Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 18, 2020 | Fear-Less Freedom - Rochelle Walsh

Transcript

August 18, 2020 | Fear-Less Freedom - Rochelle Walsh · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, ladies, welcome.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to everyone here in our auditorium, and welcome to all those tuning in online at home.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're so glad you joined us for fearless freedom.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing to be concerned about in 2020 so far, right?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing to fear, nothing at all.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's okay to be a little afraid.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: What's not okay is to be stuck in that place.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we're so excited that you joined us tonight.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: We can't wait to see how God uses this to help women, help guys watching at home to get unstuck.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we're glad you joined us.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, after this program is done, we will immediately have the video on the Topeka Bible Church Facebook and YouTube pages.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to watch it again or share it with a friend who you think could benefit, feel free to share it from then.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we will also have a question and answer session at the very end.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're watching at home and you have some questions pop up, just type them in the Facebook or YouTube comments.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be monitoring and I'll bring them up here and we'll ask Rochelle at the end.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're here in our live audience, if you've got a piece of paper or if you don't, just hold up your hand and we'll get you one.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can write your question and we'll take those questions at the end.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to tell you about something that we're doing this Sunday, especially for those of you who don't have a home church.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Here at Tika Bible Church, we are always thinking of new and different ways to do things, especially in this unusual season.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those is our tailgate at 10.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is an outdoor church service this Sunday on the north lawn of our College Avenue building.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's just right across the street back here.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: We have a huge lawn with all kinds of shade trees.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We will have outdoor church, we'll have children's church.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: There won't be any Sunday school sessions that day, just church together at 10 o'clock as a church family.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Then we'll have some opportunities for you to browse different ministry tents, see what they're doing this fall, and you maybe even sign up to serve.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then the best part, we'll have hot dogs and chips and soda and lots of tailgating games.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we invite you, especially if you don't have a home church, to join us this Sunday.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's something totally out of our norm, and we'd love to have you here.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, without any further ado, I'm going to introduce our speaker, Rachelle Walsh.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rachelle has a whole bunch of letters after her name, which means she's really smart.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the part that she wants you to know is that she is a disciple of Christ.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's her identity.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: She's a wife and mother of three.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's a licensed therapist specializing in brain-based strategies to help clients overcome anxiety and the effects of trauma.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: To further support and educate on issues of brain health, she recently created and runs a free private Facebook group called Anxiety Overcomers, creating a community for women committed to walking through fear on a daily basis.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's welcome Rochelle Walsh.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an exciting topic for me.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Fearless freedom.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So fear and freedom, they have somewhat of an inverse relationship.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the more we have of one, the less we tend to have of another.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so my goal here tonight is to educate you a little bit about fear.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that you, whether you want to call it stress or anxiety, fear, I hope you leave tonight knowing a little bit more about the brain and your health than you did before.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you leave feeling encouraged, having a few things to think about in terms of moving out of that and breaking free.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because like Teresa says, we're all gonna have some fear, we're gonna have stress and anxiety, but we don't want to be stuck there.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, like Teresa said, I am a therapist, and so this is this is my area.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love brain health.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um 40 million Americans in 2019 were struggling with anxiety disorders.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And of the, that's 18% of our population, and of those, over half of those were in the moderate to severe category, which means it had really impaired their life functioning, you know, limited their freedom, limited what they could do.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And only 36% receive treatment, even though it's really probably the most treatable of all mental health conditions.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there's really an under treatment of anxiety, and I think there's a couple reasons to that I'm gonna get to later.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I first wanted to start off, and I think I have a slide, they're gonna show a picture of the brain here, so I can kind of show you what that looks like.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But here is what if you can just nerd out with me a little bit, I'm gonna talk technical and show you what happens in our brain so that we understand what separates what is our fear response and what separates the normal fear response that God wants us to have to get out of danger, and then when it becomes anxiety and problematic and becomes a physical health issue.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So here is a very sophisticated picture of your brain, and here's what happens.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So back when we were cavemen and women, we needed to be able to escape the mountain lion, right?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we would be out hunting and gathering, and we would need to have all of our senses really engaged, and so if there was a danger, we could quickly protect ourselves without thinking and get into get to safety.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we would fight, fly, or freeze.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what that looks like.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So information comes in.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you and I are hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, touching things right now, and it's coming in, and when information comes in from our environment, it goes to a part of our brain called the thalamus.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I only put this here because it's not the names aren't important, but I want you to see the proximity because this is where a lot of misconception happens about anxiety.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it comes in here, and this little guy's job says, I gotta get this information everywhere.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: All the things that we can't even make sense of that are coming in our environment.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it first goes to a part of our brain that sits very close.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: See how close those sit, the amygdala?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And its job is to say, is this dangerous?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is this dangerous?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But how do we know?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because some people might be really scared of spiders, others may not be.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody may be really afraid of the dark, and someone else is not.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, how how do we know?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: How does the amygdala know, are we in danger or are we not?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It consults our hippocampus, which sits really close.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: What do I know about this?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: What have I experienced about dark rooms?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: What do I know about spiders?