Category: Spiritual Healing

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing, Weight Loss

It Was Never About Calories Part 4 of 5

Dara Dietz

The Weight Loss Series By Dara Dietz

I weighed over 475 pounds when I began. I say “over” because I had stopped looking. I did not get on the scale for a couple of days after I started my fasting program, so I will never know the real number. There is a point where the number becomes too painful to witness and you simply stop witnessing.

By May 2019 I had shed 240 pounds.

This is the practical article. Here is exactly what I did.

First, Read the Book

Before anything else, read The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

This book was a real eye opener. So much of what we have been taught about losing weight is upside down and backward. What we have been doing is both right and wrong, and I think the bottom line is this: we have linked weight loss exclusively to decreasing calories and increasing exercise.

Yes, it matters that we move. But we have completely missed the real issue. Like every other activity in the body, weight is controlled by hormones.

Dr. Fung explains how to get off the diet merry-go-round by resetting what your body believes your set weight should be. Anyone working with people on weight, or trying to lose it themselves, really needs to take the time to get through this book. There are answers in it.

The Whole Thing in One Sentence

Weight is hormonally driven. It is all about keeping insulin as low as possible.

Insulin is the hormone that tells your body to store fat. Every time you eat, insulin rises. Every time you taste something sweet, insulin spikes — and when insulin spikes, whatever you have eaten goes to fat. If insulin is chronically high, your body simply will not release fat, no matter how few calories you eat or how much you exercise. You can starve yourself and stay fat. Most of us have proven that personally.

The only real solution is to stop spiking insulin and give it long enough periods of rest that your body remembers how to burn what it has stored.

That is what fasting does.

What I Actually Did

Low carb, savory only. I ate nothing sweet for nearly two years. Not one single sweet thing crossed my lips. I ate — I was not starving — but everything I ate was savory. Sweet taste spikes insulin, and once insulin spikes it all goes to fat. To this day I do not eat cheap carbs. You do not throw out all that work to put something cheap in your body.

Water fasting three to five days a week. I began the last week of August 2017 and kept that rhythm going. Many people feel this is quite dramatic. The results are very worth the effort. Before forming an opinion for or against it, read the book.

Liver flushing every other week. This is where it gets trickier, and it is the part most weight loss programs miss entirely.

Why the Liver Flush Matters

Liver flushing clears waste out of the liver so the liver can effectively process excess fat out of the body. Any weight loss program will benefit from regular liver flushing.

I used two different flushes, depending on what my body needed. The ELF — Emergency Liver Flush — can be repeated over several days to clear congestion in the liver whenever it’s needed. The Amazing Liver Flush is different. It is very effective and really clears out the waste, but because of the Epsom salts, which strongly flush the bowels, it can only be done once every six to eight weeks. It must be respected to protect your electrolytes, and it cannot be repeated until that time has passed.

What triggers a flush for me is a stall. If I water fast, I expect to drop some good weight the next day. When I struggle through a day of fasting, run to the bathroom all evening, and then lose only a half pound or nothing at all — that is the signal. The liver is congested and needs clearing.

An example from that first winter. After three days of water fasting I had lost only one pound. Friday night I did an ELF. Saturday I water fasted, as I felt a bit off from the flush. Sunday morning the scale showed a five pound drop. Sunday I went out to lunch with a friend, which likely cost me. Monday through Wednesday I water fasted and dropped another two and a half pounds. Total for the week: seven and a half pounds.

Anytime what you are doing stops working — or fails to work when it obviously should — it is time to flush the liver.

My own weakness is that I get so tired of all that oil that I put it off for days instead of getting right on it and clearing the issue quickly. I am telling you that so you do not think I did this perfectly.

Herbal Support During Fasting

Clear liquids with no calories are acceptable on a water fast, so I used my extracts as nutritional support through the fasting days:

  • Weight Loss formula — this contains kelp, which supports thyroid and glandular function. That has always been a weak spot in my body, and thyroid function is directly tied to metabolic set point.
  • BF&C formula
  • Calcium formula

For years my daily supplement has been superfood, but superfood is not available to you on a water fast. Dr. Fung suggests using a vitamin supplement when fasting a week or more. I do not care for pressed pills, and I was honestly a bit concerned that extracts alone would not support a longer fast well enough. That question is still open for me.

What to Expect in the First Weeks

The water dump. When your body begins burning ketones it releases a great deal of stored water. Dr. Fung explains why in the book. Expect to run for the bathroom every hour or so. It is not a bad experience, just an inconvenient one.

The headache, and the fix. When the headache started I added a bit of sea salt to my water, as Dr. Fung suggests in his book. The pain in my head ended nearly before I finished drinking the salted water.

Energy up. This surprises people. My energy went up. I felt so good after my first 24 hour water fast that I decided to do it again the next day. I had done a 40 day juice fast years earlier, and honestly the water fast was about as easy as a juice fast.

The numbers. Eighteen pounds in the first two weeks. One hundred twelve and a half pounds by the following summer. On January 23, 2018 the scale read 344 pounds — roughly 131 pounds gone in five months.

The Part No Book Warned Me About

Somewhere in the middle of it I wrote this down:

“The emotional work is also a part of this process. I have become emotional for no reason.”

