Podcast 1

Dr. Dawn discusses the importance of prioritizing mental health and taking care of oneself. She emphasizes that while we often prioritize taking care of external things, we neglect our own mental well-being. Dr. Dawn encourages asking ourselves important questions about our mental health and processing emotions in a healthy way. She also touches on the impact of mental health on relationships and the need for regular mental maintenance. Dr. Dawn shares her personal experience with depression and the importance of seeking help when needed. Overall, she emphasizes the significance of mental health awareness and self-care. I am Dr. Dawn and this is your Embrace Your Greatness podcast for this session. Look, this is Mental Health Awareness Month and I am so blessed to be able to share this moment and space and time with you. Why? Because if you're like me and if you've been through anything, you take care of everything else first and you take care of yourself last. Perhaps that you do not do things for yourself but you're not typically primary on the list and so we want to make sure as we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month that we are doing things in the right order, in the right capacity, and with the right amount of attention to make sure that you are as emotionally healthy as you can be. Why? Because we take care of everything that we can see. If we see our lawns, we know that our lawns need to be mowed, our house needs to be cleaned, our car needs to be serviced, our children are growing out of their clothes and we need to replace them as they go from grade level to grade level. Everything that we see gets our attention. We know that our family needs to eat. We need to provide meals for them but you cannot see the inside of your mind and so sometimes because we have developed these mechanisms to operate, we're the last person that we check on. We don't say, are you good sis, how you doing bro? We don't ask ourselves those questions so we're going to talk about how we can benefit from having a healthy mental strategy for our lives because it's so important for us to do that and we want to make sure that you are checking on yourself, that you are emotionally healthy, that you are processing issues well, that you are dealing with life well and you know because you are maintenancing your own life and your own mental capacity and wellness and so it's important for us to ask ourselves the important questions in our life. Am I masking certain situations to deal with them later? Am I silently suffering to prevent issues with other people because I don't believe that they can handle it? If I'm grieving, am I doing it in a healthy way? Am I sweeping things under the rug? Am I depressed? Am I struggling? Am I happy? Am I holding in my emotions? Am I under pressure and if so, how well am I doing? Have I learned to develop defense mechanisms to help me navigate life's issues or allow me to operate but I do not have the appropriate results from that because I do not allow myself to feel it because if I don't feel it, then I will not be able to take care of all the things that I'm responsible for. I can't afford to feel anything right now. I just need to work through what's happening in my life and would that mean that I am emotionally healthy? Am I emotionally healthy? Listen, we know that mental challenges can run through families and bloodlines and we may have not diagnosed it or identified it but we have seen some triggers in our life that show us that there's some red flags as it pertains to how we handle our own mental health and how we handle other people dealing with our mental health but if it is as simple as monitoring our mental health so that it does not become a mental challenge, why don't we do more of it? Is it healthy for everyone to navigate situations, emotions and people in a way that ensures that they're doing what they need to do for themselves or is that selfish? So you want to ask yourself often as we said earlier, how are you doing? How well are you doing with life and what are you doing with your life to make sure that it is serving you in the best capacity as it pertains to your mental health and when we do that, are we sacrificing ourselves in the process or are we truly doing what we would do for somebody else? When we want to help other people, we are very disciplined and very forthright in carrying out whatever actions are necessary to help them but do we do that for ourselves? So if we are not struggling with depression, anxiety, panic attacks or evident trauma, we tend to think that we're normal because we have not hit the maximum level of what a trigger can actually cause to happen in our life. There's no fire, there's no emergency and so if we don't see that, sometimes we'll let things go on for a long period of time but when we have a vehicle, we'll pull into a repair shop and we'll have our car maintenance on schedule. So I guess my question to you is, do you have a schedule for your mental maintenance or do you wait until you do see depression, anxiety, a panic attack or evident trauma to pay attention to what it is that you need for your mental health? My mentor, the late Chief Apostle Ann Savannah told me a long time ago and a lot of you know that I'm in ministry, full-time ministry. I do run a business or two as well but my primary assignment in the earth is ministry and God rest her soul, before she went on to be with the Lord, she said to me that ministry is the assignment from God but make sure that you take care of yourself too so you're healthy enough to not only operate in it but