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll say, yes or no.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a threat, yes or no.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then automatically, once we say yes or no, our stress response kicks in.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we call fear.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: We start sweating, you know, our heart races, cholesterol dumps into our bloodstream, acid goes to our stomach, all these things to protect us to get out of danger.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when this stress response happens, it happens.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our brain, God made us so um sophisticated, he didn't want us to have to think and problem solve, he just wanted us to be able to escape.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So all of this happens far before it hits our thinking brain.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we have reason, this is where we have logic.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Has anybody ever noticed that your strongest fear responses are not always your most rational responses?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, because it's not, it's not rational thought, it's a reaction, it's protective.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what that's what it's intended to do is to get us out of danger.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we feel in danger when we're not actually about to be eaten, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that scare us that have nothing to do with danger.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we scare disapproval, we scare conflict, we scare risk that hasn't yet happened, we we are afraid of people um not liking us, we fear rejection, we fear abandonment, we fear many things.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in thinking about living our lives not stuck in fear, we want to be able to get out of the burning house and escape the you know, the predator that's about to get us, but we don't want to live in this constant state of fear all the time.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because this reaction is, you know, if it if it's constant, it's too much of a good thing.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because all those things that I said happened, cortisol, you know, cortisol's flooding through us, again, you know, blood leaving our gut, it makes us not be able to digest our food.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it sends our heart rate up.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and that cholesterol that's flooding into our bloodstream to thicken our blood so that we won't bleed to death as quickly when we are about to get eaten, you know, that causes high cholesterol.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's great physical harm that comes to us with ongoing stress, a stress response that turns on.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an inflammation response, and so inflammation is to help us heal.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But when the inflammation never turns off, and this goes on and on and on and on, then we get this stress response.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I showed this to you because I want you to understand that I think in the Christian community um there's a lot of misconception sometimes or shame associated with anxiety.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we're told many times in scripture to not fear, and we know that God doesn't want us living in fear, but we also know that our brain is a very physical structure.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want you to think about something for a minute.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Inflammation turned on, and I'm gonna talk in a minute about um how our brain gets conditioned to fear, because there's many things that cause this.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to ask yourself have you ever known a person full of faith who has MS?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that someone could be full of faith and have a lesion on their brain?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anyone full of faith who has Parkinson's?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a dysfunction of your basal ganglia down there.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee you there are many women out there, I've known many of them, they're friends of mine, they're clients of mine, who are living in an anxious state and full of faith because they have hyper-arousal of their lower brain, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's overfiring, it's overfiring of the lower brain.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think so many people, I think the reason it's undertreated is because we either normalize it and say, well, everybody's just stressed out.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's just how we are.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not normal.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not normal to wake up with your heart racing and not be able to sleep night after night after night.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not normal to feel the physical, you know, panic.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not normal to have to avoid situations because you feel like you're gonna come out of your skin.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also not always a lack of faith.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can anxiety be tied to lack of faith?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that it is sometimes.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I just want to say that, you know, we want to check for safety when we're anxious.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know we're not about to be eaten.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we know we want to know that we're putting our trust in the right place and that we are trusting our faith.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to tell you that there are women out there and men out there who are suffering with anxiety because they have a very physical condition going on in their body, an overfiring of the lower brain, and that shame oftentimes makes us hesitant to speak about it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we think, I thought I thought I gave this over to the Lord, but it just keeps coming back to me, and I just can't kind of get my bearings here, and I'm embarrassed, I'm ashamed.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't want to normalize it, but we also don't want to feel ashamed about it because that keeps us small and it keeps us stuck.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so sh fear can be conditioned in many ways.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna explain a little bit about is this making sense to people?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Does this does this resonate?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I just I know it's new information.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of it's what I learned from my field, but some of this brain stuff, you know, we have a daughter who suffered a brain injury two years ago, and through that heartbreaking journey, it's just been so educational, though, but we learned a lot about the brain that was just like an aha.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I love sharing this information because I think it destigmatizes some of the things that we experience in our mind and our body.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to tell you about condition fear.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if if things, if a spider's different for you than me, why is that, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't we just say, well, that's that really can't hurt me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: That spider's this big and I'm this big.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I scared?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you about a little boy named Albert in 1919.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is, I don't like this study, I don't like sharing this study because of um hopefully we've come a long way in how we treat research subjects.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this was a little nine-month-old baby, and they wanted to see how a brain responds to fear.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what they did is they had Albert there and he can't walk yet, so he's sitting, and it looked like he had a caregiver behind him, but then he has a researcher in her.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: The researcher has a white mask, and they just bring animals to him.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just like most kids, he's touching the animals, he's touching the white rat, he's touching the kitty, even a dog that's way bigger than him, he's responding with curiosity and pleasure and joy, and he has no fear.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: He has no fear of the researcher, he's just his happy little baby.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then they ruin that.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they decide to see can we make him afraid when there's no fear?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the animals are neutral, he likes the animals.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what they do over the next several weeks is every time the white rat comes to him, above his head, they take a hammer and I believe it was a metal pipe, and they make a loud noise.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So every time this white white rat comes to him, they startle him, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: We startle when there's loud noises.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so this little baby becomes conditioned to be very afraid of the white rat.