Book SummaryGet Out of Your Head, by Jennie Allen

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Get Out of Your Head

Many people live as victims of their own minds, consumed with negative thoughts that seem to control them. In this book, Jennie Allen, founder of the influential IF:Gathering discipleship conference for Christian women, presents a comprehensive strategy for winning the war for your mind.

Starting from the apostle Paul’s instructions to “take every thought captive for Christ” and “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Allen uncovers Satan’s master plan for trapping you in a life of defeat by poisoning your mind with self-reinforcing cycles of toxic thought. She then teaches you to escape from these cycles by using your spiritual ability as a Christian to consciously choose your thoughts and replace ungodly ones with scriptural truths, resulting in a spiritually victorious life.

The War for Your Mind

Satan is invested in your defeat, and his primary target is your mind. His mental attacks catapult you into downward spirals as negative emotions drive your thoughts, decisions, behaviors, and relationships. You live on autopilot, circling ever downward into dysfunction and misery.

The key to stopping these spirals is to interrupt them by learning to think about your thoughts, to “mind your mind.” Taking charge of your thoughts is in fact a biblical command, and it begins with the realization that your thoughts, not your emotions, determine your experience. This means you can change your whole life by reprogramming your mind with God’s thoughts.

For help, you can draw on the findings of modern neuroscience about the human brain and its plasticity. By remolding your brain with new thought patterns, you can literally grow more fully into the mind of Christ, since your brain-based thoughts and emotions correspond to what the Bible calls your “heart,” the center of your personal being.

Self-Lies, Toxic Thoughts, and Mental Strongholds

Satan’s attacks come as deceitful thoughts that convince you to believe lies about yourself. These lies fall into three general categories: “I’m helpless,” “I’m worthless,” and “I’m unlovable.” Behind each of these is the more fundamental lie that God’s love isn’t for you. Ultimately, these lies create their own alternate reality, a false mental state in which distorted reasoning seems true.

The author of this book experienced just such an attack on her thoughts after she told an audience of women at a church conference about demonic spiritual warfare. During a break, a woman approached her and warned her, “We’re coming for you. Stop talking about this.” Soon after this, the power went out at the church, and beginning that night, the author was plunged into an 18-month inner battle in which she felt estranged from God and feared that she was losing her faith.

The distorted thought life that Satan’s lies create about you and God is the deepest, darkest stronghold of evil inside you. The devil wants to keep you locked in there forever, and his intention is reflected in the psychological fact that up to 70 percent of all spontaneous thoughts are negative. Negativity appears to be our default setting.

The Key to Freedom

The key to liberation from this mental imprisonment is another thought, the “interrupting thought.” And it’s simply this: “I have a choice.” As a Christian with God’s Spirit living inside you, you have the power to interrupt negative thought spirals and choose the mind of Christ instead. You break free from Satan’s mental strongholds by using the interrupting thought (“I have a choice”) to identify, reject, and replace the toxic lies about yourself and God that are keeping you imprisoned.

In the author’s case, a friend helped her to realize that she had never really lost her faith at all, and that the very idea itself was a lie from Satan. She had merely stopped feeling her faith.

The apostle Paul’s conversion experience also illustrates the use of the interrupting thought. Paul had been trapped by the idea that Jesus wasn’t the messiah and that he (Paul) had the God-given duty to stamp out Christianity. But after the resurrected Christ appeared to him, he recognized the truth of Jesus’s identity and experienced a total spiritual and mental transformation that changed his life. He realized that he could choose to replace the lie in his mind with the truth of Jesus’s real identity and lordship.

Mental Story Maps

A mental story map is a tool that can help you use this key of the interrupting thought.

