide to make a small positive change in one area and then just see if it produces a positive change in the other areas.
- 13:17Constance Lavonice: Understanding the truth of the problem is the first step to developing strategies for coping well.
- 13:29Constance Lavonice: If this was helpful, please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend so that we can reach more women.
- 13:37Constance Lavonice: And then text the show and let me know what's on your heart.