That is not a footnote. That is the most important thing in this article.

Fat is not inert. It stores things. As the weight dissolved, the feelings it had been holding had nowhere left to hide, and they came up. I cried for no reason I could name. My sweet husband was a great support through it even while he scratched his head wondering what on earth was wrong with me.

Nothing was wrong with me. The Silent Watcher was finally being heard, and she had a great deal to say.

If you do this work, expect that. Do not panic when it comes. It is not the program failing. It is the program working deeper than you were prepared for.

Weight Loss Blog Part 5 of 5: Learning to Live in a Body that Fits

A word to the reader: I am an herbalist sharing my own protocol, not a physician giving you advice. Extended water fasting is not appropriate for everyone, particularly anyone on medication, anyone with kidney or blood sugar conditions, or anyone with a history of eating disorders. Read Dr. Fung’s book, know your own body, and take responsibility for your own choices.

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing, Weight Loss

The Brain Comes First Part 3 of 5

Dara Dietz

The Weight Loss Series by Dara Dietz

By late 2016 I had done decades of spiritual and emotional work. I had forgiven the men who abused me. I had forgiven my parents. I had gathered up the discarded child in the castle and taken her hand. I had written a book about all of it.

But I was also carrying well over 400 pounds.

If healing were purely a matter of the soul, the weight should have come off years earlier. It did not. Something was still holding on, and I could not reach it with prayer or journaling or counseling. What I did not yet understand was that the damage done to me as a child was not only emotional. It was biological. And biology requires a biological answer.

What Trauma Does to a Brain

Several weeks before my life changed, I stumbled across a seminar by Dr. Tim Jennings I had never viewed. His talk, the Modern Medicine Seminar, was given to a group of medical students and includes long discussions of drug therapy — not really my kind of material. But his earlier seminars on the brain had given me so many light bulb moments that I decided to wade through this one too.

What a gold mine.

Dr. Jennings explains how early abuse, neglect and emotional trauma physically reshape the brain. Not metaphorically but physically. Early trauma alters brain chemistry, damages neural pathways, and affects the way our genes express themselves. The child who learns to disconnect and hide inside herself is not making a choice. Her brain is rewiring itself to survive, and that wiring does not simply dissolve when the danger passes. It stays. It runs quietly underneath everything for the rest of her life unless something intervenes.

This explained something that had confused and shamed me for decades. Knowing what is right and doing what is right do not necessarily go hand in hand in a life that has experienced abuse or neglect during the formative years of childhood. I had lived that gap. I had stood in my kitchen at night knowing exactly what my body needed and eating something else anyway. I had called myself weak for it. I had called myself a fraud.

I was not weak. My brain had been injured, and I had never treated the injury.

The Nutritional Protocol

Toward the end of his talks Dr. Jennings offered several nutritional supports for brain health. He did not suggest dosages, so I played around a bit and came up with something that worked for me.

  • Pomegranate juice concentrate — 1 oz a day, added to superfood or water
  • Folate as l-methylfolate, 1000 mcg — one capsule three times a day
  • N-Acetyl Cysteine, 600 mg — two capsules three times a day
  • Vitamin C, 3,000 mg — three times a day
  • Vitamin B-12 — 1 capsule two times a day
  • Turmeric — two capsules three times a day

A word of caution from an herbalist. The best source for any vitamin or mineral is a live food source. Life has taught me that there are times when natural juices and food sources need to be carefully supplemented for the additional support necessary to heal a specific issue. But massive use of vitamin and mineral supplements adds a heavy load to the kidneys and liver. Find the best food source for the needed nutrients whenever possible, and do not stay on a heavy supplement protocol longer than the healing requires.

Because so much housecleaning happens on a regimen like this, do not neglect the foundational programs. Boosting with Echinacea. Bowel cleansing. Massive nutrition through superfood and juicing. And plan on liver flushing every few weeks. After my first two weeks on this protocol it was clearly time to flush my liver.

Joy Came Back First

Here is what I did not expect.

The regimen I began that autumn turned out to be one of the best choices I have made in a long time. Life started becoming fun again. Interest in my own life returned.

I have always loved my work and count it a privilege to know the members of H.E.A.L. But in the years leading up to this, I had quietly stopped enjoying the extra things that had always been a huge part of who I am. Photography. Cooking. Sewing. Writing. The creative side of my life had simply shut down, and I had not noticed it going. You do not notice the light dimming when it happens one degree at a time.

Within weeks of starting the protocol I was looking forward to those things again.

To understand what that means: before a single pound came off, before I had ever heard of Dr. Fung or read a word about insulin, the woman who had done all that healing work began to actually inhabit her own life again. The brain healed first. Joy came back first. The weight came later, and it came almost as a consequence.

Why This Matters for Anyone Trying to Lose Weight

If you have done the emotional work and the spiritual work and your body still will not cooperate, I want to offer you a possibility that no diet book will mention.

Your brain may still be injured.

Not broken. Not beyond repair. Injured — and injuries can be fed and supported and healed. The forgiveness was necessary. The counseling was necessary. The prayer was necessary. But learning to disconnect at seven years old left physical marks on the brain — the very organ that governs your appetite, your impulse control, your mood, and your motivation. That organ needs actual nutrients to rebuild.

