Deadly Emotions

Joyce Meyer's guests this morning were Dr. Don and Mary Colbert. Dr. Colbert is the author of Deadly Emotions, which I've been meaning to check out ever since the first time I heard him speak.

That time, Dr. Colbert got my attention when he described a physical parallel to restimulation (when you encounter a stimulus and because your old brain doesn't know the difference between the present and the past, you respond emotionally as you did when you first encountered this stimulus--in childhood, for example). Dr. Colbert said that a part of your brain (the amigdala, I think) stores the memory of your body's physical response, and so when you are restimulated [my word], your body has the same physical reaction--for example, an adrenaline rush. He went on to show how one thing leading to another can make you really sick (e.g. sustained adrenaline -> increased cortisol, which if sustained will basically start eating you from the inside... hope I remembered all that right!).

Today Joyce asked him and Mary about workaholics and people who can't rest. Some highlights:

He called anxiety the "common cold of mental illness"! He talked about needing to renew the mind, to re-program your brain with truth from the Word (like what I do in group: remind myself of truth and replace old recordings with true ones). Mary said that people expect something or someone "out there" to change the way they live or they way they think (like God waving a magic wand), when really only they can take control of and change those things. "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."

One of Joyce's favorite verses is 1 Peter 5:8 (Amplified): Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [[a]in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.

I think Dr. Colbert is going to be on the show all week, if you want to check it out: 9:30AM M-F on BrightHouse channel 14. And, I didn't realize his office is right here in Longwood!