Are You Neurotic?

hello everyone this is your brother from another mother mark dejesus bringing to you a broadcast with the question are you neurotic [Laughter] i'm sure there will be a number of people who click into this zoo oh maybe i am maybe i am you know we look up words like neuroticism and you can find articles of 10 ways that you know that you have this right and people always it's me i have this i have this or maybe we start off with going my father has it my mother my mother-in-law has oh i know my sister is we think of other people right so let's not talk about other people let's talk about you and i are you neurotic am i neurotic can i even ask the question will the conclusion leave you feeling shameful condemned see what i like to do in my work is take subjects that many times we talk about that involve mental health emotional health relationships life how we think how we see god how we see ourselves how we see others and look at it through an honest lens without condemning ourselves without condemning each other we see through so much through the lens of shame quite frankly it makes our healing journey so unproductive we judge ourselves we judge each other could there be aspects where we go you know what in some ways yeah i can be neurotic i can have some of those tendencies i get it you know what god you love me and you're working in my life thank you that you can heal me you can lead me into greater freedom and you know what this is all a part of my journey now i found it somewhat helpful because the tendencies i had in ocd made me realize that overall i have a hypersensitivity that i invited god to begin to heal now i don't ask god to change my sensitivity because i have the ability to empathize connect have compassion to feel what people are going through and connect to that i never want to change that i never want to remove that i don't want to numb that out i don't want to escape that there's been times i've wanted to run away from it there's times i was like man god can you just give me a different wiring there was times i went through self-hatred of disliking some of the ways and traits that i went about life and instead i tuned into god's compassionate love for me and realized i'm on a journey and there are areas of my life that as god heals them and leads me into greater wholeness and of course when i talk about healing it's always a journey not just a destination it's not just this black and white i'm broken and now i'm perfectly healed it's like let's look let's let go of all that pressure instead let's allow god to lead us on a journey and i found myself bringing a new compassion to my battles my struggles to see myself through the patience and kindness of god which i document in the book god loves me and i love myself because this was a game changer for me led me into other areas of freedom and so much of that i share in my materials but i began to look at myself with greater compassion and so the term neurotic is connected to neuroticism in the old days there was a term neurosis that was used and in documenting it's not used that term neurosis is not used as much but neuroticism can be in in some psychology circles considered a personality trait there are some personality traits that that are discussed neuroticism being one of them but i found it interesting because when i look at the characteristics of neuroticism it is speaking of someone that can be more prone to chronic anxiety kind of related issues mood disorders they're more prone to depression and when i looked at it i was like wow i can certainly have some tendencies towards those things now again you got to look at this through compassion don't look at it through a black and white lens or mark is it me maybe no oh there's no hope for me look at yourself compassionately and you know what i noticed i noticed that for many people that struggle with mental health issues they have sensitive hearts very sensitive emotionally that's a really good trait it can be used for power but it can also be used to create a lot of torment a lot of ups and downs and a lot of real challenges and certain depression or mood issues and things like that so what's needed is god to do healing work and freedom work and grounding us so that that sensitivity can be used for good secondly i realize is that you can have a tendency to let your your nervous system and thought patterns flow into a lot of extra territory here's what i discovered i would have discussions with people not to share hey there's something i'm thinking about right and friends or people i'm talking to would go man i never thought of it that way and at first i was like oh you know great i had some great thoughts but then i realized like i can tend to float into territories of thinking that not necessarily everyone around me spends time thinking about now that can be good providing it increases the adventure discovery faith hope and love in my life it can also work harshly against me because my thinkers my feelers can poke into stuff i don't need to and i've had to allow myself to go through a he not just a healing journey but a maturing journey because the bible has a lot to say about mental health but we're just not seeing it for some reason maybe it's because we need to see mental health you know literally written in the bible otherwise the bible doesn't say anything about it but i'll get to that in just a minute when we talk about neuroticism it's a tendency towards anxiety depression a lot of self-doubt that's a propensity to greater anxiety that self-doubt that's definitely ocd territory always doubting always doubting you're doubting your doubts you're doubting your doubts about your doubts that doubt about your doubts and then you're doubting doubting about your doubts to get the doubt doubt do you follow that well that's that's