I spent decades treating the soul and ignoring the tissue. When I finally treated both, everything moved.

Nine months later, in the last week of August 2017, I was ready to begin.

Weight Loss Blog Part 4 of 5: It Was Never About the Calories

Dara D. Dietz is co-founder, with her husband, of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private natural healing association serving an international membership since 1998. She is the author of Whatever Good May Come (2009) and resides in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing, Weight Loss

Whatever Good May Come Part 2 of 5

Dara Dietz

The Weight Loss Series By Dara Dietz

“We can’t change the past, but we can gather up its lessons and move on, stronger and wiser. We can’t control the future, but we can send our dreams ahead of us to help prepare the way.”

People ask me how I lost 240 pounds. They want the practical answer — the fasting protocol, the food plan, and the herbal supports. Those answers are coming. But before we get there I need to tell you about the work that made all of it possible. Because the body does not release what the soul has not yet processed.

This is the story of how I found my freedom.

The Question I Could Not Answer

For years I wrestled with a question I could not resolve. Why does a God of love allow innocent children to be abused and hurt? Why doesn’t a Father who claims to love us step in and stop it?

I had lived that question from the inside. I was not asking it theoretically.

For a long time, I accepted what Paul the Apostle wrote — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” I filed the question under things I would understand later and kept walking.

Dara Dietz

But I kept walking and kept asking until one day, somewhere in the long middle of my healing journey, the answer began to take shape.

The Gift I Did Not Ask For

I believe the Father has given each of us free will. We can choose to be evil if we like. We can choose to hurt others. By allowing free choice He has permitted that evil, pain and suffering will exist in this world. But knowing this would have to be, our Father of love also designed that our trials would be our teachers. Our biggest hurts our biggest gifts.

That is not a comfortable theology. It did not come easily to me. It was not handed to me in a moment of inspiration. It was forged over decades of confusion and pain, years of being misunderstood by everyone including myself.

The men who came so selfishly into my young life, stealing my childhood while they ripped my young soul to shreds, will one day stand before the Judgment Bar of the Almighty and face what they have done. That is not my burden to carry. What I carry instead is this — their acts, when filtered through the love of my Father, have become a wonderful gift.

It has taken years to grow into and open this gift. The Father alone understood the path I was walking. He continued to enable me to go the way I had to go. Throughout the years of confusion and pain He was filling me with something I could not yet see or name. It was being delivered to my soul piece by piece, set up and waiting for the time I would be able to open it and become the woman God intended me to be.

Learning to Forgive

The altar of forgiveness is not a comfortable place to kneel. The stones are hard. The question unavoidable — Can I forgive?

Forgiveness must be a gift, freely given. It cannot be earned and is seldom deserved. It must come from a place of understanding and love. The one being forgiven need not ask for this gift. Forgiveness is first and foremost a gift to myself.

In my life I have needed to forgive myself the most.

I have learned to forgive the men who stole my innocence, to feel no anger or bitterness toward those who robbed a lifetime of possibilities from me. Not because they deserved it. Because I deserve it. I can allow them to be human beings with their own stories. I am not their judge or jury; I am simply the survivor of their choices.

I have forgiven my parents — a mother who valued her friendships with depraved souls more than her children’s safety, a father who should have flown to the stars but was held down by a past he could not rise above. They gave me all that they had to give. It left me broken, but I decided to heal.

Holding onto old injuries hurts no one but me. I could not forgive myself until I began to understand and love myself. Love is not based on an ideal of what a person should be, but on the truth of who they are right now.

The Castle on the Hill

During a weekend intensive on personal empowerment I participated in a guided meditation that has stayed with me ever since.

I watched myself walk up a grassy knoll toward a castle. Passing through a massive door standing ajar I entered a large dimly lit room. As my eyes adjusted I began to make my way toward what appeared to be piles of discarded things. A favorite childhood sweater. A small pink music box with a ballerina with a broken arm that still played its tune when I opened the lid. Memories stored safely in stone walls strong enough to hold them.

As I turned to leave, the fading light fell on one last pile just inside the archway. My arms reached out before my mind caught up. There, lying motionless and silent, was a baby girl. She had been tossed aside, discarded. I knew this child instinctively. I had seen those eyes before — wide open and full of fear.

As I gathered her safely into my arms we melted into one.

In a second meditation that same weekend she appeared again, this time about seven years old. She sat outside the house of the old man who had raped us. In the past when she visited my dreams I had felt contempt toward her. I had not cared for her and she had not trusted me.

This time was different. As I saw her sitting there all alone with no one to share her horrible secret with, my heart filled with compassion. I finally understood why she had gone back to his house — she craved love and attention. She was just a little girl. It was not her fault.

I reached out for her hand as I had many times before. For the first time she took it and walked away with me.

The Prayer That Changed Everything

Somewhere in the long middle of my journey, I learned a prayer that became the title of my life.

When you cannot yet see the blessing in what has happened to you — when the wound is too fresh or too deep to find gratitude — simply say: “For whatever good may come of them.” And mean it.

When you believe, you release a power into your life that is able to transform the most devastating experience into your greatest blessing. You will be able to say honestly that you would not choose to return and change these things. That because of the gifts they carry you would choose this road again.

