In part 1, we begin addressing your questions on toxic relationships, ranging in all kinds of subjects. We had a great time talking through the questions you sent in and walking through insights we have found to be helpful and empowering.

Here are some of the subjects we talk about:

* How long does healing from spiritual abuse take?

* Recognizing narcissism in someone.

* Why narcissist will not change.

* Healing from a toxic family when they do not recognize their dysfunction and toxicity.

* Help and healing for pastors wives.

* How to heal amongst people who have seen your flaws.

* Learning to let relationships be.

* Leaning into the grace of your journey.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

* God Loves Me and I Love Myself!

* The Heart Healing Journey

To support future podcast episodes: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

Once someone has made the decision to leave a toxic relationship or organization, a new chapter of healing opens up. For most, there are areas of healing that can be addressed that were never addressed before.

This season takes kindness, wisdom and patience.

We pray that in our discussion, you will find encouragement, insight and application for what your heart needs.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

* God Loves Me and I Love Myself!

* The Heart Healing Journey

To support future podcast episodes: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

It is our conviction that unaddressed brokenness gives rise to toxic faith cultures, spiritually abusive environments and cults. In order for there to be a change, we will need to address the issues of our hearts that need healing. We pray that our conversation will encourage you to allow the healing process to take place in your life, so that you can be a living example of the health and healing that is available for the body of Christ.

May our interaction add grace, love and empowering truth to your journey.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* Healing from Spiritual Abuse Online Course

* God Loves Me and I Love Myself!

* The Heart Healing Journey

To support future podcast episodes: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

How can a pastor cultivate a healthy life of the heart with all that may be going on in the church? Is it even possible for a pastor to live emotionally healthy amidst all the demands, pressure and struggles that are going on?

In today’s episode, we want to continue our series on Healing from Toxic Relationships, by addressing the pastor’s heart. This episode will be very honest and vulnerable. But we pray that our conversation will encourage you to move into redemptive and healing pathways.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* The Heart Healing Journey

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

* Experiencing God’s Love as Your Father

To support future podcasts: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

For most people, you will spend more weekday hours invested in your job than you do at home. So having a fruitful experience with your work is important.

For many, they admit that their work environment is unhealthy, toxic and sucking the life out of their hearts. It is important that we talk about this subject, while also pointing towards some helpful strategies. We believe that God wants to heal, strengthen and mature areas of our life that can lead us to live as overcomers in the workplace.

You do not have to be trapped by toxic work environments. You can overcome.

We hope that in our discussion and our personal experiences, you can find encouragement, perspective and insight on how to overcome, even when the workplace environment is toxic.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* The Heart Healing Journey

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

* God Loves Me and I Love Myself!

To support future podcasts: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

 

Codependency is a main issue that keeps relationships from experiencing health. Living codependent keeps us in toxic relationship patterns, while never experience the health and wholeness we were made for.

In this week’s episode, I want to continue providing insight into the deception and stranglehold of codependency. I want to compare codependency with interdependence

Codependency vs Interdependence

Why do we become vulnerable to codependency?

Complex Trauma, Codependency & Narcissism 

Christian Confusion and Codependency

How to Break Free from Codependency

Video Broadcast:

Show Notes and Outline

Understanding Codependency

Codependency creates an unhealthy orbit around each other with unhealthy bonds and patterns. In its simplified form, codependency is an excessive emotional reliance on another person. It often involves an addiction or addictive relationship pattern. There is usually one who is “needed” and the one who is “needy.” Enabling and forms of control are involved. Included in codependent relationships have a dynamic of being one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive. 

Comparison of Codependency and Interdependence

The opposite of codependency is interdependence and here are some the differences. 

Interdependence

Codependency

Love is a Powerful Decision: you choose to be with them. You work on yourself and bring that to the relationship. 

Love is a “High,” reactionary, compelled, rushed, pressured, driven, intense. You “need” the person to be better for you. 

Identity Preserved: you still have an identity of your own

Identity Drowning: identity is lost into the other person

Healthy Reality: personal responsibility for personal growth, growing maturity

Unhealthy Illusion: we cannot live without each other, this relationship is my life, immaturity

Consistent: growing stable and grounded

Melodramatic: constant ups and downs

Trusting Commitment

Possessiveness

Stable Self-Esteem

Self-esteem hinges off other person’s swings

Openness to the Future: new and good things that are good and DIFFERENT from the past can and will open up.

