Living with Heart: From Birth to Death
Dr. Chip Dodd’s ”The Voice of the Heart” is one of the seminal and most practically impactful books of the last several decades in the counseling, coaching, and mentorship space. In ”Living with Heart,” Dr. Dodd joins co-host, Bryan Barley, to discuss with greater depth, detail, and practicality how to live with heart through the entire journey of life - from birth to death.
Listen on:
Episodes
Tuesday Apr 14, 2026
Tuesday Apr 14, 2026
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.
Relationship with yourself
These questions can help you become response-able for yourself:
What kind of person am I?
Who knows me?
Who do I love, and how vulnerably do I love?
Am I emotionally and spiritually genuine with God and a few others?
Do I use my mind to articulate the truths of my own heart?
Can I seek forgiveness, offer mercy, and forgive?
Christianity is truly a religion of growth. Jesus said, “The thief come only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10, NIV)
Christianity is a religion of living fully. This is unlike other religions in the world:
Jesus refers to Himself as a “Good Shepherd” in John 10.
Jesus will lead us and grow us into becoming shepherds, ourselves.
Through Jesus we give our hands, heads, and hearts to a “mission” that is worth whatever is required to live fully.
Through the Spirit of God that indwells Christians, we can live fully through loving fully and leading well. This life leaves plenty of fruit behind.
Relationship with one’s self refers to the connection between the “heart” and “head.”
Sadly, many of us are taught to defend ourselves rather than become ourselves.
We use our thinking and reactions to hide the truth of our feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope, rather than use the development of our minds to identify, explore, and express “truth in the inner parts . . . wisdom in the inmost place,” (Psalm 51:6, NIV)
We are created to live fully, but to do so, we must feed the roots, so that the fruits can grow in abundance.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Apr 07, 2026
Tuesday Apr 07, 2026
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.
Recover is not a pill > Recovery is a path.
Recovery is not a quick fix > Recovery is a lifestyle, lived one day at a time.
Recovery allows us to live with a “new set of glasses.”
People in recovery no longer see life through the “tinted glasses” that denial gives them, but they begin to live in clear reality.
A person no longer sees life through the “foggy” glasses of denial, but a person begins to live in reality.
Addiction
enslaves a person emotionally and spiritually
then begins to harm relational-social life
finally, it harms the biological-physiological life
Recovery FROM addiction is freedom from what enslaves a person, so they can get recovery OF who they were meant to be.
Recovery OF one’s self is a return to the emotional and spiritual human being who finds fulfillment through relationship with others and God.
The Process of Recovery
Recovery requires that a person step into a journey they have never been on before. They need a map and guideposts along the path to know if they are going in the “best” direction.
The roadmap for recovery is found in the 12-Steps, a recovery map with guideposts that a person follows with guidance from others. The roadmap can break the “spell” of the continuous circle of addiction repetition.
Addiction repetition is like being on a train in your own personal boxcar. It doesn’t matter how one thinks, what one promises, or fantasizes, the train is going where the tracks are laid. Addiction owns the tracks and the train.
Recovery requires that a person jump off a moving train. Recovery places a person on their own ship and they sail onto the ocean, where there are no tracks, except for desire, dependence and destination. The recovering person is guided by the compass of the 12-Steps and the north star of relationships, especially God.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Mar 31, 2026
Tuesday Mar 31, 2026
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.
Recover is not a pill > Recovery is a path.
Recovery is not a quick fix > Recovery is a lifestyle, lived one day at a time.
Recovery allows us to live with a “new set of glasses.”
People in recovery no longer see life through the “tinted glasses” that denial gives them, but they begin to live in clear reality.
A person no longer sees life through the “foggy” glasses of denial, but a person begins to live in reality.
While recovery has thousands upon thousands of personal benefits, the personal benefits do not mean that you’re the loved ones will change along with you, join you, or even be willing to participate with you. This reality is called resistance to change.
Resistant to change can be in the “main person” who has a clear and primary addiction, or it can be in the “co-addict,” or the one who has enabled, adjusted to, joined in, or “put up with” the primary addiction.
The condition of a “co-addict” is addressed in the Codependency Episodes, 32-44.
Resistance to Change
Resistance to change is not rooted in a negative motivation. The soil out of which it grows is about not being willing to be controlled by “forces” that may not want my good. For example, in World War II, the French RESISTANCE fought the German forces from behind enemy lines to keep them from taking over or controlling the French homeland.
However, resistance that is an unwillingness to grow or change will yield “negative” consequences. This negative fruit can come from roots of terror, toxic shame, fear of loss, and secrecy. Sadly, this resistance can lead to control addiction.
This control addiction can be in the “main” person or the “co-addict” as mentioned above.
The way to assess resistance as positive or negative starts with grasping the meaning of admission and surrender.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Mar 24, 2026
Tuesday Mar 24, 2026
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.
Recover is not a pill > Recovery is a path.
Recovery is not a quick fix > Recovery is a lifestyle, lived one day at a time.
