Faith, Mental Health & Renewing Your Mind

Dr. Monica Hill: Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Well, hi.
How are my people?
Lovely.
Phrasing his booby traps.
Already trying to take me out.
So, do we want to be healed?
Yes, I like that.
So how you respond to this question will determine how you receive and apply this information.
we're about to walk through today. So next, next slide. Sorry, I don't have the
advanced here. There we go. So today we're going to walk through a couple of things.
We're going to define some things that pertain to mental health and strategies to support our
mental health. We're also going to get an understanding. The Lord says in all thy
getting, get an understanding. So we definitely want to do that. And then again, we're going to
talk about our weapons. What weapons do we have at our disposal to combat this mental health thing
have going on in our society.
Next slide.
By a show of hands, I want you to raise your hand
if you have ever said, I am any of those things.
I am stressed, I'm burned out.
Look around the room if you have said any of those phrases.
Look around the room.
Okay, now lower your hands.
We're gonna come back to that.
We will come back to that.
So let's keep moving.
Next slide.
Here we go, by the numbers.
Here are the mental health numbers.
I pulled this this morning because I was just curious
about what's going on in our society,
what's going on in our culture.
So from a mental health standpoint,
this is what we're looking at.
So the percentage of adults age 18 and older
with regular feelings of worry and nervousness or anxiety
is about 12%.
Now, the next one is depression, about 5%.
But if you look at individuals ages 18 to 24,
that only accounts for about 12% of the population.
Well, you fall within that demographic of individuals
who are very, very stressed, very worried.
It says regular, so that means chronic.
You spend a lot of your time ruminating on things
on. That is why it's so important that we get a handle on what's going on up here.
Are we taking every thought captive? Are we chasing every emotion that we feel?
Emotions are awesome. God gave them to us for a reason. They're barometric pressure. They tell
us there's a change in atmosphere. They are not meant for us to chase and run after.
They are just meant for us to assess what is going on.
So, now, we need to make sure we're all on the same page in how we're defining things.
So, whenever you look at fear, fear is actually defined as, you want to go to the next slide.
There we go.
Fear is actually defined as a strong and pleasant emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, pain,
Harm whether the threat is real or imagine the what-if stuff then if you go to the next one stress
stress is actually a substantial imbalance between
physical and psychological
Demands placed on an individual so in other words it is do I believe?
That I have the resources to meet the man that's thrust on me in front of me
Now we measure that in two ways
Distress and eustress. Distress is the one that isn't facilitative. It doesn't really help us in our performance, in our walk everyday lives.
The eustress is the good one. It's almost like a primer. Like an athlete getting into the starting blocks.
Like okay, it's that nervous energy, that go, like it's time to go, it's go time. You need that. You need some of that.
It's facilitative. It can help you. But it's the chronic stuff that we want to talk about.
And next slide.
Anxiety. So these are negative emotions. They're associated with nervousness, worry, apprehension,
and it's part of the activation or the arousal of the autonomic nervous system.
The cool thing about this is it comes in two forms. And you're like, "Why is it cool?"
Well, it's cognitive and it's somatic. So you're, essentially what happens,
your thoughts begin to trigger some things.
Your body shows you what those things are.
It has a response to it.
Anyone ever had the blood or flies in the stomach,
heart rate increases, all of that stuff?
Well, that's what that is.
Now, the next one, arousal.
So arousal is measured on a continuum.
Sleep is the lowest form, and the highest form is flooded.
It's the overwhelming sense of worry, anxiety, things of that nature.
And then next slide.
So why does any of this matter?
Why am I telling you this?
In high-demand settings, anxiety is an unpleasant psychological state,
and we react to stress.
It's the concerning performance task under pressure.
So the reason this is so important is because we are not careful.
We could all, many of us in this room could be living in what we call amygdala hijack.
The amygdala is great.
Its role is to measure and threat responses.
So what happens is, so everyone hold up your finger.
Hold up your little finger.
Do it, bend it like this.
The amygdala is about this big.
But it's responsible for so much.
You could literally be governed by something this big right here.