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But he's not only afraid of the white rat, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because our memory, again, is very sophisticated.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when his brain says, What do you remember about that white rat?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's white.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's really scared of the researcher's white mask.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's terrified of the other animals because they're furry, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this little baby who had no fear, who was curious and engaging in his environment, now he's scared.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now the white rat is no longer neutral, even though it never bit him, even though it never hurt him, because he had an association in his brain.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So fear, we have fear that's a response that we are supposed to have, and then we have fear that is not a state.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have conditioned fear.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And just so that again, just to understand this a little bit more conceptually, fear can happen.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: This inflammation, this overfiring of the lower brain can happen for several reasons.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: One of that is conditioning, okay.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is trauma, okay.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is physical health conditions, hypothyroidism, gut issues, sensitivities to food.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have a vagus nerve that runs from our brain all the way down, all the way through our gut.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when that acid goes to our stomach because we're stressed, it can eat away at that lining, and we can get gut sensitivity, and 80% of the communication of the vagus nerve goes up.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a second brain.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: 90% of the serotonin produced in our brain to give us that sense of well-being produced in our gut.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So inflammation, physical health issues, conditioning, and of course, if we're not safe in our environment, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to feel safe if we're in danger, if we're in an abusive relationship, or if our environment is not safe, if we're at risk.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of reasons why we can have this chronic stress, some of them being physical, some of them being environmental, some of them being our history, and some of them being just, you know, the experiences that we're having on a day-to-day basis.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when we look at this and we say, okay, anxiety is not always a result of lack of faith.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: We can be a very faithful person and still having this going on.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to also impress upon you that it's not something we should ignore because of the physical health ramifications of being in this.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people that have anxiety feel like, you know, I just made it through the day and I feel like I ran a marathon.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed, I'm irritable.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because their body is having to work so hard just to do normal things.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's exhausting.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it also is very immunosuppressant.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about protecting our immunity, stress has the equivalent of five cigarettes a day.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to think about what it would do to your system to smoke five cigarettes a day, that's what our brain is like on stress all the time.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's not a healthy state.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't want to take for granted that um, well, I guess I just don't have anything to worry about, or I guess I'm just weak, or I guess I just don't handle things like other people, or I guess everybody, this is just the modern world.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a condition.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have a lot of toxins in our world, we have a lot of stimulation coming at us all the time, so there's definitely things we can do to limit that.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't want to ignore it, okay?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think about anxiety and, you know, breaking free from that, let's talk about for a minute about what are some things that we do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how does this anxiety then affect us?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't like to feel it, okay?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And different personalities respond to it differently.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: But one of those ways is that we try to control everything.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we want to make it safe, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we can plan incessantly.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we write all the things down, all the good things, then surely none of the bad things are gonna creep in, right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we try to plan incessantly, we try to control other people.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: We might bubble wrap our kids when they go out to play.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: We I mean I it doesn't work.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I they still get hurt, but um, you know, we we do we try to maybe control by people pleasing, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we're so nice and we never set any boundaries, then surely no one's ever gonna be upset with us or be mad at us and we won't have any conflict.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to control our environment, we try to control other people, we try to look a certain way, we try to say the right things, we try to do the right things so that we don't have to feel this uncertainty.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem with trying to control, because that can look very nice, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like who doesn't want to plan and who doesn't want to be intentional and who doesn't want to think about goals and you know plan their life accordingly, the problem is, you know, intuitively we know that we're not in control, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: The hardest things that we've experienced were not things we put on our calendar, right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: They just come.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we know we can't control other people.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: We know we can't stop our kids from getting hurt, we know we can't make everybody like us.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So then our control makes us feel incompetent and incapable and weak, and it heightens our anxiety.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing we can do to counter this feeling of anxiety is we try to avoid it at all cost.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: We try to play it very safe.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe that means never going after that job we really want.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that means uh, you know, going the other way down a hall when we see somebody that we've had an uncomfortable exchange with.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that means, you know, making excuses and not going to the social gathering or not volunteering or not, you know, being being as um forward about things that we would want or need.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to avoid anxiety by avoiding anything that might cause it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: That might be some really good things.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: That might be intimacy, that might be commitment, that might be you know taking a risk on an opportunity that you feel like God has called you to.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with avoiding is that we get smaller and smaller and smaller.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about limiting freedom, you know, that's emotional freedom.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the freedom to be able to be authentic, it's the freedom to be able to disagree with somebody, it's the freedom to be able to say what it is that we need to say or do what we need to do and participate in life the way we want to.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when we start limiting our freedom by avoiding, we miss out on some really good things.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend, Mara, who's from another country, and she grew up in a communist country, and so we were talking about the differences in relationships, and she said, You Americans, you have like so many friends, but they're so shallow, and we have so few, and they are so deep.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when she first said that, I thought she was just referencing cultural differences, but then she explained to me the impact of communism, and she said, We couldn't trust anybody.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone comes in your home, you know them very, very well.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't let people in our home, because you never know.