Hearts and Minds Set Free

We all seem to have some things that we have done or neglected to do; failures that have caused regrets. It is what we do with those regrets in our minds that either causes us to forgive ourselves and move on, or beat ourselves up and never let ourselves off-the-hook. If we allow those regrets and failures to run rampant in our minds, over and over it can cause hopelessness, depression, anxiety and despair, or worse. Doing so creates a groove in our minds of negativity that we default back to whenever anything similar comes up to remind us of it. We let the negative thoughts about our failures or regrets play in our heads once again causing negativity and torment. A lot of times we get so used to doing this, that we don’t even realize we are doing it anymore, if we ever did! The answer is to make a new groove in our minds, so that our default will not take us back to our failures anymore. (Of course, the first thing that is needed is to ask God to forgive us for partnering with li

No one likes to admit they struggle with avoidance or obsession and a lot of people don't even know they have these problems. What does it even mean to avoid or obsess? What I found is that normal people, aka people who don't act out in some sort of addiction, are those who seem to obsess the most. This was my problem. I acted in instead of out. It is much more respectable to act in! Obsession gets really strong and active when we are having feelings that we don't want to feel or accept, so to avoid those feelings we obsess about something. We act in by obsessing which takes us out of our feelings. Maybe you don't know if you are an obsessor or not. Some people think that they are just worriers. We may worry about real problems and try and figure out the solutions. We get lost in trying to figure out the solution to impossible situations. We get all caught up in our heads with all kinds of possible scenarios to our problems. Our mind gets more and more torment

I was looking for a reason to feel good about myself, and I needed the proof from someone else that I was okay. I was always looking for someone to let me know that I was okay. The problem was when I would get what I needed from someone, then I would need more of it. If that person went away, or didn’t treat me the way I thought they should, I would fall apart. It was not pretty for an adult to fall apart when they don't get the attention they need from someone. I was always examining others people's actions or words because what they thought or felt of me was very important. If they didn't approve of me then I was not okay with me and if they did approve it would make me so happy, for a while that is! You see, I had very low self-worth, and I needed someone or something to help me to feel good about myself, something to fill me up. I had a big empty hole inside. I kept trying to get that hole filled up with many things outside of myself. I was frantic to do something spe

We are not our thoughts. We are not the things that run through our heads. It is very possible that the things we believe about ourselves and others that seem so normal to us, might be not so healthy. If we were raised in a negative environment the things that happened to us or the things that were said to us might have caused us to view the world through a skewed grid. If ideas we learned from authority figures or others in our lives were learned from someone with distorted thinking, the lenses that we view ourselves and the rest of the world can be very out of whack and we probably don't even realize it. If our thoughts about ourselves and others come through distorted filters we can look at ourselves and the world around us with the wrong colored lenses. Some people look at everything through rose colored glasses, but there are lots of other colors that people view the world through and they also can cause problems. Things might seem true to us, but can we really put all o

A few months ago I wrote on Facebook about how some people spiritualize sick behavior. I was asked to explain. Spiritualizing sick behavior is something I was very familiar with. I probably still do it sometime, but I catch it pretty quickly now. I am certainly not perfect at it but I am much better than I used to be. I have watched myself in the past snowballing downwards and now I see my friends getting worse in their lives because instead of taking responsibility for their part in bad situations they either blame the devil or the other person involved. It doesn't matter how many times they go around the same circle it is always someone else's fault. I can tell you from experience that it is not easy to face yourself and say that I have this problem or worse I am the problem in this situation. But facing it is so much easier than spending our lives feeling and acting like the victim of everyone and everything else. Believing we are always the victim is really the pits. It f

There are times I get offended. I have learned if people are offending or shaming me I should have boundaries and limit their closeness in my life and choose to be around more safe people. Then there are times I am told that I need to share my feelings to the one who has offended or shamed me by saying, "When you say that to me I feel shamed," and sometimes I need to do that also. These things I can use as tools to help me get past the offensive, shaming people in my life.  It seems that boundaries regarding unsafe people and sharing my feelings when someone has offended or shamed me, are very important and needed. What I am looking at right now is, "Where does my responsibility come in?" "What is my part in this scenario?" Sometimes I am offended by others because something traumatic happened to me in my life or childhood and it caused some big button in me. When an offensive person says or does something to me and my big button gets pushed I feel p

I was reading Romans chapter 12 this morning and I was reminded how important my mind is. I have been writing and talking about the mind for quite some time now because it is so importants. For me, there was no real change or breakthrough in my life until I got a handle on my thinking. After reading Romans 12:2 this morning the importance of the mind was renewed. It says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." I don’t know about you, but this hit me strong this morning. “Transformed by the renewing of your mind, so you can prove what is the perfect will of God.” I have been a Christian for a very long time and for a lot of the first half of my walk all I proved is how I could mess up. My mind had control of my life and me, and it was not a good thing! It took me all over the place into areas I didn’t want to go, and I felt powerless because of it. It w

I am certain that there have been times in my life that I have disqualified myself from receiving or acquiring things that I should have had, whether it was a relationship, a job or anything I wanted. I wasn't familiar with the feeling of success or good things so I would sabotage those things without realizing it. I was more familiar with lack and feeling less-than so I would re-create those feelings again and again. I didn't do it on purpose, I wanted to receive, but I just couldn't. I would be in a pretty good situation and then I would find something wrong, so I would get out of it for some reason and then blame it on someone else. Having someone tell me I was my own worst enemy was the worst because I just didn't understand it at all! When we are familiar with living in defeat, lack and rejection it can feel very uncomfortable to have success. I mean it can feel so bad that we tell ourselves that we are being rejected or not accepted, just so we can get out of the

Sometimes I struggle with my faith. It happens slowly. I let in a thought that I don't even realize and before long I end up in a place and look at myself and wonder what happened to me! How did I get here? It always starts with a thought about something that has happened or something that didn't happen the way I thought it should. I let in doubt. It happens in such a subtle way. What God says about himself is truth. It is not debatable, but I question this in some way. When I allow a negative lie about God or myself to get planted in my mind, and I realize that I have done this, just the realization of it does not make everything better. It seems like the aha moment would change it all, but just as slowly as I got tripped up by the negative thought, I also will have to change the thought and be on guard for a while. It is kind of like withdrawal from anything that I have given myself over to. I will have to be on constant guard to not allow myself to slip back into the lie. I