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More Managing Your Emotions · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to hanging out with you for a few minutes today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk to you about kind of what we talked about for the last few weeks.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've been playing off of the thought of there being some uh epidemics uh raging and um whatever, it's just a way to get you thinking about things like your emotions.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you feel like your emotions just run wherever they want?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you can do about it?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like other people cause your emotions?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is if other people would just do better, do more of this, less of this, if other people do what I've told them I need them to do or ask them to do, uh, wouldn't wouldn't it be easier for me to manage my emotions?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it might be easier.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what you're doing, whether you mean to or not, is you're tying your ability to manage your emotions to someone else's choices.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, whether or not they choose to do what you say you need them to do determines how well you can manage your emotions.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's just not a good, it's it's it's not a good game to play.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I'm getting at.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um remember last week we talked about A B C, the A B Cs of Emotion.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: A is some kind of an outside activating event.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the A comes from.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: An outside activating event.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uh a spouse, a child, a friend, an event, a circumstance not going the way you wanted it to go, or expected it to go, or hoped it would go.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so that's a the outside activating, what you might call triggering event.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are very repetitive.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be the way someone greets you when they come in from a day at work or school or whatever.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this outside event, C, A, B, C, C is our uh the consequences of that event.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, how I feel, how I act, how I how it affects the rest of my day, evening, whatever.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so most people think A, these outside events, activating events or triggers, cause my response.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um the cool thing about that I've learned and and and I love the interplay between uh biblical Christianity and what I call sanctified psychology, meaning you take the two of them and you kind of marry them together, and obviously everything in psychology doesn't translate over well.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I get that, but there's some of it that really does.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, activating event, consequence, or corresponding action.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: A does not cause C.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is like a life-changing, I promise you, man, it's a life-changing concept.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: A doesn't cause C.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a B in the middle.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: A, B, C, and B is your belief system.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: B is what you're thinking.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the key thought now.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's subconscious and really, really, really fast, and um you don't even realize it's happening, but A, somebody looks at you a certain way, somebody treats you a certain way, somebody ignores you, somebody whatever, you end up spiraling emotionally somewhere you don't want to go or didn't intend to go, and you think this caused this.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it might have nudged you that direction, but it's this piece in the middle.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And notice I'm framing my head.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's this piece in the middle that determines how that affects that.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let me read you a couple scriptures.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if anyone thinks himself, I gotta I gotta move the phone a little bit here, if anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue, if anyone thinks himself to be religious but yet and yet does not bridle his tongue, okay.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, what are we talking about here?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if the con the context is a little, I'm I'm stretching here a little bit, but the con the principle is good.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you think you're you're walking it out right, in other words, if you think, you know, I think I got this figured out, I think I got it working, and yet you don't manage your tongue.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is if you don't manage what you're saying, words, inside your head and outside.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: What it goes on to say is this if you think you're religious and yet don't manage your tongue, you deceive your own heart.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You deceive your own heart.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this man's religion is worthless.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right, what am I trying to say?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's another verse in Matthew chapter 12.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was James 1.26.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 12 says this, for the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Another translation says, Whatever in it, whatever is in your heart determines what you say.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's behind my phone.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever's in your heart determines what you say.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, time out here.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's ways that I talk to myself that are coming out of my heart.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say it this way just to make a point.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That come out of my heart, not my head.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's ways that I talk to myself that come out of my heart, not my head.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what am I trying to say there?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've known for years, and and and scripture bears it out.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4 talks about the spirit of the mind, but Freud, and don't get all creeped out because I talk about Freud, Freud discovered this concept of the subconscious, that there was a large part of our brain's capacity and capability that was hidden from our conscious awareness the majority of the time.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that subconscious part of us, and this has come out in big uh popular books here lately, there's one called Thinking Fast and Slow, and it's very much about thinking fast is the heart, thinking slow is the mind.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that verse in Matthew goes on to say this the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good, the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm trying to say to you.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart stores all the experiences you've ever had in life.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart stores the sense of identity that you carry.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart stores how you see yourself, your self-image.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart stores your sense of worth and value, and how you believe you get worth and value.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where did your heart get all that?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: It says a good man out of his good treasure, an evil person out of his evil treasure.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's just trying to set a principle in place.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: A treasure, we normally think of a treasure as a really good thing.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like you open up a pirate's treasure chest and it's full of gold coins and jewelry and it's like worth millions of dollars.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is a treasure, a good one.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: But treasure, by definition, is anything you've built up, collected, stored over time.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Anything you've built up, collected, and stored over time is a treasure.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: All treasures aren't good.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what happens: as you go through life, your heart collects, builds up, and stores information.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: How does it do that?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Through experiences, through words, through disappointment, through excitement, through uh hope deferred, makes the heart sick.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we talked about that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's happening is your heart is absorbing all this information from the time you're in your mother's womb till now, and it's storing data about how you see yourself, how you see God, how you believe you have to behave, act, follow certain rules, please certain people to feel good about yourself.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So your heart's full of that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: That would be what I would call your belief system.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's interesting that it says if you don't tame your tongue, you deceive your own heart.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You you you speak with a forked tongue.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you know you can you can say this?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know God loves me.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know God loves me.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you know you can say that out of your head, and yet when something doesn't go the way you want it to, your heart goes into its stored treasure and says, you know, dude, you're such a loser.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: God, God's just disappointed in you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you would do this or that more or better or less of that, God would be so much happier with you.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what just happened?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: My head was parroting the right things, but my heart stored up a treasure of ants, automatic negative thoughts.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's jump back to ABC.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: What happens?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: External events trigger my belief system.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I it here's the problem.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It works really fast.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the next thing I know, I'm spiraling emotionally.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the trick that we're trying to work on, and we're gonna just keep practicing together is this your thinking part reacts much slower than your brain reacts slower than your heart, you might say.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your mind reacts slower than your heart.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So your heart's already taking you over here before your mind catches up to it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what you can learn to do, and what we're gonna try to help you learn to do, is how to, whether it's after the fact that you practice, but how to catch this belief system.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, we you've we've used these phrases before: identify, challenge, and change, or capture, question, replace.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: What we want to do is capture those things that are in our heart, take every thought captive.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: We want to capture them, we want to question them, and then we want to replace them.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when you learn to do that, external events, people's behavior, circumstances, yes, they will still affect you some, but they will not affect you to the extent they have in the past, because you're learning to manage, B, A, activating events, C, consequence or corresponding action.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: B, I'm learning to manage intentionally my belief system, what I believe about myself, God, other people, what I need for them, how I get it, etc.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I love talking about this stuff.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you're getting something out of it.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are awesome.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am a blessed man to have so many wonderful friends.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.