Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

From Shame to Grace

Silaine Marques

01 A Biblical Journey of Healing

02 A Biblical Journey of Healing

03 A Biblical Journey of Healing

04 A Biblical Journey of Healing

05 A Biblical Journey of Healing

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, we are so grateful for what you're doing for us so far and for this beautiful place that we have to discuss about our thoughts, our emotions.

I ask that your Holy Spirit will be with us, that each person here will feel your presence, and that we will know and understand your kindness and your love towards us.

Okay, so before I actually start, where's the PowerPoint?

Before we start, I wanted to give a few disclaimers first 1 is That Changing your thought patterns take a lot of work.

It's not something that happens overnight.

If it took years for you to develop some kind of thought pattern or behavior, It's going to also take some time, hopefully not years, but it does take some time, right?

And it requires so much practice and intentionality, right?

Because we usually tend to be reactors and we just go day in, day out, right?

But when you start noticing more the patterns the thoughts then you'll start being able to practice and put some of these things in place so that you catch yourself right it's all about self-awareness and practicing practicing practicing And also I want to encourage you to be patient and kind with yourself.

Not just that, but we know that the Holy Spirit is here with us and He does help us.

And in Jeremiah 33, it says, call unto me, and what?

And I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know of.

Does he know what he needs, we need, right, in order to thrive, to be successful, in order to connect with him?

So please involve him in the process of changing your thoughts.

And then, again, this is really just an introduction to techniques for CBT and REBT.

So, if you are having some mental health concerns, some difficulties, please ask for professional help.

And take the things that I'm saying here with a grain of salt, because ultimately you're going to have to see for yourself, right?

Sometimes The examples that I'm giving could be triggering.

There could be things that don't necessarily apply to you specifically.

There's so many areas in which I'm not going to mention, and we can't cover everything.

And if you have any questions, you can raise your hand or come to me later and we'll talk more.

And then these will add to your strategies.

And the end of the presentation, I'm going to give you my email and I'll give you some resources, the names of the books that I've been using.

So hopefully that will be helpful as well.

But what is it that you want to put in your toolbox?

We have motivational factors, right, thinking about what motivates you to change.

We have the CBT tools, and I'll be giving you quite a few today.

We have the spiritual tools and lifestyle actions.

Are you familiar with the New START acronym?

So lifestyle is a big component to our mental health, right?

Because our bodies and our brains are very much connected.

So it's really important that you try to attack the challenges from all areas.

So the first reviewing of my previous lectures that I want to give is that I want to encourage you to get in the habit of listening to your thoughts.

Well if you want to change your thinking you know first what are you thinking?

Sometimes we don't even know what is going on in our brains right?

So a first strategy is for you to be journaling and writing things down.

Sometimes it helps for you to write down things at night, Not necessarily right after, right before you go to bed, because then the thoughts are gonna be there, but it's important for you to be able to jot things down, and sometimes that even helps with insomnia, because you're not ruminating and your thoughts aren't racing, because that's all safe on the paper, right?

So that's a strategy that we use quite a bit is to be writing things down.

There is a technique that's called brain dumping, and in brain dumping, you just freely start writing things on a paper without judging yourself, without censoring, it doesn't really even have to make that much sense, it could be just bullet points, it could be just everything that's been going through your mind, it could be to-do lists.

What about this, what do I have to do tomorrow, and how am I going to talk with so and so and oh I'm worried about X, Y and Z.

So you want to just freely put everything on a paper and then you can start categorizing the things that are there.

So what's under my control and what is not under my control?

If it's not under my control, then I can leave it aside.

If there are things from the past that you're thinking about or that makes you sad, all right, this is something that you know that you'll have to process later, but if it's affecting your day, put it aside and focus on what you can control right now, right, until you can come back to it later with a little bit more time, with maybe a friend or A counselor that's going to help you through whatever you wrote down.

Then you can monitor actively what's happening to you throughout the day.

Actively observing and recording your thoughts as they occur throughout the day, especially during emotional moments.

Sometimes we notice emotional reactions before we know what we're thinking.

I don't know what I'm thinking, but I know that I'm shaky right now and nervous, right?

Or that I'm angry, or that I'm sad because I'm crying, right?

So sometimes emotional reactions, they come up first in our mind and usually that's a telltale sign that you could be thinking something that could be off, could be distorted, could be way too intense for that situation that's happening.

So paying attention to how you're feeling is a good way as well to then prompt you to ask yourself what am I thinking that makes me feel that way.

And then you can use the ABC model and we'll review it.

Practice listening to your thoughts as if you were listening to someone else.

Respond to them with curiosity and empathy.

Asking questions like, why am I thinking this?

You want to be kind and patient to yourself.

Be careful how you talk to yourself, because you are listening.

And then also get in the habit of writing things down, but not just the thoughts and emotions, but also what you're doing.

Because that has a lot to do with how we feel, right?

When we do something that we feel bad about, you're going to have a certain emotion.

So if there's a negative behavior, for example, sleeping until noon nearly every day to avoid stress and negative feelings, That might lead to the consequence of missing breakfast, no time to exercise, no time for daily responsibilities.

And then that will lead to increased stress due to unaddressed responsibilities, guilt about worsening health due to low activity, reduced energy due to inadequate diet, and that leads to more sleeping until noon.

As you start noticing these things and writing things down on a paper every day, you're going to start looking at the patterns.

What are your patterns of behaving and what do you need to do to get out of that cycle?

And so it's very helpful to have that, even if you do it maybe for 1 week, 2 weeks.

But once you understand your patterns, then it becomes a lot easier.

And as you practice things, then you're gonna start catching yourself in the moment.

A lot of people tell me that it's hard to know what to do in the moment of that emotional distress, right?

So the more you practice before that situation happens, The more you're going to, you know, as you're already reframing the thinking, when that distressing thing happens, you'll know how to react because you've already changed your mind about it and it's not going to be as triggering to you.

And get in the habit of noticing your misbeliefs underlying the negative thoughts.

So we have 10 cognitive distortions that we talked about yesterday.

So once you have your thoughts written down, try to identify, okay, could there be any distortion here?

And, interestingly, 1 thought might have several distortions.

So when I say, I'm such a failure, that would be a negative thought or distortion.

What cognitive distortions from those 10 could it be a part of?

Series

From Shame to Grace

03 A Biblical Journey of Healing

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

From Shame to Grace

02 A Biblical Journey of Healing

58m

The Gospel Remedy: True Keys to Wholistic Healing

The Safeguards: Managing Stress

58m

The Great Mind Controversy

03 Freedom Through Captivity

57m

Mastering Your Anxiety

03 Mastering Your Anxiety

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Got Thinking Problems?

Coping with Our Problems - Part 1

1h 13m

Bible Buts & Band-aids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing

Bible Buts & Bandaids: How to Apply God’s Word for Trauma Healing 2

44m

Flip the Script

03 Questions for Healing: How the Bible Answers the “Why” of Suffering

1h 6m

Strength Through the Storm – Better Brain, Better Habits, Better Life!

03 Living Free: Freedom from Habits that Hurt

51m

Mastering Your Anxiety

01 Mastering Your Anxiety

59m

Users Guide to Natural Remedies: Simple Treatments for Common Ailments

01 Natural Remedies for Metabolic Diseases

52m

Burning or Burnt Out?

01 Don’t Let Satan Blow It Out

59m

The Great Mind Controversy

01 Knowing the Time

50m

Sound Doctrine