I would choose this road again.

Not because the abuse was acceptable. It was not. Not because the losses were small. They were enormous. But because of who I have become by walking through it. Because of the thousands of people I have been able to sit beside in their own pain and say — I know. I have been there. And there is a way through.

Those men took more than a little child’s trust. They stole her life. The Lord has turned it all into a huge gift — one for me and one for me to share with others.

Personal Freedom

A good portion of my life was spent in victim mode, accepting responsibility for the wrong choices of others, reacting instead of living. Personal freedom came as I developed boundaries. I now understand where my responsibility ends.

Personal freedom is the ability to choose instead of react. It is getting up in the morning free to make good choices all day long. It is going to bed at night knowing I have broken no personal vows to myself.

This is real personal freedom. This is really living.

And it was this freedom — hard won over decades — that finally prepared the ground for what came next. The body had been waiting for the soul to catch up. By late 2016 I was close enough to ready that new life could finally take root.

Peace & Faith by Dara Dietz

We can’t change the past but we can gather up its lessons and move on, stronger and wiser.

We can’t control the future but we can send our dreams ahead of us to help prepare the way.

We can live each moment, heart and soul, and cherish this day’s greatest gift — the gift of now.

May peace with the past and faith in the future gently guide you through each precious moment of today.

Weight Loss Blog Part 3 of 5: The Brain comes First

Dara D. Dietz is co-founder, with her husband, of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private natural healing association serving an international membership since 1998. She is the author of Whatever Good May Come (2009) and resides in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing, Weight Loss

The Weight Behind the Weight Part 1 of 5

Dara Dietz

The Weight Loss Series By Dara Dietz

“When you find the door locked and barred, turn around and look for the window. You will find you now have wings to fly.”

Between August 2017 and May 2019, I Shed 240 pounds and reclaimed my life. People want to know how I did it. The answer is not simple, because the weight itself was never simple. To understand how I lost it you first have to understand why I had it.

This is not a story about calories and exercise. This is a story about a seven-year-old girl who had no voice and no vote. Her only power was to watch, to record, and to remember. And to survive.

The Silent Watcher

She was a silent watcher. One who understood more than her years of life should ever know.

From the very beginning she sat quietly, studying the souls who pressed into her life — those who took from her things she was not yet offering. She saw through the eyes of a child men who selfishly took pleasure from one who did not respond. She learned to allow life to roll over her. She learned how to disconnect from an overwhelming situation, to go into herself and hide until it was over.

She had no voice, no vote. Her power was to watch, to record, to remember.

That little girl was me.

The men who came into my young life did more than violate a child’s body. They stole her sense of safety, her personal boundaries, her ability to trust. They planted confusion and shame so deep it would take decades to fully up-rooted. What they could not steal was the Still Small Voice she heard even then — the one that told her, quietly and persistently, that none of this was right. That she was meant for something more.

The Body Keeps the Score

For years I did not fully understand why I carried so much weight. I had done enormous amounts of emotional and spiritual work. I had journaled, counseled, prayed, and wrestled my way toward healing. I had arrived at genuine forgiveness — not as a concept but as a lived reality. I had written a book about it.

And still the weight remained.

What I did not yet understand was that the body and the mind are not separate systems. Early childhood trauma does not stay neatly filed away in memory. It lives in the nervous system, the hormones, the cells themselves. The weight was not a failure of willpower. It was not laziness or weakness or lack of discipline. It was my body doing exactly what a traumatized body does — building the only protection it knew how to build.

The Silent Watcher had no vote as a child. But the body found its own way to say no one will touch me again. The weight was her vote. The only one she ever had.

Understanding this changed everything.

The Long Road to Ready

Healing from childhood abuse is not a straight line and it is never finished in a single act of forgiveness or a single moment of breakthrough. It is a long, often grueling journey taken in layers. You peel back one layer and find another waiting beneath it.

My healing odyssey began in earnest in 1998. By 2009 I had traveled far enough to write about it — a memoir called Whatever Good May Come, a title drawn from a prayer I had learned to pray over the hardest experiences of my life. For whatever good may come of them. It was an act of faith that the worst things that had happened to me could somehow be transformed into gifts. Not despite the suffering but through it.

The book was published. The spiritual work continued. And the weight remained.

What I know now is that I was not yet finished becoming ready. The emotional and spiritual work had to fully complete itself before the body would agree to let go. You cannot rush that process. You can only keep showing up for it.

This was not my first attempt. When Michael and I moved from California in 1996 I already weighed 375 pounds and my health was failing — bladder and kidney infections that required constant antibiotics, kidney stones twice, acid reflux so severe I went to the emergency room certain I was having a heart attack, back spasms, hair falling out by the handfuls. I lost seventy pounds during those years and watched every one of them layer back on, scared and out of control. I ran and played in my dreams at night the way I had before the weight. I woke each morning to restricted movement and promised myself that today I would begin. By nightfall I had abandoned the promise again.

I was building a natural healing association and helping thousands of people while living inside that cycle. I felt like a fraud. I lived in fear of the phone call that would prove I was wasting everyone’s time.

I tell you that so you know the 2017 breakthrough was not a first try. It was the attempt that finally worked, and it worked because by then everything else had moved into place.