what it feels like to follow an ocd train of thought doubting the doubt doubt doubt to doubt doubt followed the doubt get the doubt of doubt doubting on the doubt to doubt to doubt and doubt doubt doubt can you help me with that mark overall neuroticism is like a tendency to leaning to negative things like your default setting go to the negative go to the negative go to the negative now it can lead you to seeing things through like a dim lens so as a christian you might look at the times we live in your propensity when you look at it is to look to oh jesus is coming back jesus coming back it's the end times it's the end times it's the end times whether it is or whether you know it's going to happen or happen tomorrow you just there's a dark lens over it god never designed for our sense of what's coming to be filled with a doom gloom and a fearful perspective never but for people that are neurotic they tend to go to a negative perspective and i found for me that was a tendency in my life is i would look at the negative and i felt like it was a gift like i look at the negative because i i see the negative outcome so therefore we can plan for it and be protective against it it's like people who can see the worst case scenario in a situation they look for it some people in your jobs are in your field of work that's what you're supposed to do i have people that i interact with who have ocd that they have a line of work many of them their line of work their negative you know very very narrow in intense thinking actually helps their job do their job well now in my my i have an ability to take information consume it extract it and go through and find ways to pull it out in ways that are very practical and useful that was used negatively for so long because i would have a just a propensity to just hit that negative viewpoint and then worst case scenarios foreboding that i talk about in one of my videos about foreboding mindset of just seeing everything through that um murphy's law anything that can and will go wrong which is a law discovered by engineers and it was teaching them to prevent every possible negative scenario it's understandable when you're flying a rocket into space not good for your mental and emotional health because even when you feel free you're like am i free even when you start getting free from guilt you're like feel guilty about not having guilt and when you feel some windows of freedom of fear you're checking am i really fearful for for many people in mental health battles you you have constant checking and and incessant looking into pathways you deal with chronic people with neurotic tendencies have a lot of worry that they just live in a lot it's like their ner their their um their nervous system is on edge highly their nervous system is highly conditioned by fear and in many cases highly conditioned by guilt guilt fear guilt fear guilt fear guilt fear so you just can't enjoy things people tell you to relax and people tell you calm down you know stop being so sensitive right you hear those kind of things those are cute that you have sensitivity you have a propensity towards neurotic kind of things listen i'm not diagnosing you i'm not labeling you none of that i'm just your brother from another mother but i'm i'm inviting you to sit back relax and go you know what let me allow this to be helpful because this is helpful information for me to realize i can look at things through a distorted lens therefore i need to be open to learning and be teachable to help my journey improve heal mature now neuroticism can influence a lot of things it'll distort how you see yourself it'll distort how you see the world around you it'll distort your interpretation and meaning of how you see thoughts how you'd approach them how you react to them a neurotic tendency will leave you on edge a sense of danger and everything that flies through it can alter your sense of what is really going on around you and that distorted interpretation doesn't allow you to see things as they are you see them worse than they are it doesn't allow you to see them as they are it drives you to see them distorted and what they mean your responsibility what you should do about it you can become hypersensitive to thoughts emotions and scenarios i talk about that hypersensitivity now sensitivity is all right being hypersensitivity doesn't serve you many those who are neurotic they don't respond well to stressors they snap very easily they can spiral out they can be easily overwhelmed easily agitated easily startled it can affect your mood i've said i've said this in other videos i've had to learn how to cultivate a more empowered mood because when i i found that when i did that affected everything else how i responded to thoughts how i responded to people how i responded to situations but when you have neurotic tendencies social situations become very challenging you you react to stuff maybe too personal or you read into things too much doesn't allow you to just relax and be yourself and just be loved in all your strengths weaknesses great traits your goofiness and all of it because that's really where the healing begins is letting love encompass all of you god doesn't just love the strong parts of you he loves all of you all the time all the way through so without love you're not going to be able to look at yourself effectively without love and grace good luck in trying to work on issues of the heart you will spiral and shame that's why love is the journey learning love so that we now engage we we lock into the pathway of how god deals with this because everything he does is through a relational exchange it's not through data it's not through researching all the things and getting the knowledge accumulated the bible says knowledge alone just puffs up just puffs up so we get some knowledge we go i'm smarty pants you know i know all these things i can tell you about neuropathways and the scientology scientology i didn't mean i wasn't mean the scientology [Laughter] the neural pathway connections in mind body and i know how the endocrine system and the the neural pathways and neuroplasticity and how you know serotonin reuptake inhibitors that's a that's good stuff i'm with you i could travel with you and track with you in it but it's knowledge knowledge alone either just leaves us empty or just puffs us up and look at the smarty pants that i am nothing against reading and but it's got to be experienced relationally my heart like when you read something and learn it's like what does this mean for now how i relate to god relate to myself related to other people right now those of you that have ocd issues and many many people have come to my site through their researching and finding looking up ocd issues and they find me i would say i'll make a pretty strong statement i say all ocd sufferers have a level of neurotic tendencies it's the very nature of what your mind travels and does searching and looking seeking introspecting reacting in in over-reactive ways hyper-reactive ways heavy responsibility stringent perfectionism got to get just right right and then you exhaust people around you and then you beat yourself up for exhausting people around you and you you spiral into defeatism okay we don't need to do that don't spiral into defeatism don't don't do that condemnation stuff but if you're exhausting people around you like there's times i've talked to my wife and i could see exhaustion coming over her and instead of spiraling into you know i just i began to go you know what it's a good cue it's a good cue i feel like that's moving in more i found myself moving more into maturity it's not about being upset with my the person that i'm overwhelming for example i'm talking to my wife she's like i don't feel like what you're saying is it's kind of exhausting and going oh you know why are you saying that to me or being upset at myself no it's neither it's just taking that cue this is the thing that we need we need to take relational cues for what they are for our growth if you like exhausting don't beat yourself up just go you know what i'm traveling to somewhere that i don't need to be traveling that's a verification that i don't need to be traveling there and i use it for my learning otherwise you'll you'll you'll keep going and going and going and exhausting your relationships around you and what does it do it leaves you more isolated it makes you feel like you're more weird more crazy and actually you probably have people in your life that love you very much but you're not able to receive that love and that's actually the bedrock key is that you struggle to receive love or when you receive it it's like you're starving for it so much then you try too hard to get it and love is a grounding work i mentioned this in my series that i did called that when we experience love we get rooted and grounded in it it's a passage in ephesians that paul the apostles say that you be rooted and established strengthening for many of you and your emotions god is going i just gotta dig your roots deep because when the storm comes your your branches flail the the tree's all over the place right and then you beat yourself up and and god's going steady steady just dig the root system d no god help me i need it right when people write emails to me they write help help i need help now i'm desperate right that shows our neurotic tendencies and our like no i need an emergency and god's god's god's not going no no there's no emergency you need your root system dug deeper because if everything is 911-911 now we're living in this addict kind of reactionary way that's not love love is okay bring it down dig root systems deep and this took me a journey of learning and discovery of how to become grounded because otherwise neuroticism will make you so introspective so constantly examining your own thoughts a you're not paying attention to what you need to pay attention to two your relationships suffer because what relationships need is not you fixing all your thoughts they just need you to be present in all your goofiness and all your weakness in all your stinking thinking thoughts just relationally be but then the examiner in our heads we're not here in our hearts so neurotic tendencies don't allow you to flow from your heart an effective way now many of you that i've interacted with you have neurotic tendencies but you when you connect at the heart it's powerful and i want to keep building that i want to keep encouraging them but we can become so introspective so overly self-conscious and and to be honest this is the honest talk we become self-focused our mental health journey can drive us into being obsessed with focusing on ourselves and there's a block the flow of love wants to flow to you through you and these dams get built up can't receive love from god can't love yourself so therefore you're unavailable for people and what i want to do is encourage opening up the flow because god's designed you even in your sensitivity to be a blessing to others he's designed you even in your weaknesses even in your struggles but what i want to help you understand is neurotic tendencies will get you lost in subjects that'll waste your energy and get you so wrapped up in your troubled inner self you can't be present and i want to be a voice of just rest say la pause be still it's okay it's gonna be all right you don't have a broken brain you have a broken heart you don't have a broken brain you think you do because your neurotic tendencies you have a broken heart and jesus didn't come to heal the broken headed although his ways heal our neural pathways he came to heal the broken heart so what do we