• Step 1: Draw your map.
  • Write down your current primary emotion. Draw a circle around it.
  • Around the circle, write contributing factors. Unfinished work? A relationship? Money? Circle each and draw a line to the central emotion.
  • Near each smaller circle, list how it contributes to your current emotion.
• Step 2: Talk to God.
  • Pray through each item.
  • Search the scriptures for relevant truths.
  • Ask God to reveal wrong thoughts about himself and yourself.
• Step 3: Look for common patterns and themes in your map items (anxiety about things you can’t control? anger at insults? self-criticism?).
• Step 4: Notice the storyline your thoughts build about God. Is it true or false?

(Shortform note: To learn a similar approach to “minding your mind,” read our summary of Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond.)

Fighting Battles

You face three general barriers to victory in the war for your mind: the devil, your wounds, and your sin. These factor, in various ways, into the specific battles you’re called to fight against seven mental enemies. You must learn to fight against these enemies with the right weapons and strategies. **As a Christian, you belong to an entirely separate reality. You’re primarily a citizen of the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of this world. In learning to think like it, you also have to learn to fight like...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Part 1 | Chapter 1: The War for Your Mind

Many people live as victims of their own minds, consumed with negative thoughts that seem to control them. In this book, Jennie Allen, founder of the influential IF:Gathering discipleship conference for Christian women, presents a comprehensive strategy for winning the war for your mind.

Starting from the apostle Paul’s instructions to “take every thought captive for Christ” and “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Allen uncovers Satan’s master plan for trapping you in a life of defeat by poisoning your mind with self-reinforcing cycles of toxic thought. She then teaches you to escape from these cycles by using your spiritual ability as a Christian to consciously choose your thoughts and replace ungodly ones with scriptural truths, resulting in a spiritually victorious life.

This book follows a three-part plan. In Part 1, we’ll learn about the war for the mind. We’ll uncover the enemy’s basic strategy for attacking you through your thoughts, and we’ll gain knowledge and tools for defending ourselves. In Part 2, we’ll study detailed battle plans for defeating the specific mental enemies of distraction, shame, fear, cynicism, self-importance, victimhood, and...

Shortform Exercise: Recognize the War in Your Own Mind

Jennie Allen says today’s primary spiritual war is taking place in our minds. One of the first steps to victory is to recognize the way this battle is currently active in your own life and self. This means you have to begin reflecting consciously on your own thinking.

What’s one specific way this spiritual battle manifests in your life? Identify a repetitive negative pattern of thought and/or behavior—a negative spiral—and briefly describe it. (For example, do you keep returning to a habit of criticizing your spouse even when you thought you had broken it? Do you sabotage job interviews or your career advancement by playing out entrenched feelings of incompetence or inferiority?)

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapters 2-3: How the Enemy Traps You: Self-Lies and Toxic Thoughts

Chapter 1 introduced the mind war that envelopes us all. Chapters 2 and 3 identify the enemy’s basic, interlinked attack strategies, exposing their nature and impact.

Self-Lies and Their Deep Source

Satan attacks your mind by convincing you to believe lies about yourself, which are rooted in a lie about God.

Your self-lies resolve into three general categories:

• “I’m helpless.”
• “I’m worthless.”
• “I’m unlovable.”

The fundamental lie about God that lurks behind your self-lies is the unconscious belief that God’s love isn’t for you. The source of these lies is both spiritual and practical. As stated in Chapter 1, the ultimate source of all such lies is demonic. On the practical level, painful life experiences generate self-lies, which then become part of you when engraved in your brain through toxic thoughts.

Toxic Thoughts and Their Toxic Effects

Toxic thoughts, arising from self-lies, have devastating effects on your life.

For one thing, toxic thoughts shape your mind, emotions, and responses, creating their own alternate reality, a false mental state in which and from which distorted reasoning seems true. They blind you to the real...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapters 4-6: How to Break Free From Mental Strongholds

The distorted thought life described in Chapters 2-3 is the deepest, darkest stronghold inside you. The devil wants to keep you locked up in there, all alone, forever. In biblical idiom, the term “stronghold” frequently refers to a nexus of sin and dysfunction inside your heart-mind that’s sealed up and walled off from God’s healing grace.

Satan’s evil intention for our minds reflects a psychological fact: Research has found that up to 70 percent of spontaneously occurring thoughts are negative. Negativity appears to be our default setting.

The author found this confirmed at another women’s church meeting when she asked attendees to identify the thoughts playing in their minds as they arrived. Negative thoughts (worries about finances, feelings of low self-worth, and so on) dominated.

Negative thinking produces a destructive chain reaction:

• Negative self-assumptions (for example, “I’m unlovable because I’ve failed too much”) lead to
• negative emotions (anger, hopelessness, and so on), which lead to
• negative beliefs (for example, “I’ll never be good enough”), which lead to
• negative actions (such as numbing your pain or faking your happiness), which...

Shortform Exercise: Make a Mental Story Map

Allen’s mental story map exercise brings out the current contents of your mind for evaluation. It provides a useful tool for taking the first step toward controlling your thoughts, which is to become aware of them.

Before continuing to the questions below, make a mental story map. First, draw the map, with your primary current emotion circled in the middle and its contributing factors surrounding it. Second, pray, search the scriptures, and talk to God about it. Third, look for common patterns and themes in the map. Finally, notice the storyline that these uncovered themes and thoughts have built about God.

Get Out of Your Head Summary Part 2 | Chapter 7: Heading Into Battle

Part 1 introduced you to the war for your mind. It identified your enemy (Satan) and exposed his strategies (self-lies and toxic thoughts). It also taught you the basic strategy for escaping his mental strongholds. Part 2 builds on this by teaching you how to fight specific battles in this war.

Remember, the battleground is your mind, not individual problematic actions or habits. You are what you think (see Proverbs 23:7). Satan knows this and wants you to believe lies about God and yourself. What you need to do is to shift your mental focus from the flesh to the Spirit.

The Awesome Power of Thought

Every great and awful act in history and in our lives starts with a thought. A single thought that honors God can change the course of history and eternity. A single uninterrupted lie in your mind can produce inconceivable havoc in the world.

Negative biblical examples of this truth in action include Eve’s sin in the garden (which began with Satan’s implanted thought that the fruit was good and beneficial) and David’s sin with Bathsheba (which began with lustful thoughts).

Positive biblical examples include Mary’s submission to God’s plan for using her to bring his Son...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 8: The Battle Against Distraction

The first battle we’ll study is foundational to fighting all the others. The weapon you’ll learn to use in this battle is the basis for all other interrupting strategies and the foundation for all other spiritual weapons and tools.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this first battle is distraction, which keeps you from seeking God’s help to quiet the chaos in your mind.

Some typical thoughts associated with distraction include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• My schedule’s too full. I don’t have time for prayer and meditation.
• I’m the active type. I’m not one for silence and solitude.
• God has better things to do than help me with my little problems.

Your weapon against distraction is stillness, a state of silent rest in God’s presence from which you can recognize and combat your negative spirals.

The Lie: Distraction Makes You Feel Better

The enemy’s basic lie in this battle is that you’ll feel better if you remain distracted.

The distraction in question is a perpetual inability—or rather a decision not—to spend time in silence and solitude with God. There are many ways to keep yourself distracted, including...

Shortform Exercise: Reframe a Negative Thought

Chapter 8 lays out a practical strategy for reframing negative thoughts by exposing them, deconstructing them, and replacing them with positive thoughts from God.

Consider again the mental story map that you made for Chapter 6. Select one of your toxic thoughts that you identified and, if the thought isn’t already stated in the form of [negative emotion] + [reason], rephrase it that way below.

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 9: The Battle Against Shame

In this second battle of the war for your mind, you’ll face an enemy that wants to shut you off from relationships with other people. Even more, it wants to shut you off from a relationship with God himself.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this battle is shame, which leads you to behave self-protectively by generating an illusion of self-enclosed autonomy.

Some typical thoughts associated with shame include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• People would run if they knew how badly I’ve failed.
• I’m not a people person. I enjoy being a loner.
• Other people just don’t get me.
• Nobody wants to hear about my problems.

Your weapon against shame is community, a relationship of open, heartful connection with God and other people.

The Lie: You Don’t Need Anyone

The enemy’s basic lie in this battle is that you can “do it on your own,” that you can live your own life and solve your own problems. This lie is generated and fueled by the shame described above. We’re each burdened with a deep-seated fear that our true selves are shameful, that other people would reject us and abandon us if they really knew our thoughts,...

Shortform Exercise: What's Your “Last 2 Percent”?

In Chapter 9, Allen talks about the liberating value of sharing things that you hold back from others in an attempt to protect yourself from shame. You don’t really help yourself through this act of concealment. Instead, you actually empower the hidden things to poison you and dominate you. It’s only when you bring them into the light of community that they can be healed.

We all know of people who have suffered for refusing to share their “last 2 percent.” There are also notable examples in literature and film. Think of a “real-life” example or, if you prefer, one from a book, movie, or television program. Name them in the box below.

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 10: The Battle Against Fear

In this chapter, you’ll learn to fight an enemy that’s dedicated to making you live your life in a perpetual state of anxiety, robbing you of peace and poisoning your view of God’s providence and goodness.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this battle is fear. More specifically, it’s the fear that God isn’t actually in control of the world and your life.

Some typical thoughts associated with fear include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• What if my worst nightmare comes true?
• What will I do if [insert awful thing] happens?
• Everything’s out of control.
• I’m not good enough to handle this.
• I probably said that the wrong way (or they took it the wrong way).

Your weapon against fear is surrender, an attitude of total trust in God’s goodness, power, and provision.

The Lie: God’s Not in Control

Fear’s lie is that you can’t trust God to take care of your future. This lie is fueled by the question “What if?” There are infinite variations on it. For instance:

• What if this person hurts me like the last person I trusted?
• What if my spouse betrays me?
• What if my children die horribly?

The effects of...

Shortform Exercise: Analyze a Fear

Chapter 10 presents several strategies for surrendering your fears to God. This exercise leads you through practicing one of these.

Write one of your chief fears, something that persistently causes you anxiety and has the potential to knock you into a toxic thought spiral. (Are you afraid of close relationships? Do you suffer from anxious thoughts about failing publicly at your job? Do you lose sleep because you’re afraid for your family’s safety?)

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 11: The Battle Against Cynicism

In this chapter, you’ll learn to defeat an enemy whose goal is to rob you of joy and bury you under a mountain of pessimistic gloom.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this battle is cynicism, which makes you pessimistic about people and life in general.

Some typical thoughts associated with cynicism include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• Everyone disappoints you. Don’t trust people.
• Don’t get your hopes up.
• Belief is for gullible fools.
• I don’t need anyone’s help. I’m fine on my own.

Here are some other signs of cynicism. Use them in tandem with the thoughts listed above to assess whether you’re infected:

• You find optimism annoying.
• You think nice people have ulterior motives.
• You always feel misunderstood.
• You always expect the bottom to drop out when things are going well.
• You’re quick to notice other people’s faults.
• You worry about being taken advantage of.
• You’re guarded when meeting new people.
• You’re habitually sarcastic.

Your weapon against cynicism is delight. More specifically, it’s awe-filled delight in God, his goodness, and the beauty of his creation.

The Lie:...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 12: The Battle Against Self-Importance

In this chapter, you’ll learn to fight an enemy that wants to distort your relationship with others by distorting your estimation of yourself.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this chapter is self-importance or self-inflation. This is the idea, rampant in 21st-century consumer culture, that you’re awesome, and even more: that fixating on your own awesomeness is a great thing.

Some typical thoughts associated with self-importance include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• Why don’t they listen to me?
• I’ll prove them all wrong.
• But what about my needs?
• You don’t really care about me.
• None of it is my fault.

Your weapon against self-importance is humility, a proper estimation of yourself through recognizing that only God is awesome, that you aren’t even all that great, and that your calling on earth is to serve other people.