It's calling the shots.
that is what amygdala hijack means so the amygdala is part of the the way we interpret what threat is
more importantly what what learned fear looks like so why did i say learn fear you ever been
around kids little jokers aren't afraid of anything are they man they have never wrestled
with gravity, that's why they jump off stuff.
They don't know.
They don't know, hey, danger.
They have no clue.
So for me, I believe that fear is a learned response.
They don't come out of the womb being afraid.
There is something about this thing called life
and the things going on in life where we learn fear.
And then record that memory.
because whatever it was was so bad or so heavy
or whatever, so uncomfortable, we want to avoid it.
So we go through great pains to try to avoid things
that are uncomfortable.
That's one of the brain's responsibilities,
survival, protection.
So the amygdala gets into this loop
where it's like, uh-oh, threat, threat, threat,
threat, threat, threat.
So we never get to up here to where reasoning and logic
and imagination happen, the prefrontal cortex,
we never get up here.
where we can make a decision and decide whether or not
we actually have resources to deal with what's going on.
So we basically get in agreement with all of the stuff
that the amygdala is telling us.
Be afraid of that, avoid that, be comfortable over here.
What if the very thing that the Lord is trying to usher you
into for your own good, for your future, for your legacy,
is that meant to make you uncomfortable?
In opening chapel, it was said repeatedly that this is supposed to be hard.
It's supposed to be challenging.
That's what you signed up for.
Anything worthwhile is going to have some teeth.
It's going to fight back.
But maybe we should have a Jacob response.
I'm not going to let you go until you bless me.
Don't retreat.
Do not give one inch to fear.
Because thank you.
Right on cue.
They agreed with me.
That's what you didn't hear.
You're welcome.
I got you.
Okay.
Now, let's go to the next slide.
Okay.
So the autonomic nervous system, let's go.
It's part of the peripheral nervous system.
Now I have to get my thoughts process back in line.
But we're there.
So we want to be this guy, you know, the parasympathetic, the rest-digest guy.
We want to just chill, just chill.
Everything is steady state, all relaxed.
But this is what happens when we get into amygdala hijack.
Everything is threatened.
We're running all the time.
And it's always playing in the background, which we'll get into later.
It's always running in the background.
This is what makes this loop so dangerous once you get into this amygdala hijack loop.
So over here we have what's called the inverted U. Inverted U has been around for, as they
say in the streets, hot minute, 1908.
So since it's been around hot minute, that means people have tried to poke a lot of holes
in it, but it still stands.
Like the Bible.
Ooh.
plug.
So,
with that said,
you guys are awesome.
So, with that said,
if you look at the
chart, so the one with the colorful
one, so in the middle, you remember that
eustress thing? That's the good stuff.
That's the good stuff. That's
the sweet spot in arousal
and emotional regulation. That's when
hey, I'm not too
low I'm not too high and stats we would call that like normally distributed
emotion if you will but once you get over to the red I know it's small but it
says things like illness and fatigue and depression burnout that's when you start
living over there and make the amygdala hijack will keep you in the red zone
That's not what we want. That's a far cry from balance, what the Lord calls us
to walk in, balance. Now that cycle, it's a continual loop. If you stay in
amygdala hijack it just continues to run. So what happens in stage one,
environmental demand, a stimuli is presented, you have to make a call
whether or not you have the resources to address it. If the amygdala hijack says no, because
remember, it's responsible for learning emotion too. If it says no, then you go to the next
one. The perception is, I do not have resources. Then you go to the next one. You respond physiologically
and psychologically. Then you go to the next one. The behavioral consequence is too high.
Then you start all over again
Life doesn't play fair though. You don't just get to deal with one situation at a time. There's a there's a compounding factor
that happens
So now we didn't address that part so we get to add something else then we get to add something else
Then we get to add something else. So then the things start to feel really really heavy
Next slide
that little red, this little bitty, remember the little bitty? The red. So when you're there,
here are some of the things you experience. You experience increases in cortisol levels
and adrenaline. That's the stress hormone. It surges through your body and increases heart
rate and things of that nature. The other thing that it does is it arrests information getting
to the prefrontal cortex up here.
Now, God bless you.
The reason this matters is because your brain anatomy begins to change
and your neural pathways begin to change.
It's like driving the same pathway home or walking the same way home every day.
