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). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.

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). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.

Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.

Purpose of Therapy

Therapy is about healing; restoration; and returning to normal interaction in a society that finds genuine fulfillment in participation, appreciation, and contribution.

Those who develop the healing and “heart” of wholeness or identify themselves as an improving “work in progress” have tolerance for difficulties, ability to work communally, and desire to contribute.

Disruptive Therapy

Healthy therapy loses its focus on healing and restoration when it loses the wisdom of consideration.

The wisdom of consideration is the process in which a “client,” for example, does healing work around family of origin wounds and identifies the need to restore the true self.

To restore the true self is to be able to know one’s own feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope without toxic shame or self-doubt.

Toxic shame and self-doubt are diminished through community with non-shaming people.

Therapy disrupts the healthy process when boundaries become walls and feelings become weapons—

• If the therapist and client do not go beyond “what happened” and move into the consideration for the people who through ignorance, denial, or incapability were part of the loss of self, boundaries become walls instead of fences and division is increased. Walls create isolation. Fences create respect.
• If the therapist helps the client turn feelings into rights rather than the tools that help a person make decisions, they are helping client’s get “stuck” in a victim status, rather than choice making response-ability.

The true self is not the right to not have to feel and make choices. It is the ability to know yourself and become responsible for your own actions that never give up on love and restoration—though a person may have to grieve deeply that the ones they hoped to be in relationship with do not seek restoration, too.

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). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.

Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.

Surrender:

1. What surrender does not mean.

• It does not mean defeat, as in you have been beaten.
• It does not mean that you are through defeat establishing a peace treaty, as in you remain sovereign over your country, which is yourself.
• It does not mean that you are giving up benefits and have to tolerate abuse.

1. What surrender does mean

• It literally means, “to render over, or give way, for one’s own benefit”
• It is a relinquishing of my attempt to control what I cannot control; from that standpoint, the “defeat” is the relinquishing of pride, denial of need for help, or actions that make my life unmanageable
• Recovery from any kind of addiction has surrender as a key beneficial step:

1. A person first admits that they cannot control “life,” but they wish to live life
2. Surrender occurs when we seek a path, person, or process that can do this for us
3. surrender: “I cannot; therefore, I surrender to what God and others can do for me what I cannot do for myself”

God and surrender

Actions of surrender imply that a person is “rendering over” “giving back” or “returning” something that was taken from someone them or someone else. In emotional and spiritual surrender, we, as humans, are “giving back” to God what we “took” from Him.

We “stole” our hearts from God; we took our feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope and refused the dependency upon God that these inherent characteristics require.

We are created dependent, but will we remain vulnerable to using that dependency well or refuse to depend?

Surrender really is “re-depending” on God as the Source of primary connection, presence, and fulfillment.

We were born dependent and created to develop resilience in life and living through dependence.

God gave us:

• Fear - so that we would ask for help
• Hurt - so that we would seek healing
• Sadness - to resolve loss through grief

When we surrender, we are returning to how God made us, with the ability to be:

• connected to Him

• present with Him
• fulfilled by Him

This allows us to experience all the relational wonder that life has to offer. But we must be “good at dependency.” We must start with knowing our feelings and using them as they can be used for our benefit.

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.