Healthy Choices

Another deviation from 2 Samuel.

Making healthy decisions on a regular basis can be overwhelming. Historically, I’m not very good at making the healthy choices. From childhood ineffective coping skills, including making decisions to try and protect myself, are ingrained in my thoughts. The goal is to adjust and change my thinking, my reactions, and my behaviors to more effective, more mature, more balanced thinking.

Becoming better at choosing healthy (mentally, physically, and emotionally) actions is the process of becoming an adult. At first, I didn’t even know my thoughts were “child-like.” They were all I knew and not having examples of other ways of thinking, those were the only thoughts I was familiar with. The thoughts and corresponding behaviors did protect me and help me cope as a child, but as an adult they are ineffective. They are in many cases self-destructive.

Change. What’s the process of changing and learning new ways? I thought you just started doing things differently. That’s part of the process, but that is usually the final step in the process. First, I have to recognize the ineffective, dysfunctional thought or action. For instance, when it comes to losing weight, I have tried many things and the results were not beneficial to me. In one sense I knew they worked for losing weight, but in another, the rest of my body and mind was being hurt. My therapist (and I guess I also do now) identified the unhealthy thinking about losing weight as an Eating Disorder (ED for short). So the first step in making “adult” decisions is to recognize and acknowledge the ED thought or behavior. Sometimes, this happens after the poor behavior has already been executed. But it’s a place to start.

Second, I have to argue against or convince myself to think differently. The behavior will not change without an active, logical thought to control it. Sounds easy? It hasn’t been the case for me. Sometimes I don’t know or can’t determine what a healthy thought would be. Through therapy, we talk about these things and come up with alternative possibilities, which I sometimes remember and sometimes don’t (so I ask for help). So, when ED thoughts are identified, I can counter them with the idea of living a healthy lifestyle as the goal (not to lose weight).

Third, I have to determine to choose to engage in the healthy thought and/or do the healthy behavior – not every time but one situation at a time. With ED, it means choosing foods that are healthy for me, or choosing a walk instead of eating an unneeded snack. This usually involves a bit of arguing with myself. Keeping the argument short is a key to making the right choice. The longer the argument goes on, the less likely I am to choose the healthy thing. (I just give up, saying to myself, “I’m never going to change” which is another unhealthy thought and urge to deal with.)

The last part of the process involves repeated success at choosing the “adult healthy” option. Do it enough and a new pattern forms in our brains replacing the old patterns. At first, choosing the beneficial option may not happen every time (it may not ever happen every time), but the more often that choice is made, the easier it becomes to make and the more automatic it will become.

Someday, you will realize that the old pattern interrupts your life infrequently and you have changed. 

Truth Reinforced

Between 2 Samuel 15 and our Pastor’s church sermon from John 4, an vital truth can be seen (along with many other places in Scripture). Whether we look at the Old or the New Testaments, it is clear that God is not confined to a building, a tent, a city, or a country. He is not confined to the Ark of the Covenant.

Especially in the time of King David, many Middle Eastern religious beliefs had infiltrated the beliefs of the nation of Israel. I’ve addressed this before. The predominate view was that the gods were only present when and where the idols were present. As a result the various armies took their idols with them into battle. Most of Israel believed the same thing about the ark – God was only present when the ark was present.

So in 2 Samuel 15, David is being ousted as king as the people rallied behind David’s son, Absalom. As David fled, the priests brought the ark along. David responded to the high priest in such a way that showed David had at least an inkling that God was everywhere:

2 Samuel 15:25-26: The king said to Zadok [the high priest], “Return the ark of God to the city. If I find favor in the sight of the Lord, then He will bring me back again and show me both it and His habitation. But if He should say thus, ‘I have no delight in you,’ behold, here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him (NASB).

David appeared confident that God could and would deal with him, no matter where he was and no matter where the ark was.

Jesus gives us this same message in the gospels. In John 4:1-42, Jesus does a very non-culturally appropriate thing. He has a conversation with a Samaritan woman. The woman asks Jesus where people should worship – on the mountain in Samaria or in Jerusalem. Jesus answers in verses 21 and 23-24:

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jesus emphasizes that the place to worship God is not important. I need to remember this and focus on God wherever I go and whatever I am doing. God is not confined to my office in the morning or in church on Sundays. He is present everywhere at the same time.

Recovery Thoughts

This week I’m deviating from the series on 2 Samuel for my blog article. As I was reviewing some journal entries and emails to my friend from 2007, I discovered a few things. Some positive areas in my life and some areas where much work is still needed. Today I’m going to share with you how things have changed in my mental health since 2007.

First, a little background. I’m an insulin dependent diabetic. In the early stages of my recovery I desperately wanted to lose weight. Desperately. So desperately that I was willing to forfeit my health for that single cause. So I misused my insulin because the less insulin the more the body relies on burning fat for energy. As a result, my blood sugars were way above the normal, desirable range and probably causing damage to my kidneys, eyes, brain, and other areas of my body. But, as I said, I wanted to desperately lose weight. That plan of action was dysfunctional to say the least, and ultimately deadly. It landed me in the medical hospital at least two times (always followed by a stay at the mental hospital). The imbalances in my blood sugars also created aggravation to my mental illness, and I would become irrational and take on risky behaviors. And I was frequently uncooperative.

So that’s the background. 2007 was smack-dap in the middle of those years. I was manipulating my insulin dosing and it was a constant battle with my husband, my therapist, my psychiatrist, and my diabetes care team as they tried to get me to comply with their guidelines for caring for myself. It’s different now. I can’t remember the last time I thought about manipulating my insulin with the goal of losing weight in mind. That’s a significant milestone in my recovery.

My focus now is working towards having a healthy lifestyle. That involves careful diabetes management, increasing exercise, eating healthily, and taking my meds (the psych meds and the medical meds) as prescribed. None of those things were being taken care of in 2007.

Second, in 2007 I was just learning about certain aspects of my mental illness. I was fragmented with different aspects of my personality acting independently from the others. I have gotten to a point where I’m aware of the aspects of my emotional life and am better able to look at situations from a whole person perspective.

Third, self-harming urges and behaviors (including suicidal ideation) are much more manageable. In fact, both self-harm and suicide have become almost non-issues. Many years of looking for escapes from dealing with stressful situations in my life have influenced my thought patterns. But now, when the thoughts come (and they rarely do anymore), I can easily dismiss them and look for other ways to cope with the stressors in my life. A big part of this change happened in 2017 when I got a diagnosis of cancer. I suddenly realized that I wanted to live, that I have much to live for, and that, with my therapist’s and friends’ help, I can find other ways to cope in previously hopeless situations. I no longer need to escape my feelings or thoughts; I just work through them.

I don’t know if these changes seem significant to you or not, but to me they are huge. While there are still areas to work on including living a healthy lifestyle and unifying all aspects of my personality, I’m able to pursue those activities because I’m not looking for a way out of the struggles and I’m not distracted by them from getting to core issues. I’m rejoicing in the work God has done in my life. Maybe you can rejoice with me, too.