Working Through Catastrophic Thinking

[Applause] [Music] huh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome everyone to this broadcast welcome welcome welcome today i'm going to be talking about the subject of catastrophic thinking catastrophizing catastrophe it's the end of the world as we know it right this is a a problem for many of us and what i'm going to share with you welcome those of you coming to this broadcast mark dejesus here what i'm going to share with you is not something i'm just observing from an outside perspective this is something i've gone through and god is continuing to heal me more and more in my life is the subject of making everything a catastrophe as though you are working with a ticking time bond at any moment right and you might say well i don't do that with everything and i'm not saying necessarily everything but when the habit of catastrophic thinking gets into your coping skills it really blocks us from being able to work through what we really need to work through and how we really need to work through it and so there are many of you you have anxiety and your catastrophic thinking increases anxiety and you have anxiety over having anxiety you have panic attacks on top of anxiety you have anxiety on top of feeling depression you have ocd and then you have catastrophic thinking that goes on top of it right or maybe this catastrophic thinking pattern takes any situation and just bursts it into a place of despair we kind of hit that despair switch right and i talk about this often in my coaching work with people is how often do you hit the despair switch the despair is not depression it's not discouragement it's that drop you know we're just free fall you just kind of hit a switch and i can't that's it i can't take it anymore and life isn't work and the dominoes start happening right so this video is intended to encourage you to work through catastrophic thinking my goal is not to try to give you an imagery of make it all go away kind of thinking because that's what we often do in our problems make it all go away god fix this god alleviate this god do something about hey you do something about it you know what i want to do is i want to empower you in your healing and freedom journey to learn to recognize where you fall into catastrophic thinking patterns and allow god to do some healing work in your life now what exactly is it what are we talking about when we're dealing with you can look this up for yourself but i'm just going to give you some basic things to consider when it comes to catastrophic thinking basically what we're looking at here is some thinking patterns that you have and if the thinking pattern leans into overestimating i highlighted that word overestimating how bad a particular outcome could be overestimating how bad things are while also underestimating your ability to cope or to handle it so it's kind of like here's what i'm going through it's this bad it's terrible it's awful and it keeps going and going it dominoes and once the dominoes start falling it just goes further and further so the problem increases it tags on with other things in the past right so what happens is usually it hits on something something similar that's happened to you like maybe you feel like you got the short end of the stick and you go see and it lines up with something to happen in your childhood and then it hits this domino connection and it just proves that this thing is just never gonna work out you're never going to break through and all that that's an example of catastrophic thinking so it increases it while it diminishes your ability to handle it and it conditions you to remain in a state of hopelessness in a state of helplessness i'm beyond being helped and god maybe i'll throw up a flare to you you'll come and rescue me but other than that i don't know what else to do and so what we usually do is we hit this cap in our growth because in your healing and freedom journey you're going to hit resistance you're going to be working through areas and it's you're going to take three steps forward and five steps back and i'm going to tell you that's progress and some of you are going to say what three steps forward and five steps back is negative two you took a step out and it's going to take practice for that new way of thinking and perceiving to become a regular part of your life so many of you out there are getting so deeply discouraged because you're taking steps and then you have these regressions or you you feel like you're falling backwards no you're just practicing and if i want to be a tennis player and i go out on the court and get upset at all the all the times the ball goes out of bounds or i miss miss the ball or something i i would realize i need practice and lots of it why don't we apply that to our mental emotional relational health world why don't we apply that to our discipleship you know when jesus said it is done it is finished what he accomplished and what he came to do was finish but you and i aren't finished we're still on our journey we're in our process and we have this expectation as though we should arrive into everything overnight so catastrophic thinking becomes a big habit and it's a dangerous habit it's unhelpful for you so it's a thinking pattern of overestimating how bad an outcome could be or how bad things are and then you underestimate your ability to cope or handle it because many of us live with a low sense that we can handle anything a whole lot of anything there's such a lack of belief in who god is in us to walk with us through the storms of life and that we have what it takes in him to overcome so these these thinking patterns become ruminating thoughts you ruminate you ruminate you ruminate they increase they increase they increase you get lost in your head and that worst case scenario gets bigger and bigger then you start convincing other people of this worst case scenario you start using it maybe you warn other people or maybe you you you you see it as gospel truth you may develop a catastrophizing habit that word is sometimes i have to enunciate it catastrophizing to get it out of the way otherwise i can't even say the word right you automatically lean to the worst case scenario it kind of becomes your default mechanism you lean into that so you what you do is when you describe your pain you often exaggerate it and it's okay the more you exaggerate your pain the more it reveals you need nurture because nurture is the power of god's loving compassion to meet you where you're at to tell you it's okay that you're not okay and we're gonna step by step work through this people who have catastrophic thinking patterns lack nurture in a massive way massive it's a signal you've not been nurtured so i've pretty much summarized what this video is about in one sentence people who catastrophize or get into catastrophic thinking patterns they lack nurture nurture is god's gracious compassion and his mercy to look at you in your struggle in your problem in your suffering to draw near to you and it is kindness and patience minister to where you're at and help you take steps the problem is we have no reference for that we don't even know what it's like to be nurtured we don't even know what we're looking for so when problems hit all these dominoes start rolling all this fire of heat inside of you erupts right and then we start going into self-pity patterns and we start going the world is coming to an end then you watch the news and you go see look at the and one of the things that we have to realize as people of faith as sons and daughters of god we have to learn how to look at problems in the face and historically we've not done a good job of doing it a lot of what we do when it comes to dealing with our problems are different patterns of avoidance and denial you can scripture you could throw a scripture in and just you know deny all your problems and things like that you can but so many things that we do to avoid it and one of the things i'm going to share with you is catastrophizing is actually another way we avoid dealing with our pain now let you sit on that one for just a second because you think no i'm not deep in it i don't know what to do no you've spiraled the pattern that doesn't let you actually see the problem for what it is so that you can effectively now have some clarity on what your next step could be or what you even what you even need in a given moment so this catastrophic thinking habit you automatically lean to the worst case scenario you exaggerate the pain it's unproductive because it's so huge so way out there right you ruminate on it and it just enhances the unproductiveness and what does it do it increases the belief that you're helpless and there's nothing you can do and then we fall into what i teach on victim thinking self-pity there's i've done everything i've done everything there is to do there's nothing left to do i've never done it i've i've there's nothing i haven't done i've done everything life just works against me and we forebode and we we take that thinking pattern and we just forebode and we assume what can and will go wrong will what can go wrong will go wrong and then we have some proof from our history and experience and we use that the problem is is you're now trapped and here's an additional problem not only are you trapped you're not actually dealing with your pain because you may be going through something where you maybe let's say you lose your job and your finances drop and you spiral and you go into catastrophic thinking i'm gonna i'm gonna be homeless out in the street and i'm never and this always happens to me and what happens is you drift into all these worst case scenarios you know what you're not doing you're not actually just feeling the fact that you're going through a hard time of finances you're now drifting into the distant future and you're homeless or you're living in your car or whatever and you never actually face what's in front of you see we don't think about that do we we're just like oh i am facing that it's just you know god doesn't help me no you're not really you're not really facing it catastrophic thinking is a protective mechanism it's actually a protective mechanism and here's one of the reasons it is when people use catastrophic thinking they say well at least i won't be disappointed because i don't get my hopes up that's a protective mechanism i'm not going to step out and have an optimistic hope-filled view of what could be or or start to assume better things than always you know assuming the worst i'm going to start assuming that maybe some things could go really really well or that i'm going to learn something instead we protect ourselves because disappointment is a part of life you learn in the disappointments you learn in the heartache you learn in the struggle and i think many times we get stuck in this like if if we're christians life should just work even worse and i'm going to challenge these sacred cows i'm going to burn them let's just burn them have a barbecue the sacred cows of if it's if god's in it everything just works out beautifully like no you go through stuff you go through valleys and you go through oh i must must not be in god's will no you probably right where you need to be but you weren't prepared for the resistance the struggle the trial so what do we do we catastrophize because we are not equipped that jesus said in this world you will have trouble and some christians i know today would go jesus don't claim that i'm not claiming that because you just said it that means i'm adding trouble because you just said we're going to have trouble right with our our superstitious if you say it means it's going to happen as as though we're like like serving god is like living in some voodoo spell kind of world i understand the power of your words i understand that but i'm just talking about what we do to go to great lengths where we actually become more superstitious anyway i bring it back to the point and so we can develop this as a coping mechanism i'm going to inflate this thing big and i'll protect myself oh this is going to be terrible this is going to go really bad and feeling like you're predicting the worst outcome i find people that have catastrophic thinking they often have a pattern in their life a wound a feeling neglected and ignored so the only way they feel like they can get someone's attention to talk about something is you have to inflate it huge