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and so just the effect of freedom and not being able to trust people, when we start avoiding and we start living in fear, fear of what they'll think of us, fear of what, you know, so it so when we look in places where we have a lot of freedom here, but when we look at places where there's been a lot of fear, there's been a limit on freedom.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when we think about avoiding, we don't want to do that.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to stand on the edge.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing is, you know, again, we can't we can't stay there.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't avoid you can't avoid it, you have to be able to feel it.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what's fired together is wired together.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was talking a little bit ago about the brain and the memory, if we avoid that situation, it says, okay, brain says, Oh, great, great, yes, you stayed safe, you made it to work alive because you did not go over that bridge.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all you have to do is avoid that bridge again.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, and again, and again.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so it goes.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fired together, it's wired together.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have to avoid that thing.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And fear never diminishes.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes stronger and stronger.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And our freedom of what we can do and what we can experience and feel and say and tolerate all becomes very limited because of this thing called neuroplasticity in our brains.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to take some risks.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: One other way that we really try to get out of this feeling of anxiety is to distract by it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can't control it and we can't avoid it, I can eat it away, I can smoke it away, I can drink it away, I can shop it away, I can get on the internet away.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can distract myself away from what I'm feeling in my body.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this too doesn't work because the thing about fear is it chases you.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going anywhere.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you can run from it, but you cannot hide.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be there.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so the more we distract, the more of that thing we need to do so that we don't feel what we don't want to feel.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And usually that's what it is.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that we don't want to feel.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: That thing may have never hurt us, but it's what we're gonna feel when we feel that thing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm fearful of this, which I am, it's not because I think you're gonna throw rotten fruit or someone's gonna attack me in the parking lot because I offended them.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Christian audiences are nice that way.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the fear of disapproval, right?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is it that we're really fearing?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that we don't want to feel?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to feel rejection, we don't want to feel abandonment, we don't want to feel unsafe, or maybe there's been trauma in the past.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And being close or being in the dark makes us feel unsure or unsafe.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to get to the bottom of what we really feel because when we control and avoid and distract, the fear continues to be there and it grows and it begins to dominate our thoughts, begins to dominate our thoughts and our activities, and we feel chained by it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and nobody wants that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we when we start to step out of fear and we go, okay, so this is this is overstimulation of my lower brain, and it's not a rational thought process, I want to remind you that our thoughts do influence because we have a lot of involuntary thinking down here, and once we are aware of it, we can start to shift it because we can use up here to observe what's going on, and we can speak truth into it, and we can start to make these thoughts involved in our memory, we can start to make them more our automatic thoughts.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't going to be a one-fits-all.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is no happy pill that takes this away, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's different for everyone.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody has a headache and you have a headache because you drink a little bit of, I'm not pointing at any one particular, drink a little bit of wine, too much wine every night and you have a headache the next day, or you have a headache because you got hit with a hammer in the head, or you got you have a headache because you have terrible sinus pain and allergies, the treatment's gonna be different for all of those, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got trauma, changing your diet's not going to probably reverse that, right?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a genetic predisposition where you're not clearing cortisol for your system and you've got something like that, you know, thinking strategies probably are not going to change that.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've got some terrible thoughts about yourself because of things, bad things other people did to you, you know, getting off gluten may not be the answer to that.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's not a one size fits all.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there are answers, and there are help, there's help, and there are strategies.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so, just like anything, we are unique individuals, and God has put his individual fingerprint, and life has put its fingerprint on us.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's not one approach for everybody, but there's some things that we can all benefit from.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to share a few of those things with you.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about what to do, if we're not going to control and avoid and distract, the first thing is that we need to calm our mind a little bit because with everybody, regardless of where the anxiety started, wherever it's rooted, it's an overexcitability.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we have so much sensory information coming in, you know, from the blue lights on our screen to the stimulation of noise and sound and environments, that's stilling our mind is one thing that we can all really benefit from.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we start to really have single-focused attention, it starts to kind of rewire that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we can do that.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's exercises, breathing is greatly underused.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I talked about this when I've talked about before, but you know, breathing strategies change our nervous system.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: 20 minutes a day of deep breathing strategies will change your brain in a way that will be visible on a scan 15 weeks later.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So breathing strategies are huge.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing is, you know, there's there's a scripture that says you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the other one in Philippians that reminds me of kind of this meditation, which I say meditation, I'm not talking about any um practice that's not consistent with Christian theology, but I'm saying keeping your mind on that one thing.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what meditation is, training your mind to be single-focused.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're so multitasking that we overstimulate ourselves.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when our when we're kept at perfect peace because our mind is stayed on Him, if we can just try to calm our thoughts and comment and stay on that one thing.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think in Philippians 8, I don't remember the whole thing was like whatever's good and noble and true and right and lovely and admirable, think on such things, meditate on such things, make that the refrain, like make that the refrain of our mind, that those single strategies of being still and focused really start to reorganize and bring structure to our chaos.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd like to encourage you to think about that, to think about how much, how many times am I able to think about one thing, even for five minutes?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've tried, it's challenging, right?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then your thoughts straight, and that's okay.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're supposed to notice our thoughts, and it's okay to have thoughts.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can't not think, but we can choose our thoughts, and we can be intentional with choosing our thoughts.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the more we make it simple and based on truth, and we keep our mind stayed on that, the more our brain starts to organize, right?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we can start to observe.