do with this what do we do with this information what do we do with what i'm sharing here well i think first you gotta you gotta intake it and kindness if we don't start looking at ourselves with kindness and patience our journey is going to be filled with shame and condemnation and performance and perfectionism and just so much stuff that's going to just clog up the process kindness is always where it begins because then we start to when i'm kind to myself i'm also going to be kind to you i'm going to give that grace so i gotta i want to first recommend this that you recognize your sensitivity can be used for good it just needs healing attention some healing and some maturity that's all because many of us no matter how old you are we can still be very juvenile in our emotional mental makeup not in every area of your life but in certain areas right oh come on don't lie to yourself the second thing i would say is let it be helpful information when you realize that you have a lot of perfectionism you overreact you hyper inflate things you it's okay if you oh man i'm just i'm just terrible no you're not i'm guilt i've done those same things i use it though as awareness i teach i use it as teachable moments to myself lessons don't be hard on yourself about it but here's what i want to advise you in if you want some advice when you recognize your very sensitive tendencies what we can often do is we put a demand that everyone needs to understand our battle and needs to adjust to it and i want to say that that's can be a very unhealthy expectation because everyone can't read your mind and everyone doesn't know your entire story nor do they need to know your entire story i want you to be gracious to yourself but i also want you to be gracious to other people around you i remember when i was pastoring many people would say to me mark you know you create such a safe space for me to process but when i'm here in church you know i need i need people to be safe for me because i have trauma and i have these things that have happened in my life and i have these things and i need i said i said i get what you're saying but i don't i don't know that that demand is reasonable because people are not always going to say the right things and people are not always gonna and as a pastor i was like yes i'm creating safety for you but i'm also creating safety for this this and we're all in process and journey and we'll have to deal with things as they come up but many times we go to a counselor and you feel like you got to get your whole story out because unless you get your whole story out they'll never understand you no you don't just bring up layer by layer of what's being worked on because when you have very hypersensitive neurotic tendencies you feel like no one can help you unless they fully understand your story my my hypersensitivity drove me to feeling like that my need to be understood got inflamed that rejection root inflamed this need to be understood and when my need to be understood rises up it takes over like it just takes over and then i start spinning and start spiraling and i had to release people of fulfilling that in my life only god knows that only god knows me all the way through and through and i gotta release you from that i gotta let you off the hook that you don't have to fully understand everything and i can share layer by layer step by step and but you still need room and avenues are certain people whether it's official capacities or relationships you have that are mentoring where you can share freely without that judgment without that condemnation without instantly like picking it apart now you just need to process there's some stuff you need to go through i've had some things that were more on the traumatic end or more the deep challenges i needed to be able to just share and get it out but i can't expect everyone i interact with to know and sometimes it's a very disempowering thing so practicality what's what's the need here it's the need for love but getting grounded in love love isn't a high love isn't a rush love has a very grounding work it heals but also matures i want to encourage you get a hold of my what is love series get a hold of my series where you can continue to grow in that and the grounding of it let it permeate your members let it get into your system so it begins to calm you slowly over time so i'm learning to take my sensitivity i'm learning to take what was coming out as neurotic and learning to calm them in groundedness so groundedness and love is important but then getting connected to nurture we talk about nurture a lot i've got a i've got a training course on restoring nurture in your life these things are important because when you lack nurture your your nervous system is like just highly agitated highly you know sparked into certain feelings and emotions you just you have a propensity towards that anxiousness and stress and being overwhelmed and stuff like that what do you need in those moments what do you need what do you need when you're in that state what do you need you need nurture nurture says it's okay that you're not okay you're gonna be okay i've had people that i've sat down with i will say the statement it's gonna be okay and they will sometimes burst into tears because they hadn't heard that and they just needed to know i'm gonna be okay now some people even in their struggles resist that they even resist that no that's not gonna be okay no it's not gonna be okay because you need to understand what i'm stressed about nurture is everything it calms you it calms your emotions it regulates you it restores you it strengthens you it makes you more resilient you get hit but you come back because you're resilient that's who you are but we have to connect to that nurture and some of that is healing our mother wounds some of that