The Turning Point

In late 2016, roughly nine months before I began my weight loss journey, I stumbled across a seminar series by Dr. Tim Jennings — a psychiatrist whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience and faith. What he shared stopped me cold.

Childhood abuse and neglect do not just leave emotional scars. They leave biological ones. Early trauma literally alters brain chemistry, damages neural pathways, and affects the very expression of our DNA. The healing work I had been doing for decades on the spiritual and emotional level was real and necessary — but there was also a physical dimension to the damage that needed to be addressed.

Dr. Jennings outlined several nutritional supports specifically for brain healing after childhood trauma. I began implementing them immediately. Within weeks something began to shift.

The creative side of my life — photography, cooking, sewing, writing — had gone quiet over the previous years. I had not noticed how much of myself had retreated until it began to return. Joy came back first, quietly, like the first warm day after a long winter. Interest in my own life returned. The woman who had done all that healing work began to actually inhabit her life again.

That was when I knew the body was finally ready.

A Note to the Reader

If you are carrying weight you cannot seem to release, I want to ask you a gentle question before you read another diet book or count another calorie.

What is the weight protecting you from?

I am not asking that to be provocative. I am asking because it is the question no one asked me for decades, and the answer — when I finally found it — unlocked everything else.

The weight loss tools I used were real and practical and effective. I will share all of them in the articles that follow. But they only worked because the ground had been prepared. Decades of spiritual work, years of emotional unearthing, and finally the biological healing that addressed the damage done to a child’s brain and body.

If you have been doing everything right and the weight will not move, consider that there may be a weight behind the weight. A story your body is still telling. A protection your nervous system is still insisting upon.

That story deserves to be heard before it can be released.

In the next article I will share the spiritual journey that made my transformation possible — including the prayer that became the title of my life.

Dara D. Dietz is co-founder, with her husband, of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private natural healing association serving an international membership since 1998. She is the author of Whatever Good May Come (2009) and resides in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

Weight Loss Blog part 2: Whatever Good May Come

My Opinion, Spiritual Healing

SOULMATES

Dara Dietz

As long as there is life there is growing to do, a becoming more than we currently are, it is often painful and can require serious effort on our part to stay the course.  I found this journal entry and wanted to share it.  My prayer is you will understand and find a blessing in it.

In pride and arrogance, we want to fix ourselves and present ourselves to God perfectly healed. This will never happen. Christ offers us the only cure to our sin condition.  We are sick unto death; sin is killing us. We must accept all the healing Christ brings. Grow up into adults who can understand all he has done for us.

Children insist on “doing it myself,” these words can be heard from the mouth of an independent child, unwilling to allow someone to help. We need to be able and willing to let Christ help.

Sin, the law, the healing, so much to understand. Jesus can and is able to heal all the brokenness in a surrendered soul. He is longing to be our soulmate, the one who is with us, our heart’s desire, who knows us and who we know so well we are of the same mind.  Our hearts yearn for more knowledge, healing, and loving care, it is His desire for us to have.

Soulmates with Jesus? I have prayed for years, “Let them see you in me”. “Let the Jesus in me see the Jesus in others”. These requests have filled my prayers since I was a child, alone and hurting, longing to understand my world. Lord, you held my world together.  You gave me time to grow up, a chance to choose you from my heart.

Always, you helped me pick up the pieces of my broken self, bringing the healing truth as soon as I was able to hear it. You kept me together, giving me the strength to take the next step, with you, always with you. So often it was not my feet walking. Only my will, given freely, and my wanting you, moving us forward, together, as you carried me over the hard roads I could not even walk. So much, too much for me to have done alone without you.

Yes, Lord, you are my soulmate, the one who knows me best and loves me most. My heart is and always has been yours. Be my heart, the choice I choose every day. Never without you, always you are here with me still.

Dr Tim Jennings Blogs, Spiritual Healing

A Scriptural Healing Plan for Overcoming Addiction

Dara Dietz


by Tim Jennings, M.D.

All addictions – whether drug or alcohol related, sexual, or relational – meet the same definition: “the compulsive engagement in behaviors that bring short-term reward but long-term destruction.”

No matter the addiction that brings short-term pleasure, even if it’s accepted by society, if not overcome it will completely ensnare and destroy you. A range of treatments are available – from counseling to prescription medicine – but when God is included, people can experience real freedom.

One of the most common addiction treatments are 12-step rehab programs, the bases of which were first published in the 1939 book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Many conscientious believers have asked me not only whether these steps are effective, but also whether they are biblical.

While often presented generically so as not to offend non-Christians, these steps are designed upon the journey of Christian conversion and spiritual maturation, which is one reason these programs are so successful. You see, the primary purpose of the 12 steps is not merely to achieve abstinence from the addiction, but the healing of the heart, as unhealed emotional wounds often lead people to engage in addictions as means of self-medicating. Let’s take a quick look at the scriptural underpinnings of the 12 steps.

Step 1: Admit You Are Powerless Over Your Addiction

We must admit our inability to heal ourselves, that our lives had become unmanageable, and that we need a Savior. “Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’” (Mark 2:17).

