4 - Healthy/Unhealthy Ways to Belong and Matter (Part 2)

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 two primary needs are the need to belong and the need to matter. The need to belong is being accepted for how I am created. The need to matter is to be appreciated for what I bring specifically and uniquely to how I am created.   We are looking for affirmation and confirmation   We are so created for relationship that we have to have it one way or another. Either we’re  going to have it as we are created or we’re going to have to take over and try to become someone we’re not so that we can receive the smile, the approval, the affirmation, the confirmation, the connection which inauthentically “meets” our need to belong and matter.   When your need to belong and matter is not met as you are created for it to be met, you will find another way to have those needs met.   When your need to matter and the need to belong are met in healthy ways through affirmation and confirmation, it will open you up to thriving.   Sadly, when our need for belonging and mattering is not met in legitimate ways, we use illegitimate means in order to have our legitimate needs met.   Our wounds can drive us to do great and extraordinary things, but no matter how much we give, it doesn’t heal us, because the toxic shame still says I must have done something wrong for me to be in this situation.   Toxic shame creates a circle of self-destruction that makes us, in the world’s eyes, successful often.   Generational Curse - Once you become loyal to protecting the people who did not affirm you for who you were, you get affirmed for acting like they act. You develop an addiction to avoidance of having to face your grief, loss, reality that you were raised by humans who wouldn’t do “human” well and wouldn’t need God well.    Action Steps to Thriving: Find my feelings.   Face my feelings. Feel my feelings.   Give them to God. (Give them to the process of how life actually works. God owns the process.) Take us to being in need. Be able to tell the truth about my internal feelings and needs (never as  weapons of blame but as ownership of response-ability.) Tell the truth about my feelings. Dare to stay angry. (Stay in the desire of what you really want and be willing to be in the pain of what it’s going to cost to get there.) Be willing to seek forgiveness.   Patience means willing to carry the burden of hope.   Passion means the willingness to be in pain for something that matters more than the pain.   Click here to continue reading highlights.