You begin to wear a path, and it becomes really easy to spot which way you need to go.
The blue, look at where most of the activation is.
You're like, so who are these individuals?
Well, this side are individuals who are living with PTSD, depression, anxiety, stress, all of those things, chronic.
The other side are individuals who are from a group who aren't living in that way for whatever reason.
Maybe they made different choices.
Maybe they've had different life experiences.
Or maybe their perception of those experiences is different.
Case in point, it changes your brain.
What you feed grows.
The amygdala, those neural pathways to it, it tends to think about it this way.
It grows.
The other pores, what you aren't feeding, shrinks.
So that's what you have to be mindful of.
Now, next slide, please.
But we have weapons.
Now we're going to get into the weapons part, which is so much fun.
you remember when I asked you a show of hands who has ever said I am so I had a God thought
what else do you do at like three o'clock in the morning you talk to the Lord or he's talking to
you and you're listening that's more after experience what's happening but anywho he kept
taking me back to the I am I am that's how he introduced himself to Moses he said I am who I am
I am that I am. Now I want you to think about this for a second. His word does not return void.
Satan knows this. He knows this. So Satan says, hmm, he's not very sophisticated.
So when you say, I am depressed, I am stressed, I am, you are assuming that identity whether or
Now you know it.
Now there's a difference between acknowledging
something has happened and living there.
My hope is by the end of this thing,
we set up some lean-tos and not build foundations there.
At this point, I am advocating for eviction.
I want you to self-evict from whatever this is
that you're living under,
in terms of how you talk to yourselves.
And so that's our first weapon, self-talk.
What are you saying?
Self-talk is this internal dialogue
monologue that's going on. It plays on a loop. And if you're an amygdala hijack, what's probably
happening is the enemy has inserted his playlist. It's all accusation, all of it. He hates us.
Let's just put it on record. Is this being recorded? He hates us. He absolutely cannot
stand us. So if he knows this, I'm not going to say anything that edifies or encourages you
ever. That's all. I may tell you do what feels good. Is everything that feels good,
is that always beneficial for us? I may tell you stuff like that, but I'm not going to tell you
you are the redeemed of the Lord and I say so. Who the son sets free is free indeed.
You are the apple of my eye.
You guys know he sings over you?
That every thought towards you is good?
So if you're having trouble coming up with anything to say that is good about yourself
to replace all of the trash that you have been thinking and speaking to yourselves in that internal dialogue,
give it a go.
Just Google it.
I did it this...
It's all running together.
When did I do it?
I won't lie.
I don't remember.
But it's been in the last 48 hours.
So give it a go.
All I did was type, how does God see me?
That was it.
Man, it was some cool stuff coming up.
Thank you, AI.
You finally came through for us.
So there you have it.
All you have to do is give it a Google and then start rehearsing and thinking on such things.
Now, we can leave it there.
Mental rehearsal.
So how does this work practically?
So you become really good at generating a script so AI can come through again for us. This is how to use it responsibly
This is how
So you can go in and that thing that is besetting you that is coming against you that is tormenting you you can go and
You can say you know what?
I've had enough you can draw a hard line in the sand
Google something that is
Encouraging but vivid
You paint a picture of what it is that you want to address, a situation, a behavior, whatever it is, and then you begin to rehearse that.
What a powerful way, a daily practice of renewing your mind.
Good old Romans 12.
What a great exercise.
It's your words, the thing you want to address in your own words.
Then we go to arousal regulation.
Arousal regulation is really cool because it is the process of actually addressing some of the things you have going on through breathing techniques, breathing exercises.
Now, here are a couple.
There is box breathing.
That's a go-to.
So you go breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four.
Now I'm not gonna I've been doing this for a while and I've had clients straight up look at me like that's too complicated
So it's like okay, then let's not do that
Here's the thing I can come in here and I can give you all of these these tips and strategies and all of that good stuff
My thing is find something that works for you. There's breathe and tap
That is you're applying pressure like almost like acupressure to various parts of your body
It has multiple benefits where you're bringing the awareness to those areas and away from the
situation just to break that loop, that cycle of thinking. But can I tell you just the power
of being still? We're so busy. We're running around all over the place all the time. You
You notice I haven't said put your cell phones down?
