Interior Integration for Catholics

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In this episode, Catholic psychologist Peter Martin and I discuss narcissism with a live audience, covering the following questions: 1) What are two primary clinical approaches to treating individuals with narcissism; 2) How do we distinguish between boldness and narcissism; 3) How does one relate with a narcissistic spouse; 4) How do we work with narcissistic family members who don’t believe in God; 5) The importance of feeling cherished and treasured by God; 6) The relationship between narcissism and spiritual abuse in religious communities and organizations; 7) What makes it difficult for a person with narcissism to receive the love of God; 8) what are the different attachment styles associated with overt and covert narcissism; 9) How do children’s experiences of narcissism impact them in adulthood; 10) What are the effects of narcissistic parenting on children’s separation and individuation; and 11) How does one manage a contentious co-parenting relationship with an ex-spouse who is narcissistic?

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In this episode, we examine different definitions of narcissism, we look at the markers and diagnostic criteria for narcissism, we examine the main beliefs, emotions, assumptions, and internal experiences that fuel narcissistic defenses (especially idealization and devaluation), we focus on relational patterns that narcissists have, and we look at how narcissists subjectively experience themselves. I show how narcissistic defenses represent maladaptive ways of trying to get deep needs met, especially integrity needs. We explore different kinds of narcissism, especially the different between over and covert narcissism. We then go into how to identify narcissistic behaviors and appropriate ways of responding, according to the secular experts. Also, I issue you an invitation to a special opportunity. Tonight, Monday, August 7, 2023, from 8:30 PM to 10:00 PM Eastern Time -- I will have Catholic Psychologist Peter Martin as a special guest and we will be discussing narcissism -- in this free Zoom meeting, for the first 30 minutes or so, Dr. Martin and I will have a conversation about narcissism, and then for the next hour, we open it up for questions. Register by going to our Interior Integration for Catholics Landing page at soulsandhearts.com/iic. At the top, there's a link to register for the Zoom meeting. You can send me questions to crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- or leave me a VM at 317.567.9594 and I will play that voicemail on the air and Dr. Martin and I will answer you questions.

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Dr. Gerry Crete, Marion Moreland and Dr. Peter Malinoski discuss the relationship among parts and how your manager parts make up what is perceived to be your personality. Dr. Peter offers a 25-minute experiential exercise to help you connect with your manager parts, the ones who make up your "personality." Then we debrief, describe our experiences of the exercise and answer questions from our live audience.

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In this episode, Dr. Peter discusses five reasons why the conventional understanding of a single, homogeneous personality is insufficient to more fully understand your internal experience and how alternative conceptualizations of the human psyche that recognize internal multiplicity, parts, and systems are not only more helpful, but also harmonize with our Catholic Faith.

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Join Catholic IFS therapists Marion Moreland, Jody Garneau, and Dr. Peter Malinoski for an in-depth discussion of unburdening, informed by Internal Family Systems and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person. We explore three kinds of burdens -- personal burdens, legacy burdens, and unattached burdens (the IFS equivalent of demons), we provide examples from our own lives, we emphasize the importance of felt safety and protection for all parts, and we discuss the role of attachment theory in unburdening. In our Q&A with our live audience, we discuss how to approach "hiding parts" as well.

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In our 100th episode, we celebrate by going inside in an experiential exercise. Recorded before a live audience, Dr. Peter guides you through an experiential exercise to help you connect with parts of you that resist God's love. We create a space where you can much more deeply understand the negative, distorted God images that some of your parts may have -- mistaken ways they see God, and how those misunderstandings came about. With gentleness, kindness, and love for your parts, your parts might be ready for your innermost self to be a bridge between them and God and Mother Mary. Come join us on an adventure inside, where we work to overcome the human formation obstacles to embracing God's love for us. At the end, audience participants share their experiences with Dr. Peter and he answers questions.

