Overwhelmed

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. And I'm Lori Miller. Thanks for joining us and welcome to Wonderful Words of Life. Well, welcome everybody. We're glad you've come back and we are excited today.

I am excited today to introduce you to a friend. Her name is Major Lori Miller. Welcome, Lori.

Thank you, Bernie Dake. Lori's a little nervous everybody. This is her first episode. She is someone that I would love for you to meet in person because she is awesome. Now, she is the Salvation Army's Southern Territorial Coordinator for Child and Adult Safety. It's a pretty serious job.

She has to do all of the training for us to help us understand what is the best way to interact with young people and at-risk adults. It's not the most fun job perhaps, but we're glad you're here, Lori. Thank you.

Thank you. Another cool thing about Lori is she's a mommy. I am a mommy. She has two sets and a spare.

I do. Now, for those of you that don't bowl, that means she's got two sets of twins and a spare or one who's not a twin or five kids. So God bless you, Lori. Thank you very much.

All born within four years. Oh, man. And she is a great writer.

So if you get a chance to listen to these episodes, you'll get a little bit better chance to know her heart and who she is. But Lori, welcome officially to the Wonderful Works of Life. Thank you very much. I'm really actually excited. Good.

We're excited than nervous. So there you go. Okay. Well, that's good because have you done anything like this before? Not really. No. So no formal training in radio ministry? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I hadn't done it either. It's just something that we want to encourage our listeners. And we say through the lens of our faith, but basically through our own walk, right? Sure. Absolutely. That's how you and I can share the things that we've learned with our listeners.

Absolutely. Well, everybody, we also begin a new series called Headspace, a series on mental health. And for the next 11 weeks, we'll be joined by Aliata Dawkins. She's a licensed counselor who works with the Salvation Army in the nation's capital, and she has a passion for this topic and a passion for people and the Lord. I got to meet Aliata a couple of weeks ago when we did all of the interviews with her.

And I know that might be confusing to the listeners who get it all in one big package, but in order to bring them the best series, we have to plan this stuff in advance. Have you done any mental health training or do you have some experience in this? I do have a little bit. Believe it or not, before I became a Salvation Army officer, I was a child life therapist.

Wow. And so I worked with hospitalized and chronically ill and terminally ill children. So I have some background in this and then in my current job as well. As you can imagine, dealing with issues of abuse and trauma, there's a good bit of mental health crises going on in what I do currently.

So yeah, just a little bit. I'm not an expert, but yeah, I know a thing or two and then personal experience. You know, we think we all have personal experience with our family or someone we know and love. And so absolutely, this is a really important topic. Well, just going through the interviews with Aliata and then talking with our production team, I've learned a lot and I'm excited to share this particular series with our listeners. Well, be sure to follow us on social media.

We'll be posting links to many of the surveys quoted throughout the series, as well as where you can find help and more information. We begin the series with Aliata discussing stress in our world today. The speed of life and the demands of work and family looks so different than they did just a few generations ago. And so how do we manage? Hey, everybody, we're glad that you're here.

Welcome to Wonderful Words of Life. We have a new friend with us. Her name is Aliata Dawkins. She comes to us from the Salvation Army's National Capital and Virginia Division. She works there at the Area Command and we're excited because she's going to talk to us this series about mental health. And first, I just want to say welcome, Aliata. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for traveling to our very beautiful studios here in Atlanta, Georgia, and sitting down with me and just talking about mental health.

Yes, I love it. Tell our listeners a little bit about your story. Where did you come from? Why are you doing what you're doing? Just so we can get to know who you are.

Okay. Grew up in South Carolina. I'm a southern girl. Grew up poor, of course, but always saw a need, always wanted to help someone. So I was fortunate enough to be able to go to school.

I majored initially in political science because I like to know the backdrop of how things work, how we build in this society. But I still wanted to get into serving. I felt like God was really calling me to do something different, something to serve more.

So I worked for a couple of organizations who provided substance abuse treatment, work release services for clients who were exiting the jail or inmates who were exiting jail. And at that time, as I was saying earlier, there was just this one case where this guy who was in his sixties was able to, he was signing out, he was checking out, he was free, he was ready to go. And so I walked him over to the jail in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I said, you're free to go. And he just stood there and said, Ms. Aliado, where do I go?

You know, he had pretty much burned all the bridges in his life through his substance abuse. And so we stood there for about 20 minutes. And without him saying another word, he just kind of took off up the hill running with that. And that moment kind of just stuck with me.

What happens to individuals who have no one to turn to, no place to go, who helps them? So from there, I just felt like God was just calling me into that field. And so I just went back to school, got the necessary degrees and certifications and licensures, but I've always really been tied to programs that provide service in the community. And so I've been almost 19 years now providing services to the homeless community, families and individuals in need.