And said that because right now you're probably looking for a way out.
And so oftentimes cell phones are just a risk as an escape.
I want you to be so filled with him and your identity in him.
You don't even need it.
Cell phones take their rightful place is just a form of communication, not our everything,
our dependence, our emotional dependence isn't connected to them anymore. There's power in
just being still. Just be still. And then that last one, gratitude. That's what gratitude
is, but I highlighted a couple of things for you. Gratitude has this uncanny ability of
taking you outside of yourself. When you get into a big little hijack, everything turns
word the focus is me me me i i me me me i i me me me i i on repeat all day long but when you walk
in gratitude It peels back those layers and the callous area and it opens you up to so many
beautiful things like other people. Oh, wait a minute. What did God tell us to do love him and
love people? How can I truly love someone else if I'm so focused like this if everything is about me
if I'm so focused like this if I'm so focused like this if I'm so focused like this if I'm so focused
on this campus we tell people we walk with you the only way that happens in a
form that honors the Lord is we have got to move I out of the way now I'm not
gonna even lie walking walking what people cost loving people costs but it's
so worth it oh man it's worth it I keep looking out here and you're like well
Where are you
the time. So I know my husband's in the back somewhere. I can't see him. But if you ask him
to this day, from the very first moment I met him and I asked him, how are you? He says, grateful.
The first real conversation I had with the man, we're standing in the dog food aisle at Sam's.
Seriously, but that's not what we're talking about today. But anywho, in the dog food aisle
at Sam's. I said, how are you?
He says, grateful. I didn't know he had just
lost his mom.
How are you
grateful?
Thank you.
Grateful.
So
grateful triggers the brain's
reward system, releases hormones and
neurotransmitters that have tangible
physical and mental health. It can
actually help you start to rewrite
brain it is healing guys gratitude is healing I don't know for some reason I
just felt and almost compelled to just go oh like gratitude is like beast mode
but I'm not dressed for it I don't have on my sweats so next slide and then the
last one probably one of the most powerful ones jesus himself i'm not going to say probably the
most this is how you overcome we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony
people do not get called to witness stands to be quiet testimony speaks what do you have to
to be grateful for? What has he done for you? You don't just go up there and chill. I mean,
you can. It's not really a good witness. You have got to know everywhere his handprint
has been. And you have no way of knowing, but it sure is fun chasing and hunting and
just seeing and looking how he's blessed me here, how he's blessed me there, and telling
other people about it and inviting them into it. So what are we speaking? I wonder if we're
testifying to things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good, virtuous, praiseworthy.
What are we meditating on?
So let's make it personal.
Do you want to be healed?
I said we earlier.
But do you?
Has this mental health stuff and my anxiety, my depression,
has it become so entrenched and so grafted into who you are
in terms of your identity that you don't even know where to begin?
Well, I'm asking you.
Give Jesus a shot.
He has a vested interest in you getting to know him.
It cost him his life.
He's already died for you, so the value proposition is off the table.
Greater love than no man has.
Then he laid down his life for his friends.
He's already done that part.
So if you can trust him with that, can't you trust him with your mental health?
So, with that said, he's waiting for you.
You are not waiting for him.
But there are so many things you have at your disposal and so many people you have at your disposal who want to love you, who want to walk with you, who want to hear what you have to say.
But more importantly, he already knows your thoughts from afar.
So with that, God, thank you so much for this day.
Thank you so much for the way that you move and you work in our lives, each and every one of us.
And Father, thank you that the very fact that we have trials and tribulations, Jesus said we would have them.
But he said to take heart and be of good courage because you have already overcome everything that we have walked through or will walk through.
So, Father, we trust you.
We trust you with our future.
Father, we trust you with our thoughts.
And, Father, we trust you even in teaching us how to walk this thing out.
Father, I pray that you would be with every individual in here and every individual's family, Lord.
That, Father, that today will truly be a new day.
That we will seek you on a new day.
We were hunger and thirst for things that we never have in a new way, Lord.
Father, we just pray peace.
Peace in our minds, peace in our bodies, and peace in everything connected to us.
Father, we thank you and we love you, and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
You are dismissed.