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FLUSH YOUR STRESS! · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, folks, I'm not sure if uh I'm doing this the way I wanted to do it.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it might be showing up on the wrong page.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying that so that when I do repost it to the right page, um, you will hear me apologizing if you were there live.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what I want to do today is talk about your brain and the drugs that drive it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're gonna use an example of stress and how stress affects us and um and just kind of ponder through that.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've been talking about the brain and all, you know, like I said last week, if you didn't listen to last week, listen to last week because I I really explain a little bit why I'm doing all this stuff on the brain and why I think it's important.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I've just learned a lot about how to incorporate our understanding of the brain into our efforts to change and grow, break patterns and cycles in our life.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, experience more of the kind of emotion we really want to experience, and less of the emotions that we don't.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not not when they're appropriate.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if life's sad, then life's sad, and let's be be authentic about that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there's times when life's good and we still don't feel good.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let's talk a little bit about a cycle that I think we all get caught in.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this would be a whole stress cycle, all right.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it starts at the top with being hyper-stimulated.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: What does hyper mean over, uh uh, you know, above, you know, extreme amounts, whatever.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and here's the thing about your brain.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain basically does not distinguish between good stress and bad stress.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you're uh engaged, excited, alert, angry, um, anticipating something very excitedly, your brain experiences chemicals that are chemicals of stimulation, agitation, engagement, etc.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Positive or negative.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: When I went through my uh crash, I don't know, I guess now it's been six, eight years ago, um, I studied all this stuff and I learned, even from watching my own stress levels, that um good stress and bad stress had the same effect on how my brain felt, if if you can say it that way.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So hyper stimulated, what does that mean?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That means do you know how to be still?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to be quiet on the inside?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to turn off all your devices and just be in a moment?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: One way to say it is do you know how to be bored and just allow yourself to connect to everything that's in the moment you're in?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sitting here up in Atlanta working with an awesome church, friends of mine, and I'm looking out the window of my room and beautiful trees.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And can I slow down enough to connect to that?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if not, I'm probably hyper stimulated.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: What that leads to is a consistently high state of adrenaline.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, adrenaline, we use that term, but it covers a whole handful of chemicals, and um so when I'm agitated, stimulated, engaged, I I'm on adrenaline, you might say, which is kind of it feels empowering.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It feels, you know, it feels like, man, I can do anything.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we like it kind of.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem with it is it's meant to empower us to handle a moment, a situation, and then the way God created us was and then we come back down to a less stimulated, less adrenalized state.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't, if we get up and we're on our devices, if we go through the day and we're doing different things, and then we get finally get the kids in bed and we we're in bed and we're still on our devices, or we're playing a video game that just whatever.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is we stay adrenalized.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Adrenaline is the fight flight.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can handle this dangerous moment, and it can be a speech you're giving, it can be all kinds of things.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what happens when we stay there and don't flush it out is we become stuck in this hyper-alert place, and it's it's its function is to protect us, its function is to enable us to deal with threats.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what happens is we get stuck in a state of hyper alertness to threats, not to how beautiful that tree is out there, but a sense of what what's in my environment that could hurt me.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is everything feels like a threat.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everything feels dangerous.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: What we're meant to do is get go into an adrenalized state, deal with whatever the challenge is, and then come down out of that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not just back to normal, but down low enough in a rest cycle, rest rhythm to where we flush the adrenaline out of our system, and then we kind of buoy back up to a nice middle place.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us aren't very good at that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Adrenaline is a hormone released by the central nervous system in response to stress.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And notice the star, it could be positive or negative.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Stress, anger, or fear.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It acts to increase our heart rate, our blood pressure, our cardiac output.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it alerts your entire body that there's something we've got to deal with.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's get up for it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And everything in your body awakens to challenge.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's another chemical in your brain called serotonin, and it's what we call the feel-good hormone.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It decreases anxiety and physiological stress.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they're kind of when one's up, the other's down, not immediately, but in a in a practical sense.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And serotonin is what kind of levels our moods out and makes us where our moods fit the situation better.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it works to help us feel happy and contented.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's where it gets tricky.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you stay in a hyperadrenalized state, when you stay overstimulated, in other words, consistently high adrenaline, they've sit found that when you have high adrenaline for extended periods of time, you lower the serotonin level in your brain.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Low serotonin leads to this high threat state, and your responses to threats are bigger.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That means you you overreact to life, you see negativity and danger when it isn't really there, or you see a one or a two as a five or a six, and your filter is skewed.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what it can lead to is what you might call adrenaline addiction, meaning you like that kind of sense of empowerment that adrenaline brings you.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You feel more alert, you feel like you can move quicker and faster, and I can do more.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But because it's depleting your serotonin, it can lead to anxiety issues and depression issues.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why am I doing all this?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want you to just have an example, an understanding of how the brain plays into our health, wholeness, our ability to pursue all that God has for us.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I know that's a lot.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this thing worked.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if I am on the wrong Facebook page, I'll post it to the right one.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Love you guys.