Survival Self vs Spirit-Led Self: How to Break Out of Survival Mode

Have you ever noticed how the same situation can bring out two completely different versions of you?

One reacts from fear, anxiety, and control.
The other responds from peace, trust, and connection with God.

In this episode of the Freedom Camp Podcast, Gretchen explores the difference between your survival self and your spirit-led self, and why learning to notice the difference can transform how you experience your life, without your life changing.

Through a personal story, Gretchen illustrates how our thoughts shape our feelings, our actions, and ultimately the results we experience.

When we operate from survival mode, we may experience:

• anxiety and overthinking
 • people-pleasing
 • trying to control outcomes
 • shutting down or feeling overwhelmed

But when we reconnect with our spirit-led self, we often experience:

• peace
 • clarity
 • compassion
 • courage
 • the space to choose our response

You’ll also learn a simple reflection practice called The Freedom Path, which helps you examine your thoughts, emotions, actions, and results so you can move from survival patterns into agreement with God.

Freedom doesn’t always begin when circumstances change.

Often, it begins when our agreement changes.

In this episode you'll learn about

The difference between survival and spirit-led living
 Why thoughts shape feelings, actions, and outcomes
 How anxiety and control patterns develop
 Signs you may be operating in survival mode
 A simple exercise to reconnect with truth and discernment