benefit from it. She said when you're gone, the building will still be standing and somebody else will be preaching in it. So make sure that you're enjoying your life and you're doing what it is that you need to do in that to make sure you're healthy. She said take one day off a week, take one weekend off a month and take one week off a quarter for your own personal health so that way when it's all over you won't regret not having had that time with your family but more importantly making sure that you are mentally, emotionally and spiritually sound yourself. I have to be honest and say I don't always do it but I always use it as a gauge to see where I am when I need to do it. You know mental health was not mentioned the way it is now 20 years ago when she gave me that strategy. So it's not the exact verbage that she would use, I don't really think she called it mental health. I think she called it just taking care of yourself but in essence it's the exact same thing that I'm sharing with you today. So where are you on your own schedule? Because if we don't have something that raises the red flag like we talked about earlier then what would make you stop and say sis you good? Bro are you okay? Did that upset you at work? How did you process rejection? What are you doing when you encounter failure? How do you feel about yourself when you encounter a delay? How do you handle success? Is success making you egotistical and cocky or is success making you confident in Christ and more purposeful about your call? How are you processing life? Do you have a good relationship with your children, your family? Listen, do you have joy and are you happy? Do you check on yourself when there is no visible mental health challenge? Do you ask yourself again, are you good sis? You alright bro? And then what do you do if you do encounter a red flag? What do you do if you find yourself dealing with depression? I have to tell you first hand that that happened to me in the year 2000. It probably started in 1997. I lost my fifth child. Some of you know my testimony that I had uterine cancer when I was 15 years old and so they never wanted me to get pregnant because I had a hormonal cancer which actually meant that hormones triggered cancer cells in my body and everyone has cancer cells. Some of them are never triggered and some are triggered by certain things but we all carry the cells that could manifest cancer, right? And so they never wanted me to get pregnant but I did. I kept getting pregnant. My first three pregnancies ended in miscarriage. My fourth pregnancy ended in a stillborn because the heart stopped right around five months and then the fifth pregnancy I actually had the child and he died during birth and so I lost these five children. I dealt with cancer at the age of 15 years old and I really found myself slipping into a depression, not to mention that my husband could not keep his clothes on. My ex-husband at the time, husband at the time, ex-husband now, could not keep his clothes on and so I'm dealing with adultery in my marriage and you know we weren't really having a hard time. We didn't really have money problems. I had a great job. His business was doing well. He unfortunately ran in his family, his grandfather, his father, and he and his brothers all you know found themselves in situations where they were unfaithful. Some resulted in children out of wedlock and I think that he felt like because he didn't have children, he didn't do me as bad as his other family members did their wives or his mom and so to him, he was doing a great job of not being them but to me, you're still having an adulterous relationship so yes, I'm divorced. Church folks don't come for me about being divorced. The Bible does say adultery is a reason to do it. That is why I'm not married so let's just move on past that. We don't condone it. We don't want it. We fight for it. I did fight for my marriage. I never wanted to be divorced. I did everything I could to restore our marriage but he just could not break the stronghold that he was in as it pertained to adulterous relationships with more than one woman so I had to protect myself mentally, spiritually but most of all physically because now I'm being exposed to things so that is why that happened but I found myself slipping into this depression. My marriage is falling apart. I've lost my fifth child. Not sure what I'm going to do, how I can get over it and I had a really good job, a really good job. I was just about to turn 30, 29 years old, worked for a Fortune 500 company but I was dealing with this loss and so I found myself slipping into this depression and just really didn't know what to do. Went and got some help and I'm telling you I don't and we'll talk about medication for different things probably a little bit later in this but I did go get some help. I got some help and had a wonderful counselor who I work with who gave me a very low dose of some medication to help level out the depression and it worked for me but I ended up going to this church called From the Heart Ministries. This is back in 2000 and I believe they were in Temple Hills then with the late Pastor Cherry who was amazing and I gave my life to Christ and I was radically saved and something just happened after that which is why I want to kind of mention that I don't give medical advice this is just testimony and information that I'm sharing with you but you have to know how to balance what God is doing in your life and so before I had that help from the Holy Spirit after I gave my life to Christ I needed that medication to kind of help me overcome