is learning how to you say well how do i start nurture i'll tell you right now begin saying things to yourself that are built on kindness and patience begin new language to yourself connect to that nurture so it's the getting grounded in love so that i learned to take my emotion i'm not swinging this way swinging that way i'm learning to stay steadfast immovable and as the bible says always abounding in the work of the lord remain steadfast unmovable okay i'm not i'm not steadfast and movable i am all over the place it's okay god loves me and will just slowly slowly start strengthening like it's not working it's not working i'm still flopping i'm all steady nurture says steady steady because we're going for the long term not not i i i did it's not it's not working right that panic 9-1-1 comes in nope you didn't get here overnight it's going to take some time i think too what's helped me is to laugh at myself not in like don't be i'm not saying be mean but i do think we need to laugh at ourselves a bit i think that we we take ourselves so super seriously and people who struggle with ocd issues especially or certain anxieties you get real serious or the depression comes over you you get super serious and what we need to do is we need to learn to laugh because laughing also helps lighten thoughts it's hard to spin in a thought that you're laughing at and sometimes even when i talk about intrusive thoughts i encourage those i'm them giving some feedback to we've got to be lighter with our thoughts and not so if you're intense with your thoughts you're gonna you're gonna struggle at some point because you'll you will have every kind of thought cross your pathway in your lifetime mark that's scary it's frightening right because you've been trained to be afraid of your thoughts we're gonna we're gonna help you with that but you gotta learn to laugh at yourself you also have to learn to take in the input around you as helpful cues for your healing recovery if you find people constantly feeling exhausted if you feel like you realizing you over talk you don't talk you realize that your your problems monopolize situations that's helpful cues that hey i need i need to to learn to work in these areas right so from a practice i'm going to give you another practical and then i want to look at the bible for a second i want to encourage you practical habits that bring your nervous system to a place of calm when you're you have neurotic tendencies your nervous system is just conditioned to be on edge so practices of stillness you mean prayer sure if you're being still practice moments of nothingness though where you're it's not about praying about something or figuring something out it's training your brain to sometimes just be in nothingness in you're sometimes we go you ever hear you're you know you kids say this a lot i'm bored sometimes your brain needs to be bored to have a break it needs a break your brain wasn't designed for you to be analyzing something all day long that's why many of you are exhausted in your struggles and your battles you're you're overwhelmed and then depression comes in because you're just worn out so as a part of your journey it's this isn't like optional it's gonna be something going for daily walks daily so i practice daily physical things i can do moments where i just sit and watch the trees or watch a bird and just take in and that's going to take time for many of you for even it to kick in because you're looking for like some spiritual super answer and it's right in front of you be still just be still mark are you teaching some type of method nothing no i'm just be still just sit an amazing relational moment between two people who love each other that you know sit and watch the ocean and just sit in the silence and take it in and you enjoy the company together nothing's being said but you're enjoying it god sometimes is saying you've got to learn to just be still and enjoy learn to enjoy the peace that i have for you the love i have for you but it has to be activated i got to practice it because for many of us our nervous system is only in fight or flight it knows nothing else and that nurture needs to happen now lastly i'm going to leave you with this is i want to encourage what the writings of paul paul gave some great advice regarding anxiety when he and i i speak about this a lot second timothy 1 7 for god has not given us the spirit of fear so underneath fear is all our neurotic tendencies that's what it wants to do is keep you in those patterns keep you in fight or flight keep you in hyper vigilance keep you in all these these you know nervous system training where you're not able to just land into peace he says he's not giving us a spirit of fear but of power okay this dynamis or we say dunamis power this love okay that agape love and powerful agape love but what i wanna do is i'll take a moment here because you know i talk about the grounding work like i wanna encourage you getting grounded in love this word sound mind is powerful because it speaks of discipline self-control sound mind so what we can realize now this is teaching time this isn't condemnation time this is teaching time when you realize you have anxiety tendencies worry tendencies depression tendencies negativity depression spirals and so forth it's what you need is you need deeper work of power love and sound mind okay sometimes it can be like this where it's relating to the godhead in in a deeper way you know power holy spirit you know love from the father sound mind through god the word the living word jesus this is the living word getting that in us right that's one way of looking at it today i want to go kind of deeper in this sound mind it's learning to discipline your thoughts and learning to have this word sound mind can also be translated self-control now we think of