Navigating Mental Health: 5 Strategies to Support Mental Health - Part 1

Hi, Victorious Living family, welcome to Stepping Forward. My name is Sheridan Correa and I am the Wellness Program Developer Director for Victorious Living. So thanks for tuning in. It's so good to be with you here today. I am a living testimony of the transforming power of Jesus Christ and the good news. And he has freed me from mental illness, from bitterness and unforgiveness, from disorder, a disordered mind, dysregulation that I was experiencing, gosh, all my life, that survival mode. Let's see what else. Two divorces, broken relationships, I lost my kids, meth and heroin addiction, opiate addiction, alcohol addiction. I've done it. I've been through everything. And when I encountered the living God, the one true God, eight years ago, a little over eight years ago, my life has been radically changed ever since then. And so I want to just welcome you here today and friends, if I am living a life of victory, you can too. So we are talking in this series about mental health and about navigating our mental health. How does this work? How does our old life and our new life that God is bringing us into being a new creation, how does that work? How do we navigate that? And our head has probably been in a state of disorder for most of our life. And the experiences that we have gone through have not only added to, but are probably continuing to add to the dysregulation and the hardship that we are experiencing in our minds. So in this series, Navigating Mental Health, what we're doing is three things. We are breaking the silence. We got to talk about it. If we are feeling a type of way and we are struggling mentally, we don't do that alone

because the enemy would love to get us alone. Our brains love to catastrophize and make things up and it's just not good. So let's break the silence. Let's get it out. Let's talk about it. We're not crazy. We're human. And we are reducing the stigma here. We're reducing the stigma. Again, we're not crazy, we're human. And our hardship and the things that we struggle with in our minds and having to navigate even our emotions, which is part of the mental health and well-being of us, it's confusing. Let's be real. It's confusing. And so we are reducing the stigma and the label that says, oh, we're like this, we're always going to be like this, ain't nothing going to be ever different for us and can't do anything about it. No, here we're going to empower you, I'm going to empower you. The word of God is going to empower you and says, yes, you actually do have a choice. Fear and the things that we've gone through and a lot of times our minds, and especially when the amygdala, the emotional part of our brain has hijacked our entire life and our entire well-being, tells us that it's a place of fear, okay? It's a place of fear. It's a place of panic. And so we want to quiet those voices and quiet that part in our brain that says that we are unsafe and it's never going to be different and I have no power, I'm powerless, I'm hopeless, I'm helpless. That's not true. That's not true. So we're going to reason with that part of our brain.

We're going to bring in the word of God and the word of truth and see what he says about that today to really partner with what's going on inside of ourselves. I think it's very easy to be able to avoid, ignore, talk down to, let's see, condemn ourselves for the experience that we're having inside of our minds and our hearts. And that's not our Lord, okay? That's not our Lord and our savior and our friend and that's not our God who doesn't care about what's going on. So we're going to do all that today. Always reminding you that God sees, God cares, God understands, God hears you and wants to help you and give you hope, give you your power back, empower you and equip you to live out a state of wellbeing. mentally inside of ourselves. So today we are gonna talk about winning the war in our mind. And I'm gonna share five things that I do that help me to keep the peace within myself, right? Jesus came to give us life and peace. The Spirit comes in and brings us into this place of life and peace that's part of their nature, among other things. But if we are not experiencing that life and that abundant life, or we are not experiencing his peace, but we are experiencing restlessness and unrest and conflict and confusion and all those other things opposite of peace, that should be an indicator of kind of where we're at without judgment, right? This is a place of a reflection. What's happening inside of us

is not a place of judgment or condemnation, but it's just a way to identify, okay, where am I on this? What lies am I believing or am I believing truth? It's a barometer. So we wanna do that here today. So five things, winning the war in your mind, and let's get started. Okay, first, so I think we've covered the definition of mental health pretty well, but it's how we think, how we feel, how we respond to life, how we make choices even. It's our will and it's our wanter. And it affects even our relationships, right? It affects the way we relate to God, the way we relate to ourselves and the way we relate to other people and engage with other people. So it encompasses a lot. It defines or it affects how we handle stress even, whether we are becoming more resilient when we are feeling stressful and entering adversity, experiencing adversity and hardship and trials and troubles. If we can become resilient and bounce forward in that, that is part of our mental health and wellbeing. It also affects, like I said, how we relate to others and how we make decisions. So all those three things, all those, I don't know, seven things that I just said, those are so important. So, so important.