and magnify it it's a sign of neglect it's a sign that growing up and a sign that in life you can't just casually go yeah i'm going through some stuff and have people meet you and listen and you can process nope you get ignored it's just oh you're fine you're fine whatever so it's got to be big and then people will pay attention because they don't see the signs of what you're going through so therefore it leads you the only way i can get help is i got to make everything 9-1-1 so if if not i'm not going to get any not going to get any help in what i need and so catastrophic thinking it leads us to a lot of unnecessary suffering because you spin in things you don't need to spin into and i noticed in my life what helped me is realizing when it comes to many situations i can really magnify how bad it is and minimize the ability i have in god to walk through this stuff and you're gonna have to recognize this in your life no one can do this for you you're gonna have to recognize that in your life and journey you blow up the problems bigger than you need to and it doesn't allow you to see what you need to see the bible talks about magnify the lord let's exalt his name right what does that mean magnify to make him big why because in your life what's the war make him small make your problems huge right and so we live by magnify magnify uh my problems with me and let's exalt what i'm all the all the terrible outcomes that could happen in my life that's the bible of many of many people right and so then then here's another thing that happens you will recognize in your pain that you're in catastrophic thinking you're magnifying it as you share and express it and then what you do instead of recognizing it and just allowing yourself to work through the pain of it you shame yourself and quickly dismiss and go forget it and you shut it down you swing the other way just get over it why am i even talking about these problems right when you are in catastrophic thinking it needs to be an informative cue in your journey that there's a massive massive place of emptiness and neglect in your heart that needs to be tended to so what we do is if you notice the catastrophic thinking you beat yourself up oh i'm so dramatic i can't what's a matter with me no stop that because now you're being catastrophic about yourself instead when you realize while i'm really really inflaming the negative outcome or how bad things are or how bad the world is you know christians are notorious for this oh jesus is coming back he's coming back quick quick we're we're full of fear when it comes to the times we live in and the times that we're heading into and we've got to get ourselves armed in faith hope and love because we want to be available to be voices of hope and freedom for the mercy of the living god in every moment his mercy is still fresh his mercy is still at work but if we're in the same fear and catastrophic thinking that that many would of the world would believe then there needs to be there needs to be a shift where we start really walking in power love and sound mind faith hope and love so if you find yourself in this don't beat yourself up we all have aspects of this in our life you have a problem you're going through you need to see the problem for what it is you don't need to see it dominoing all the way back to this problem this problem this problem and see and then and then everybody's you know right that's what we do i've done it been there as many times as you have i have but i realized i got sober i sobered up see when i use the word sober it's more than just not being on alcohol and being drunk on alcohol i talk about sobriety as you see circumstances you see things fully awake you see them for what they are your senses are alert be sober be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion right now we have to be hyper vigilant which is like oh that fear responds or the devil is around everyone no no be sober and i got sobered up that when i spin in catastrophe i don't actually stay sober i get drunk on despair oh [Music] that's a good word that'd be like a organ in the background no no i got sober because despair was intoxicating to get lost in la la land bad my life is how bad circumstances are and you know what i'm not seeing just the problem deal with that with god and i get into despair and self-pity and my life and nobody has nobody knows the trouble i see nobody knows my sorrow nobody knows not even jesus the trouble i've seen right this is a this is a serious fight that's coming under people's thinking so i got sobered up i said you know i'm not even facing the problem and so then i began to say i need to shift and learn how to shift how i see things through your love that god you are here with me whether i feel it or not you're here with that in mind i'm gonna learn how to nurture myself and be kind to myself and my thoughts so i can look at the problem for what it is so that then i can say what's the one next step see that's when you break out of catastrophic thinking you bring things back in you ground yourself and you go okay what's next what's next what's that one thing i can begin to do in god's grace next you see when you're compassionate over your pain it leads you to a healthy now what i feel i feel this is tough this is hard i got to go through it it'll take as long as it takes now what what's the one step i'm not going to alleviate this overnight this isn't going to just go away overnight some of you are going through such thick storms stop trying to go wins is just going to be over instead just go i'm going to god's gonna help me i'm gonna figure it out one step at a time we're gonna go through it it'll take as long as it takes but it involves listening to the voice of nurture now i'm gonna give you some distortions that i'll quickly go through that influence catastrophic thinking they keep them going and some of this will get even into some anxiety ocd kind of areas but i think we could all benefit from this one distortion is people with catastrophic thinking can often think everyone else is under-reacting it's like no this is really really important you've got to see this and people are like um i hear what you're saying but um i think you're overreacting