The Lie: Your Self-Esteem Is Everything

The enemy’s basic lie in this battle is that self-esteem is your life-compass, your primary tool for navigating and achieving a good life.

The lie of self-esteem has several sources. In our sinful state of fallenness, the automatic trajectory...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 13: The Battle Against Victimhood

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to fight effectively against an enemy whose goal is to convince you that you’ll never be happy because life is against you.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this chapter is victimhood, a state of unhappiness centered in self-pity over your painful experiences.

Some typical thoughts associated with victimhood include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• It isn’t fair.
• I’m doing the best I can just to survive.
• I can’t ever recover from what happened. I can’t move on.
• My life wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
• Nobody would believe what I’ve been through.
• I never get any good breaks.

Your weapon against victimhood is gratitude, an encompassing attitude with an accompanying practice of thankful appreciation, no matter what happens.

The Lie: You’re the Victim of Your Circumstances

The enemy’s basic lie in this battle is that you’re a victim of your circumstances. It tells you that you’re doomed to a life of misery because of the negative things that have happened to you, because of your situation, because of what other people have done to you or withheld from you,...

Shortform Exercise: Practice Gratitude

The most difficult time to practice gratitude is when you’re faced with challenging and painful circumstances. Ironically, this is also the time when practicing gratitude is most necessary. This exercise will help you to get started.

Describe a challenging and/or painful circumstance in your life, one that you could easily use as an excuse to identify as a victim. It can be a past circumstance or a present one.

Get Out of Your Head Summary Chapter 14: The Battle Against Complacency

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to battle an enemy that tries to seduce you into a useless and ultimately soul-killing life of self-indulgence and mediocrity.

Your Enemy and Your Weapon

Your enemy in this chapter is complacency, a state of listless passivity in which you find comfort in mediocrity and the status quo while you indulge your own whims and feel your passion for God fade away.

Some typical thoughts associated with complacency include the following. Look for these in your own mind:

• I have nothing to offer.
• I deserve some “me time.”
• Let someone else do it.

Your weapon against complacency is intentional service, a choice to work for the good of other people instead of fixating on your own comfort and contentment. Clearly, this relates to Chapter 12’s battle with self-importance, but the focus here is different. In the battle against complacency, the enemy isn’t self-inflation (although it’s related to it) but self-indulgence.

The Lie: You’re Here to Do What You Want

The enemy’s basic lie in this battle is that you’re free to live for yourself, to do whatever you want to do. This lie comes out in thought patterns that...

Get Out of Your Head Summary Part 3 | Chapters 15-16: Winning the War

In Part 1, you learned about the war for your mind and what it entails and involves. You learned about toxic thoughts spirals, mental strongholds, and the basic technique for escaping from these strongholds by replacing toxic thoughts with Godly ones. In Part 2, you learned how to engage in specific battles against specific mental enemies using specific weapons. Now let’s zoom out again to consider the entire war and learn the most important lesson of all: what we’re actually fighting for.

Winning the war for your mind requires following certain overarching principles that preside over the individual battles.

Victory in Jesus

The first and most important of these principles is that Jesus himself illustrates the victory in each battle. The same Holy Spirit that empowered him empowers you.

• Because Jesus sought solitude away from the crowds with his Father, you, too, can choose stillness with God over distraction.
• Because Jesus chose to live in community with others, you can do this, too.
• Because Jesus trusted his Father, even to the point of death, you, too, can let go of fear and trust God.
• Because Jesus knew all about the world’s brokenness and sin...

Shortform Exercise: Battle in the Spirit

Part 2 of this book detailed seven battles in the war for your mind (the battle against distraction, the battle against fear, and so on). Part 3 gave thumbnail sketches of how Jesus demonstrated and illustrated victory in each of these battles. It also pointed out that you have the same Spirit in you that empowered Jesus.

Which of the seven battles in Part 2 is particularly important to you? Which do you find yourself fighting most frequently? Even if you could validly name several of them, for this exercise choose just one.