Living with Heart: From Birth to Death

This discussion dives deep into the intricate world of codependency and emotional health. It highlights how fear of exposure, rooted in toxic shame, can distort personal identity and relationships. The speakers emphasize the essential role of vulnerability in fostering true connections and navigating emotional challenges. With anecdotes and thought-provoking insights, they explore the importance of self-care, healthy boundaries, and the power of inquiry in relationships. Ultimately, it's a journey toward reclaiming one's sense of self and belonging.

Discover the story of finding freedom from codependency and the power of personal gifts in connecting with others. Delve into the pain of loneliness in today’s world and the need for genuine relationships beyond social media distractions. Explore symptoms and effects of codependency, and gain insights on self-awareness and fulfillment through authentic connections. Learn how viewing coworkers as 'work family' can lead to dysfunction, stressing the importance of maintaining healthy boundaries in professional settings.

Dive into the exploration of how our deep-rooted need for belonging and mattering shapes our lives. Discover the connection between these emotional needs and codependency, illustrated through a powerful story. The discussion also reveals God as a redeemer, encouraging listeners to present their pain for healing. Personal analogies and metaphors shed light on the challenges of receiving love while highlighting the significance of early emotional connections for personal growth. It's a heartfelt journey towards understanding self-worth and embracing vulnerability.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.   Episode Highlights: Codependency is the loss or the sacrifice of:  God-created true self.  self-trust.  self-awareness.  self-worth.  self… in terms of assertiveness.  Codependency is not being able to:  say what you feel.  say what you need.  say what you desire.  trust that your own feelings have validity or accuracy.    We are made for love; we are made to be connected.     In order to be accepted and loved by our significant caregivers, we often end up hiding our own needs. Examples: If I don’t like sports, my dad will not love me. If I don’t make good grades my mother will be so  disappointed. If I have opinions that are different from my teachers, they will reject me. If I’m not artistic like my older brother, I won’t be as loved.   We end up acting a certain way or pretend to be someone we are not in order to be loved. We  eventually begin to “believe” in the pretending rather than being our true selves. We slip into denial.    We perform for love instead of being ourselves.    God designed for us to:  be who we are made to be;  so, we can do what we are made to do;  then, we will have what we are made to have.    In a codependency environment we end up:   doing what we’ve got to do;   so, that we can have what we’re made to have;  and hopefully, if we do enough, we will become somebody.    Codependency becomes the belief that I can perform enough and do enough so that I can finally rest, trust, be believed, have my worth, and be valued.    Codependency is a disorder of distrust. You trust the anxiety. You don’t trust listening to your own fear and exposing it.     Sadly, if a codependent person stays stuck in their past and sOll believes feelings are the enemy, they will,  no matter how much they are loved, never trust the love.     Codependency is bringing your “bucket of desire” into life, and your caregivers poking holes in the  bottom of it so that in your future, no matter how much love gets poured into it, it goes right through it.    There’s not enough love; there’s not enough approval, there’s not enough trustworthiness because it all  slips right through the holes in the bucket.    Codependency recovery is about repairing, or healing, the holes in your bucket (revision).    Codependents are always trying to find their fulfillment externally by withholding what’s happening in  them internally.    The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd    Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.   Episode Highlights:   Click here if you would like more information about Champion's Path   Chip Dodd- The Boy & the Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency   Melody Beatty – Codependent No More  The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations for Codependents   Sarah Young - Jesus Calling   Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