Familiar Repetition: inward drive to repeat and recreate the dysfunctional – yet comfortable past. Bubble life. 

Willingness to Surrender

Need to Control

Trust in God

Trust building Christian Fellowship 

Fear of Abandonment

Why Do We Become Vulnerable to Codependency?

You do not just magically become codependent because a light switch went off in you. There are legitimate factors that influence why you become codependent. 

* Your upbringing and home life. (The brokenness of your home and how you responded to it.)

* Your relationship with your parents.

* Your empty and broken hearts are looking for love, but you lack the references on what true love looks like. 

* You became a caretaker early on.

* Mis-targeted Love Source: You look for a person to be a core source of fulfilling your need for love, a place only God can fill, but you are blind in how to connect to the true love of God. 

* Trauma

Complex Trauma, Codependency & Narcissism

Recommended Resource: Tim Fletcher – YouTube

Codependency often develops from an emotionally abusive environment, with a narcissist being the abusive one, and it develops in an emotionally dishonest environment (the needy ones/enablers never get honest about how things really are).

One of the greatest ways we can heal from the impact of toxic relationships is to recognize patterns of codependency and allow God to heal how we connect and get our needs met. If there was a top issue on the list of emotional and heart healthy issues that we all need healing from, codependency would be at the top of my list. 

I believe that now more than ever before, God is highlighting how we do relationships and he is seeking to heal us while maturing how we approach relationships. The problem is that we carry so much brokenness in what relationship looks like that it leaves us very vulnerable to moving into codependent patterns. 

The more you can honestly identify codependent patterns in your life, the more you will set yourself up for renewed relationship patterns. So keep an open heart. 

The truth is, we live as broken people in a broken world, so it can be very challenging to know how to navigate relationships in a healthy way. We did not have healthy examples growing up, nor did we get training on how to navigate relationship decisions in a healthy way. Meanwhile, we all carry broken wounds in our hearts that distort our ability to relate to people in a healthy way. 

This is why codependency has become a major problem. 

Relationships are meant to be fulfilling. But if you don’t have a healthy compass of who you are and you do not know how to live in the love of God, you can easily take your brokenness to another person. This will make that relationship dynamic highly vulnerable to codependency.

Video Broadcast:

Show Notes and Outline

Are You Willing to See It?

But I must say this up front: you have to be willing to humble yourself and become teachable. You will need to be able to see yourself and your relationships through some healthy input, or else you will dive back into your dysfunctional patterns. The number one problem with codependency is that people do not see it. They don’t know how to see it or they just don’t want to see it. 

That is why getting training, equipping and resourcing is so critical. But you’ve got to want it. And no one can want this more than you do. 

For decades, Christianity has neglected the subject of emotional and relational health. We’ve pursued a passion for God, while we neglected the issues of our heart that needed healing. And sadly, many of our relationships have been a mess. In the meantime, masses of believers have often unknowingly fallen into the trenches of codependent relationships. 

God in His kindness is allowing us to see our broken patterns of relationship, not to condemn or shame us, but to heal us and mature how we do relationships. Jesus has destined that His church reveal the nature of the Father through how we do relationships. It’s not about our achievements or performance evaluations. It’s about the health of our relationships. And that takes work! 

What or Who You Depend on for Core Needs

The journey of uncovering codependency begins with asking, “Where do you place your dependence?” 

Where does your need to be loved, your identity, your sense of validation and acceptance get validated?

At the end of the day, what gives you the ability to rest your head in peace and love. 

How do you feel fulfilled at the end of the day?

What allows you to look in the mirror and be ok with yourself? 

Christians love to respond, “In God of course!” We shout it from the mountaintops in church services. But in day to day life, our relationships patterns reveal that we are not really being honest. In fact, many times, when it comes to how we do relationships, believers can be incredibly self-deceived and cover it up with nice super spirituality. 

So let me ask that question again and please do some honest reflection, “Where do you place your dependency?” When push comes to shove,

Are your family gatherings wonderful and picture perfect? Well most people don’t relate to that, as many are deeply imprinted with the experience of toxic family gatherings that create obstacles and challenges to heart healing and wholeness.