And it's been wonderful. And just having the clinical expertise on top of that, just I utilize it to help me work with people a little bit better. Man, well, we're glad that you're here. We're glad that you're working with the Salvation Army with that expertise in particular. And we're going to do an 11-part series on mental health with Wonderful Words of Life. So no pressure.

No pressure. While we've got you here in the studio, we just want to talk about each of the topics. And our first week is going to be under the topic Overwhelmed. And I think that you have – well, I know you have a passion for mental health in particular, but when we say that word overwhelmed, what kind of bells go off in your mind? For me, overwhelmed comes the word balancing act.

You know, as a parent myself and probably for majority of the listeners, that's what we do on a daily basis. We balance what we have to do with what we want to do and what we need to do. And in terms for some of us, the majority of us, that balancing act can get out of hand. And when we lose grip on it, then we are overwhelmed. And the feelings of being overwhelmed for individuals is different. But for the most part, I believe that it's been a spirit where we've just kind of let go of our ability to be humans and interact with individuals.

And we're so focused on getting to the next thing, the next thing that we forget that God has kind of given us the precious present to absorb for a minute. And so that out of wellness has us out of balance at work, out of balance in our family lives. Very few people, because we're working so much to keep up with, I don't know who the old saying, keeping up with the Joneses. We're losing the family time. We're working more hours than traditionally maybe our parents did.

Making more money, a lot more successful than probably most of our parents are. But the breakdown in the family is having an effect on who we are. We're not able to maintain that type of continual going through life on a daily basis without pausing and having a minute to ourselves. And I think that's where people get overwhelmed, the speed of life today, particularly with social media and keeping up with the Joneses or keeping up with the fictitious pictures that we see in social media. It's having an adverse effect on who we are. And it's actually taking a hold of our mental health.

We're not able to relax, calm down. I think I heard someone term it of fear of missing out. FOMO. Fear of missing out on what's going to happen. So we always have to be in something, do something. Everything is so fast now.

And people have stopped writing. They send text messages or do a quick call on a phone and they want an answer now for everything. There's no just taking a breath. And when you're overwhelmed. You need that breath. You need that breath.

You need that breath to take a break. And even with your scenario regarding emails, the whole purpose is as soon as you see it at work, you need to respond. But then another one comes in and then you respond. And before you know it, you've missed lunch and it's time to go.

And then you just, let me say five more minutes and five minutes turn into 30 minutes. And therein lies that whole breakdown of the structure of having the time to relax. And so we're in a society that wants us to keep going, going, going, going. And I really do believe in essence, it's not what God intended for us.

You know, he, he made the earth in six days, but on the seventh day he rested. And so we as society are not putting that time into rest to be there, to be with our families. We are on our phones, so we have to be engaged in everything. So we're engaged in work.

We engaged in Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. We don't even have time. We have a rule in my house where, you know, 7pm everything shuts down.

Wow. You know, we go back to the old ways of doing homework, reading books and things like that, just so we can just disconnect from technology. You need that to let our brains just kind of relax, rest and relax.

That is wise. I appreciate you doing that because our children need people in their lives. They need to be, they need people that are present in their lives. The relationships that we have with each other, whether it's in the workplace or it's a, it's a personal relationship.

If you're not present, I don't know how they can be fruitful relationships. And when we're so distracted by our phones or the, the media that we have just hounding us for our time from every angle. We never shut off.

We're looking at the news, we're keeping up with the news, the changes in the stock market. We never have the opportunity to shut off. We're talking, if anyone is listening to this today, I want you to be able to give yourself permission to let yourself off the hook. It's okay to take a day off. It's okay to not cook for one evening.

Um, it's okay if you don't mow the grass this weekend. Um, and so hopefully this podcast, when we talk about being overwhelmed, we'll just give somebody, somebody will give themselves permission to be okay to take a break. You have permission to take a break. Aliata Dawkins says, so I'm Bernie Dake with Wonderful Words of Life. Thank you for joining us. Now, if you keep coming back week to week for this 11 week series, you may hear Aliata sing. I won't make any promises, but if she doesn't, I will. God bless you.

Take a break. The Salvation Army's mission, doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

And we would love to hear from you. Email us at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org. Call 1-800-229-9965 or write us at P.O.

Box 29972 Atlanta, Georgia 30359. When you contact us, we'll send you our gift for this series. It's totally free for listeners like you, one per household while supplies last. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast store and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for Wonderful Words of Life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes, extended interviews, and more. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center. They'll be glad to see you. This is Bernie Dake inviting you to join us next time for the Salvation Army's Wonderful Words of Life.