this depression but something happened after I gave my life to Christ and I was able to cold turkey just come off of that medication. I don't even think I was on it for about six months so it was just a blessing for me to be able to have something to help me and then get delivered from it with the help of the Holy Spirit. Now everyone's journey with the medication is different I know some people who have had long term assistance with medication some people have had short term assistance with medication some people have not needed medication at all whether it was pertaining to a sickness or a mental crisis mental health crisis you have to determine that for yourself I believe that everybody's DNA is different the dynamics of how you handle situations are different so you really want to pray and have the Holy Spirit help you maneuver how you mix traditional medicine and holistic medicine how you mix prayer and your walk with God and faith as it pertains to healing do what's best for you because everybody's life is different so that's just my disclaimer on that but I get off the medication and God sends me a little girl and after that I'm able to have a biological son and now I'm going through this divorce it does end due to this infidelity this adultery and I'm trying to figure out you know how to maneuver the waters here because I knew that depression had left me now I have somewhat of a family I'm still grieving this divorce because I didn't want it I wanted to be married and then of course you try to find other relationships or be in another relationship if you want to be married and things just weren't playing out for me I was drawing the short end of the stick making bad decisions because I was not emotionally sound in my walk with God I was new in Christ I really needed the Holy Spirit to mature me quickly and so my my depression dissipated but now I am stressed I'm stressed because now I went from being married to being a single mom and now I have these responsibilities and then my work schedule was crazy and I didn't have a spouse to assist me with the children and so I go from being depressed to stress and so that's why mental health is so important because there are different lanes in life that you can find yourself in and you need God's help to overcome those things I'm the sole provider and I had to stop and ask myself sis you good sis are you good how are you handling all of these changes and that's when embrace your greatness started in my kitchen in my bay window for those of you who know my story it was between then and 2004 that God really began to help me with the different issues that I was dealing with in my life and he gave me the strategies to help me reveal and heal what was happening to me and how to make the best out of them and learn from them and that's where embrace your greatness manifested from that's how it came about and so we want to deal with ourselves so that we can help develop the mental capacity to enjoy the rest of our lives so let's you know help put ourselves in the right perspective let's go through some things that will help us kind of look at our whole life you know just real quickly to make sure that our perspective of our own life is correct not what other people think what you think so things like you grew up in a family each family has their own dynamics each family has their own generational burdens each family has their own generational blessings some of us have heard that we are the favorite in our family some of us have heard that we are the black sheep in our family we have learned habits and patterns and behaviors from this family unit and then you enter into this world with other people who have had the same experience in their family but that experience is different than yours and so all of us are full of what life has poured into us and what happens is if we do not reveal and heal we cause more damage to each other and i've often said that if people do not deal with themselves honey they will deal with you why because damaged people think that they're okay right nobody walks around and says oh i'm damaged goods i'm gonna i'm gonna break your heart i'm gonna bruise you that's not what happens and so we have to make sure that we do not allow damaged people or give damaged people permission to damage us we don't give traumatized people permission to traumatize us now they will try to do it because that's the condition they're in i'd love to teach on condition we'll have to do that in another podcast but their condition allows them to think that their behavior is okay so now we have people trying to merge histories and avoid healing and we got to make sure that we're not the ones as we're merging the history that this person has with their family and the history you have with your family that we are not avoiding healing in that process so that's when i want to ask you again have you checked on yourself have you learned to maneuver life with the skills that pain has taught you oh my goodness have you learned to maneuver life with the skills that pain has taught you or have you checked on yourself and you said are you good sis bro you all right did you heal from what your father said did you recover from what your mother did how are you really doing can you catch yourself as you're processing this emotional cycle that you're in and maintenance in your life or are you going to wait until you are in an emotional crisis right are you going to catch yourself in the emotional cycle and maintenance your mental health so you're okay or are you going to wait until you're in an emotional crisis depression anxiety stress did you forgive yourself when things happen that you thought you could have fixed or you know overcome did you release anything that would hinder unforgiveness did you give yourself credit for not quitting did you pat yourself on the back for surviving have you given yourself permission to start over the bible tells us in romans chapter 12 verse 2 and i'm reading from the amplified version and i so enjoyed this text i really do romans chapter 12 verse 2 and amplify says and do not be conformed to this world any longer with its superficial values and customs but be transformed and progressively changed as you mature spiritually by the renewing of your mind focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes so that you may prove for yourself what the will of god is that which is good and acceptable and perfect in his plan and purpose for you so a couple of things here we are transformed by the renewing of our mind the only way we change everything around us is the renewing of our mind that comes from maturing spiritually right and then that allows us to prove for ourselves no one else can do it for you what the will of god is for what in his plan and purpose for you i would love to do the teaching on purpose and intent we don't have to come back to that as well but this is important for our lives because our mind is what god is needs to be transformed why is he saying that our mind needs to be transformed because our mind is what determines what we believe it is what determines right and wrong the mind is what answers the heart when the heart has questions when you say are you good sis bro are you all right have you given yourself permission to be changed to be transformed have you let go of all the things we talked about that come through your bloodline and in your family have you given yourself permission to cry have you given yourself permission to yell have you give yourself permission to fail have you said to yourself it's okay it's okay that you made a left and went right instead it's okay that you were supposed to go forward and you stalled for a bit hoping something would change it's okay have you rewarded yourself for recovering from life that's why this is important during mental health awareness month it's important for us to take care not only of what we see like we said earlier our lawns our houses our clothing our family our vehicles but to take care of what we can't see naturally you can't look in your mind naturally but you can look at how you're handling everything and how you handle everything will tell you how you're doing mentally we want to be so diligent about our mind that we know that we're taking good care of ourselves in every aspect of our lives we don't want to wait until something manifests or it's too late for us to respond because now we're dealing with trauma and we've gone too far what do i mean by that if you know people that go from zero to ten because they have this thing that's happening in their life and you can set them off quickly typically they're not really going from zero to ten they're going from ten to ten because they've been out of zero a long time they just learn to manage at ten they learn to take things and suppress them take things and hold on to them or think that they can handle them and they've been at ten a long time until they just can't handle it anymore and so people say you're going from zero to ten no you've been at ten you just learn how to manage it and you can't manage the ten anymore and that's what happens so when you get to three four and five you need to be saying to yourself are you good sis you all right bro why because if you don't do that you will be trying to manage ten and lose it and sometimes you can't recover those conversations you can't recover those situations and you want to make sure you are healthy first so we can stop the cycle you know i can tell someone's condition by their response to know boundaries are in place to protect the giver and regulate the taker i'm going to say that again boundaries are in place to protect the giver and regulate the taker because takers take they do not self-regulate let's say that again takers take they do not self-regulate and if givers are not wise then they go from being a resource to being a victim out of their own generosity let's say that again if givers are not wise they go from being a resource to a victim out of their own generosity so i watch people and i listen to them as they talk about their parents their peers their spouses their children and their friends and i listen to their response as they're telling me different things that have happened in their life and i can tell a healthy response even if they're hurt but i can also tell an unhealthy response from someone that has not learned how to live with other people and how to mentally regulate themselves and it's important that we understand it because you cannot show people to themselves a healthy person's mindset is self-accountability and self-accountability causes self-correction but a person with an unhealthy mindset only holds on to other people's things that they need to be accounted for and they correct other people they don't self-correct and so there are many pieces that compose our mental health and we want to make sure that we're not allowing people who are unhealthy to traumatize us we're not allowing people who are unhealthy to cause us to correct when they won't self-correct right we want to be in charge of that and so i know that we want to take into account everything that's going on in people's lives but you have to make sure that