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Helping Someone Depressed

/ Robert Bruton / Leave a comment

*To help your friend or relative:

 Offer emotional support, understanding, patience, and encouragement.

Talk to him or her and listen carefully.

Never dismiss feelings but point out realities and offer hope.

self improvement, hope, help

Never ignore comments about suicide and report them to your loved one’s therapist or doctor.

Invite your loved one out for walks, outings, and other activities. Keep trying if he or she declines, but don’t push him or her to take on too much too soon.

Aid in getting to doctors’ appointments.

Remind your loved one that with time and treatment, the depression will lift.

Caring for someone with depression is not easy. Someone with depression may need constant support for an extended period. Make sure you leave time for yourself and your own needs. If you feel you need additional assistance, there are support groups for caregivers too.

Helping someone with depression can be a real task. The person may be in a pit and become verbally combative when insisted on getting moving to a therapy appointment or maybe just to the shower.

Remember, it’s the depression lashing out or talking to you. Just like someone drunk, it’s the liquor talking. Boundaries can be set; however, patience is the call of the day.

*U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. (2015). Depression (NIH Publication No. 15-3561). Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government Printing Office.

When Silence Screams

/ Robert Bruton / Leave a comment

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”–Mother Teresa
For anyone in turmoil, silence can be defining. The clutter in our minds can be more defining than someone actually screaming in our face. When we’re in secrecy, this seems to be genuinely augmented.

prayer, self improvement, God

The blessing we seek is to be able to enjoy the silence. No noise, just utter silence. Just as Mother Teresa says in this quote, God is a friend of silence. Being ready to embrace the silence and not be deaf from the noise in our head, here we can find true peace.

Meditation can help you find the silence so your mind can be at peace. Beginning a daily routine of meditation will accelerate your ability to love the quiet. Most of us need some sort of ambient noise to not drive ourselves nuts.

Your meditation practice may need to begin with ambient noise, music, nature sounds, or the like. As you progress in your training, you can start to wean yourself off the noise and learn to embrace the silence. Here is where you can indeed be one with the Universe.

If you want to energize your life, meditate! Learn to embrace the silence.

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Peace with God

/ Robert Bruton / Leave a comment

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”–Mother Teresa

If you can be honest enough with yourself, most of us would say our head is jumbled up with garbage. So much so we couldn’t hear God if he used a megaphone. Arguably my worst trait, how about you?

Finding peace and quiet enough to hear Gods love is for most of us a challenge. We have conditioned ourselves to the constant moving of the mechanism we call our noodle. Our minds are constantly churning the garbage dump that has become our thoughts.

meditation, meditate, relax

This is a battle for me. So now I am learning to allow God’s love through meditation. Here is how I do it:

  • Using headphones, I put meditation music on and focus on the music to relax my thoughts. “I am” a meditation that the late Dr. Wayne Dyer put out on YouTube. It’s amazing.
  • Make a time you know you won’t be disturbed. Turn off cell phone unless you’re using it for the music. Put on Do Not Disturb while listening, it turns off notifications.
  • After relaxed, then see yourself in the state-of-mind that you want to be. Learn to experience the peace-of-mind that comes with relaxing your thoughts.
  • Don’t fall asleep!
  • Allow yourself a half hour.

Learn to find God by relaxing your thoughts!

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To Big for Your Britches

/ Robert Bruton / Leave a comment

Remembering to stay connected to God when things do go your way. To keep your blessings moving forward, you can’t stop going to God and expect everything to remain in place. A mistake I made that slowed my progress, so I have had to hit my knees and let God know I have not forgotten myself.

My grandmother called this “being too big for your britches.”

When blessings come, old habits can creep back into our lives. Understanding this will make your walk, your path much smoother. For me, I even was called out by a friend that my language offended a dear person to me. A person whom I would never intentionally want to hurt with a potty mouth. Old habits die hard.

faith, Jesus, God

Stay Humble

Learning from this was tough medicine to swallow. So begins my repentance to God. You should as well if you’ve strayed from the path. Stay on the road with God. A full-time, not pick and choose time process. Today I feel more back in tune with the Lord. My heart is more at peace.

I want the promises that the Bible says are mine. When I began this journey, it was about not losing anymore. That there had to be a better way to live than the trajectory my life was advancing. Terrible place, lost relationships, financial problems, and despair. All of a sudden God blesses me in significant ways, and I take my eye off the ball and get hit right in the head with a fastball.

With a sincere heart and prayer. Will pass and learn what not to do embedded deep in my heart. If you’ve suffered from this because you to went off the beaten path, God will happily accept you back in his good grace. Do what I’ve done, get on your knees, and get back in God’s good grace. Never allow yourself not to be humble.

 

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Backstory Don’t Judge Someone

/ Robert Bruton / Leave a comment

We’re all guilty of judging people. If someone has sentenced you unjustly, this can be very difficult to live with. Of course, if someone judges that’s indeed on them. This article will speak to standing in judgment of someone in our life.

Being judgmental is wrong in so many ways. It’s hurtful, and more than any other reason chances are you don’t have a clue what someone’s backstory is that causes them to be a certain way. self help, judgmental, sad

Everyone has a backstory that if it was known to others, they might look at a situation with empathy instead of standing in judgment. More times than not if you knew what was going on with a person you would feel pretty crappy for your thoughts. Jesus said it best “if you are without sin cast the first stone.” None of us are in any position to judge.

I have a friend who on the surface comes off a little distant, sometimes even disconnected when you interact with him. People around us sometimes say he is weird. What people don’t know about his backstory is two years ago he lost a daughter to suicide. Now I’m no psychiatrist, but I believe if I were a survivor of that tragedy, I might be off my game as well. This is not the common knowledge to folks who stand in judgment.

This begs the question with that knowledge would you be judgmental or empathetic? We all know plenty of stories like this. So who are any of us to stand in judgment of another? Before you say something about someone make sure you have all your facts. Moreover, if you can’t say something sweet don’t say anything at all! How many times did your Mom say that?

Remember words have the power to heal or the power to cut. Choose your words wisely. Before you stand in judgment of anyone, could you pass the judgment test? Get judgment out of your head. We all have a backstory!