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can start to notice what's coming up, we can start to feel our sensations, we can know, you know, what it is about that situation that bothered us.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: We can start to observe when does this happen?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what triggers this?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it better?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it worse?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we can start to really pay attention to the things that we do in response that in trying to avoid are actually making it worse and keeping us in bondage to it so that we're no longer nurturing the fear, we're observing the fear, and then we're making intentional choices about stilling our mind, stilling our body, and moving forward.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this is really um, did you ever see, did anybody ever see the movie What About Bob?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of my favorite movies.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And just a recap, you know, Bill Murray plays this patient who's greatly disturbed uh with mental distress, and he's very, very fearful.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he follows his, he just gets this new psychiatrist who's kind of a big wig, and he's just um written a book and he's going on vacation with his family, and this patient follows him because he's so scared.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he he tracks him down and he finds him, and the therapist has just told him baby steps, baby steps.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: But by the end of the movie, the therapist has gone crazy, uh, you know, lost his mind, because the patient is, you know, following him, and the patient's so endearing, everybody likes him, but he's taking baby steps.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: But one of my um one of my favorite scenes in that movie is you know, you see this, he's been so fearful, he can, you know, he's like baby steps, baby steps, baby steps, and then you see this picture of him and he's sailing, and he's like, I'm sailing, I'm sailing, and then it the movie it pans out, and you see that he's tied with ropes, you know, to the mass.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: But he's sailing and he's so proud.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it reminds me of our little kids, you know, when they start to walk and they take a step and they fall.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Baby steps, and they take another step and they fall, but they haven't yet learned that they should be embarrassed by falling.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they just fall.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they take a few steps, they're just that pleasure and that exhilaration, that kind of like, I did it, I did it, look what I can do.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what it's like when we take this third step, which is we have to step into the fear.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have to move toward it, because otherwise it's our mind just tells us that we can't, we can't feel it, we can't handle it, we can't deal with it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we start taking those steps, you know, as kids get a little older than like, you know, three, four, what do they what do they do when they do something new?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Watch me, watch me, watch me.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I did it, I did it, I did it, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're so proud.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not pride, it's it's competence and confidence.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they know that they can do something.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when we step into our fear, you're gonna have to feel it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are gonna have to feel it.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing we don't really have the option not to feel it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because we, when we're standing on the bank not wanting to jump, we're feeling it just as much.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not a risk taker at all by nature, not a risk taker at all.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I always do play things safe, but I can tell you the hardest things in my life are not because I stepped into them, they're because I was pushed into them.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: But there is something that we learn when we experience that depth of fear that we can't learn outside of it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of strategies, you know, for calming my mind and all of that stuff, and it's good stuff to know, and I think you should know it, and we should all know it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: But in the real depth of fear in the middle of the night when nobody else is there, you know, it's God who's there.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so the real tragedy of our fear overtaking is that not only do we start to doubt our own competence that we can't do it and that we're not enough, but we can actually start to doubt that God's promises are true, that he is enough, and it may be bigger than us, and sometimes it is bigger than us, but it is never bigger than him, and he is never gonna leave us alone in it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: He is a strength and a refuge in a time of help, but he never promises that we're not going to be afraid.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: He teaches us what to do with our fear, because David was afraid in the cave, and Moses was afraid when he went into Egypt, and afraid before he parted the Red Sea, and they were afraid before they went into the promised land.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Mary was afraid, and we're going to be afraid, but we can also be brave in our fear, and we can be brave and we can step into it, and we can say that we can handle it, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we learn something through that that we cannot know otherwise.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was a little girl who lost both her parents by the age of 10.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Her mom told her she was not smart and she was not pretty enough, and her dad was an alcoholic.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: She went on to get married, and her husband had a public affair.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's Eleanor Roosevelt, and she said, you gain strength, courage, and confidence every time you stop to look fear in the face, and you say to yourself, I live through that horror.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can handle the next thing that comes along.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what it does for us is know that we can handle the next thing that comes along.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says, You must do that which you think you cannot do.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: You must do that which you think you cannot do.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to be still, we have to focus our mind on the one thing.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when I title this a fear less, because you know what, we're gonna have fear, but maybe we can fear less, meaning fearless things.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: What is it I'm really afraid of?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because our fear, our reverent fear of God says, I will help you get through the rest.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you won't need healing.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I pray when I need dental work, but I go to the dentist, right?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because and and so sometimes we need help.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we can do this on our own.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm not saying everybody has an anxiety disorder.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody has an anxiety disorder, but 40 million Americans do.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're gonna be a light on the hill, we're gonna learn how to be still, and we're gonna learn how to move and take action, and we're gonna learn to be able to do that thing that we cannot do, that we think we cannot do, and we're gonna find out that we can do it, and then everything else becomes a little less scary.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like you to think for tonight about something that you think you cannot do, something that your fears held you back from.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a career move, maybe it's just speaking, maybe it's going someplace.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I guarantee fear has a hold in all of our lives.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's setting boundaries, maybe it's, you know, saying no to that thing that you want to buy.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we've all had fear, fear of rejection, fear of, you know, not being enough.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And really challenge that fear and then take some steps and encourage yourself.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than I'm not gonna feel that way anymore, I'm gonna feel it, and I'm gonna go through it anyway.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that way it leads it it loses its hold on us, and we have the freedom to be and the freedom to fear less than we do.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's really what God wants from us.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that we never feel it, but that we just we don't stay in bondage to it.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So do one thing that scares you just a little and do that every day.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 37:35
  unknown: Sorry, we're showing me.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, ladies, if you've got questions, go ahead and jot them down on a piece of paper, and we've got some women who will come around.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just hold it up in the air and we'll we'll take that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sorry, live stream audience, you may not be able to see me.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go ahead and speak to the live stream first because you are two minutes behind us.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you have questions for Rochelle, please go ahead and type them in the comments on Facebook or YouTube, and we will try to get to those.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the good news is we've already got some.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna move this table up.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we can be in the light.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, again, thank you.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I can talk for two hours.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course, my power just went down.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, first, the most pressing question I think everyone will agree.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did the parents of the little baby and the white rat experiment?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Did they sue or did they get counseling?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is everything okay?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: For the white bunny, yes.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is not okay.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is not okay.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh dear.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: He died at six.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Did everyone hear that?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: The baby died.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: He died at six.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, I had no idea, or I would not have asked that question.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't know what to say after that, except for moving on to our next question.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can we just bleep that out for the live stream audience?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I look a little bit more.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I could have lied about that, but it's you could Google.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm feeling yeah, sadly.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unrelated, hydroscephalous, I think.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and you know, they didn't know as much.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news about this is like we can do you can decondition fear.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was the really sad part of the study, is they didn't decondition him.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I don't think they knew the impact of the trauma, but it's really good research in in terms of looking at how we can have be become made fearful of anything simply by association, and that that expands to other things.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, someone who is um like let's say afraid of not being in control, right?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: That might that might be that they're not in control when they're not driving.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe they have no bad association with driving, but maybe they were in an abusive home growing up and so they were never in control, so they've learned that never being in control means they're not safe.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the next question is that some of us have taken wisely taken social media breaks during the last several months.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but some of us either have to use it for work or it's maybe your only way to stay connected to your family or friends.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: What are some, other than the technical things that we can do with filtering, what are some of the things, healthy mind kinds of things that we can do to kind of push back when that fear or anxiety triggers us while scrolling.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things I would really recommend is first of all limiting your social media and giving yourself a time of day where it's not right before bed or first thing in the morning.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's research on this, you know, people who use a lot of social media have higher rates of depression.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: If we open it first thing in the morning, as most of us do, you know, that's not a good way to start out our day.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then what we think about at night, you know, sits with us all night.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our subconscious brain kind of starts to process that information.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another thing that I would just say, not just about social media, you know, well, pay attention to how you feel after certain social media.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're scrolling and all of a sudden you're feeling less than not good enough, why is everybody else doing this better?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: How come I can't be that kind of mom or party organizer?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, notice your emotional reactions because the toxins we take in are not just toxins of food or chemicals or substance, but they're toxic thoughts.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: So those toxic thoughts have structures in our brain.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So positive thought structures on a scan look very columnized, very organized.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Negative thought structures look very chaotic in the brain.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually does brain damage to have ourselves in negative states.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're watching, if you're looking at social media and you get off and you feel worse than before you started, you know, we really need to limit it.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or limit it or limit it to certain things that do encourage you.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had really never used social media and we went through this experience with my daughter.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: I joined a post-concussion syndrome support group online because I wanted to know what people are doing and have other people heard of this.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when we can find people of common interest and we're, you know, using it to educate or connect with people in a good way, um, there's not harm.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Blue light, I will say, can I just say one more thing?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Blue light glasses, blue light blacking glasses, you can get those really inexpensively, you know, in stores or but it's they're very helpful.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you could wear those like from seven to ten, most people who are having a lot of anxiety have a hard time sleeping, and they don't just have a hard time falling asleep, but they have a hard time getting into that deep sleep.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, melatonin helps melatonin helps get to sleep and kind of reset your circadic rhythm, but it does nothing to keep you asleep.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh put those blue light blocking glasses on, or you can get a film on your phone and use that in the evenings when you're doing your social media or looking at your phone.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Those are some great strategies.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh next question.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: As Christians, what advice can you give us related to being sensitive to the trauma in others and shutting down the tendency to judge a person's possible response to their trauma?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good one.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just I always try to remind myself I don't know the story, and that's probably a benefit that I have in my job is someone comes in, and my job is to to understand what the story is that informed their responses to now.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I just try to remind myself, because I mean, I I I know I can have a judgmental um spirit, and and um I think we all can to remind myself I don't know, I may not agree with the action, but I I don't know exactly why they're reacting that way, and just to be kind of curious.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: With others as we are with ourselves to be curious.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can't be curious and afraid at the same time, like in our own mind, if we're fearful, but using that um top brain to observe and be curious really helps calm a fear response.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think likewise when we're um placing judgments on others, if we can keep that in mind, it helps us to be a little less angry.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Linda asked this from online what is EMDR therapy and your thoughts on it.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite strategy.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm an EMDR practitioner.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it helps shift those neural um networks in the brain.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um is it okay if I explain for a little bit?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um EMDR, how it works, is it's eye movement or tactile stimulation that helps shift the pattern.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get in a fear response, our lower brain is kind of in this looping pattern.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll notice, we have the same thoughts again and again and the sensations.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so EMDR takes something that's really triggering and triggering a fear response, and then it forces your brain by moving your eyes, it forces your brain into a new pattern to de-stimulate or um neutralize, neutralize that triggering event by creating a new pattern in your brain.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think um I first learned of EMDR as a client, my son, when he was five, we were in an accident, he witnessed a fatality.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a a truck hit a motorcycle and it sent them into us, and so it was a really bad scene.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he developed PTSD, so taking him to an EMDR clinician, it just it worked so well, and so I got trained in it, and that's what I use with almost all my clients.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's helpful for it, it's helpful for trauma, but it's also helpful for anxiety, um, peak performance, um, just stuck emotional states.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Does that use some kind of technology, or is it just okay yeah, it there's a light bar.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some clinicians will use their fingers that there's a light bar that you can use, and there's um headphones you can use, or the tactile stimulation, like vibrating things that you hold back and forth.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a really helpful strategy for changing the brain and the way it fires and um reducing distress.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I really love it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the most um empirically searched, researched form of tool for psychotherapy.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, and with trauma, it's um yeah, really helpful.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no research that cognitive behavioral therapy helps with trauma again because thinking strategies are up here, trauma's down here, right?
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: So stored in different parts of the brain.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can't think your way out of anxiety, you can't think your way out of trauma, there's a reason.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've got some really good questions here.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some concerned parents.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'll get to those in a minute.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Lisa on Facebook wants to know can you describe high-functioning anxiety?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I hope tonight's an example of it.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's doing a great job.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because stress really like adrenaline and stress helps us perform, right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have stress, we're gonna have some anxiety.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so high performing anxiety, we just don't want to be in that state all the time.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what I would look at is, you know, is it is it is it serving you?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and there could be there could be lots written on it that I'm just not versed in.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know might be a better answer, but I'm just saying there's an optimal level of having cortisol and stress in your system, but it's supposed to be a response, and not just a response to danger.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I should have said that probably earlier, but like, you know, a new situation, you're going to a new job, you have a new um, you're meeting somebody new for the first time, you're on a first date, you're you, you know, you lost your job, things like that.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or like this, you know, setting where it's unfamiliar to you.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have some of that.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I would look at is it impairing your functioning?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not when anxieties, um, we all have it, it helps us do well, but when it's starting to close the walls are closing in and we're having a lot of physical symptoms from it.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that answers the question.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I think you got it.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to some of these parenting questions uh and then we'll wrap up here within 12 minutes or so.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how do you comfort a child with anxiety related to not knowing or being known by her birth parents?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Comfort a child with anxiety around comfort of not knowing her birth parents.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, that's a challenging one because the things that we learn um in that first two years of life and up to six months have a lot to do with that firing.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: So in our amygdala, there's a lot of fight or flight when we're a baby.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, kids startle really easily, right?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then if everything's safe and secure as we go on, that prunes by about the age of 10 or 12.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So fewer things scare us.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: So with a child who has grief about not knowing their birth parents, there's probably things around how did that happen?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: How did it happen that she didn't know them?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was were they given up at birth?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a six-month where they were in foster care?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Was, you know, was there some kind of thing developmentally that caused anxiety that's the root of that distress?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, you know, there's a lot of therapies that can be geared toward nonverbal trauma, pre-verbal trauma with kids.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't work with kids, but there are certain therapeutic approaches using somatic experiencing and EMDR and things like that, but um it's a very common um because this is probably this is too much to go into tonight, but um they say like stress and trauma is passed down through the genes.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when you know, when there's adoption, a lot of times there's distress in that in utero and things like that, so that may be part of it too.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that remarkable?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is remarkable.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, another parent.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what are some steps you would take to decondition fear in children that have been conditioned to be fearful about something?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and again, I'm gonna give you my best answer, but I'm not a ch a child therapist.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um children cannot co-regulate, they cannot, they're not supposed to be able to regulate their own emotions, right?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: So they need us to co-regulate with them.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: And most adults that I see that had an absence of this in childhood, that's why they're that's why they're chronically distressed, is because they didn't have an adult co-regulating with them.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are the parent and you have a child who's in distress, just don't underestimate your role because you are their avenue to regulation.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not developmentally appropriate for them to have to regulate themselves.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: So regulating yourself first, checking your own breathing, talking slow, getting down, looking at them eye level.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that probably the most helpful thing to say is I see you're really upset.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: I see this is really hard for you.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you're so mad about that.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because kids, you know, when they're saying, Mommy, there's McDonald's.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mommy, there's McDonald's.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to say it back.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I saw the McDonald's, we're not getting it, or whatever.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to, they want to know that you heard them.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when you read them, you help them match the word with their experience.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: You help them gain upper brain um recognition of what's going on in their body.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you say, you really wanted that toy for yourself, didn't you?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody took it from you.