And family, if you are getting out of prison, all right, if you have an end date, an end game date where you are returning to society and you are in prison right now, trying to figure out and trying to build yourself up, trying to help your help, trying to understand yourself and trying to help yourself and heal those wounds and those things that you've gone through and better yourself so that you are growing into this person who does have some stress resilience, who is learning how to make better choices, all right? Because I can guarantee you, the choices that we made that landed ourself there probably is a good reflection of like, this might not be working well for my life. That's at least my story. When I ended up in jail on my eighth or ninth time and I'm walking in and everybody's like, well, Sheridan's here. I don't think that's a good sign, okay? I don't think this is what I want for my life, that I am this popular in jail and on my way to prison. I don't think that's where I should be. And so I spent that time while on, I call it time out, it's a holy time out. I spent that time really pouring into myself and understanding myself and building myself up and healing those broken places, bringing the darkness into light

and really working on myself. And so I became a healthy person, we'll say it like that, because I wasn't healthy for so, so long, for most of my life. So that's what mental health encompasses, which is a lot of things, it's a lot of things. So today we are gonna talk about five things that I do personally to win the war in my mind. I was, man, my experience with mental health, I don't know if I've shared that very, very clearly, but it was, it started early in my childhood and never knew how to navigate it, manage it, understand it, why it was even happening, the nature of it, the root of it. I didn't know any of that stuff. And the people that I was surrounded with didn't know any of that stuff and was experiencing their own dysregulation and their own unhealth and unwell-being and illness, if you will. Disorder, we'll call it disorder, I like that word better, because, yeah, I like that word better. So I didn't know any of that. I didn't have any peace, I didn't have purpose, I didn't have clarity for my life. It definitely, nothing made sense up here and I didn't know, I just didn't know. And on the day that I encountered Christ and surrendered my whole self and just said, I'm in, I'm living for you, let's go, I'm not in control, I have no idea what I'm doing, let me raise the white flag. And that day, all the voices in my head stopped and I had clarity, I had peace, I had, it

was just so quiet because it was so still upstairs and I was like, okay, this is crazy. I've been trying my whole life to manufacture this and get to this place. And I've used drugs, I've used relationships, I've used like fill in the blank, I've tried it to numb and escape and make sense of my thought life and just my mental wellbeing and nothing worked. And I knew that it was from the Lord, I knew it was supernatural, I knew that I knew that I knew that it was from him because, and a result from coming into relationship with him because all of a sudden I couldn't do, like I didn't create this, it just happened. So that was like, wow, okay, Lord, so if this is now my new life and my experience, like how do I keep it? How do I keep it? How do I manage this? How do I be a good steward of my mind? Because that's my responsibility. That's our responsibility as followers and disciples of Christ, being students of the Lord and students of the word of God, that is our, we have a responsibility to keep ourself and to guard the things that we have been entrusted with in our minds and our hearts and those places of freedom. In Galatians 5.1, it says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. That is responsibility language, okay? That's not just like, hey, yeah, here's a good word and just listen to it and don't do anything. No, that's not, that's not what that scripture says. That scripture says that once we are free, it is our responsibility with the Holy Spirit co-operating and co-partnering with the Holy Spirit and the word of God to keep ourselves free. We are supposed to stand firm in the truth so that we are not burdened again by the slavery that we used to be in, okay? So that was very, very relevant to me because I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want to go back

to that land again. I don't want to live with a disordered mind. I don't want to not know what truth versus lies are. I don't want to live my life with a bitter heart that was seriously, seriously corrupting my mind. So Lord, what am I supposed to do? How does this work? All right. If you are the God of order and the God of peace, well then I need you to teach me because I don't have those things. Those are not things that I possess. So I looked into, you know, and studied the word of God and surrounded myself with healthy community who were really applying the word of God and being disciples of Christ also, you know, things like that that I'll get into. But we have a responsibility once again to stay free. Once we are free, once he has granted us the clean slate and the freedom from slavery that we found ourselves things bound to and sin nature, we, it is our job with the work of the Holy Spirit to keep ourselves free and to stand firm in that. So again, I'm going to go over five things that helped me to stand firm in my freedom and to not only stand firm in that, but to grow, continue to grow and be sanctified also in that. So the first one is be in community. Listen, we are created for community. We healing does not happen in isolation alone. Okay. Why community? The word of God says in Ecclesiastes four, nine through 10, two people are better off than one for they can help each other succeed. They can help each other to victory. They can help each other to grow and to be fruitful and faithful.

Those were, that's what that word means. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help, man. This is so. So true. Because I don't know if you're like me, when I get alone and try to grow alone, try to go it alone. Man, I can talk crazy to myself. Well, then here comes the enemy with all his crazy stuff to all his sideways things. And I'm like, yeah, oh, wow, that's totally believable. And I start even believe in the lies again. I start being corrupted and twisted even in my mind and start compromising, okay? Start compromising and not even holding myself accountable anymore. And God calls us into community. We have that common oneness and unity where we are all going the same direction. That is gold. That is gold and that is a must. God never intended us to live in isolation and to go it alone. He knows that Satan is like that prowling lion just waiting around, waiting around the corner, waiting for us to get alone, get that little sheep, that little baby yak that's like moved away from the herd so, man, he can just devour us and he can talk nonsense to us and he can speak out his lies to us and he's just ready to take us out at all costs. God designed us to live in relationship as the body of Christ. Why did he do that? We need encouragement. We need encouragement, constant encouragement from others, from safe, supportive, and godly wisdom people. We need people to encourage us. That's why we're on here to encourage y'all to keep going. You can do it. Keep going into the word. Keep praying. Keep doing the things that you know that will bring about and grow your relationship with Christ and take you from point A to point B because God has all the answers to that. We also need accountability. Listen, we're not good at being accountable to ourselves. We love to lie to ourselves. Our heart says, the word of God says, our hearts are deceitful and above anything else in the world, I'm really good at lying to myself and I know that. So I got to like bounce off even my thoughts and my heart against people like, is this real? I'm not sure about this. What do you think about this? Or we're struggling with something in a sin pattern and we can invite another safe person into that space and say, hey, I need some accountability help. I need someone to check in with me. I need someone to make sure that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing because I want this result over here. We need that. That is healthy and that is part of God's divine design for our life and for being a Christian and being in the body of Christ. We need to be reminded of who we are because the enemy

ain't gonna stop. He ain't gonna stop telling us lies. He is not going to stop coming to try to get us. He is not going to stop firing away his fiery arrows in our direction, which is why we need to put on the armor of God so that we can stand firm in that. But we need help. We need help. We are an army. We are now an army together, working together as a team and as a body, different members of the same body with different functions. But we have to, we just cannot walk it alone. We can help each other point out the schemes and the lies to each other like, hey, man, I don't know. That's a lie from the pit of hell right there. And so don't believe that. Don't be tempted to follow that trail and believe that lie because we know that where that lie goes, that lie goes to death, that lie goes to disorder and sickness and away from well-being. But God made us to be in relationship with others. So having the supportive and safe and godly relationships and friendships must be a part of the journey. So here's a question. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Who is in your circle of influence? Are they people who are fanning your flame for Christ and your faith? Are they people who are championing you and cheering you on and encouraging you and supporting you to be the man or the woman of God that you are intended to be, that you have been granted access and permission to step into? Are you feeling like this around those people where you are flourishing and you are growing in not only your spiritual things, but growing mentally, growing in knowledge, growing in wisdom, growing in stature, in relationships, spiritual stature, in relationships, healthy relationships? Is that happening? Or do you feel like this when you're around people? Ain't nothing going on with the people that you're surrounding yourself with. If this is true of your life, I would find these people and rope up with them. If I would, here's my encouragement, my counsel, tell yourself, no, tell yourself, no, exercise that self-control and say, no, I want this life. I want this life. I don't want this life anymore. And so I'm going to find supportive, healthy people. There is a saying that says, you know, show me your friends and I'll show you the state of your heart. And that is so, so true. Or there's another one that says, you know, if, if you are surrounded with five wise people,

you're going to be the sixth wise person. If you're surrounded by five sick people, you're going to be the sixth sick person who the company that we keep is so, so important. So do a little inventory on that, where, who you surrounding yourself with, who's in your circle of influence, and are they helping you or hindering you in your progression and growth and coming into that place of well-being and truthfulness and authenticity? Or are they, is it going the other direction? All right, you got to examine it. You got to examine what you are doing. The second thing is renewing my mind, renewing your mind. God often speaks to us through our minds and wants us to develop what the Bible calls the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is the ability to make decisions as Jesus would. Okay. This is so, so important. If we are in our identity, we are a child of God. We are no longer an orphan. We belong to God. And so we can receive anything that he is trying to give us. All right. And then he cares about our becoming. He isn't just like, Oh, you're saved. Awesome. High five. Just stay the way that you are. Just coast and just wait till I bring you home. No, no, no. He's like, Hey, you can literally bring heaven down on earth while you are down there. You can live a holy and set apart and different and radical and healthy life than you've ever, ever experienced before.

And you can make decisions like Christ would. Okay. So God cares about that and we must follow the Bible's urging in Romans 12 too. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will. Because as we are being transformed and as we are becoming more true and honest and authentic in our being coming from, from this to this, we are able to like, be like, Oh my gosh, this is for real. And, and the Lord is legit. And he actually speaks truth and he is credible and he is able and good and faithful. Like those things actually become, um, real and, and approved. They, they become, um, credible to us because it works. It works. It works guys. So renewing our mind is part of that. Renewing our minds and I'm gonna give you three reasons why we need to remove our minds. First of all, we leak. Okay. We have holes in our brain, not literally, but there are, there are, um, yeah, we just have holes in our brain and we forget, we forget. So we must be reminded over and over and over and pick up again and again and again, the truths and the weapons of warfare. If we want to win, we have to go to the word of God every single day to renew, to make new again, our thoughts, the truths remind us that, okay, wait, now who am I again? Okay. Well, that's a lie. Yep. Here we go.

Okay. The word of God says this. We have to get that in us all the time because we will forget. We will forget. And that's part of being human. So staying spiritually active is more important than physical activity. All right. Sorry to break it to you, man. Um, uh, what's that, uh, oh gosh, come on the, uh, curls for the girls. Yep. Well, you're going to need to do some, some spiritual curls. Okay. Get spiritually active and get your spiritual, uh, self it exercised and exercise your mind. Exercise those truths. God calls us into a relationship with him so that we may be renewed with truth daily. We will be restored to wholeness and soundness and healthiness. That word sound means healthy and find out who he is. who we are, what His will is, and His way because it is good, it is healthy, and it is whole. All right? And it is holy. Jeremiah 29, 11 says, For I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a hope and a future. And we'll go 12. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me and I will be found by you, says the Lord. I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. This is a powerful, this is a powerful reality of our God and what He does, okay? He has purpose and plans for your life. It is soundness, it is health, it is order, it is well-being, it is a future and a hope, a confident expectation that He will remain faithful and He will bring about the goodness in your life. But we have to go to Him. We have to go to Him, be renewed by Him and be restored. And that renewing, that daily renewing, that discipline, that daily discipline of renewing,

that is key into our restoration process. We just can't be sitting around all passive and not doing a thing and lazy and being like, well, it ain't working because He ain't, look, look at my life and He ain't doing nothing. Well, here's a question, fam. Are you cooperating? Are you doing your part? Are you taking responsibility for renewing your mind? Okay, the second reason why we need to renew our mind is we have a proclivity to negativity. In our human nature, in our sinful nature, we have a proclivity, we lean and incline more towards negativity very naturally. So our brain naturally defaults to negative things unless we have other input to interrupt it, all right? We need some circuit breakers. We need something to come pierce our tracks and are the circuits that we get stuck on. And we need the Word of God to do that. The third reason why we need to be renewing our mind is God knows Satan will not stop trying to come at us sideways and tell us all the lies, right? The influences of the world and the messaging of the world and just the, oh my gosh, the inundation of the poison of the world is only getting worse. I don't know if you know that. When you get out, I mean, it's just, it's too much. It's just too much sometimes even for me, but He knows that the world won't stop. He knows that Satan won't stop. And as a child of God, we cannot become children of the world, okay? We need to learn how to live in the world, but not of the world. God is calling us to live that holy and that blameless above reproach life and that separated life where we're not going down the wide party easy road. We're going down the narrow hard road, all right? That's the road that leads to eternal life. That's the road that leads to peace. That's the road that leads to wellbeing. And that's, that can be really, really challenging. Praise the Lord. He does not leave us there and just say, Hey, yeah, this is how you, this is, this is what you need to do, but I'm not going to tell you or give you any equipment to do it with. That's not our God. He gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to carry that out. That's part of renewing our mind also. So out of forth is inviting the Holy Spirit into a, our, our, our everything, our daily life, everything that we are doing and being able to listen and heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit. So if you got that little, you know, that little cattle prod feeling in your, in your mind, in your heart that says, uh, you know, come on, man, come on. And he's really pushing you or prompting you or like

tapping you on the shoulder, man, we got to listen to those. We have to listen to that because the Holy Spirit and God are one, right? It's God's spirit. And God is the God of order and a God of peace. And so everything that he tells us to do is to bring us into that place where we have a hope, our future, where we are experiencing his good plans and purposes, where we experiencing wellness and soundness and healthy living even on the inside. And that will manifest that will come out and, and be a reflection, you know, from the inside to our outside. So he cares, he cares. Invite the Holy Spirit to renew your mind daily. He will cleanse it from all the dirt and the clutter and the false beliefs and the attitudes and the lies and the unhealthy feelings, the ways we are responding to our emotional experience and all the misguided plans. The Holy Spirit will replace all of that with true thoughts and true purpose and true plans and true traits and your authenticity and your true identity as a child of God and his purposes for your life, which is this, to thrive and to flourish, not this anymore, okay? So here's a question. How's your time in truth? How are you doing with renewing your mind? Is that a challenge for you? What gets in the way? What obstacles? Is it because, let's be real, you don't wanna look stupid? You don't want some people to like judge you and like talk about you and make fun of you? Our God has to be louder than those voices,

than those places of fear, okay? God calls us into a life of not being cowardice and where we are not able to walk forward and carry out the things that he is calling us into. What does the word of God say in 2 Timothy 1, 7? God gives us a spirit of power by the Holy Spirit, of love and a sound and healthy mind, self-control and self-discipline. So we gotta get really good, fam, at telling ourselves no and stop doing the things that are not working and saying yes to the things that will work for our life. And the only way you're gonna find out if they work for your life is if you start doing it, okay? So let that be, I'm trying to encourage you here to step forward into that place. But are you seeking truth? When I started my relationship with Christ and really studying the word of God and growing in my faith, like my name Sheridan means seeker, it means a searcher. And so I took that very, very personally and like, Lord, I wanna be a truth seeker now. I don't wanna seek out the things that are not bringing me goodness and that are not growing me in my faithfulness and that are not allowing the health and the flourishing of the gospel to be evident and active in my life. I don't want that for my life. So I'm gonna seek truth and plant myself in truth.

And that's what I did. I took that very, very, very seriously. So are you seeking truth? Are you seeking first the kingdom of God and then everything else will be added unto you? Are you learning how to discern between truth versus lies? Are you planting yourself into that good soil that it talks about in Matthew? And I can't remember the chapter right now, but in Matthew, are you planting yourself in that good soil? Are you listening and that's it? And then it just kind of falls to the wayside and you're like, oh man, that was a good word, but you ain't applying it. You ain't doing nothing about it because nothing's gonna change. We're just not here to gain knowledge and be like, yeah, oh yeah, agreement, but not do anything about it. That's not what the word of God tells us to do. So are you even telling yourself the truth? Are you agreeing with those lies that we tell ourselves and then finding evidence to support those lies that actually grow and solidify those lies to become truths in our head? Man, that is slippery territory. We cannot do that. So are you even telling yourself the truth? I just, this last weekend, I was battling with this. I am experiencing a very new season in my life,

perimenopause, where my hormonal swings are just there a lot. And my emotional brain can be really, really loud rather than my reasoning brain. And I have to really learn. I am learning, have to, and have learned, even used these tools in my toolbox over the last eight years that I've gotten to be able to tell myself the truth. And when my emotional brain is coming out and it's telling me all this crazy stuff, that I can sit down with myself and say, okay, thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. Instead of thinking about all the ways that what's wrong with me and why am I this way and condemning myself and getting stuck in that spin cycle, I sat down and I said, okay, what's right with me? Let me speak truth over myself so that I can take my power back and I can walk in that identity and not be walking in the spiraling out of like, oh my gosh, who am I and what's going on with my life? And the dysregulating part that our brain can be activated by several things. But are you even telling yourself the truth or are you agreeing with the lies? Are you high-fiving the enemy and then we slap Christ in the face and say, I don't believe anything that you say about me. Hey, but I'll take all those blessings, Lord, I need you to get me out of this prison. That I'm not going to believe that you have good things for my life, that I'm not going to believe that I actually am a child of God and that I am beloved and I'm treasured and I'm cherished and I'm chosen to do a good work and I have purpose and you have a good plan for my life. But I'm going to take all those other things just, uh, you know, that really benefit me

that I think benefit me. Is that our life? Is that your life? Are we doing that to Christ? I know sometimes I am where I am believing the lies of the enemy and I get stuck there for a minute and I'm like, oh, hold up. I don't feel good. I don't feel good. I feel confused. Let me sit down with myself and the scriptures and define who I am again. Let me locate myself and bring me back to the truth and the authentic design, divine design that, that, um, the authentic identity that I am. And we, if you don't know how to do that, will you just put a little comment in the section there in, if you're watching in Pando, put a comment in there and just says, Hey, I need help learning how to do that. We can help you, um, help walk with you through, through that process. So we're going to stop there. That was totally two things that we got through. So we got three more on this next video, but let me just pray over y'all and, and, and please keep the comments coming. Keep the letters coming. We are receiving them. Your prayer requests are going on our prayer wall in our headquarters, um, and we are getting those addresses that you are giving to us. So thank you for doing that. And you will be receiving correspondence and a letter from, from our team very, very soon. So let me pray over you. Father God, we just, I love you so much, Lord. And I thank you for these brothers and sisters that are tuning in right now, Lord, I thank you that even as I am talking and talking about things that your spirit is bringing

them into a united place with you, Lord, into an alignment father, where you are aligning their mind, you are creating order in their minds and in their hearts. They have clarity. They have understanding of how you work. They have no fear because perfect love casts out and drives out fear father, that they are experiencing soundness and wholeness even now, father, and you are bringing them into that place. You are restoring everything that was lost and eaten away. Everything that the enemy tried to do, all the experiences that they have walked through that tell them that they are unlovable and that there are no, there's no purpose for them. And then you have no plans and you're not good father in the name of Jesus. I see an alignment and I call down an alignment and declare an alignment and a union, a perfect union for with your ways and your spirit and your restoration and faithfulness and goodness, Lord, may that be evident and true in their lives. And as we, as we step forward into believing who you are, believing who we are, father, that we would experience wellbeing and continue to just teach us and walk with us along this journey. And we love you so much. Continue to pour out your blessings and your truth to, to the incarcerated family here. And so Lord, gosh, I just love you. Thank you for the hope and the help that you give us. And thank you for caring about us so much and your unconditional love and constant care, your grace, your mercy and your peace. We love you so much for it. And we thank you in Jesus name. Amen. We'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you for watching our broadcast.

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