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Summary -- It is so common for Catholics (and others) to reject the love of God, to not let that love in. Join Dr. Peter for this episode where we explore in depth the eight natural, human formation reasons why we refuse God's love. We also look at what Hell really is and why it really exists. Through examples, quotes, and an exploration of Dr. Peter's own parts, listen to how this critical, central topic comes alive. And then Dr. Peter presents the an action plan for accepting and embracing God's love.
Lead-in
1. “It’s very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved.” ―Psychiatrist and Harvard Professor George Vaillant (need description)
2. 1. The Hardest Thing about love for many of us Catholics -- is to be loved. To tolerate being loved first. We can't love unless we take love in first. We can't generate love out of nothing on our own, we don't have that power.
  2. Many Catholics make sacrifices great and small in an attempt to love others.
  3. Many Catholics go to great lengths to try to please God and to love their neighbor -- very busy people, most parishes have a few of these -- always volunteering, working, making things happen, St. Vincent de Paul, soup kitchens, corporal works of mercy -- working so hard to live out the Gospel as they understand it, but it's all external -- they are very out of touch with their internal lives. Their prayer lives are shallow and sketchy and they are uncomfortable in their own skin and they will not tolerate silence.
  4. The vast majority of us Catholics will not tolerate being loved deeply or fully. We shy away from receiving love. We get so uncomfortable, we skirt around the edges of being loved
    1. Or we allow love into us only so far. Only so far. We won't let real love permeate all of our being. We let the quote acceptable unquote parts of us be loved, those parts we allow in our shop window. Those parts we believe others will accept. 4. 1. But to allow someone to love all of you -- your nasty parts, your shameful parts, your disgusting parts, your hidden leper parts, your sinful parts -- those tax collector parts, your inner prostitutes and blasphemers, your Pharisee parts, the parts of you that are so lost and so isolated and so angry and hateful? Those parts? Most of us will say -- No way -- no way does anyone get to see those parts if I can help it, let alone love those parts. How about your terrified parts, your desperate parts, your wounded, traumatized parts, the ones no one wants, the parts of you that have been rejected by everybody, including yourself. 5. 1. This podcast is for us Catholics who understand at least intellectually that we have those parts. And that those parts need to be loved. Those parts also need to be redeemed. 6. 1. For anyone out there who is saying "Well, I don't think I have any parts like that, Dr. Peter. I don't have any problems being loved."
      1. My response to that is one of two possibilities -- either you are:
        
        1 -- A very special person, who has been freed from our fallen human condition and you've achieved an extraordinary degree of perfection in the natural and spiritual realms -- and if so, congratulations to you. You don't need this podcast and you don't need this episode, you are so far above the rest of us. I'm in awe of you. You don't need what I have to offer. 2. 1. Or 2 -- you don't know yourself very well. You are out of touch with yourself and your parts, disconnected inside. 3. 2. 7.
        
        It's especially hard for us to tolerate being loved by God. That's the primary reason we don't love God back and we don't love our neighbor and we don't love ourselves. We won't be loved first. 1. God loved us first.
        
        It all starts with God's love -- not our love. God loved us first. 1. Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow in his Book Shaken “We were created by Love, in love, and for love.” 2. Paul tells us in Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. 1. God loved us first. 3. 1 John 3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1. The world does not know God. Christianity is the way to discover who God actually is. To discover what Love actually is. 4. John tells us in 1 John 4:9-10 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. 5. This is what I want you to remember. From St. John, 1 John 4:19: St. John tells us: We love because he first loved us 6. And it's up to us to take that love in, to let it reach to every corner of our being. That doesn't sound easy. And it's not as easy as it sounds.
        
        Intro
3. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, a.k.a. Dr. Peter, clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, podcaster, blogger, cofounder and president of Souls and Hearts -- but most of all I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to experience the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God the Father and our primary Mother Mary. What I want for you more than anything else is that you enter into a deep, intimate, personal, loving relationship with the three Persons of the Trinity and with our Lady. That is what this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast is all about, that is what Souls and Hearts is all about – all about shoring up the natural foundation for the spiritual life of intimacy with God, all about overcoming the natural human formation deficits and obstacles to contemplative union with God our Father and our Lady, our Mother
4. 1. We are on an adventure of love together. Episode 94 of this podcast focused on the primacy of love in the Catholic life. Episode 95 focused on trauma's devastating impact on our capacity to love. Episode 96 discussed how trauma hardens us against being loved. Episode 97 discussed how trauma predisposes us to self-hatred and indifference, a refusal to love ourselves. And episode 98, the last episode was all about ordered self-love, how we need to love ourselves in an ordered way in order to love God and neighbor, to carry out the two great Commandments. Today were to take a step back were to look at the most critical prerequisite for loving God and others. We are going to discuss being loved the first, accepting the love of God first. This is absolutely essential. The most critical mistake that most Catholics make is to refuse the love of God. Let me say that again. The most critical mistake, the most devastating, catastrophic mistake that most Catholics make is to refuse to allow God's love to transform us entirely, to make us into new men and women.
6. Let us start out with The order of Loves
7. God leads with love -- he goes first. God makes the first move. He moves toward us, we who He created, and who have fallen from grace because of original sin. We don't make the first move. God does. He loved us first, and he continues to love us first
8. 1. Sean Mitchell -- We Love Because He First Loved Us -- Those Catholic Men.