a bit oh no no no no no because they feel their negativity or their dark despair or their gloom perspectives or they're the you know things are just terrible is their healthy warning system and it's not it's their lack of nurture showing up it's their need for nurture showing up it's their need to be calmed and rooted in love that i'm safe and i'm okay and so we have to confront that and recognize uh it's not necessarily everyone's under-reacting i i may be overreacting secondly is a fear-based thinking lifestyle you lean to the fearful so therefore darkness increases if you have a propensity to constantly lean towards the what ifs the what is the what ifs it welcomes darkness because the what if a fear is always going into the the substance of things not hoped for not the substance of things hoped for fear is the substance of things not hoped for and i talk about these things in my book i will not fear because it's one of my deep passions to help people to untangle the root system of their constant fear perspectives and here's something i've noticed too in life is that there are many people in their fears they get into catastrophic thinking they get angry if you don't share their exact fear-based thinking boy is that infectious in this world today get angry if you don't serve their fear get angry if they don't serve their dark um depressing kind of perspective so number two is fear-based thinking number three that feeds it is these perfectionistic and internal pressures that we have you carry like an all or nothing kind of mindset black and white thinking basically you have a distorted expectation and so you need god to work in a certain way in this certain manner and when it doesn't happen it's not just disappointment it's massive despair you're angry you're upset the world's coming to an end you expect this for other people they don't pull through for you in certain ways you're super hard on yourself and you don't pull through for yourself you give no room for mistakes for learning so then you start spinning you start spiraling number four is one of the biggest distortion this applies to a lot of things even those i help who have ocd issues and problems is distorted interpretation and meaning how you interpret life and where you are and how you interpret the thoughts that you have this is the story what's the story of where you are right now take a moment and pause and think what's the story if you were to give me a biography of where you are in life right now what would it say those who catastrophize things will say things like i never have this happen i'll never i'll never get over this i'll the things that you say involve catastrophe and things will never improve they'll never change and what you don't realize is that distorted interpretation you know i say well no you got some scriptures you throw into it but it's blocking you from freedom the truth that sets you free it's not the truth it's a list of some facts so what anyone can list out some facts of things that have happened to you facts of things happen in your future what is the truth the truth sets you free it leads you into freedom but freedom is challenging to people who have catastrophic thinking because their catastrophic thinking is protection because if i let that down and and develop faith hope and love and start to walk in freedom and trust more and take new steps and heal oh that's dangerous i don't want that it's easier to just kind of stay in this place distorted meaning and interpretation take a moment what's the story of where you at why are you where you are right now this is all your fault it's a god's fault is it people's fault or can we back up a little bit and go you know what you've been through some stuff and god's here he's with you no and right now you don't have to fix 20 years of trauma and you don't have to fix all these things in one moment nope god's here right now and i have found in the years of helping people one of the greatest benefits i can bring to people's lives is even just in a moment of sit down helping someone with a nurturing ear of listening and tuning in and giving feedback i i see this over and over again where you see people at it's the end of the world like on a scale of one to ten they're at ten everything's going wrong and by the end of our discussion they're down to like a two and they take a deep breath and they go you know i can handle this it's like it's like they almost want to they almost want to end the conversation and move on because they're like okay i got this now what do they need did they need a special sauce of the perfect recipe do they need the perfect guru to come and share the thing or say the prayer or lay hands and do the no what they just needed to do was get grounded in the love of god and have a nurturing moment that's why people starving for nurture we're starving for it right now starving we're dying from lack of nurture that comforting instruction that grounded you're going to be okay that learning to spiritually and emotionally take that deep breath regulate ground yourself but without it you lose meaning and interpretation it's not what you're going through it's your interpretation of it because you could be going through hell but if you still have an interpretation that invites heaven you're gonna be just fine you have two people going through hell and one is going through hell and they're listening to hell's interpretation the other person is going through hell but they have heaven's interpretation and they land smack in psalm 23 though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil because you are with me i'm going to get through this but i got to learn my interpretation gets off the rails gets off the rails gets off the rails well mark how do i ground my thoughts and the interpretation of my thoughts faith hope and love is my interpretation increasing love in my life and my experience of love in myself how i receive it from god how i love god back how i love others is it increasing hope and a sense of my hope in my future and is it increasing confidence to take steps of faith that's the real estate where god is now this is not just a self-help and and just everything is always just great and easy life is tough