Transcript

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Welcome to the Freedom Camp Podcast, rooted in truth, growing in freedom, and built on the belief that you weren't meant to grow alone. Each week I'll share honest stories, insights, and simple questions to help you explore the unseen things that keep you from living in the freedom that's already yours. And take brave intentional steps toward the life you were made for. This is your space to reconnect with your authentic self and grow in freedom on purpose. Have you ever noticed the exact same situation can create two completely different versions of you? One version is tense, reactive, defensive, controlling, hurt, or even shut down. The other is grounded, honest, compassionate, peaceful, and connected to God. Today I want to talk about the difference between your survival self and your spirit-led self, and how learning to notice the difference can change everything. So our survival self is often fear-based or control-based, shame-based, guilt-based. It's protective. It's often formed out of pain, trauma, old coping skills, ego, and fear. Our spirit-led self is rooted in our God-given identity. It is trust-based. It is a love-based. It is hope and faith-based. It's connected to God and it is clear, grounded, open, and courageous. So I want to use an example that I have shared with about before on the podcast. And in this example, the situation doesn't change, but the way that I am does. So I hope that this ends up being a helpful illustration of the power between our survival self and our spirit-led self. Probably what three months ago now, our dog Awen, was getting ready to have puppies. And I didn't know when. Got a couple books on whelping and helping be a birthing partner for a dog, and found out lots of things can go wrong. So I was feeling overwhelmed, anxious, worried, confused. And all of that was coming from thoughts around what if she has puppies in the middle of the night? Um, and I miss it? Or even worse, what if something happens during labor and one of the puppies needs help and I'm not able to help them enough? Um, and or what if one of the puppies dies? And or how are we going to keep them warm enough? Because this was right before the week of um the ice storm and the the blizzard um of uh of the winter. So those thoughts and those feelings then led to actions of things like worrying and spinning out and trying to um grasp for some area of control, trying to like figure out in advance how I was going to um to manage this. And then that also ended up resulting in me really dealing with a lot of anxiety. So I ended up um gratefully through the exercise that we're about to do right after I tell this story, I was gratefully able to connect to my spirit-led self. And my spirit-led self had thoughts like, you know what? It's gonna be okay. Um, you're connected to God. God's got this. Mark and Benjamin, my son and my husband, are doing this with me. I'm not alone. Even if it's the middle of the night, um, I'm not gonna likely wake up my eight-year-old. Um, but certainly Mark, my husband, would still be out there with me helping me. And those thoughts then led to feelings of trust and peace, and I was grateful and I was relaxed and I was more confident. And that led to actions of me being able to make clear decisions with Mark, uh, me being able to execute on those decisions, uh, working as part of a team, asking input from others, and not expecting myself to solve everything, which then led to me being a better support human for Eowyn, my dog, um, and the the mom of the puppies. That whole thing then led to the result of having 10 healthy puppies being born. Um, two of them did end up needing help. Uh they couldn't open their mouth, they couldn't latch to nurse. So we Googled it and we watched a couple videos on the fly in the whelping box during labor, and we figured out what we needed to do, and we did it, and it worked. And we were able to keep all 10 of the pups alive with the help of their amazing mama. So, why does that matter? Well, this matters because we live our lives one moment at a time, first of all. I don't know about you, but I would prefer to not be riddled with anxiety for the majority of the minutes of my life. I'd prefer to never be riddled with anxiety. So, really, when you look at it, the only thing that changed in this situation was what I thought about it, how I felt about it, how I then reacted, slash what actions came out of that, and then the outcome of those actions. So our thoughts inform our feelings, and our feelings inform our actions, and our actions inform the results that we get, and then the cycle repeats, and then those results often inform our thoughts and our feelings and our actions, and it and it continues on. Like when this happens, then I'll be free to blah blah blah, or when that happens, or blah blah blah. But what I keep seeing time and time again is that freedom begins when my agreement changes, when I choose to agree with my spirit-led self who is free, it rather than my survival self or my flesh, who is not free, or not as free, I should say. So I wanted to share just a few signs for you to look at to have an idea of if you may be in survival mode. So one is if you are rehearsing conversations in your head, you may be in survival mode. If you are feeling like you need to control the outcome, you may be in survival mode. If you are people pleasing, you may be in survival mode. If you are shutting down, you may be in survival mode. If you are feeling heavy, uh frantic, defensive, victimized, overwhelmed, you may be in survival mode. And if you're feeling like everything has to change, or something has to change, before you you can feel okay, you may be in survival mode. That last one in particular, I personally relate to all of these, but that last one in particular, I really um am continuing to grow in freedom in getting out of that. Um, however, on the spirit-led side, well, what does that feel like? First of all, it's not perfect, it's not fake, and it's not passive. It can feel like relief. It can feel lighter, like hope or peace, compassion, clarity, courage. It can it can feel like you have enough space to choose your response. Or as um a dear coach um used to always say uh that the pressure bubble has been popped. That's Tori Hine. Look her up if you do not follow her. She is an absolute gem, um, and she will bless your life for for it, for the for the following. Um, you may also feel like the situation is still hard, it's just as hard as it was, but you're not trapped inside of it anymore. And then for me, the other big big clue is I often can see a bigger picture. I can see the way that God sees it, sees the situation or the circumstance, and that makes all the difference in the world. So I'd like to invite you to use a simple exercise this week. And I call this the freedom path. It's totally biblical. Um, I've learned it through various people. Most recently, I learned it through another amazing coach, um, Edie Wadsworth, Dr. Edie Wadsworth, also worth the follow. She calls it the creation cycle. And in this, essentially, you take a situation, a relationship, a um a um something that you are either a part of or it's impacting you, something you find yourself thinking on, something that you've got emotions tied up in, you're feeling the feels, and you may it may also be something where you're like, oh, I know what to do, but you also know that that's probably not the spirit-led response, and that you want to connect in with what what what does your spirit have to say about this? So once you get your situation, then you look at what is my survival self thinking and feeling and doing, and what result is my survival self going to get, and then you think, what is my spirit-led self believing or thinking, and then feeling, and then doing, and then what result is my spirit-led self going to get? And then what is the response that agrees with God? Where is God in this whole thing? And so, just as a little example for this, say it's something around forgiveness. Maybe what you're getting is they didn't mean it, they aren't even aware, go ahead and forgive them. Maybe though, what you're getting is they meant it, they dogged you out, you have every reason to feel dogged out, mad, whatever, and go ahead and forgive them. So I'm using that as an example because oftentimes the spirit-led response can be the same. And even when there's every reason for your flesh or your ego or for your defensive protective self to be like, wait, that wasn't right. Well, yes, it wasn't right. We all probably can remember hearing in kindergarten that life isn't fair. That said, your spirit-led self and the response that you get from that spirit-led self is of course the one that we want to ultimately connect with because that's where the freedom is. So you don't need to become someone brand new this week. You may just need to notice which self is speaking and choose agreement with God one moment at a time. Thank you so much for listening to the Freedom Camp Podcast. If you got something out of this, please consider sharing it with others, leaving a comment or a review. And join us back next week when we explore spiritual warfare with our health and our well-being. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the Freedom Camp Podcast, where we believe freedom is nurtured from within and grows when you tend to it. If this stirred something in you, let it take root this week and see what grows. And if you enjoyed this or found it meaningful, please give the gift of a review, share it with a friend, and leave a comment below. It helps us build this podcast community because we weren't meant to grow alone.