Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

BOOK BUNDLE GIVEAWAY!

We are giving away 5 FREE Chip Dodd Book Bundles!

• Write a review of this podcast.

Reviews and emails must be submitted by October 31st.

5 names will be drawn and winners will be announced in November.

The book bundles include:

1. A Signed Copy of The Voice of the Heart

Dr. Dodd will be leading 1 more seminar this fall:

How to Love a Woman’s Heart

November 8, 2024

9:00-12:00

For more information or to register for these seminars go to chipdodd.com/seminar

2 new FREE Resources at chipdodd.com:

14 Symptoms of Codependency: A Personal Inventory

Return to Being Human: 6 Freedoms from Birth

We offer free resources not to promote, as much as to attract people to come get something that will benefit individuals, couples, families, friendships and society itself.

Now Available at Amazon

The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional for Individuals, Couples, & Families is a 24-day devotional that prepare us for the birth of Jesus. It is offered as a free eBook at chipdodd.com and it also can be purchased from Amazon. The Jesse Tree includes daily devotionals that start with creation and end with the birth of Jesus.  Each day has a list of ideas for extending the day’s “study” and opportunity for fellowship with your family, friends, and God. Order now, the devotional begins December 1st.

The reason I do this podcast is because we want people to have more life, more fulfillment. The things we talk about here and the materials we refer to are about what knowing your heart can do for you. It won’t stop pain, but helps you know what to do about it. It certainly doesn’t promise perfection or even happiness, but helps people develop the ability to live life on life’s terms with all of its heartbreak and heartache that conflicts with our craving for life without tragedy.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

BOOK BUNDLE GIVEAWAY!

We are giving away 5 FREE Chip Dodd Book Bundles!

• Write a review of this podcast.

Reviews and emails must be submitted by October 31st.

5 names will be drawn and winners will be announced in November.

The book bundles include:

1. A Signed Copy of The Voice of the Heart

Dr. Dodd will be leading 2 seminars this fall:

Leading With Heart: When Intellect, Willpower, and Goals Aren’t Enough

October 24, 2024

9:00 to 12:00

How to Love a Woman’s Heart

November 8, 2024

9:00-12:00

For more information or to register for these seminars go to chipdodd.com/seminar

2 new FREE Resources at chipdodd.com:

14 Symptoms of Codependency: A Personal Inventory

Return to Being Human: 6 Freedoms from Birth

We offer free resources not to promote, as much as to attract people to come get something that will benefit individuals, couples, families, friendships and society itself.

Now Available at Amazon

The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional for Individuals, Couples, & Families is a 24-day devotional that prepare us for the birth of Jesus. It is offered as a free eBook at chipdodd.com and it also can be purchased from Amazon. The Jesse Tree includes daily devotionals that start with creation and end with the birth of Jesus.  Each day has a list of ideas for extending the day’s “study” and opportunity for fellowship with your family, friends, and God. Order now, the devotional begins December 1st.

In today’s episode we are continuing to discuss how to find recovery from codependency.

Last episode we focused on the equation:

H.O.W. + G.O.D. > E.G.O

Honesty, Openness, and Willingness + Good, Orderly Direction allow us to reduce the ego or the Easing God Out experience of our lives. It also allows us to rediscover our true self and how to live out of it. The ego is the mask we wear to cover up our vulnerability and neediness, and our boundaries.

This episode particularly focuses on the path of recovery, returning to how you are created and to the God who created you. 

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

BOOK BUNDLE GIVEAWAY!

We are giving away 5 FREE Chip Dodd Book Bundles!

• Write a review of this podcast.

Reviews and emails must be submitted by October 31st.

5 names will be drawn and winners will be announced in November.

The book bundles include:

1. A Signed Copy of The Voice of the Heart

Dr. Dodd will be leading 2 seminars this fall:

Leading With Heart: When Intellect, Willpower, and Goals Aren’t Enough

October 24, 2024

9:00 to 12:00

How to Love a Woman’s Heart

November 8, 2024

9:00-12:00

For more information or to register for these seminars go to chipdodd.com/seminar

2 new FREE Resources at chipdodd.com:

• 14 Symptoms of Codependency: A Personal Inventory

We offer free resources not to promote, as much as to attract people to come get something that will benefit individuals, couples, families, friendships and society itself.

Episode Highlights:

The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd

Real freedom awaits us in codependency recovery—if we take the risk of hoping and then trusting that a better way of living is on the other side of the risk. We have to admit that we are actually powerless over the symptoms we have talked about. We must admit that we need an emotional and spiritual “makeover.”

We must face that codependency is not a habit, one that we can just change by conscious action only, or mindfulness. It actually fits into the criteria of an illness, a disease.

Medical Definition of Disease: A morbid process (meaning destructive to health), with a characteristic chain of symptoms, of known or unknown origin, that are chronic, progressive, and can be fatal.