life is hard and it's actually through the pain you can find some of the most beautiful revelations of god when we allow ourselves to go all right i got to go through some stuff and it's okay so let me take a minute and go further on this distortion of thoughts because there's a bunch of them that that increase this catastrophic thinking and give it more power because we have these distortion regarding our thought life one of them is the idea that we can prevent a troubling thought from appearing because many of us the thought comes in and you catastrophize that thought and it just it just leads you down down the mountain and so we think oh i should be able to prevent any unpleasant thought from coming and many people live in that kind of cocoon no no no no no no no no no no and that intensity can often make things worse right so the the idea that we can prevent a troubling thought from appearing or secondly that we think we can control any thought from we can now live in this like world where we're just gonna control and and many ocd sufferers have this where they live in fear of even having the thought and that well that gives the fear the fear of power the heavy urgency of thought i've got to pay attention to this i've got to listen to this thought it means something and then there's a heavy responsibility that i've got to address this it's this no mark this is my salvation this is a repentance no i could get a disease mark this is right and it will continue until we come to the end of ourselves and realize i have a problem in how i distort thoughts and how i distort interpretation it can go into further things that having a thought means that just because the thought appeared it means it's going to happen it'll cause it to happen you can become superstitious what do i mean by that many of you become very superstitious with your thoughts if i walk past that place that thought's going to arrive if i smile while having this thought it's going to mean i like the thought if i if i do something with my body or if i move in a certain position or if i if i'm in a certain we become very superstitious and we avoid all these little this is what creates an obsessive world obsessive compulsive world of all this protection we tried to create right we think having a thought communicates you are capable of doing this and so we feel the emotion of the video the tape that plays in our head and we go oh my oh my we catastrophize it instead of just going it's just a thought and letting it float on by and down playing that we don't have to have catastrophe for our thoughts because catastrophe doesn't help us deal with what we really need to deal with or worse yet the thought could say you want this thought there's another catastrophe you actually really want this now maybe i do maybe i should test it do i really want this right we're getting all these different kind of hula hoops sometimes people have a thought and they catastrophize it maybe i did this maybe there's a time i did this thought and i don't know i don't remember it but maybe i did and i'm blocked off from memory do you see where catastrophe can take us there's a bunch more here that i could i could list and share certainly another distortion is the weight of responsibilities exaggerated meaning that this problem is so big and i'm not just talking about yourself i gotta do something about it and people need to do something about it and you know you know we do you know we do this the most with god you need to do something about this quick and we're upset that god isn't panicked right now god do you understand what i'm going through you need to do something you need to do something because i can't handle this right there's the exaggerating the problem and minimizing your ability in god to deal with it and so we put this hyper-inflated god you've got to respond to me right now you got to do something about this because number seven the threat of thoughts or subjects is huge god this is my financial situation this is my provision god this is a salvation issue i'm uncertain what i'm going to do that's a repentance issue all this thought this unclean thought god oh somebody people i got a this is right what's it lack of nurture lack of nurture so therefore a distortion that we give into number eight is we equate safety means solving all my thoughts i to solve all these things i got to solve the situation or solve my thoughts and what it's what it's revealing now the problem's not the problem what you need is you need compassionate grace and love and nurture to look at you and say it's okay where you're at no it's not mark no it's not it's the end of the world i can't take it anymore i can't take it mark i can't take it i can't take it at the end of my row people write to me i can't take anymore this is it right catastrophizing no that's not it you have more power available to you what you're revealing is your lack of equipping and nurture and you're hitting a cap so now that cap where you say i can't take it anymore this thing that you're feeling is the level that is calling you to a new level and that what you've what you're equipped in has only gone this far and so god wants to take the cap off of your life and take the next step into the next level this is why so much of the bible's instruction is maturing us as sons and daughters see there are things that my kids do when they were three that were cute if they do them when they're 15 it's not cute time to upgrade if my if my daughter is still whining at 25 the way that she was at three years old there's a problem right and what god is wanting to do as a good father is he's wanting to upgrade us so we feel stuck right and there's aspects of us that are still in adolescence and this is coming from the lack of nurture the lack of fathering in your life that didn't equip you to know how to navigate the transitions and stages of your life it's okay because guess what god is a father but we've got to learn to hear the frequencies and when we catastrophize what we do is it's a way of blocking what he might be saying over our situation over our journey we can't even hear it because we're listening to the noise of fear the noise of doom and gloom and i'll tell you what fear has