Recovery allows us to live with a “new set of glasses.”
People in recovery no longer see life through the “tinted glasses” that denial gives them, but they begin to live in clear reality.
A person no longer sees life through the “foggy” glasses of denial, but a person begins to live in reality.
While recovery has thousands upon thousands of personal benefits, the personal benefits do not mean that you’re the loved ones will change along with you, join you, or even be willing to participate with you. This reality is called resistance to change.
Resistant to change can be in the “main person” who has a clear and primary addiction, or it can be in the “co-addict,” or the one who has enabled, adjusted to, joined in, or “put up with” the primary addiction.
The condition of a “co-addict” is addressed in the Codependency Episodes, 32-44.
The question becomes, “How do I do relationship with someone who doesn’t want to join me in this new way of living?”
Recovery From addiction processes and recovery OF who I am created to be is a genuine form of authentic life, without running from one’s own heart.
Resistance to change, then, is a heart problem.
Addiction in and of itself is rooted in denial, which requires that the status quo becomes the primary focus in relational life, not the capacity to adjust to change.
Acceptance of and willingness to change requires the ability to “deny” denial.
Addiction is founded in denial.
Change is founded on “denying” denial.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Mar 17, 2026
Tuesday Mar 17, 2026
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.
Recover is not a pill > Recovery is a path.
Recovery is not a quick fix > Recovery is a lifestyle, lived one day at a time.
Recovery allows us to live with a “new set of glasses.”
People in recovery no longer see life through the “tinted glasses” that denial gives them, but they begin to live in clear reality.
This clear reality contains a new hope that is the soil out of which the ability to live will fully grow.
Recovery provides so much more than abstinence FROM what was harmful. It allows a person to get recovery OF.
Not only does admission of powerlessness (The First Step, episode #106) open the door to recovery, it “admits” a person onto the path of healing and liberation. Admission is an entrance.
The healing is in the “connection rupture” from childhood development that blocks the empowerment of dependency resilience.
The liberation is in reclaiming the Six Freedoms (Free Resource at chipdodd.com).
There are three steps to begin recovery. The first three steps, however, are just the beginning.
We admit we were powerless over __________ (addiction) and that our lives have become unmanageable.
We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
We make a decision to turn our lives and will over to the care of God as we understand Him.
These three steps are from the 12-Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and yet they apply to all addiction and recovery. The primary addiction of all people addicted is control addiction.
Basically, a person who lives in recovery recommits to these three steps every morning for the rest of his/her life.
Here are the first three steps in a nutshell:
I can’t
He can
I will let Him.
Click here to continue reading episode highlights.
Tuesday Mar 10, 2026
Tuesday Mar 10, 2026
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.
FREE RESOURCE: Six Freedoms from Birth
The Power of Admission:
When we admit we have a problem that we cannot stop repeating and this problem creates negative consequences, we have begun the first movement of recovery.
Admission is often mistakenly related to losing, or what is associated with being a “loser.”
Addiction is fueled by toxic shame. This toxic shame “ranks” everything being about winners and losers, a scoreboard, comparison, ranking, excluding/including and worth.
Our toxic shame mistakenly identifies our admission as being a failure or worthless.
Most recovering people who recount their stories will agree that admission of a problem is very often experienced as relief.
People who are addicted are often tired of being enslaved by the addiction.
Recovery ultimately moves a person away from “ranking” themselves over and over again to recognizing a new way of seeing success.
Success is having a passion plus pursuit that will contend with obstacles and challenges. There is no ranking or even competition. The only focus is keeping the passion fueled.
Success, then, comes in many packages, from planting flowers every spring and “feeding” bees and butterflies, to becoming a neurosurgeon who discovers a new method for brain surgery.
The power of admitting addiction is the first step towards returning to and then becoming “whole” again.
Admission moves a person into their “Six Freedoms from Birth” journey.
Recovery from the sickness of addiction moves us toward recovery of who we were created to become.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Mar 03, 2026
Tuesday Mar 03, 2026
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.
FREE RESOURCE: Relinquishing Your Defenses
Ultimately, every person who becomes addicted to any substance or behavioral process is running from knowing how to or being willing to contend with four realities and four promises (from episode #104), which requires that we know what to do with our feelings and needs.
We must become “response-able” to contend with life on life’s terms. While life is wonderful, it is also very painful. Even love, which is what we most desire, is very painful.
We are emotional and spiritual creatures, and we are created to live fully. We are created to find fulfillment in relationship with ourselves, others and God.
If we run from feelings and needs and the responsibility, we have to deal with them as emotional and spiritual creatures, we cannot fulfil our desire to live fully and love deeply.
On my website, chipdodd.com, you will find a FREE RESOURCE called, Relinquishing Your Defenses. This resource uses a triangle diagram to show the trap we can get caught in if we run from feelings and needs.
We can become trapped in a never-ending cycle of avoidance and projection, “mind-reading,” and judgmental conclusions about everyone (Codependency Episodes, 32-44, Season 4).