The disease of codependency is driven by stress. Many physicians have reported to me that the causes of most of the illnesses that are presented to them are stress-based sicknesses of not knowing how to live. In other words, the patient does not know what to do with or how to process feelings.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

BOOK BUNDLE GIVEAWAY!

We are giving away 5 FREE Chip Dodd Book Bundles!

• Write a review of this podcast.

Reviews and emails must be submitted by October 31st.

5 names will be drawn and winners will be announced in November.

The book bundles include:

1. A Signed Copy of The Voice of the Heart

Dr. Dodd will be leading 2 seminars this fall:

Leading With Heart: When Intellect, Willpower, and Goals Aren’t Enough

October 24, 2024

9:00 to 12:00

How to Love a Woman’s Heart

November 8, 2024

9:00-12:00

For more information or to register for these seminars go to chipdodd.com/seminar

2 new FREE Resources at chipdodd.com:

14 Symptoms of Codependency: A Personal Inventory

Return to Being Human: 6 Freedoms from Birth

We offer free resources not to promote, as much as to attract people to come get something that will benefit individuals, couples, families, friendships and society itself.

Episode Highlights:

Today we’re talking about the last two symptoms of the 14 symptoms of Codependency.

We will close our series on codependency with several episodes about the solutions and treatments for codependency.

Once we see we have a problem with codependency, we need to:

• admit the need for help.

There isn’t a quick, easy “fix” for overcoming codependency. The reality of having to take a path, rather than have a “pill fix,” is sad. The reality is that it takes a lifetime to learn how to live.

Codependency recovery is a great path to move us from surviving to thriving.  The question is, “How are we going to live?”

Symptom #13  Restricted Emotional Development

Restricted emotional development is grounded in the fear of being labeled as inferior because of what we do not know or have not learned.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

Episode Highlights: 

“Confusion about Toxic Shame and Guilt”

Codependency is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to deal with. Even though we have been “taught” to rid ourselves of how God made us, it does not give us permission or the right to stay there. It is a sickness that we have, and we have the responsibility to find the healing.

Codependency is the loss of how God made us, with self-awareness, self-trust, self-care, being sensitive to our own true feelings, loss of learning how to respond to our feelings in a healthy way; it is the loss of self-worth—given over to the needs of significant others who are uncomfortable with themselves, or self-rejecting. 

Codependency recovery is not selfishness; it is “Self-fullness.” Self-fullness is having enough of who God created us to be that we have the ability to give our gifts to a world in need.

The need to belong and matter is so powerful that we are going to find a way to get those needs met—through suppression or expression.

Expression has to be grown and matured, so codependency recovery does take time and investment.

Each of the symptoms that we have discussed in this podcast is from the work of Timmen Cermak, in his book Diagnosing and Treating Codependency. The descriptions and following work are from my own experiences.

Codependency is pervasive, a pandemic, and all the relief-seeking addictions we can name have their origin and influence in codependency.

Symptom #12  Confusion About Toxic Shame and Guilt

Toxic shame is grounded in never being able to do anything “right enough,” or be right enough to be loved, or have the “right” to receive mercy.

In toxic shame the confusion between shame and guilt is birthed in the mistaken belief that I should be able to not mess up; not make mistakes; should not have to need mercy; should be able to be perfect. It is the belief that only perfect people can be loved. If I am not perfect, I am “worth-less” and cannot be loved.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

Emotional recovery is about going back to “ground zero,” your childhood.

A disease is a morbid process that is destructive to the being: body, mind, soul, and heart. It reduces our capacity to be productive and prosperous. Disease has a characteristic chain of symptoms with known or unknown origins. A disease is chronic, with acute episodes, progressive and often fatal.

We are as sick as the feelings we will not let ourselves have.

Symptom # 9 Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance is the fear of giving up anxiety that keeps me “on my toes” as a safety mechanism; bad things will happen if I’m not on my toes.

Hypervigilance is being controlled by anxiety. Anxiety is always seeking relief from the hypervigilance. Anxiety becomes the expectation of an external threat doing something to put me in a position of helplessness.

Anxiety is in us to tell us to be ready to take a defensive action, a reaction:

fight…get ready

flee…get ready

freeze…get ready

appease…get ready

Anxiety in its negative form is saying “watch outside right now because something is coming that is going to harm you.”  Anxiety is an external locus of anticipation and control.

The anxiety in hypervigilance is about avoiding the confession of being afraid and in need. The anxiety goes in search of the external threat; it looks for danger. This anxiety will not be quelled until it finds the thing that it needs to control in order to find relief.

We are made to live fully in relationship and connection. When we become disconnected from how we are made, because we are made for connection and to live fully in relationship, that has always been there. If I can’t find a way to be connected the way I am created to connect, I will have to find another way to be connected, one way or another. 

Toxic shame tells you that if you’re not doing what others expect you to do (and your discomfort will confirm this), then you will be humiliated and rejected. Toxic Shame says:

• You better get your role together.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the episode highlights in full. 

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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd

In codependency, people hide their competence and giftings in order to belong and matter.

People are generally unable to celebrate well with others.

