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Mental Holy Health Strategies · Well Women Flourish | Fitness and Nutrition Strategies for Women Over 45

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Welcome to the Well Woman Podcast, where we are making daily deposits into our
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physical, mental, and spiritual health accounts.
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I'm Alexis, your host, and today we are going to talk about mental holy health strategies.
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I have the honor of being invited to participate on my church's mental health
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wellness panel this coming Sunday.
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And the question that I've been asked is to provide advice for someone beginning
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to acknowledge their mental health struggles.
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I have learned and found ways to thrive with anxiety and depression.
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It's been just over 20 years since the onset of these things in my life.
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And I'm at a point where I do consider anxiety and depression to be gifts in my life.
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And I'm able to navigate through those different emotional and mental health
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changes with grace and also the ability to have purpose behind it and help others.
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And I'm always excited and honored to share how I've been able to do this and
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some tips and strategies for other people.
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I have a list of about eight strategies that I'm going to go through.
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And it's important to understand that if you meet one person with anxiety,
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I've heard this said in the autism world, if you meet one person with anxiety,
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you have met one person with anxiety.
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Everyone is different. And these things manifest in very unique ways in everyone.
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It's also important to remember as a person who is working through living victoriously
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with these challenges, that if you've had one, two, three, however many anxiety
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attacks, each one is going to be different.
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So I'm at a stage now where anxiety manifests differently in my body.
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It feels different. It looks different. And I have to always be in tune to what
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is current for me on each day.
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Each day that God gives me as a gift is a different day in the body.
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So number one, redefine your identity in Christ.
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I like to think of this as thinking of whatever happened in your past.
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If there is a specific incident or trauma that you experienced in your past
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that you believe has been the cause of your anxiety.
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For me, it was a domestic violence season in my life where I felt my nervous
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system had become dysregulated, and it has taken me 20-plus years to work through that.
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I had an instance about three years ago where I thought I had reached a place
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of victory, and then it was triggered again,
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and all the work I thought that I had done, what I had overcome,
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actually came right back up to the service.
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And it caused me to dive deeper and do more work to overcome. So for me.
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Thinking of that domestic violence
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season in my past as a thing that happened to me versus the thing.
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This is not the defining moment of my life. And when I detached myself from
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it being such a significant contributor to my mental health,
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it was very empowering for me.
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The thing of my life that is defining for me is actually my salvation and my
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relationship with Jesus.
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So think about how your trauma and your past experience, it is not your identity.
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You have to let your relationship with Jesus in the moment of your salvation
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be the defining truth for you.
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Healing is going to begin when you see yourself through his eyes,
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not through the eyes of the trauma that you went through.
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The second tip I would say is use scripture as your mental anchor.
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You have to figure out what scriptures work for you. I like to have two handy
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at all times. Put these things up on post-its and reminders for myself always.
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The first one for me is lean not on your own understanding and that's Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5.
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And this reminds me that my emotions are real and they're valid but they are
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not always rooted in the truth.
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I have to let God's word reframe my perspective at all times.
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So I lean not on my own understanding.
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The next scripture for me is, no weapon formed against me shall prosper.
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And that's Isaiah chapter 15, verse 17.
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I'm sorry, that is Isaiah chapter 54, verse 17.
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And this for me is,
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Helps me to understand that a lot of times my negative thinking,
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my mind is actually the weapon against me. So no weapon formed against me shall prosper.
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And I understand that sometimes I am that weapon.
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My thinking and my feelings are sometimes the weapon that is working against me.
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And I have to recognize and resist these internal battles. And you can only
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do that with the spiritual truth that we're getting from God's word.
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The third tip is to recognize harmful self-talk as a spiritual attack.
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You have to be mindful of the words that you're saying to yourself.
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Negative self-defeating thoughts are not harmless.
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They are attacks on your identity and purpose. You have to speak life,
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truth, and grace over yourself daily.
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I have an app that helps me with that. I read a book by Dr.
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Shad Helmstetter a number of years ago, which helped me to, first of all,
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become aware that my self-talk was so powerful in framing my thoughts and behaviors.
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And then second of all, to make a strategy of how to clear out the old negative
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self-talk and replace it with more empowering, life-giving, affirming truths.
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So that book is What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Dr.
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Shad Helmstetter. And the app is the Self-Talk Plus app.
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I have daily reminders set up three times per day.
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It just pops up on my phone and that's my daily self-talk time and I listen
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to it on repeat and this is my mental health nutrition protocol for wellness.
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So that's number three, recognize how harmful your self-talk can be.
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The fourth tip that I would give is to make a conscious decision to pursue wellness.
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You have to just decide, you You have to draw a line, a very firm line, and decide to be well.
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Make the decision and decide to be well. When you think about the...
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The antonyms, the antonyms for wellness and really the words we want to avoid,
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some of them are illness, sickness, unsoundness, disease, unhealthiness,
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debility, weakness, and infirmity.
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So do this exercise, get a sheet of paper,
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draw a line down the center, and you put wellness on one side,
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and then you put all of those words, illness, sickness, unsoundness,
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disease, unhealthiness, debility, weakness, and infirmity on the others.
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So your thoughts, behaviors, actions, habits, and the foods you are eating are
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either going to align with being on one side or the other.
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There's not really going to be an in-between. So once you make that decision
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of what side of the line you want your life to be headed towards,
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which my suggestion is that it be wellness, all of those things need to line up with that.
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And any people, places.
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Things, and like I said, foods that don't line up with wellness,
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you need to make a very clear strategy on how to, I'm not saying just eliminate
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and cut things off, but at least have the awareness.
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And then make a plan of how you are going to start to remove these things from your daily life.
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And that's going to inch you further and further towards total wellness and
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deliverance from these mental health attacks, spiritual attacks from the enemy.