People can get trapped in the victim-martyr-persecutor roles that become a person’s reaction to any forms of vulnerability that produce emotional arousal.
Anxiety fuels the defensive roles.
Judgmentalism creates a repetition of behaviors that a person uses to block or defend themselves from perceived threat.
The Victim - The victim role is not about being immature or weak.
It is about life experiences in which a child “discovers” that their feeling responses to life are ignored or negated in some other form.
The experience creates a sense of helplessness, which means “no help is coming.”
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Feb 24, 2026
Tuesday Feb 24, 2026
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.
You can also RSVP to Bryan for "Awaken the Heart" on Sunday, March 1 - more details here.
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.
What is Substack? It is a subscription-based platform that allows independent
writers and other creators to publish content directly to their subscribers’ inboxes.
The cost of the subscription is only $7 a month. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. The content focuses on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
FREE RESOURCE:
Four Realities and Four Promises
Ultimately, every person who becomes addicted to any substance or behavioral process is running from knowing how to or being willing to contend with four realities and four promises.
Because the four realities are in conflict with the experience of the four promises, a person must find a way to integrate the conflict or avoid real life.
We are emotional and spiritual creatures, created to live fully. We are created to only be able to find fulfillment in relationship with ourselves, others and God.
As emotional and spiritual creatures, if we run from feelings and needs, we cannot resolve the conflict between reality and the truth of God.
Four Realties
The best we ever become is still clumsy. We are all like “giraffes running on ice.” Perfection is not attainable.
We must live life on life’s terms. We don’t make the rules about how life works. No one defeats death, pain, or the craving to connect in relationship. To love always requires that we learn how to tolerate pain.
Everything in life is practice. Doctors practice medicine, lawyers practice law. Parents, likewise, are practicing being parents, as are people practicing being human. Children are working very hard practicing being children. No one has all the answers. We are all works in progress, not works of perfection.
It takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Whether a person is eight or eighty-eight, we still have questions about living and life, relationships, love, success, needs, and God.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Feb 17, 2026
Tuesday Feb 17, 2026
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.
You can also RSVP to Bryan for "Awaken the Heart" on Sunday, March 1 - more details here.
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.
What is Substack? It is a subscription-based platform that allows independent
writers and other creators to publish content directly to their subscribers’ inboxes.
The cost of the subscription is only $7 a month. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. The content focuses on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
FREE RESOURCE:
The Addiction Cycle
Addiction is a disease, but its genesis is related to the trauma, and subsequent toxic shame that occurs relationally.
It is actually a neuro-physiological sickness that originates relationally and emotionally.
When we, as children, reject our vulnerable need for emotional connection with our important caregivers and other emotional influencers, we end up suppressing our true self and this creates toxic shame.
A person with addiction is driven by his/her anxiety of anticipating negative outcomes, and they seek to relieve themselves from this anxiety of anticipating negative outcomes.
The need for relief from anxiety and the energy required to suppress genuine feelings and needs sets a person up to seek relief from anxiety.
The relief comes in the form of counterfeit fulfillment of genuine relational connection.
Counterfeit fulfillment “feels” like relationship with self, others, and even God temporarily, but it is not genuine relational connection because the person is avoiding their core feelings and needs.
A person who is addicted continues to struggle in a cycle of escaping his/her feelings. This cycle is usually associated with what people call “stress.”
This cycle works as follows:
An event occurs that a person has feelings about and the feelings need to be addressed.
The person has increased anxiety, promoting a “need” for escape.
Preoccupation with control over unwanted feelings and negative anxiety begins to be the focus of the “threatened” person.
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.
Tuesday Feb 10, 2026
Tuesday Feb 10, 2026
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.
You can also RSVP to Bryan for "Awaken the Heart" on Sunday, March 1 - more details here.
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.
What is Substack? It is a subscription-based platform that allows independent
writers and other creators to publish content directly to their subscribers’ inboxes.
The cost of the subscription is only $7 a month. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. The content focuses on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
FREE RESOURCE:
The Toxic Shame Cycle
Go to Free Resources at chipdodd.com
What is Toxic Shame?
Toxic shame is the rejection of healthy shame.
Healthy shame allows us to recognize and accept our dependence upon others and God as we struggle to live fully in a tragic place.
Every child is “okay” being in need. When we lose our ability to be comfortable needing others, we develop toxic shame.
Ultimately, we become (a)shamed, which means “no healthy shame.”
Addiction grows out of the poisonous ground of toxic shame.
As toxic shame is developing, it begins to disrupt our normal sense of inborn worth.
Every child comes into life with a sense of self-worth. It is a God-given attribute of being created in His image.
Self-worth drives the child to cry out for his/her needs to be met. It drives him/her to have confidence that their craving is good.
Toxic shame occurs when the normal human responses of the child are rejected, neglected, abused, or simply ignored.
Normal human responses are:
feelings
needs
desire
longings
hope
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.