Step 2: Believe that a Power Greater than Yourself Can Restore You to Sanity

We must know the truth about God: that He is in the saving business – and not the condemning business – and He has the ability to heal us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16, 17). “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself” (John 12:32).

Step 3: Make a Decision to Turn Your Life Over to the Care of God

We must choose to open our hearts to God, as best as we understand Him, and let His power transform and heal us from within. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

Step 4: Make a Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory of Yourself

We must stop running from the truth about ourselves and our brokenness. It is only as we are truthful that we can experience healing. “The truth shall make you free (John 8:32). “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23, 24).

Step 5: Admit to God, Yourself, and Others the Exact Nature of Your Wrongs

This step is about grace in relationship. As we confess our wickedness and experience love and acceptance from God and humans, our shame is replaced with love and empowers us to move forward in healing (John 8:1–11). “When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned” (Leviticus 5:5). “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). “If someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:1, 2).

Step 6: Be Entirely Ready to Have God Remove All Your Defects of Character

We must have heart honesty. God cannot remove from us what we persistently hold on to. If we really want freedom, we must honestly let go of our addiction. “I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me” (Jeremiah 33:8). “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:25–27). “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Hebrews 8:10).

Step 7: Humbly Ask Him to Remove Your Shortcomings

We must commit to daily acknowledgement that we are powerless to change our own characters or natures and daily reach out to God for His transforming presence. “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin” (Psalm 51:2). “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

Step 8: Make a List of All Persons You’ve Harmed and Be Willing to Make Amends to Each One

True heart change replaces fear and self-centeredness with love for other people, and self-deceit with truthfulness. We stop lying to ourselves, stop denying the truth, and instead become lovers of the truth – including the truth about our own histories. As we are healed by our Creator, our motives change and a genuine love for others grows within.

Step 9: Make Direct Amends to Such People Wherever Possible, Except When Doing So Would Injure Them or Others

Both steps eight and nine are meant to help us apply new methods, principles, and motives to our lives – the process of thinking about the welfare and health of others rather than one’s self. In doing so, we move forward in God’s healing and deliverance. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew5:23, 24).

Step 10: Continue to Take Personal Inventory and Promptly Admit to Wrongdoing

We should do our best to prevent new mistakes from taking root and becoming habits. We daily examine ourselves in light of God’s design for life and health and apply His principles to our lives. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. … The man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22, 25).

Step 11: Seek Through Prayer to Improve Conscious Contact with God, Asking Only for Knowledge of His Will for You and the Power to Carry That Out

We must grow in our relationship with God, exercising new healthy brain circuits resulting in the actual rewiring of our brains over time. “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:13–18).

Step 12: Having Had a Spiritual Awakening as the Result of These Steps, Carry This Message to Addicts and Practice These Principles in All Your Affairs

We must allow God’s love to flow through us to others – the more we give, the more we receive. “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).

Before concluding, there is one aspect that I have come to recognize as important in recovery from addictions that is not specifically addressed in the 12 steps: “bringing every thought into captivity to Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Science has revealed that even though we may avoid unhealthy behaviors (taking a substance, gambling, shopping), if we engage in the behavior in our imagination, the same neural circuits fire as when the actual behavior is carried out. This means that if we long for the addiction in our mind, if we imagine the “good ol’ days,” if we wish we could engage in our addiction but don’t merely because we know it will harm or kill us, then our brains will not rewire and our characters will not change. Such persons never experience genuine freedom from their addiction.

However, when we not only change our behavior but our thinking as well, over time our brains actually rewire and what we once found pleasurable will, in time, become repulsive. This is the freedom that unity with Christ brings!

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing

The Deeds that Make a Life

Dara Dietz

  A choice can be a simple thing, a moment in time with little apparent significance.  Yet, moving through time, from childhood into adulthood, all those little choices add up to make a life.  We build our characters, personalities, destinies, one deed at a time.  Our actions when we are stressed or emotionally exhausted provide an open window into the soul.  We become our choices; every decision made from the day we come into this world forms us into the people we are today.

It takes only one step to begin a thousand mile journey.  Each following step leads us closer to our goal and further away from where that first step was made.  At the end of any physical, emotional, or spiritual, journey, I am not who I was at the first choice or beginning.  The experience of the journey has created a new person, one who can never completely return to the start and choose another direction. 

Something to contemplate as we start a new year.  Who am I today? What new venture can I begin that will enhance the person I have become?  

A Blessing for the New Year!

  • My prayer for each of you is that your life will exceed your expectations. 
  • May your days be filled with perfect balance. 
  • May your Blessings keep you humble and grateful.
  • May your Joys be a never ceasing spring flowing from within. 
  • May your trials all become victories. And May this New Year be filled to the brim with possibility.  –Dara Dietz
Dr Tim Jennings Blogs

THANKFULNESS AND YOUR HEALTH

Dara Dietz

Used by Permission: by Dr. Tim Jennings

Does it really matter whether we give thanks to others, live lives that express our gratitude outwardly, or whether our thanks is a more inward experience focusing on how we have been blessed and relishing our gains and advances? The answer is a resounding Yes! – it makes a huge difference.

Medical science1,2,3,4,5 has shown that those who experience an outward focused thankfulness experience a greater sense of wellbeing, happiness, optimism, satisfaction with their lives, greater sense of feeling loved, greater success in achieving life’s goals, and lower incidence of stress and depression when compared to those who don’t express outward thankfulness.

