- Okay, so whenever I have guests on my show,
I would say like nine out of 10 of them, I know personally.
And like one out of 10, I'm like, oh, I'm just a big fan,
and I haven't met them.
Well, the one out of 10 is happening right now.
Dr. Chip Dodd is with us today,
and I'm having him on today
because I read his book Voice of the Heart
and it is phenomenal.
And I use some of this stuff,
and actually an interview I did on the phone,
I guess we technically met on the phone a few months ago.
- A year ago or so?
- Yes, for my new book, talking about emotions
and your book, Voice of the Heart, is incredible.
- [Chris] Thank you.
- Absolutely amazing.
And so, you walk through the eight core emotions
that everyone has.
- Right.
- And I love this book
because I don't think a lot of people have the language
or even know that these emotions exist.
So, let's talk about it.
So, what are the eight emotions?
- Yeah, this book came out some years ago, actually.
And the book says,
and biblically and neuroscience now, too,
it says that you and I are created
as emotional and spiritual creatures,
created to live fully.
But we can't live fully
unless we're living fully in relationship.
And the language of relationship
is the language of the heart.
And what's amazing is, it became really clear,
you know, in the Book of Genesis,
our problem is,
and I guess always will be,
that when it's time to cry out,
our expertise is actually in hiding out.
And Adam said, "I was afraid, so I hid."
And in the crying out, relationship began again.
And it turns out that,
and this is a bit long,
but the brain actually develops from the back to the front.
We have the brain stem, which is reactivity.
It's what lizards do.
It's hot, it's cold,
There's a fly, you know, that kind of thing.
- The lizard brain.
- Yeah, the lizard brain.
Yes, you know exactly, the lizard brain.
And then we have this thing called the limbic system.
And the limbic system is really the heart.
It's the emotional, relational,
connection, attachment, dreamer,
probably the seat of the amygdala.
It is the place from which we're created to connect.
And it is the brain that's always asking a question,
like, do you care?
Are you with me?
Do I belong?
Do I matter?
And then the frontal lobe develops
over a period of 20 years. It's the executive functioning.
It's the thinking brain.
Well, it turns out that the thinking brain,
the main purpose of the thinking brain
is to be able to articulate what's happening in our hearts.
And yet, we live in a world that is anti-vulnerability,
anti-neediness, anti-transparency,
though we talk about it a lot.
- We're so authentic.
- Yeah, and how can we do it
unless we're telling the truth?
And it turns out that the truth about us human beings
is that we are emotional creatures too.
And we grow up losing the language of birth.
And we were born with eight core feelings:
sadness, hurt, fear, loneliness, anger,
which a lot of people don't understand,
and then we have healthy shame, guilt, thank God,
and then gladness.
But the feelings,
and everybody has asked me with these eight feelings there,
how come there are seven bad ones?
- I know I said that right before.
I was like walk through that myth.
- Yeah, shame, guilt and gladness, right?
- Yeah, you hear them all and you're like
okay, gladness, that's good.
But everything seems bad.
- It turns out that all the feelings are good,
just like the organs of the body.
I mean, your lungs are not bad or good. They're good.
And the more you attend to your lungs,
the more they can do for you.
Even the bladder is good.
I mean, if you can't sense your bladder,
well, you know the rest of the story.
- You're my 2-year-old.
- Exactly, they go right ahead.
- Or I should say my 8-month-old.
- So, with feelings, unless we are sensitive to them
and learn how to use them,
they become our enemy, which is astounding.
So, each feeling is good
because God has graciously given us eight tools
to be able to live fully in a tragic place.
- Yes.
- And since we're created for relationship,
these are the relational tools
that put us in awareness of each other,
connect us to each other.
- So, why don't you think we're a culture
that is so scared to even tap into emotion?
- Well, I think the world is a survival-oriented place.
And in the United States,
we are self-sufficiency, work performance.
You're only as good as your last performance.
We worship independence.
We worship reality,
not letting reality get to you.
We sacrifice the truth of how we're created to be realistic.
And we seek power,
power over having to be vulnerable.
So we kind of tilt over to the self-sufficient,
climb the ladder of success.
- That's right. That's right.
And totally ignore everything going inside.
And I think after years and years,
not even knowing how to tap into it.
And so, I think, for you guys, doing the work
to actually get there,
you just live this more holistic life
and holistic relationships
with your marriage and your kids and your coworkers,
I mean, everything, so much.
So, let's dive into fear for a little bit.
That's the one emotion I really dove in with you
for my new book,
and I think it's huge.
I think it dictates so much of our life,
including why we handle money the way we do,
different money fears,
but talk through why fear is a good thing,
healthy fear, all of it.
- And by the way, your book,
I thank you for having me here
and I made sure I read your book,
it's a wonderful book.
- He got the advanced copy, and he's like,
I actually read your book.
I was like, you read my book, Dr. Chip Dodd?
- Get this book.
It's profound, practical, witty.
It's a wonderful book.
It's deep in its proper ways,
and yet very understandable when reading it.
- Thank you.
- Fear. 18 inches below our forehead is the heart.
And we practice doing everything we can
to stay away from our heads and hearts being connected.
And if our hearts aren't connected to living,
we miss life, right?
And it turns out that fear,
we've been given fear as a feeling
that allows us to acknowledge being in danger.
So, when I'm afraid,
I'm actually saying life's happening in a way that's scary.
Life's happening in a way I don't like.
I'm anticipating something happening negative in me,
to me, against me.
So, fear is a cry-out feeling that allows us to ask for help.
And if we're not good at fear,
if we're not good at being sensitive to using our brains
to express what's happening in us, then anxiety takes over.
So, anxiety,
except when a bear's in the room,
or a tiger's in the room,
anxiety is actually an indication,
a physiological indication,
that we're not dealing with owning our fear.
So, fear and anxiety are different.
Anxiety is physiological and mental.
And the beauty is that fear
is a feeling that allows us to hope.
So, if you're in danger, and you cry out,
automatically you're using how God created you.
You're hoping that there's a solution to this predicament.
- Oh, that's good.
- And what's amazing is,
the way the voice of the heart talks,
feelings lead us to their gifts.
I don't do feelings just for the sake of feelings.
I don't like the feelings.
I don't like fear or sadness or hurt.
But what they give us, they're tools that give us results.
So, fear leads to I hope something, and I cry out.
I risk something.
And that lets us develop a thing called faith.
So, fear is actually the birthplace of faith.
So, isn't it amazing?
- It is.
And that's what takes down the scariness
and actually gives you the tools to break down, right?
Because some people just kind of get in fear, and it's just . . .
But no, to say, okay, to acknowledge, no, I need help.
I'm asking for help.
And then you seek the answer, and it helps you.
And that's in every area, you guys.
I mean, whether it's like,
I mean, fear, I automatically think like personal safety,
right, like there's that.
But then the fear of, oh my gosh,
my marriage is struggling,
or my kids are so out of control.
Or people with older kids, right? A kid goes astray,
Whatever it is, that fear that rises up
and being able to ask for help and gather that wisdom.
Yeah, any area of life, money, all of it.
Okay, I want to talk through shame
because it's clicking in our interview right now.
And I want to go text my husband,
because he sent me,
he was like, Rachel, you have to listen to this.
Because you did a talk on good shame versus bad.
- Yes, yes.
- Okay, let's talk about it.
- Let's talk about.
I love talking about shame. - Shame is good.
- There are a lot of people who are doing
a lot of shame teaching now,
and they don't include healthy shame.
- Yes.
- And I said healthy shame's essential
because healthy shame literally is the essence
of a human being.
It's amazing how you're born looking, literally looking,
and you can't think yet, you can't talk,
but you're born emotionally and spiritually
looking for who's looking for you.
We're so created for connection.
- And attachment, yeah.
- We're so created
to find fulfillment in relationship.
So healthy shame is the dependency feeling.
It's the awareness that I'm created for relationship
and healthy shame's amazing
because you have some answers and I have some answers.
So if we turn that into how to have a community,
it's like, you've got green peas, I've got potatoes,
you've got beef, you've got carrots,
you've got water, you've got a pot,
you've got a fire, you've got a match, you've got wood
and somebody has a spoon and a few bowls.
Those are answers.
It's what you bring into life
to do, to live, to develop in you.
And so before you know it,
we have, together, what we never could have had apart.
We have a stew.
We have a community.
So, toxic shame is when we become contemptuous
toward ourselves for being needy,
for not having all the answers,
for making mistakes,
for being in need, and ultimately, for not being God.
I should have known this.
I should have known that.
I shouldn't need this.
I shouldn't want that.
And so toxic shame is taught.
So something's wrong with me for being human.
Something's wrong with me for being in need.
- I feel crazy, those kind of statements, yes.
And I do that to myself.
I do. I'll go through the day, and I'm like,
oh, Rachel, that's crazy.
Why are you thinking that?
And I catch myself. And I'm like, why am I even thinking? No.
I have to walk myself through it.
But it's so good. It's so, so healthy.
Okay, so one thing I learned from your book
that was huge for me
is that anger is one of the only emotions
that's always attached to another.
- Yes, it's true.
- Okay, so when you . . . I think it's huge.
So like, when the anger boils,
because I will, I'll get mad,
or I'm just like uh,
and I'm like, no, no, no, what am I really feeling?
And I have to stop and pinpoint, like, I'm fearful,
I'm fearful of X, Y and Z,
or that made me so sad,
you made me mad,
but actually I'm sad because the X, Y,
whatever it is. But I think it's fascinating.
- It is.
Anger is the most vulnerable feeling
of all the feelings.
It exposes our capacity to be wounded
more than loneliness or sadness or hurt, okay?
Because anger shows what matters to us.
And the gift of anger is passion.
A willingness to be in pain
for something that matters more than pain.
And that's how people get out of debt.
It's not fear, ultimately. It's passion.
I'll do what it takes to get to this place.
- Yeah.
- But when we bury our anger,
we're burying our capacity
to tell the truth about ourselves completely.
You know, when we can no longer hunger and thirst
and yearn and long
and want and hope and wish and dream, we're not alive.
So anger,
we really do need to wake up to becoming free,
to have the powerful vulnerability
of admitting that I'm a hungry creature
created to live fully.
And the problem though,
I can't live fully
unless I'm doing so in relationship.
And money can't fix it,
and there's not enough performance to make me whole.
I can't become independent enough.
I can't remove myself from the pain of life.
So I've got to learn how to live the pain of life.
You're on Earth, and there's no cure for that
except learning how to live it.
In fact, you said, even in your book,
in the Lion King, you used Lion King,
and Rafiki said you can run from it,
or you can learn from it.
And learning from it means coming back to being human again
and asking ourselves the hard questions about everything.
- What it is, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so when it comes to money management,
our emotions are so tied in very deeply
on how we manage money, right?
Whether it's our spending, our giving, our saving.
So, kind of talk to me through those three emotions.
We talked about fear.
We talked about shame and anger.
How do you see those play out
when it comes to managing money?
- So, in a lot of ways, money is just like alcohol, drugs.
It can be used to get away
from dealing with life on life's terms.
It can be used to anesthetize fear.
So, we try to medicate avoidance of these feelings.
So, money is an emotional issue
of a way we can either hide our feelings
or we can deal with our feelings and manage money properly.
Because it's not something
that's gonna take us away from life.
It's something that can allow us to live life fully
if we acknowledge what it is. It's a tool.
- And that's such a key point,
that it's not always the outgo of money, right?
Because I'm a spender, naturally.
So, I naturally always think, oh yeah,
if I were to medicate with money, it would be to spend.
But others, it's the hoarding mentality.
If I can just keep, keep, keep, and keep everything close,
I'm gonna be okay.
And that feeling of security does not end up there.
It can help you with that foundation, get an emergency fund,
all the wise things we talk about, for sure.
But ultimately, that's not gonna satisfy that core emotion.
- Absolutely.
And even related to anger that you said,
a person cannot live debt-free without passion.
And they can't live generously without passion.
They have to be trusting something bigger than money
to be generous, you know?
- Well, you guys, I hope this interview
shows you the depth of life,
but it can take a lot of work.
It can be scary.
It's not always fun digging into the feelings.
But once you get in that practice,
your relationships just explode,
I mean, so much richer.
It's an incredible way to live.
So, again, I kept saying it,
but Voice of the Heart, it's a must. It's a must.
And then I'm stealing this one
because it's your new one that came out yesterday,
Hope in the Age of Addiction.
Guys, Amazon it, get a copy.
And Dr. Chip Dodd, thank you for being on.
- Thank you, Rachel. It's great to meet you.
- So appreciate all your wisdom, incredible.
Again, you guys, check out his new book.
- Thank you so much.