Episode 31: The Rediscovered Treasure (Part 4)   The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com. Episode Highlights   Needs are:  how we’re created.  what God works with.  what we have to have fulfilled, or we die.  Our need to belong and our need to matter are more important than food, shelter, and clothing. We will give up food, shelter and clothing in order to belong and matter. The unseen needs are more  powerful than the seen needs.  God gives us the desire of our hearts.    We are born with longings.    We long for justice. (We see a small child lying in a bed in a pediatric intensive care unit with bandages and  tubes, and we cry, “NO!” We don’t have to know the child to recognize the injustice of it.)    We recognize that we are not made to die of disease. We’re not made to kill each other. We’re not made  for war.    We are made for love and peace and eternity and raising each other up.    We are made to experience the grace of a hand that can reach into the farthest depths. There is no mistake  that is so far away that God can’t reach us.    We long for a place where we can put our heads against a safe shoulder, where there are arms to go  around us, and there is a voice that says, “It’s okay now, it’s okay. You can rest now.” We long for a place  called “home,” where God lives.    Longings are deep cravings within our hearts that will never be fulfilled as long as we live on this earth. It’s living in the wishing every day. It’s living in the wanting forever. It’s meeting God every day, and God says,  “One day it will all be complete.”    Surrender your heart every day, and it will change. Walk in the surrender every day. Live in the world of  miracles. Tell the truth and live in the truth. Open your eyes to see the joy of what happens when we walk  in the truth.    If we do not deal with our hearts, we end up living counterfeit lives.   We grow into shriveled, little trees, not oaks of righteousness.  We live lives of shame. (We are ashamed of how God made us)  We lower our expectations.  We don’t expect much from people. We don’t expect others to show up in our lives.  We have counterfeit fulfillment.  We pursue power.  We pursue mood-altering experiences.  We seek relief.  We plan events in hopes they will make things different/better.  We refuse to face where we live.    We pursue all forms of counterfeit fulfilments instead of believing that God can fill us.    Sadly, we end up practicing hopelessness. We practice hopelessness as a way of not taking a risk to believe  that our heart’s yearnings are real. We refuse to believe that our feelings really matter. We refuse to be  vulnerable. We refuse to surrender our lives to the God Who made us.    Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.   Episode Highlights   We are born as emotional and spiritual creatures. We are born with feelings.  Before we ever think or speak our first word, we are expressing ourselves as feeling creatures.    We experience life in the very beginning as God made us through our feelings and through the  longings to be in relationship with our mothers and fathers.     We came out of the womb experiencing life through what we feel.     We came out of the womb looking for who was looking for us. We were looking for emotional  and spiritual connection through relationship, before we were ever able to think or speak.    This emotional and spiritual language is the language of the heart.     We communicated from the very beginning of our lives with our feelings.     Hurt  is a feeling you feel when you experience a wound.  is possibly the most embarrassing feeling we carry and experience.  is acknowledging that someone or something “got to me.”   is a feeling that acknowledges that I am vulnerable.    Hurt that is not acknowledged becomes resentment. It is the impaired expression of hurt. It is a justification of your right to act badly towards another person because you carry a pain  that they’ve given you. Resentment takes us out of relationship.    People who won’t acknowledge their hurt, hurt others with their resentment.  (Hurt people, hurt people.)    Loneliness  God gave us loneliness so we would seek out relationship.  We can be lonely for ourselves. There are times when we just need to be alone and have solitude.  We can be lonely to be with others.   There is a loneliness for “home” (heaven, or to be with God) that will not go away while  we live on this earth. We will always walk this earth with some loneliness because we  are not complete. We are lonely for God.    Loneliness that is not acknowledged becomes apathy.     Apathy develops when you try to make your heart stop caring about relationship.   Sadness  is a feeling you get when you lose something that matters to you or is important to  you.  is the feeling that honors; it values what you value.  is a cleansing feeling.   is how you relieve ourselves from carrying the burden of the pain of daily life.    Sadness that is not acknowledged becomes self-pity. Self-pity is a way of trying to escape your  pain.    Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.   Episode Highlights   The focus of this episode is a recording of a men’s retreat that Chip did in Texas in 1993. The retreat  content was edited and put on CDs. The CDs were included with the first edition copies of The Voice of the Heart published in 2001.     You’ve got to get defeated to become rich in this “God world”.    God says that what He is after is our hearts. Our hearts that He made, that He created, that He  loves.    “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.    They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NIV)    What is feeding the roots of the tree? Its roots are planted in what feeds it, and it receives emotional and spiritual food.    God feeds our hearts with emotional and spiritual food.     God stamps our hearts with feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope at birth. This is what God is after. This is what puts us into a relationship with the God of our forefathers.   Through our feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope we end up growing into a strong person who others can love and trust.     Torment in our lives does not come from exposing the truth about our hearts; torment comes from the energy we take to keep our hearts hidden.    We are as sick as the secrets we keep within us, from the smallest manipulation to the largest  secret.    The difference between an unhealthy family and a healthy family is the willingness to seek forgiveness. Healthy families seek forgiveness.    Truths:  Pain of the heart is the teacher.  Love is the lesson.  Life is the result.  Sharing that is the practice.   God loves us so much that He will go to any length to get us back. There is nothing we can do to earn it. God doesn’t need anything we have.     God does not need us:   He craves us.  He wants us.  He wishes to be with us.    Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19:39-40 (NIV)    God doesn’t need us; We need Him. The price we pay for needing Him is having to go through the  excruciating and glorious pain of being loved, without being able to do anything to get it.    What we can do is live out our salvation. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He came to bring life  and life abundantly.     Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com. Episode Highlights The focus of this episode is a recording of a retreat that Chip did in Texas in 1993. The retreat  content was edited and put on CDs. The CDs were included with the first edition copies of  The Voice of the Heart published in 2001.   The CD intro song is “Capshaw.” The banjo is played by John Balch. It is available on iTunes and  Spotify. John’s website is hidebanjoheads.com.  Living With Heart Podcast “Becoming a Portable Sanctuary” Episode 26  The message on the CD is just as true today as it was in 1993 when Chip did the retreat.  Our God absolutely looks toward us, moves into our world, and changes our lives, not a little, but a lot, not as an event, but as a journey.    Our God is not a god of an event; He is the God of the journey and the God of relationship. God is also our destiny.  “Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:9 (NASB)  “…Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of  life.” Revelation 22:17 (NIV)  God is in pursuit of our hearts; He is in pursuit of what He created.  “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Psalm 139:13  When we came into this world, we were stamped with the image of God. God made us in His image.  You and I were created to live fully. We were created as emotional and spiritual creatures,  created to live fully in relationship with myself, with others, and with God.   We are made to live fully in 3D.  We’re made to feel it.  We’re made to seek it.  We’re made to hurt over it.  We’re made to laugh about it.  We’re made to take joy in it.  We’re made to hunger, seek, and ask.  We’re made for play, and work, and creation, and sharing.  We are made in the image of God! Everything about life is about relationship.  The 18” journey from our heads to our hearts is the longest journey that we will ever take. It is a  journey of wholeness. The journey never ends. If we don’t make that 18” journey, we will be a  failure. We will fail within the walls of our own home and we will never be of maximum service. Click here to continue reading episode highlights.

Exploring awakening, acquiring skills, and arriving as Portable Sanctuaries. Embracing emotional connections, vulnerability, and authenticity for personal growth. Importance of self-reflection, emotional work, and transformative leadership. Navigating parenthood while maintaining independence and identity. Essential questions for self-discovery and fulfillment in relationships with others and a higher power.