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). These words from the first letter of John beautifully and succinctly sum up the origin and end of the Christian life—which, in a word, is love. “Being Christian,” said Benedict XVI, “is…the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1). That “encounter” is our experience of God “first loving us.” The “new horizon” that it opens up, the “decisive direction” that it gives to our lives, is love—our love of God and our neighbor because of His prior love of us. To participate in that endless exchange of love is what it means to be a Christian. It is the center from which all other aspects of the Christian life emanate. I fear that a significant number of Catholic men miss this point and regard something other than love as the central point of being a follower of Christ.

What I did not include from Benedict’s quote above is what he says being Christian is not. It is not, he says, “the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est). To state that more generally, being Christian isn’t primarily about my will or my intellect and what I do with them (i.e., make “ethical choices” and assent to “lofty ideas”). Rather, it is first and foremost about my heart, my whole person in all its mystery, and what has been done to it by God. Is it not the case, though, that so many of us fail to understand this? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think we would have to admit that it is, that we ourselves are among those men who place something other than love at (or at least close to) the center of our “Christian” life…even if we don’t realize it.

Comment on this
Edward Vacek: Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. The sequence in loving and being loved. (1) God affirms us; (2) God receives us; (3) we accept God’s love; (4) we affirm God; (5) God forms community with us; (6) we cooperate with God in loving God in the world; and finally (7) we grow in a limited co-responsibility with God. p. 177
1. Genesis 3.
  1. The trauma of original sin.
  2. God comes looking for them -- God seeks them out -- hiding, fleeing from him in their shame and confusion and bitterness, in the trauma of original sin.
  3. God calls out to them -- example of His gentleness.
  4. No cursing of Adam and Eve. The serpent is cursed, the ground is cursed. Not Adam and Eve
  5. Provides clothing for them to help them with their shame.
  6. Protects them from the Tree of Life. Banishing them from the garden was an act of love -- if they had eaten from the tree of life, the
    1. Genesis 3:22- 24 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. 7. 1. God making sure that they won't be separated from Him forever. St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis, 122 explains, “God did this lest this life-giving gift that they would receive through the tree of life become misery, and thus bring worse evil upon them than what they had already obtained from the tree of knowledge. From the latter tree they obtained temporal pains, whereas the former tree would have made those pains eternal. From the latter they obtained death which would have cast off from them the bonds of their pains. The former tree, however, would have caused them to live as if buried alive, leaving them to be tortured eternally by their pains.”
    2. 1. The basic problem with the sequence -- not tolerating enough contact with God to be affirmed, for Him to receive us. to understand Him in a radically different way.
    4. And what kind of love is God's love for us? God Himself tells us: I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31:3. God is faithful to us. He loves with an everlasting love.
      1. Isaiah 54.10 For the mountains may depart