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So that's my fourth suggestion to make that conscious decision.
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You have to choose to walk in wellness every day, disengaging from those behaviors
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and environments that are leading you away from God's peace and away from wellness
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and towards those other things.
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Wellness is really a reflection of your worth in God. Now, the fifth tip I'll
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give is to equip yourself with worship tools. Worship, worship, worship.
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This is next to water for me, and it's a must.
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I can feel when I have a resistance, like a wall up, and I'm not able to worship,
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and I just have to play the music, play the playlist until something happens.
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Worship until something happens.
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There's a song, something's gotta break.
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And that's what you have to do with worship.
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One of the classes that I took in the mental health.
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Coaching certification, the teacher said that is that depression is actually a worship issue.
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And that resonated with me. You know, you have to find what resonates with you.
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But it resonated with me that worship is the issue. So I made it a point to have my playlist set.
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I have automated everything in my house to do the work for me because I already
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know there are times that I cannot do this on my own.
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So I automate things so that all I have to do is say, hey, device, play such and such.
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And then the music starts and I'm able to play the music and I simply have to
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play until something happens.
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There's going to be a moment and sometimes this takes hours.
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Sometimes it takes like six hours or so before I start humming the music,
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start moving a little bit and then I feel a release and I'm able to worship again.
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That's how seriously you have to take your mental health.
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So make a playlist, have a song. You have to do that when you are feeling well,
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not in the throes of your anxious and depressed moment because worship is truly
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the lifeline that connects you back to love, hope, and joy of Jesus.
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So don't wait to be in a crisis. You have to have these tools ready.
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The sixth tip I'm going to give is to establish emotional boundaries.
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You actually don't need to react to every situation and you don't need to seek
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validation from every person in your life. Boundaries are there to help preserve.
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Just like you have boundaries in your yard and walls to preserve and protect
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yourself from your neighbors, we have to have those boundaries set up to preserve
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and protect our emotional health.
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And it allows you to respond with wisdom and grace instead of impulsively.
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It's okay to say, I'll get back to you or I have a call right now that I have
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to take. I'm stepping into a meeting.
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This meeting could be with yourself. A lot of times when I tell people I have
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a meeting, that meeting is with me,
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that meeting is with God, that meeting is with Holy Spirit, the meeting may
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be with my husband, but it's okay to let people know I have something I need
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to attend to right now and I will get back to you.
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This way you are decreasing the number of times that you are responding impulsively
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and reactively to the stimuli that are around you in life.
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So establish emotional boundaries. That's number six. Number seven,
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celebrate your progress. This isn't about perfection.
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I have, you know, I'm not fully there yet. I've experienced anxiety at least
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three times in this week, and I have to start to deploy my tools, but that's okay.
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I have tools to deploy, and I'm well-equipped and empowered,
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and I know there's always some deeper insight that I'm getting as I push through.
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I have heard it said in one of the apps, another app I use is the Pep Talk app,
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and I have that said automatically as well.
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There's a man that says, continuous return to your harmony actually strengthens you.
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So every time I do have an anxious moment or a depressive episode,
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I'm able to say, okay, great.
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This is another opportunity for me to learn how to leverage these tools I have
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and return my body, get back in homeostasis at peace,
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at ease with myself, and I'm only getting better and better and better each time.
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So that's the way I look at it as progress.
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I want to think about the frequency and duration of these episodes and how long it takes me to recover.
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So that is decreasing. That's progress. It used to knock me off my feet and
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disrupt my life and productivity for weeks at a time.
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So if I am kind of down or disengaged with things for 24, 48 hours, I consider that a win.
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And typically, my nervous system is letting me know that I need a rest and to
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just step back from whatever the stimuli is that has helped contribute to the disruption.
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So celebrate your progress. We're not seeking perfection. There's no one perfect.
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And healing, it's not linear. You're not just heading down the track to some sort of finish line.
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It's all about the journey and who you're helping along the way and acknowledge
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your small wins If you're in a situation that you know previously would have
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just sent you over the edge Acknowledge like wow,
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I made it through that good for me pat yourself on the back every step forward
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No matter how small it is is definitely worth celebrating.
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So be gentle with yourself Just the way god is something.
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I like to tell my daughters This to be gentle with yourself
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the same way you would pick up a ladybug that's how
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we should be with ourselves and the
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eighth tip i would give is to maintain a
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faith based mental health toolkit you
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have to combine scripture prayer worship boundaries
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all these healthy habits to build spiritual resilience you
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keep these tools close do whatever you can to
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keep it in your phone use these phones to
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help strengthen your mental health
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toolkit the dwell app that
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pep talk app self self talk plus from
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dr shad helmstetter and the self talk institute i
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have messenger x which john bevere is the
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the person responsible for that i have so many apps on my phone and i'm using
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them to help me monitor your notifications decrease those things as well and
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make your your faith-based mental health tool apps and items keep them at the forefront,
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have a folder and set them to go off automatically instead of all these other
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notifications that are not on the side of wellness for you.
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You need these tools, not just in hard times, but every day.
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This has to be an everyday thing.
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Something that I tell people often is that the same way they prescribed medication
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for me, and they didn't say, just take this when you're having a hard time.
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Just take this when you remember.
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Just take this when you feel like it. The medication was prescribed for me to
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take every day, and that's how seriously I take all of these strategies.
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This is a daily workout to strengthen my mental health so that I can be better
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for me, better for my family, better for my community, and for the purpose and
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plan that God has for my life.
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So that is my encouragement that, above all, keep your relationship with Jesus
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at the forefront, not any of the things that happened to you in the past,
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and start to develop your mental health toolkit. kit.
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I hope that this information has been helpful. If you found anything helpful,
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I would encourage you to share with a friend or family member that it may help as well.
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Until next time, be well.