Brain Development: Why It Matters
Breaking Bread Podcast
Brain development can be understood as a process of four maturing stages: survival, emotional, attachment and cognitive. These stages hold a key to understanding both poor and healthy thought processes. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Dr. Kirby Reutter steps us through brain development, how trauma impacts it and how by God’s grace we can think healthier. Show Notes: The first dimension of the brain to develop very early in life is the survival brain. Survival lies at the heart of the operations of the survival brain. The responses...
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Autism Spectrum in Marriage
Breaking Bread Podcast
When a spouse is on the autistic spectrum, marriages can experience unique challenges. Communication and understanding will likely be impacted. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Kaleb Beyer speaks to these unique challenges and provides a roadmap to flourishing. Show notes: When communication is significantly strained in marriage, neuro-diversity may be present. Often, in these marriages, the amount, frequency, intensity and duration of these struggles are higher when compared to neuro-typical marriages. A neuro-typical marriage is a marriage where both spouses learn, process information,...
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Doubt in Decision Making
Breaking Bread Podcast
What if I choose the wrong option? What if a better option comes a long? These are a few of the questions that plague decision makers. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Kathy Knochel and Ted Witzig Jr. discuss the angst that can accompany decision making. While we desire to have certainty about future outcomes, it remains elusive. Yet, there is a certainty that the believer has, and it can make all the difference. Show notes: Decisional Stress can be understood in three...
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The Gift of Repentance
Breaking Bread Podcast
Change, when it is for the better, always accompanies healthy human growth. When it comes to emotional, relational and spiritual change, repentance is an apt feature to discuss. After all, repentance means changing your mind. On this episode of Breaking Bread, Chad Leman and Brian Sutter shed light on both the “why” and “how” of repentance. Show Notes: Repentance in three movements. Movement 1: God’s goodness. Romans 2 says God’s goodness leads us to repentance. His work, his grace,...
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Discipleship in the Middle Years
Breaking Bread Podcast
Show notes: Growing into Christlikeness is not a linear process. Yet the historic Christian church has identified three movements that we revisit with increasing depth. Purification: This refers to growing in increasing moral excellence. Illumination: This refers to growing in increasing understanding of truth. Communion: This refers to growing in increasing fellowship with God. These provide a helpful “map” for understanding the invitation before us to grow in Christ-likeness. In the middle...
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Praying Like the Disciples
Breaking Bread Podcast
Christ knew what he was doing when he gave his disciples what we have come to call “The Lord’s Prayer.” It is beautiful to the ear. Rhythmic to the tongue. Simple to remember and loaded with power. In this episode, Joe Leman highlights this beauty and power and helps us see the hope of human transformation that is instore for any who would take up the prayer and pray it.
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How to Have Stress-Reducing Conversations
Breaking Bread Podcast
Stress is a very real part of our lives. How we manage stress can have healthy or unhealthy consequences. Fortunately, one tool we should be using to soothe stress in one another is stress-reducing conversations. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Kaleb Beyer, Craig Stickling, and Brian Sutter explain how to have these purposeful conversations. Show notes: What is stress-related conversation? A conversation that has at its purpose the intention of soothing the emotions in a stress heightened...
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Accepting Relational Influence
Breaking Bread Podcast
Healthy relationships require that we are open to being influenced. After all, what is a relationship if it doesn’t include give and take. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Kaleb Beyer explains what both research and experience has taught him about the importance of accepting influence in relationships. Show notes: What does accepting relational influence mean? Allowing those we are in relationship with to shape and impact our...
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3 Habits for Our Kids
Breaking Bread Podcast
Parenting has its eye towards producing future adults. One powerful adult forming tool is instilling good habits in our kids. A well parented habit can pay dividends in the long run by building the muscle memory to do what otherwise would not be natural. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Brian Sutter examples this by suggesting three habits that will produce very welcome attributes in our children as adults. Show notes: Healthy habits can help grow and mature our children. And yet, to do this, the habit needs to grow and...
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One Tip for Human Growth
Breaking Bread Podcast
We all have room for growth. Yet sometimes our progress gets stalled, and we get discouraged. This discouragement might be because we are measuring the wrong thing. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Ted Witzig Jr. helps correct this mistake and teaches us to measure from the bottom-up. Show notes: Measuring human growth can be tricky. We often evaluate our progress by measuring from one of three perspectives: From top-down: This happens when we measure the gap between who we are and who we want to ideally be. For...
info_outlineBrain development can be understood as a process of four maturing stages: survival, emotional, attachment and cognitive. These stages hold a key to understanding both poor and healthy thought processes. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Dr. Kirby Reutter steps us through brain development, how trauma impacts it and how by God’s grace we can think healthier.
Show Notes:
- The first dimension of the brain to develop very early in life is the survival brain. Survival lies at the heart of the operations of the survival brain. The responses of fight, flight and freeze protect and train us to respond to our surrounds and preserve life.
- Healthy development : A child has a healthy co-regulator (parent figure) who helps them regulate their responses and properly protects them.
- Unhealthy development: A child does not have a healthy co-regulator and their safety is exploited. Fight, flight and freeze become a constant regular reaction to outside stimuli.
- The second dimension of the brain to develop is the emotional brain. Responses to outside stimuli are mapped to feelings.
- Healthy development: A properly developed survival brain allows for a developing emotional brain. The full range of emotions, both comfortable emotions (positive) and uncomfortable emotions (negative) are appropriately experienced.
- Unhealthy development: An underdeveloped survival brain has a detrimental effect on the developing emotional brain. Negative emotions (primarily fear and anger) are over developed because of their abundant use. At the same time, positive emotions under develop because of their infrequent use or betraying affect.
- The third dimension of the brain to develop is the attachment brain. This development helps us connect with another human in relationship.
- Healthy development: A healthy emotional brain allows for a healthy attachment brain to develop. A recognition exists that people and relationships are needed. A child is seen, safe and soothed by another person (parent figure).
- Unhealthy development: An unhealthy emotional brain thwarts a maturing attachment brain. A belief emerges that recognizes people as a threat and relationships as dangerous.
- The fourth dimension of the brain to develop is the cognitive brain. This is the thinking brain, responsible for reasoning and judgement.
- Healthy development: A healthy attachment brain gives way to healthy thinking and reasoning. A healthy cognitive brain will making good decisions, recognize cause and effect, seeing short term and long term goals, identifying pros and cons, thinking abstractly, theoretically, logically and linguistically.
- Unhealthy development: An unhealthy attachment brain skews the cognitive development. Decisions and judgements are made through the lens of a threatening world.