self-control as like don't eat another piece of pizza i have self-control you know learning to control like the bad emotions like lust and stuff like that self-control also speaks of like learning to regulate our thoughts and learning to not react to everything inside of me learning to not have to have a response that's self-control ocd sufferers have a lack of self-control they wouldn't think of it that way but they have they've developed a conditioning by which they react to everything and part of the journey of breaking out of a spirit of fear is learning don't panic stay calm and call your heavenly father stay calm and call your heavenly father i'm gonna make that a bumper sticker stay calm and call your heavenly father stay calm but i have to no stay calm but evidence stay calm but i have to and this is what many of your brains sound like but i have to stay calm but i have to stay calm but i have nothing's working i can't see no you had wait wait wait you were calm for half a second you have a mark it was only half a second half a second is half a second how about we expand that to one second because that one second will eventually become 20 seconds it's not working yeah because your metrics are always defeating you your metrics always defeat you discipline teaches you step what is someone who teaches discipline to a child they say i want to play i want to play the piano you can play the piano and on day two they go i want to quit the parent goes no we're not going to quit we're going to stay with this ah that's the discipline we lack that's why the father stuff that i talk about nurture is so important because love doesn't just speak of safety love speaks of discipline hang in there self-control you don't have to react to everything look at the definition here can you see yeah it's up on the screen and an admonishing or calling to soundness of mind and that's what god is calling us as believers in the midst of worldwide stuff and changes and things that we're worried about and fussing over he's going have no fear i am with you be sound in my mind yeah but how yeah but we gotta practice and for some of you you practice and you're learning and you go man you know journaling wasn't for me but i tried it but man when i talk to myself that really helps or mark that that that you know mark i did that some people say i did that you know um solitude and it didn't work that's how long did you practice it for two days i'm like [Laughter] that shows how bad our soundness and lack of self-control and it even speaks of a moderation so think of this in your thoughts where you're able to stay steady one step at a time full of fear full of this guilt thing full of this thing but you're not serving them you may have it working but you're not serving it anymore and eventually those neural pathways get renewed because you're getting nurtured you're getting encouraged you're getting your brother from another mother that's encouraging you you connect to your father in heaven he's your dad he's your abba he's strengthening you soundness so god hasn't given you these anxious thoughts that's revelation for some of you it's not from him how do you know something's from god it increases your power it increases love in your life it increases soundness and what mental health manifests is a lack of soundness a lack of love and being stripped of power because that powers your confidence right that's that fear so if you'd like if you're all right with this i'd like to pray for you and do that to pray for you father in the name of jesus ground us in your love teach us as your children believers in christ how to relate to you as a father to heal our broken hearts calm our neurotic tendencies so much of that is going on father comfort us by your holy spirit but i pray that we wouldn't just sit here waiting for heaven to fall because as believers you are within us help us to connect to what's already there to activate it to bring the peace of the kingdom of god into manifestation in our lives i thank you for that power love self-control sound mind it's there it's there for you and i pray that you'll connect to it even if it's just one step forward today if this resource is a blessing to your life go to markdays to jesus.com m-a-r-k-d-e-jesus and you are there it may help you if you want to get my book i will not fear speaking of anxiety worry panic attacks and all that stuff if you find yourself struggling in the ocd world go to my ocd help page by the way i'm in the process of at some point i'm going to be creating topic pages that when you have a certain topic you're working through there'll be a whole page with a list of resources you can go to so it'll be similar to this ocd help page because i've accumulated resources there and will continue to add to them learning to see yourself through love and compassion get up get a copy of god loves me and i love myself and by the way if the book blesses your life please let other people know share it with others and review it if you're ready to engage the heart healing journey you're like i need some practical step-by-step understanding some prayers some questions to help me process through it the heart healing journey is for you and if you realize wow i need to experience god's love as my father i need to understand what it's like to relate to father god experiencing god's love as your father is a fantastic resource anyways i pray this is a blessing to your life lord willing and the creek don't rise i'll see you next time live healed live free i love you and i'm so glad that i'm able to be a voice in your life see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 1,627

Rating: 4.9223299 out of 5

Keywords: Neuroticism, Neurotic, Mental Health

Id: Hgxv4MkO0hk

Length: 42min 48sec (2568 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021