When it comes to family, there are a lot of factors that can kick up the brokenness and pain of our hearts. At times it can keep us in cycles of bondage and prevent us from greater freedom. That is, unless we gain some insight and wisdom on how to navigate family dynamics in an empowered way.

This episode is targeted to those who are seeking to walk in greater healing and wholeness, but get tripped up when interacting with your family or your in law family members. You are not alone.

We pray in our conversation, you can find love, grace and insight for where you are the journey you are taking in the life of your heart.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* The Heart Healing Journey

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

* God Loves Me and I Love Myself!

To support future podcasts: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link

 

Healing from toxic relationships often involves we working through the toxic soul ties that have form in our journey. In today’s podcast, I want to talk about the importance of your relationship ties and your history of attachments, connections and bonds. You were made for relationship and designed to be knit together with other relationships in powerful ways. Yet at the same time, your enemy seeks to orchestrate relationship ties with people that reinforce bondage in your life.

Many discover in their healing and freedom journey that there are significant ties, often referred to as soul ties, that need to be broken.

While this is true, I want to first bring out the power of what healthy ties can bring about in your life. The subject of soul ties can be a powerful invitation for you and I to develop healthy bonds with the right people. You don’t have to remain stuck in the toxic attachments, bonds and ties that seek to hold you in bondage. There is freedom available and healthy bonds we can develop.

Video Broadcast:

Show Notes and Outline

The subject of soul ties, relationship ties, bonds or attachments is an important one to address in the healing and freedom journey. In addition, I think this issue impacts our lives way further than we often realize. In healing from toxic relationships, we often have to address the unhealthy ties we developed along the way. 

Toxic Soul Ties

Toxic is a good word to describe these unhealthy relationship ties, because it includes the meaning of the biblical words bitter and defilement, which are found in Hebrews 12.

looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. Hebrews 12:15 (NKJV)

Toxic people do exactly that: they allow bitter roots to spring up and the spread the infectious trouble that springs out of it.  In the Scriptures, bitterness literally means poison, something that should not be inhaled or ingested, because if you do, it will have a negative effect.

Bitterness also means acridity, which means it leaves a strong and unpleasant odor. Bitter roots produce bitter fruit, but they are also contagious, spreading like a virus to other people. We become “defiled” by bitterness when our hearts become contaminated with another person’s bitter perspectives.

This toxic or bitter effect is often compounded because of the unhealthy soul ties that get formed with toxic people.

What is a Soul Tie?

Over the years, the term “soul tie” has become the popular term that people use to address the bonds, attachments and ways we become relationally knit to another person. It is usually brought out in a negative and destructive connotation. But a soul tie or relationship tie is actually designed by God to be a good thing.

For simple understanding, a soul tie is a bond or attachment that exists in a relationship. The truth is that a soul tie can be a healthy tie or an unhealthy tie. 

Relationship Audit

Take a moment and look back at your history of close-knit relationships. Allow your heart to do an honest assessment of where you’ve had strong relationship ties that were helpful, healthy and fruitful. But consider as well those relationship ties that were harmful, toxic and left you to cope with the collateral damage. 

Many of the toxic relationship experiences we’ve had are not relationships we just turn on and then easily turned off. They often involve deep investments, where it can become challenging to unwind from the negative experiences. 

Those who invest their hearts in spiritual and emotional healing often come to the point of realizing they need to “detox” certain unhealthy relationships. Many begin to realize that healing from toxic relationships is not so easy. There becomes these invisible ties that pull on them.

There is no greater place where healing, maturity and growth can take place than when we walk through conflict in a healthy way. At the same time, this subject hits at some of the deepest places of hurt, woundedness and brokenness in our lives.

In today’s episode, we want to have a fruitful conversation about conflict and bring about some awareness as to the issues that keep us from having healthy confrontations and conflict healing. We will share our own journey of learning to handle conflict with greater maturity, while also share what we’ve learned in working with a wide variety of conflict situations.

May our discussion add value and life to your own journey.

Video Broadcast:

Recommended Resources: 

* The Heart Healing Journey

* Exposing the Rejection Mindset

To support future podcasts: 

* Consider a one-time donation.

* Become a monthly supporter.

* Join a free month of Audible Audio Books and get 1 Free Book!

* Support our ministry work by shopping at Amazon with Our Link