the loudest voice it's got a very loud voice and god's not going to compete with fear and try to scream louder no that's not how relationship works okay so what's some tips to help you to begin to move forward and i'll give you some things and you could you can ponder over them let god show you just some healing tips these aren't things to like solve every problem in your life but these are things i've learned and things that i would recommend for you is we first gotta become aware of of your tendency to lean to catastrophic thinking that you tend to go to that and and this is very important recognition is very important because we spend a lot of time not recognizing what's really going on if you still think the problem is whatever you're spinning about and don't realize it's the catastrophic thinking i keep falling into then you'll keep spinning in the problem unproductively in a non-fruitful way many of you still defend your catastrophic thinking you defend it and you get mad when other people don't join you with it so do this with sobriety get sobered up because spinning spiraling and self-pity and victim thinking it keeps you drunk drunk with thinking that doesn't let you see what you need to see and face when you need to face now do it with compassion don't beat yourself up no need that's not going to help that's not going to go anywhere that's not going to do anything but here's a very practical tip i wrote the whole thing out in a slide because i was like you know i'm just going to put this up here when you notice those around you who love you saying things like you're being too sensitive or you're overthinking things or you're being hard on yourself let it be helpful and useful information to you because at times what we do is we find people who don't say things really nice to us they're not kind i get it i get it we got a lot of that problem going on but there is some helpful information when you notice people saying hey you're too hard on yourself you're being you're being extra sensitive about this and you get this feedback on a regular basis from from numerous people instead of going you know what no one understands me no one gets me let it be helpful information see sometimes we don't know how to handle the sharpening of life you know someone who wants a singing career but no one ever told them singing is not really your thing and then at one point someone has to tell them and then they spin out but they never take that useful information and say yeah singing is maybe not your thing so they can become more self-aware for life so instead i like to encourage people we are sharpened by life yes people are not exactly kind and rude but what are the things we can extract for our helpful information and when i started hearing people saying mark i don't i don't know that perspective you want to think that through and i have a number of people giving me that feedback this isn't just somebody being mean to me and so many of you that are catastrophizers people have said to you you're you're you might be blowing this out of proportion no i'm not and you respond back because you feel like they're not being empathetic and they probably aren't and i get that but sometimes we're just trying to do our best in the best we can to just say hey be aware of this use that as helpful information not beating yourself up use it as helpful information i think that's an aspect of mental health is that we allow some constructive helpful loving input to be informative for our journey because for many it makes things worse number three we have to recognize and this kind of ties into number one but recognize that catastrophic thinking is not serving your journey it's not allowing you to see what you need to see how you need to see it it's distracting you into a distorted reality it's an alternate reality it's not what you're going through it's a version of it that's leading you into places and if you'll notice that you may think that catastrophic thinking it protects you in some ways but it's not it's distancing you from what you really need to face and what you really need to face is feel what you're feeling go through what you're going through learn what you need to learn and go through your journey stop avoiding your journey because when you hit the catastrophe button it doesn't let you face what you need to face my encouragement number four is recognize what you really need is nurture now i always refer this course to people and and help my wife and i did a conversational set of of audio that you can get on our website restoring the power of nurture but more than that it's going to invite you to go through your own healing journey in that because we live in a in a pandemic of lack of nurture and so it influences people are not able to comfort themselves and let themselves know it's gonna be okay i'm gonna be okay and god wants to heal that so that you can listen to the comfort of the holy spirit and that nurturing comfort and that's why maybe i i can't hear from god i can't hear what he's saying well do you have a frequency that knows what nurture sounds like because then otherwise you're going to be someone who speaks english and you're hearing mandarin and you don't pay attention to anything because you don't know the language it means nothing to you in the same life if you've not learned the language of nurture you don't even you're crying out to god and he's nurturing you back and you can't hear it and then you go god's not here i'm speaking to the overcomers you're going to get this so if you find yourself where you're constantly venting venting venting over what you're going through right and to the point that you even get sick of it right you're just always venting about what you're going through it is a sign of lack of nurture because nurture shows you how to express it how to discover god in it how to feel what you're feeling and work through it and find the deeper places in the journey to lead you towards healing to lead you towards maturity so my exhortation to you number five is going to be learn to be kind and gentle regarding your thought life because otherwise you'll jump to catastrophe jump to worst case scenario no you don't need to let love settle you he's how