Grateful people also live healthier lives, they exercise more, engage in healthier lifestyles, experience more fitful and restorative sleep, have healthier immune response, lower rates of headaches, stomach problems and pain, and are more alert, mentally sharp and efficient in their activities.

The thankfulness that results in all these positive changes is the thankfulness which moves one toward actions of appreciation. It is when we recognize our appreciation, develop a sense of goodwill toward those to whom we are thankful and then express our gratitude in meaningful ways that we experience positive mental and physical outcomes. Further, expressing thankfulness has positive impact on social relationships resulting in greater sense of cohesion, connectedness, and bonding within one’s social group. We are more valued and loved and we love and value others more when we are thankful.

Those who tend to focus on self, who are thankful for what they get, rather than for those who are gracious in giving, fail to express genuine thankfulness. The verbal expression of “thanks” mumbled as someone opens the door, or as one birthday present after another is opened, is not the healing, life transforming thankfulness. It is when we take time to allow ourselves to genuinely care about and appreciate others and then take purposeful action to express that care that we experience mental and physical wellbeing.

Our thanks should also extend beyond the people in our lives to our amazing Creator God who has provided so much and sacrificed so much for our health and eternal well-being.

If you are not already living a thankful life, then I encourage you to begin today. Each day purposely examine the events of the day and choose 3-5 things you are thankful for. The only requirement is that the items on your list are meaningful to you. It might be a new toothbrush, the fact it didn’t rain after you washed your new car, the umbrella you had with you when the storm hit, a friend who shared a lunch, the person who stopped to help when your car broke down, the pastor whose sermon touched your heart, or your family members who love and care for you. Whatever it might be take time each day to purposely reflect on what you are thankful for in that day. And then consider how to express that appreciation in meaningful ways, a phone call, letter, email, text, gift, cookie, or whatever is meaningful in your life in order to show someone how their kindness brightened your day.

Remember, offerings given from a thankful heart are the only acceptable gifts to God. Why? Because God wants us to experience the blessings of living the thankful life and He knows if we return tithe and offerings from a sense of obligation we don’t experience the healing and life changing benefits that thankfulness brings. Therefore, God loves the cheerful giver because He loves it when His children are healthy and happy. Finally, one of the best ways to give thanks to God is to remember what Jesus said, “as you have done it unto one of the least of these you have done it unto me.” When you recognize how God has blessed you, when your heart is warmed with gratitude and appreciation for His love in your life, go and give to someone in need, seek to share with another the love and joy you have received from God. Let this be your thank offering to God.

1. Wood AM, Joseph S, Maltby, J. Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big Five facets. Pers Individ Diff. 2009;46(4):443–447.

2.; Sheldon KM, Lyubomirsky S. How to increase and sustain positive emotion: the effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. J Positive Psychol. 2006;1(2):73–82.

3. Froh JJ, Sefick WJ, Emmons RA. Counting blessings in early adolescents: an experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. J Sch Psychol.2008;46(2):213–233.

4. Kubzansky LD, Sparrow D, Vokonas P, Kawachi I. Is the glass half empty or half full? A prospective study of optimism and coronary heart disease in the normative aging study. Psychosom Med. 2001;63:910–916.

5. McCullough ME, Kilpatrick SD, Emmons RA, Larson DB. Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychol Bull. 2001;127:249–266.

Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association, and an international speaker. He served as president of the Southern and Tennessee Psychiatric Associations and is president and founder of Come and Reason Ministries. Dr. Jennings has authored many books, including The God-Shaped Brain, The God-Shaped Heart, and The Aging

Dr Tim Jennings Blogs

FEAR: THE MEDIUM OF DEATH; LOVE: THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

Dara Dietz

Used by Permission: by Dr. Tim Jennings

Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Have you ever wondered about that famous statement? Imagine walking a four-inch wide balance beam placed securely on the ground, your feet only a few inches from the dirt. Now imagine walking that same beam raised 100 feet in the air. Would your ability to successfully traverse the beam be negatively affected as you look down from such a height? What changed? Fear!

When we are afraid, the brain’s fear circuit (amygdala) activates, which floods the body with surges of stress chemicals (adrenalin and glucocorticoids). We experience the classic “fight or flight” response in which blood is shunted from our internal organs to our muscles and glucose is dumped into the blood stream. This is to bring us to quick attention in the face of an external threat, like the house being on fire. However, chronic fear, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of what others think, fear of financial ruin, and chronic worry of any kind keeps the fear circuits firing, which activates the body’s immune system, increasing inflammatory factors that injure our bodies. Under chronic fear, worry, and stress these inflammatory factors damage insulin receptors, increasing the risk of diabetes mellitus, obesity, high cholesterol, heart attacks, and strokes.

Chronic fear also impairs growth of all types. A recent study documented that Iraqi children growing up in war zones were measurably shorter than Iraqi children growing up in rural safe zones. Fear impairs physical growth!

Maybe you have known someone with test anxiety or someone who froze when getting up in front of an audience. What happened? Their fear circuits fired, paralyzing their prefrontal cortex (thinking circuits). Intellectual and cognitive growth is impaired when we are afraid.

