In order to achieve victory, you have to understand the battle you're fighting. Are you treating an emotional issue with physical means? Are you using medication or alcohol to mask the symptoms rather than getting to the root cause?
Key topics:
✔️ Battles can be physical, emotional, or even spiritual in nature. Know which is which.
✔️ Numbing out may provide relief in the short term, but it is not a permanent solution.
✔️ Beware the Dr. Feelgoods of the world!
✔️ Rather than preparing to slay dragons every day, put your armor on and keep it on. Don't anticipate problems, but instead, understand that if the sh*t hits the fan, you can handle it.
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
In order to achieve victory, you have to understand the battle you're fighting. Are you treating an emotional issue with physical means? Are you using medication or alcohol to mask the symptoms rather than getting to the root cause?
Key topics:
✔️ Battles can be physical, emotional, or even spiritual in nature. Know which is which.
✔️ Numbing out may provide relief in the short term, but it is not a permanent solution.
✔️ Beware the Dr. Feelgoods of the world!
✔️ Rather than preparing to slay dragons every day, put your armor on and keep it on. Don't anticipate problems, but instead, understand that if the sh*t hits the fan, you can handle it.
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I'm your host Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. Today I want to talk about understanding your battles. Now as you know, I am not an advocate of getting up in the morning and automatically expecting turmoil. You don't want to wake up and immediately say things to yourself like, what fresh hell awaits me today? What nightmares will I encounter? what misery, what problems will I have to solve? What fires will I have to put out? what employee will disappoint me? What coworker will backstab me? Will my boss be terrible today? When we do those things, especially first thing in the morning when the mind is so pliable and suggestible, when we do those things, it's almost like putting out a beacon to the universe. You know, people say Don't tempt fate, you know, someone standing next year that says, Wow, could it get any worse? Or I guess it can't get any worse than this. At least we've hit rock bottom and you're thinking, Okay, don't tempt fate. Let's, let's don't do that. It's the same type of thing. When you get up in the morning and you automatically think I'm going to have problems. I'm going to have dragons to slay people are going to disappoint me. It's gonna be a nightmare. Well, yeah, it probably will be. So you don't want to call those experiences to you. You don't want to borrow unnecessary trouble. It's like the scripture about sufficient unto the day is the evil therein-- every day has its own set of challenges. You don't need to call more. There's a Buddhist proverb about the 88 problems. If you solve one, another one will crop up so that you'll always have 88. But if you worry about your set of 88 problems, then you've actually created an 89th problem. So don't when we're in a situation, and we realize we're up against something, we're fighting a battle, we do have a dragon to slay, not necessarily that we've decided we want to call that dragon to us, but life has decided to surprise us with something or someone utterly delightful. One of the keys to success, one of the keys to having the victory in that situation is to understand the nature of the battle that you're fighting. It would be like taking medicine that would cure a migraine when the problem is in one of your feet, or going to a chiropractor when the problem is psychological in nature, and you might be going to a practitioner you might be taking a medicine that's excellent for the problem. It's meant to solve or for the illness that it's meant to cure. But if you're taking the wrong cure for the wrong problem, or you're just constantly masking the symptoms, and you're not really getting to the root of the problem, you're kind of in a danger zone. I have a friend who went through a really terrible period in his life. It was, it was like the book of Job he he had one tribulation and one setback after another after another after another, and through absolutely no fault of his own. He connected with a psychiatrist who was a doctor feel good. This psychiatrist did not want to do any kind of talk therapy, behavior modification, coping mechanisms, none of that anything that my friend expressed having a problem with Dr. Feelgood had a pill for it. Oh, you can't sleep at night. Here's this. Oh, you're having depression related aches and pains have some pain pills. Oh, you're having anxiety and panic have this. I mean, it's just one thing after another after another after another. And my friend was also self medicating with drugs and alcohol. But he had this idea that well, the the psychiatrist is a medical doctor, he would not prescribe any pills to me, that could harm me and he definitely wouldn't give me this combination of medicines if they could interact poorly with one another like he knows what he's doing. Now my friend was fully aware that he did not need to be mixing street drugs and alcohol on top of the medicines that he was taking. But he gave this psychiatrist almost like a godlike power over his life and anything the psychiatrist prescribed. My friend was happy to take it over the course of about a year. He hit a really scary and debilitating downward spiral. And I cut ties with him after an event that made me fear for my life and my safety. I'm not going to go into the details of everything that happened but I was really and truly afraid. And it's one of the few situations I've ever been in in my life where I had to run for my life. I had to just gather my things and go because I just didn't know the level of safety or I guess I should say the lack of safety that I had unwittingly put myself in. I did not know the depth of what was going on in his situation and it was it was very scary indeed. For quite some time. We did not talk after I severed ties; I really shut that door and and kept it latched. About two years, give or take after the incident where where I shut the door and locked it. I received an email from him. And it started out with him explaining that he had gotten to the point in a 12 step program where he needed to make amends to people that he had wronged when he was using drugs and alcohol. And he needed to apologize and do what he could to make the situation right. Again, long story made short and protecting his privacy. He had a series of events that took him to what he felt was his rock bottom, he was suicidal and an intervention was staged. And he actually went to an inpatient treatment program. And the doctor at the facility told him I don't even know how you're living. I don't even know how you're able to walk and talk and put together coherent sentences like this psychiatrist had you on so many medications, many of which have terrible interactions with each other like I just I don't even know it's it's up fathomable to me that a medical professional would feel like this was a responsible way to treat a patient. And then on top of that you had the street drugs and alcohol and it just it led to like a tornado of