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard when that happens, or it's hard to share, isn't it?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then as they get this um right brain, so we're giving them.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we just say, that's ridiculous, you have plenty of toys, just go play with something else, right?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, that's a normal response that we would say.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not abusive, it's not mean, but it's left brain, it's reasoning.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in their reasoning brain.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, EMDR helps regulate right and left brain and increases the connectivity between both.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I I lose my train of thought a lot.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we're following, right?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're following.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, with them, when you give them a right brain response that helps them regulate because they're like, I see, you don't have to feel the same thing.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to say, I see you.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's upsetting.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then you, as you calm and they feel seen and they feel heard, then their escalation comes down a little bit because all of a sudden something magical happens.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not alone in it, right?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're not alone, things feel less scary.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: When no one gets it and we're alone, we get really dysregulated, especially as kids.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that probably works with adults too.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wish I'd been here 19 years ago.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you I have a 19-year-old.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I'm not sure I'm saying this right, but your thoughts on binaural beat technology?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something you're familiar with?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's like these different sounds that you know you listen to, and I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's kind of a form, I think, of uh neurofeedback.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: And my daughter's actually had this, and I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's supposed to, gosh, I don't want to, I don't want to say this if it's wrong.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you're listening, it's trying to synchronize your brain waves, and I really don't know how to answer that because I haven't read um research on it, so I don't want to give a you know, I haven't heard anything bad or good.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't know, but fair enough.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that gets through all of our online questions.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: Again, online audience, unfortunately, you're about two minutes behind us, so we're gonna wrap it up here in just a couple minutes.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'll check one more time.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wrote a couple things.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like at what point with a child or a teenager as a parent do you decide you're just not equipped to handle this particular issue and it's time to seek some professional help.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: At what point do you make that determination?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe at the point you're thinking that.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really don't know that I don't know if there's, you know, there's probably a different threshold for every person.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's probably a right or wrong answer to that.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, probably the impact on the child and the impact on the family.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I don't know.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I'm biased because that's what I do.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, there's great benefit in learning how to help your kids deal with these kinds of things while they're under your roof and investigating, and I'm always of the mind, I've always, you know, the important question to me is why?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is there this dysfunction, whether it's physical or emotional?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so when a kid is struggling against stress is normal, but if if it's interfering with school, if you know family relationships are getting to where they're really distressing and there's a ton of conflict, I mean, I I probably sooner rather than later because it's not gonna hurt if it's not a good fit, then it won't be a good fit.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: You'll learn pretty quickly.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: So before we close out, I'm gonna check Facebook one more time.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see any more questions.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: But do you have any books that you recommend for not just parents, but for anyone who wants to learn more about brain health or about dealing with fear?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um The Body Keeps Score is a really good book by Bessel Vande Koek.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty heavy, but in terms of the things I was talking about in the brain, it's really talks about trauma in the brain more than just anxiety, but it really explains um all of this.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a pretty thick book.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you're gonna, you know, read this in a few nights.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty in-depth.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: But um, and then I like a lot of um podcasts.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: So like I listen to Dr.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Caroline Leaf.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's a neuroscientist, she talks about the brain, and she's also Christian, so she has a lot of things that are really sound advice.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Caroline Leaf, she has a book Switch on Your Brain.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really like that one.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then Dr.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Hyman, he's an MD, and he was the head of the, I think he still is, but he has his own clinic, but he was the head of the, at least for a time, head of the functional medicine clinic at Cleveland Clinic.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he really talks about gut health and how it affects your mental health as well as your physical health.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Dr.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wilkell.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, I read somewhere that um the newest research takes 18 years to hit your doctor's office.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I know when we were in that situation of really needing to understand things about the brain, we were searching out people who were like on the cutting edge of the research.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like to listen to people online who um are progressive in that way because it's I feel like you're gonna get more thorough explanations of the why rather than these are the symptoms.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's anxious and doesn't know they're anxious.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: They know they're anxious, you know, they know something's not right, um, but it's not a one size fits all.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think holistic practitioners such as those.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm gonna pray uh for all of us tonight and for our online audience too, and then we'll thank Rochelle once again.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go to our Lord in prayer, Father God.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you did not give us the spirit of fear, but you did give us the tools to overcome the things that trouble us.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: We just pray that you make us aware of our response to different triggers, that you help us take what we learned tonight and put it into practice so that we can be more focused on the joyful things that you do and give us those great fruits of the Spirit.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we pray for healing for women and men who might be watching here online.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: For those who are troubled, we ask that you just overcome them with your Holy Spirit, with healing and with wisdom and with comfort and a cure.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we thank you for Rochelle.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: We thank you for the things that she had to share tonight.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: We ask that you bless her, bless her family on their journey, especially with her daughter.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: We just pray for supernatural healing there and for wisdom for everyone involved.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for bringing these people to us tonight, and we ask for your blessing on them in your son's name.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Rashad.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you.