6. Name the symptom 

Enmeshed relationships with controlling people

Identify the fear that it’s grounded in 

Fear of being alone

Identify the toxic shame that it is birthed in 

Unless I please, I will be rejected.

Discuss its impaired expression in our lives (External locus of control) 

I wait to see what they want before I can act, and even then, I am uncertain about my feelings and thoughts.

Discuss what it was meant to be (Internal locus of control) 

Being in relationship with people who see you as having the same worth, and desire to hear your feelings and thoughts.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  Psalm 139:14

7. Name the symptom 

Constricted emotions

Identify the fear that it’s grounded in 

Fear of being known or the fear of being seen as weak/inadequate

Identify the toxic shame that it is birthed in 

If I let myself be known, bad consequences will happen. The past will repeat itself. I will be seen as weak/ inadequate again.

Discuss its impaired expression in our lives (External locus of control) 

The need to hide or deny feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope.

Discuss what it was meant to be (Internal locus of control) 

Freedom to express yourself wisely with others who can do the same

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  Philippians 4:8

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to view the 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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

Structure of Symptoms of Codependency

• Name the symptom

Codependency recovery and codependency illness is not an either/or; it’s both/and. 

Just like addiction, codependency is an attempt to have a full life, without having to be truly human and having to deal with needs, embarrassment and vulnerability. It is both/and as an impaired way of living and an attempt to find full life.

Recovery is developing a tolerance for vulnerability. 

Vulnerability is the key to identifying myself as human, having feelings and being in need; and identifying others who are capable of feeling and being in need.

Codependency is the loss of self, and all that comes with self, given over to significant others because they are uncomfortable with someone being human in their presence. So, with our need to belong and matter, we will sacrifice how God made us to belong and matter to those who are actually running from themselves.

Sadly, children don’t know that these caregivers are running from themselves because children look at their caregivers knowing that they are big and the child is little. They think, “You must be right because you’re big; therefore, I must be wrong.”

The caregiver’s toxic shame and defenses, and their protection from their own internal world become a rejection to belonging and mattering for the child.

The origin of how we’re created is found in this equation:

intuition + suspicion + questions = the growing ability to discern 

• where I am

This means I am listening to my internal world.

Intuition + suspicion + questions = discernment.

Intuition + suspicion + defensiveness = judgmentalism. Judging my environment around me all the time based upon making sure that I do not end up looking little, stupid, or weak. This is the fear and toxic shame of vulnerability.

So, your whole life revolves around trying to fit in based upon your performance again, rather than being how you are made. This requires that you ask a lot of questions.

Asking questions is a solution that helps separate us from judgment and return us to discernment.

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 [email protected].

Episode Highlights:

The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd 

A story/workbook for helping codependents find freedom from codependency.

You are gifted, and there is a world in need of your gifts.

Loneliness is the biggest pain that people are facing now. What people need is to be known from the inside-out, rather than distracting ourselves from our loneliness (need for genuine relationship) through social media.

Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence by Timmen Cermak

5 Things God designed us to find fulfillment in:

1. We are created to use the development of our inborn self-awareness through feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope to find and live in authentic relationship.

↓

1. With that in-born self-awareness, we are able to be “response-able” to our inner make-up.  (We’re created to develop the ability to respond to our outside life by using our inborn makeup: feelings, needs, desire, longings, and our hope. We need our “makeup” affirmed and confirmed so we can keep being able to use it, so we can grow “response-ably” which ultimately becomes responsibility.)

↓      

1. We are created to find genuine relational connection through being “response-able” and through using our inner self-awareness.

↓

1. We are created to initiate our lives from our hearts, with others who have the same capacity. (We are looking to connect with others who are also living a life of relational fulfillment. They are aware that we are all 99.9% the same.)   "It's a Small World"

↓

1. We are created to be in relationship with others, God, God’s creation, and the others in it.

When we live our lives fully out of the 5 fulfilments, we are able to be healthy grownups who do what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  Matthew 7:7

Matthew 7:7 is for grownups; grownups are just children who have gotten older and who have remained fully present in their lives. Grownups are able to live out of their fully present lives.

Jesus encourages grownups to:

• Ask so they can receive.

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 [email protected].

Episode highlights:

The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd

God is a great garbage man; He wastes nothing in our lives. 

• God values His own creation;

Bring your child-heart to God and give Him your pain, suffering, and your struggle, and even your questions. God can deliver you. He delivers people through circumstances, prayer, His word, other people, and illumination of your heart.

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength,” Ephesians 1:18-19

Paul was a man who knew that to love, is to suffer. Therefore, he needed a place to take his suffering. Paul refers to God in this passage:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”  2 Corinthians 1:3-5

So, we can either choose to believe that while God is good, we still suffer; yet we have a place to take our suffering. We can take it to God, who cares for us.

OR

We will stifle suffering unnecessarily, and just live miserably.

The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. ‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you.”

Proverbs 23:7

Click here to continue reading episode highlights.