insane activity and self destruction. My friend got clean and sober, thank God. He was working regularly with a therapist as well as a sponsor for his drug and alcohol issues. And the change in him has been absolutely profound. And and it was getting into that talk therapy and getting to the root causes. So instead of treating all of these symptoms as though they were physical ailments, and then trying to mask them with drugs and alcohol and prescription pills, once he got to the root issues, the emotions, the sadness, the pain, the unresolved trauma, he started to heal. It is so incredibly important to understand the nature of the battle that you're fighting. It may be emotional, it may be physical, it may be spiritual. But if you are treating a spiritual problem with physical remedies, or you're treating an emotional problem with physical remedies, you're going about things the wrong way. And the chances of you having any lasting long term success are pretty low. It may be that you're having tension headaches, and a fast heart rate from anxiety disorder. Or it may be that you're feeling lethargic and very down and unmotivated due to depression. Or it could be that those things have some underlying hormonal imbalance. There may be something going on that's emotional and physical. It's important to know your body understand what your body is telling you and Talk to a medical professional. And never be afraid to get a second opinion. Especially if you feel that someone is dismissing you. If you are telling them, Hey, I know my body and this is abnormal for me and they're just Pooh poohing you around. Please get a second opinion, be willing to advocate for yourself. It's incredibly crucial to not just assume that a doctor is God and take his or her word for whatever they're saying, if it doesn't hit you right in the gut and you feel suspicious of what you're being told, get a second or even a third opinion, but don't compromise your health because you think well, this guy wouldn't prescribe this pill for me if it could hurt me. That's just simply not always true. I would also worry about anyone who like my friend is getting connected with a doctor feel good. And they just want to push pills on you and pharmaceuticals. They don't want to do any talk therapy. They don't want to look at anything that might be natural or homeopathic. They just want to tell you about Well, I've got a pill for that. It's almost like the seedy guy in Times Square that's like, hey, do you want to buy a fake Rolex? Hey, do you want a pill? I've got a pill for that and a potion for that. And some, it's like, okay, no, I don't want to be like a lobotomy victim all the time, I still need to be able to think and function and feel like myself. I will also say, I think sometimes living in the modern world, we fancy ourselves as being so rational, so logical, so rooted in science, you know, we've been through the Age of Enlightenment, and we're living in the era of big tech liqui we don't have any need for Super superstitious twaddle anymore. it cracks me up and you know what no offense meant anybody that might be listening to this that thinks otherwise. But it cracks me up whenever atheists say that, oh, they're such a persecuted minority. And I'm like, I don't know about that. Because it seems to me more en vogue than ever for someone to say that they're an atheist or an agnostic and God is dead and all of that. So I, I always just sort of arch my eyebrow in a very like Roger Moore sort of fashion when I hear someone say, "Oh, I'm an atheist and I'm so persecuted," and like in some parts of the world that may be true, but in America I I'm extremely suspicious of that claim. I'm very definitely a believer in spirituality. I do not think that the world is limited to only things that we can perceive with our five senses. And let's face it, sometimes those senses lead us down, I may perceive something we you and I could see the same event and yet perceive it and interpret it in such different ways. I I very much believe that the world is not limited to only the things that we can take in with our five senses. And I again, this is my podcast with my opinion, so feel free to turn it off or shake your head and disapproval but I believe sometimes the battles that we think may be physical or emotional could actually be of a spiritual nature. There's a passage in the Christian Bible in the book of Ephesians, about the armor of God, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes or boots of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. And I heard a minister one day-- I want to say it was Joyce Meyers, but if I'm misquoting here, forgive me. But I heard this minister talking about how all of these elements that are in the armor of God are for the front of the body, as opposed to the back of the body as though you the battles that you will fight of a spiritual nature are going to come head on, you're going to, you're going to need to understand the enemy that's attacking you and you're going to need to face the battle head on. You can't turn your back and run away, you're going to have to face up to it. My interpretation is instead of waking up every morning, and expecting problems expecting a spiritual attack or a psychic attack or some type of emotional turmoil, instead of setting the tone for the day of I need to be prepared because all these terrible things are going to get flung at me. And I'm probably going to have a bad day. It's better if you just cloak yourself or close yourself in whatever spiritual or emotional armor that you believe in. It's sort of like being prepared to be prepared. It's like Susan Jeffers book, feel the fear and do it anyway. And one of the big things that she advocates for is knowing that you can handle things in the event of some worst case scenario. In the event that something doesn't go my way I do have a bad experience or problem crops up. I can handle it. Even if it's something that I've never dealt with. For and I'm completely in foreign territory. I can handle it, I'll deal with it. I can handle it. I've already survived whatever my worst days or my worst experiences may have been, I'll survive this to it will be okay. That is the kind of armor that I recommend that you put on. And I I don't necessarily think that it needs to be like, Okay, I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to expect that I'm doing incredible battles. I think it's more like you put it on and then you keep it on. It's like a almost like a situational awareness. I'm, I'm an English major, that's like questing around in my mind for exactly the right words. The situational awareness is is a sort of phrase that I think fits but it's just a general awareness, a general intuition of whatever comes out, whatever comes at me, whatever happens, be it a problem I face before, be it something new. I can handle it. I'm not going to expect That bad things are going to happen to me all the time. I'm not going to will that I'm not going to imagine the unknown as a place of terror and turmoil and nx. I'm just simply going to say, when poop happens, I know I can handle it. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it. If you haven't already, take a quick second to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai