The basic need for human flourishing is love and truth, which allow the Mind to feel securely attached to another Secure “Loving” Person—most importantly to God Himself, so that we can know how to love others properly. Our ultimate love attachment is designed for an Eternal Attachment with God (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
The Mind (Soul) is designed to “feed nutritionally” on love and truth. This healthy process must begin in infancy otherwise the Mind becomes distressed. When the caregiver is loving the infant will produce a healthy bonding and boundary established as a neuro-mirroring process.
The infant is soaking up and shaping its mind (soul) forming a mental map to navigate our relational world.Without this bonding and boundaries process forming around love and truth in the mind—Five Tensions will shape the Mind (Soul) toward the potential for ADDICTION.
A Mind without a Secure Attachment will ceaselessly and sympathetically search to fill the EMOTIONAL VOID with counterfeit alternative hopes to mask the PAIN.
These FIVE TENSIONS are:
1. A Mind (Soul) lacking LOVE AND TRUTH develops DISTRESS and a sense of REJECTION.
2. FREEDOM formed without healthyBonding and Boundaries (love and truth) develops issues of internal confusion resulting in feelings ofCONFINEMENTleading to a ROOT of BITTERNESS.
3. A lack of discipline (healthy guidance) produces UNRESTRAINED INTERNAL CONTROLS which develop UNRESOLVED GUILT due to relational damaging behaviors.
4. Lack of AWARENESS OF ONE’s EMOTIONS forms a DEPENDENCE-INDEPENDENCE IMBALANCE.
5. A lack of relational INTEGRATION and attachment between a Secure Parent or Person develops an INFERIOR vs. SUPERIOR STRUGGLE due to lacking SPIRITUAL MATURITY (a need for accurate spiritual truth).
Repairing one’s basic relational needs is required to leave the past behind. Essentially, we have a Soul-sickness that must heal through love and truth. The foundation is knowing your “true self and identity” rooted in a Secure Relationship.
This is being Fully Alive and Renewed without “filling the void” for misguided and false, counterfeit hopes, and addictions that steal, kill, and destroy. Replacement, Rewiring, and Reframing the Mind around SOLUTIONS for the FIVE TENSIONS and building new neuro-faith structures will reshape the “old broken navigation mindset.” The goal is to build a “new, safe, and loving freedom”that satisfies the soul through a Secure Attachment.
Symptoms of mental distress are Protests, Depression, Despair, and Detachment. Monitoring our feelings is essential. They are a signpost to negative cognitive distortions. Ignoring, denying, and suppressing these feelings only increases the pain of unmet love and truth needs, which can often end in addictive behaviors.
Our negative mental navigational map has “unrepaired holes” in our Mind (soul)which is looking for the SECURE VOID FILLER (Eccl. 3:11; God), which isrelated to the pain of a relational love-gap. Without a Secure Mirroring Attachment, the individual blindly identifies with false counterfeit hopes that are addictive, which can lead to physical addictions as well.
The cure for addiction is to repair the unmet “love-gap” by addressing the Five Tensions. Through replacing, rewiring, and reframing cognitive distortions. This process builds new neuro-faith pathways that fortify a new true identity by paying attention to the Mind and mirroring a Secure Attachment.
Behavior modification is not the goal—but rather building new emotional attachments around the Secure Attachment of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We can stop trying to work harder to stop the PAIN by filling the “authentic love void” by drawing into a Secure Relationship that heals.
Fruit grows from seeds—but “good fruit” requires cultivating the soil of our Mind(soul) by paying attention to the signposts of your emotions. However, this work is our responsibility. We must choose to partner—spending time cultivating, and mirroring the heart of God, as our Secure Connection.
The Wheel of Awareness and I-CARE exercise can help monitor the pressure points of life and connect us to our spiritual HUB where our Ultimate Secure Person (God) offers the love and truth that heals.
This is our Mind (Soul) freedom—becoming Fully Alive and Renewed!