do i do that more we'll start with being kind to yourself i can't feel god i can't connect god well join the club because a large percentage of christianity today is in the same boat because we have lived in performance driven christianity and it just increases that sense of distance from god and god's getting us back to his love and grace and getting us to stop earning it and all this all this stuff that we get lost in and feel distant from god and and all our all our wounded issues that that come up to the surface so what you can do right now is you can make a decision i'm gonna be kind to myself i'm gonna stop beating myself up i'm gonna invite a gentler and more kind response to my thought world the more that i've i've practiced that the more i have seen dramatic growth in my life it has calmed me it has settled me it has helped me to get my root system dug deeper and to strengthen me in the midst of storms so it's so important now number six i have to highlight this in our healing journey we need to learn to see things as they are not not catastrophe is always things are worse than they are i want to face the problem that's in front of me that's coming to the surface i don't want to add unnecessary baggage to it and sometimes what adds unnecessary baggage is despair and thoughts like no one's got it as bad as me i'm the worst it's like we get competitive and who has it the worst i'd say we can do get a history book and read generations and cultures of the past how hard people have had it all across the world and all and that's not to demean what you're going through it's to recognize i need to see this for what it is i'm an overcomer in progress in process and so is everyone else and hardship is a part of it and i'm learning in it how to discover who god is discover who i am and i'm going to learn to be kind to myself in it that's how you learn to see things not worse than they are see it for what it is we need to sober up because we're we get drunk with despair no no i don't have to go there i can see the problem for what it is the heartache for what it is the battle for what it is right in front of me because that's how god works one thing at a time one thing at a time so what's my radar in the healing process well my radar number seven i want to encourage you to let your compass be on faith hope and love how can i learn to build love which then increases my hope and increases my faith that sequence helps to move you out of catastrophizing the worst case scenario and to then instead saying you know what one step at a time i'm going to figure out i'm going to work through this somehow some way i don't know i'm going to stop blaming god blaming me blaming others instead i'm going to let compassion wash over this and start by how you talk to yourself start with your self-talk talk with the narrative that's going on inside of you what are you listening to what's it saying and invite faith hope and love to now ground and guard where your thinking is going and then i want to close with this in the atmosphere of compassion here's what i found is i want to see what's the one next simple step and i find that when i let myself sometimes when i've been through hardship going through a really hard time i just let it out let it out put it all on the table maybe it's in a discussion with someone or maybe it's just in my my my prayer time my solitude time and i put it there and i express it i get fully out there i don't spin out i don't blame things i don't get in all these what i just let the problem out for what it is what i'm feeling and as i emotionally allow that it's like now what okay that's the next step i need to take got to make that phone call i'm going to make that phone call that's what i'm going to do now this this this this this nope just that one thing right many of you are going through a trial and you sit there and you go you spin out you spin out you know what i need to get some help and do some one-on-one with somebody i'm gonna take that next step i'm gonna fill out a form or make a call or whatever to set up that appointment you know what i'm going to you know to use the illustration of the person who lost their job you know what i'm just going to start looking for what potential opportunities one at a time that's all i can do right now you see because that's what compassion does it takes into consideration what you're going through and it says just one thing at a time not a million things nope that's not what you need it's not ten steps to eight steps seven steps six steps nope just one you didn't get here overnight you're not going where you're going overnight it's not even about that it's about the journey anyways so if you feel like you you know i recognize where i need some added nurture in my life i recommend the audio course restoring the power of nurture i also want to encourage my book the heart healing journey because it helps you to navigate things that are important to the life of the heart and help you see the things that can be helpful for your journey but i pray that this episode has been a blessing for your life i pray that it's a blessing for those that you are talking to and ministering to and i just pray that you be encouraged that you don't have to be bound in catastrophic thinking you can break free and i've been there i know what you're i know what many of you are sharing and talking about and i pray that what i've been able to share with you has been a blessing to your life to your journey to help if it has consider supporting with a one-time donation or you can become a regular supporter and we appreciate that so much we appreciate prayers we appreciate the encouragement most of all i pray that grace and love of god and our lord jesus christ would just continue to wash over everything that you're taking in i pray your healing and freedom journey is empowered so looking forward to sharing more great insights with you continue to live heal and free blessings [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 2,083

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Catastrophic Thinking, Catastrophizing, Self-Compassion

Id: exlcuY5GXyE

Length: 52min 37sec (3157 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021