Category: Pastor Brad’s Blog

Bipolar & Creating Mini Habits For Positive Change

It only makes sense that our brains have default settings. Those are the settings that our brains default to when we are stressed or things we can do with little to no thought. For example, my default setting for when to eat is when I’m sad, happy, tired, stressed, or when I’m awake! This eating default setting has been a well-worn patterned default in my brain for many years. Unfortunately, unlike being able to go into your computer default settings, make a change and click “save,” we cannot do that with our brains. Instead, if we want to make changes to our default settings, we must make them bit by bit, by starting a mini habit that we can do without one ounce of motivation on our part; a simple thing that can be done by sheer self-willpower.

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Bipolar

Leave “Flat-Lined” Emotions Behind & Overcome The Fear Of ‘Feeling’

My doctor heard me loud and clear when I kept saying that I didn’t know if I could live feeling so lifeless. He kept telling me at each of my appointments that I needed to give it time. But, I felt as though I was a medicated zombie- just blah. I missed the ups, downs, intensity, the fast and slow beats yet, I was scared to death to feel anything of an up or down, sad or happy feeling. I feared that feeling nothing would be the permanent “music of my life”.

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Fresh Hope for Mental Health

Healing from Trauma

Joy and Brad discuss what trauma is and the trauma healing classes that the Trauma Healing Institute is sponsoring in both churches and jails.  They also talk about the healing and hope that is coming from the classes and what is necessary in order for trauma, which is a wound of the heart, to heal.

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Bipolar

7 Tools for Overcoming Bipolar Impulsivity

“There’s a connection between having bipolar disorder and controlling one’s impulses.

The lack of impulse control may not only be an indicator of bipolar disorder, but explains a number of the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

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Faith and Mental Illness

Mastering the Art of Self-Distraction

Being focused is essential for getting a lot of different types of tasks done in this life.  However, sometimes being intensely focused or “stuck” in our thinking about something is not good and we end up needing to be distracted from it.  We need to be interrupted! There are times we can become intensely focused, ruminating over and over on something negative. It’s at that point that we need to interrupt and distract our thinking.

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Depression

Facing Real Together by Lindsay Hausch

There is a sacred space we enter with another person when we can let them feel what they are feeling without avoidance, advice, judgement, or tense discomfort. Simply to tell them, “I’m here and I love you.”

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