When something really frightens you, like smelling smoke as someone yells fire in a theater, where does your focus turn? Do you become more concerned with the strangers in the room or more concerned with saving self? The more fearful we become, the more self-focused we become.  Fear impairs relational growth!

When we believe God concepts that incite fear, the ability to grow spiritually is impaired. It is in the prefrontal cortex (located right behind the forehead) where we reason, plan, organize, focus, concentrate, and self-restrain. It is also in the prefrontal cortex where we have our conscience, redirect inappropriate behavior, and worship. A special part of the frontal cortex, called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is our neurological “heart.” It is here where we experience altruistic love and empathy.  The ACC is also the seat of the will, the place we choose right from wrong. The proverb, “As a man thinks in his heart so is he” (Proverbs 23:7) is referring to the ACC.

Amazingly, brain research has demonstrated that people 60-65 years of age who meditated on a God of love, just 12 minutes a day for 30 days, experienced measurable growth in the ACC of their brains. This was directly correlated with reductions in heart rate, blood pressure and a 30% improvement in memory testing  [ii]. Meditating on a God of love reduces fear and is healing to our being. Science confirms what the Bible tells us, “perfect love casts out all fear” (1John 4:18).

But, just as strikingly, brain research confirmed that meditating on angry, wrathful and punishing god concepts did not result in positive growth in the ACC, nor provide the beneficial reductions in blood pressure, heart rate, and improvement in memory. In other words, angry or wrathful god concepts do not heal the brain, improve love, or enhance prefrontal cortex function. Instead, believing such concepts activates the fear circuits of the brain and contributes to impairments in healthy growth, thinking, reasoning, and relationships.

Love acted out is also healing. Research documents that youth who volunteered (love others with acts of altruism) experienced greater academic achievement, civic responsibility, and life skills that include leadership and interpersonal self-confidence than those who didn’t [iii]. And adults who volunteered (after accounting for variables such as education, baseline health, smoking, etc.) lived longer, had less illness, less disability, less depression, less dementia, and lived independently longer than those who did not [iv].

Fear is our enemy, it infects us, drives us toward destructive thinking, living and reacting. Whereas, love is the only power capable of freeing our hearts from fear and bringing genuine healing to our minds, bodies and relationships. So love well. Love always.

You can download a pdf of the full article Dr. Jennings posted in 2010

how_tv_wrathful_god_damage_brainDownload

Iraqi war stunts children’s growth https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100329082121.htm

[ii] Newberg, A. How God Changes Our Brain. Ballantine Books, New York. 2009: p.49.

[iii] Post, S. Altruism and Health Perspectives from Empirical Research, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007: p. 20, 21).

[iv] Ibid. p. 22, 26

Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association, and an international speaker. He served as president of the Southern and Tennessee Psychiatric Associations and is president and founder of Come and Reason Ministries. Dr. Jennings has authored many books, including The God-Shaped Brain, The God-Shaped Heart, and The Aging Brain.

Dr Tim Jennings Blogs

FASTING: WHAT’S THE POINT?

Dara Dietz

Used by Permission: by Dr. Tim Jennings

Please explain Fasting to me. I have never understood this topic too well. It seems that fasting is a way to make God answer your prayer when He wont answer it otherwise.

Somehow that doesn’t seem to fit too well with all that I have been learning about His character. I have a prayer request that I have been presenting to God with no answer and I was thinking about fasting but then I realized that the only reason I am fasting is because I am trying to convince God to answer my prayer even though He promises to give us all we need. So my question is. What exactly is fasting? What purpose does it serve? Are there different kinds of fasting? Does it change Gods attitude or mind toward us? Or does it change us toward Him?

You are not alone in your uncertainty about fasting. As a child I always wondered why abstaining from food was called a fast when it went by so slow? Many have struggled with understanding the purpose of fasting and have falsely concluded it is a work, penance, action we can take to somehow influence God. This conclusion occurs when we first believe God is the kind of being who needs to be influenced to be kind, loving, gracious and interested in our welfare. When we realize that God is exactly as Jesus revealed Him to be then we realize that, whatever the purpose of fasting, it is not to influence God.

Misconceptions about fasting have been around a long time. In the book of Isaiah we read that the people fasted as a work to somehow influence God, but simultaneously went around living selfishly and out of harmony with Him. So God corrects them and tells them that real fasting is not mere denying oneself food, but to say no to selfishness and yes to loving others. It is in living with hearts that have been renewed to be like Jesus that we can have certainty that God will answer our prayers.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. Isaiah 58:6-9.

Then what about fasting from food, what is its purpose? When we eat we shunt blood to the digestive organs, this slows the thinking and causes the release of certain polypeptides which have neurological impact. Fasting can help improve our mental focus, clear the mind, reduce distractions and allow for better contemplation, meditation and appreciation of spiritual themes. In other words, in a time of crisis fasting may help a person understand more clearly what God is trying to communicate to them and thus enhance the ability find answers to their dilemma.

Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association, and an international speaker. He served as president of the Southern and Tennessee Psychiatric Associations and is president and founder of Come and Reason Ministries. Dr. Jennings has authored many books, including The God-Shaped Brain, The God-Shaped Heart, and The Aging Brain.