they've healed in that area they're not using that area against you so if we take into account everything that's happened let's reflect on what people have done to us in our life how that's impacted us and if we've healed from it and you know my favorite saying is you get to choose how you use what happens to you so no it's not your fault when people mishandle you but you get to choose what you do with how they handled you and how you're going to use it how you can add more to your life instead of allowing it to traumatize you so ultimately we're not responsible for managing people and their actions but we are responsible for managing the damage that they cause to our life and no it's not fair that we are now you know affected by their problems or that their trauma has invaded our lives but it is our job to have a healthy boundary and a rescue plan for our mental health so let's talk about that rescue plan real quickly and we're going to wrap up this wonderful podcast today first thing is prayer we want to ask god to help us see through his word what's happening in our lives and we want to ask the holy spirit to give us the wisdom to handle what is happening and how to take care of ourselves the second thing in your rescue plan is forgiveness forgiveness is not giving them permission to hurt you it's releasing them from the power to change you let me say it again forgiveness is not giving them permission to hurt you it is releasing them from the power to change you so you want to process what they have done and you want to implement the proper boundary and you do not want to become what you despise don't turn into them what did you learn and it does not get to have an opportunity to change me unless it changes me for the better this problem does not get or have an opportunity to change me unless it changes me for the better and it does not get to have power over me it can only be used to empower me it does not get that power over me it can only be used to empower me and i give the pain to god and i forgive myself for the access and i use this lesson to make me better systematic healing systematic healing is number three in this rescue plan what is that when you put yourself in position through god's word to deal with your emotions what is systematic healing when you put yourself in position through god's word to deal with your emotions how does that work what does the system look like the first thing is accountability why did i give this person access in the first place what is going on with me that i allowed it or i did not see them or i did not see what was happening why was this okay with me in the first place why did i allow it to go on so long i do not have to take accountability for the action because that was them but i do need to take accountability for the access come on let's say that again i do not need to take accountability for the action because that was their action not mine but i do need to take accountability for the access accountability draws lines where reason ends come on somebody accountability draws lines where reason ends right reason is the thing that gives you a proper guideline for how you make decisions but once reason ends now accountability kicks in now there's the boundary um people that do not have personal accountability have already given themselves a path in life because they have a justification for their behavior so you're always in danger with somebody that does not what self-correct or take personal accountability so accountability is huge number three under systematic healing is observation what was healthy what was unhealthy what would i do the same what would i do differently and use this information the next time that you encounter people and last in this systematic healing is invite christ into every situation so the holy spirit can help you navigate and discern everything and this is important because we are built to be in relationships god tells us in psalms chapter 68 verse 6 and i believe this is the nlt version god places the lonely in families so we need the holy spirit to have healthy relationships because god does not want you to be alone but he doesn't want you to be in relationships silently suffering because we have not learned to navigate trauma or pain with the help of the holy spirit and so these are the things that we want to do during mental health awareness month basically take inventory of your mental health make sure that you're servicing yourself and taking care of yourself just like you would do anything else if your lawn is well manicured so your mind should be well manicured if your car is clean and service so should your mind be clean and service you want to take care of yourself like you take care of everything else and more importantly you want to ask the holy spirit to help you do it so you have the right vision view discernment gifting and wisdom on everything that you're evaluating changing and maintaining listen this is dr don it's been a great time i hope that you make sure that you subscribe to this podcast so you get a notification whatever it is that we are putting some new information out there and listen i'm rooting for you jewels and gents you know that's my name for you guys i believe that men are still gentlemen and i believe that women are still jewels and that we have of course my vision tip of the day you can follow me on all social media platforms but i want to make sure that you get that information so that you can see a change in your life so that god can show you who he is and that you can walk in the blessing that god has placed for you here on this earth