and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,

says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

How steadfast is God's love: Deuteronomy 7:9 tells us. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations
Psalm 86:5 For thou, O Lord, art good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee.
1. God requires a response from us. -- abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee. We have to call on him, we have to respond to the love.
2. 1. That is what this episode is all about. This is episode 99 of the Interior Integration for Catholic podcast, released on November 7, 2022 titled IIC 99 Why We Catholics Reject God's Love for Us and How to Embrace that Love
3. 1. CCC 221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love": [1 John 4:8, 16] God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
4. 1. We have to take him up on that.
6. How do we know we are loved by God? -- 2 ways. Faith and lived experience
7. Faith Infused virtue
  1. CCC 150 Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.
  2. CCC 153 When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven".24 Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'"25
8. 1. Lived experience of the relationship with God.
  2. 2 Timothy 1:12 But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.
  3. Can feel it in consolations.
  4. We don't want to engineer emotional experiences of closeness, manipulating emotions --
    1. Concern about Catholic youth events, hyper emotional, noisy and using psychological techniques of influence to generated contrived emotional experiences. Hyping people up, getting them out of their window of tolerance.
9. 1. We don't want to rely on our subjective experience of lived relationship
  2. Because the subjective experience of connection with God can vary way too much.
    1. 1. Von Hildebrand writes, “Our confidence in God must be independent of whether we experience His nearness, whether we sense the enlivening touch of grace, whether we feel ourselves being born on the wings of His love.” (p 210).
    2. 1. Mother Teresa
    3. 1957 confided to spiritual director: In the darkness . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The child of your love — and now become as the most hated one. The one — you have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer . . . Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love — the word — it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. 2. 1. David Scott in chapter 17 of his book The Love That Made Mother Teresa wrote: For more than fifty years following her initial visions and locutions, Mother Teresa was wrapped in a dark, pitiless silence. She only once more heard the voice of God, and she believed the doors of heaven had been closed and bolted against her. The more she longed for some sign of his presence, the more empty and desolate she became. 4.
    5. Needs
10. Weekly Reflection: from September 6, 2022: The Top 10 Needs That Fuel Modern-Day Idol Worship go to soulsandhearts.com/blog
11. 1. Integrity Needs
  2. My need to exist and survive
    1. 1. My need to matter
    2. 1. My need to have agency
    3. 1. My need to be good
    4. 1. My need for mission and purpose in life
  3. 1. Attachment needs --Brown and Elliott (2016)
  4. Felt sense of safety and protection -- have to go through the valley of shame, fear, anger, grief
    1. 1. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood -- have to tolerating being in relationship, being present.
    2. 1. Feeling comforted, soothed and reassured
    3. 1. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in
    4. 1. Feeling the other has your best interests at heart
  6. Resistance to being loved
12. Weaving in Integrity needs and attachment needs.
13. 1. Main themes
  2. Limited vision and lack of imagination, leading to a refusal to be transformed by God
    1. 1. We don't understand God's love
    2. 1. The Costs of Being Loved by God
    3. 1. Poor God images
    4. 1. Poor Self images -- Shame
    5. 1. Refusal to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be revealed to God.
    6. 1. Lack of courage.
    7. 1. Anger at God -- rebellion
  3. 1. Limited vision and lack of imagination, leading to a refusal to be transformed by God -- unhealthy satisfaction in far more limited spiritual goals -- a willingness to settle. Von Hildebrand
  4. According to von Hildebrand, the vision of most Catholics is way too narrow – our sights are set way too low. We are satisfied with too little in the spiritual life – we are like chickens pecking at the ground when we are called to soar as eagles. We may be content with merely avoiding sin, overcoming vices and developing virtues. Some of us may pursue the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, satisfied with incremental gains Weekly reflection October 26, 2022 -- Why we resist change – and especially radical transformation.
    1. Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children character Jacob Portman “One day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered."
    2. Love, in some sense, is nothing other than an invitation to great joy and suffering, so they shy away from it. Paul Catalanotto Refusal to love is also refusal to live The Catholic Weekly
    3. 1. John 6: 41-42 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
  5. John 6: vs. 60 and 66 Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
  6. 1. We don't understand God's love
  7. Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
    1. 1. Sharon Jaynes When Love Hurts April 17, 2018. Proverbs31.org

“Mommy, Mommy,” Steven cried. “Don’t let them hurt me!”

My son, Steven, was about 3 years old when he contracted a severe case of the flu. His slumped body snuggled listlessly like an old, worn rag doll.

When I carried him into the medical clinic, the doctor quickly diagnosed dehydration and immediately sent us to the hospital.

My heart ripped apart as the nurses strapped my little boy onto a table and began placing IVs in his tiny arms.

“Mommy, Mommy,” Steven cried. “Make them stop! They’re hurting me.”

“No, honey,” I tried to assure him. “They’re going to make you all better.”

“Mommy, help me!”

Steven cried. I cried. The nurses cried.

I could only imagine what was going through Steven’s little mind. Why are these people hurting me? Why doesn’t Mommy make them stop? She must not love me. She’s not protecting me. If she loved me she wouldn’t let them do this. She must not care about me.

Standing in the corner watching my little boy cry, I wondered if that’s how God feels when I’m going through a painful situation that’s for my ultimate good. I cried out, “God, why are You letting this happen? Don’t You love me? Don’t You care about what’s happening to me? Why don’t You make it stop?”

Can see the need to exist here being threatened.
1. I might be very injured, I might die. Integrity need
No felt sense of being protected -- attachment need. In fact, just the opposite. The little child was being protected, but didn't understand, didn't feel it.
No felt sense of being comforted or soothed, child not open to it. Third primary condition of secure attachment
No felt sense of support for his highest good. Fifth condition of secure attachment.
Parts of us very young, like this 3-year-old.
Hebrews 12:11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
1. Poor view of discipline
  1. Bad experiences of being disciplined -- not having been disciplined out of love
    1. 1. But rather out of anger or inconvenience or frustration. 3.
  2. 1. Freud -- gratification and frustration to grow.
  4. The Costs of Being Loved by God
2. Real love, agape or charity, is always given freely -- we understand that much
  1. But real love, agape, charity -- real love is never received freely in this fallen world.
    1. 1. There is a cost to allowing real love into our lives. 3.
  2. 1. Very little discussion about the costs of being loved by God. I find that so strange. So many Catholics don't think this way. It is as though Catholics have parts that believe that being loved by God is one of two things
  3. Being loved by God should easy, delightful, peaceful --
    1. like being the lead character a Hallmark movie
    2. Romance novels. Easy love that just come naturally. Emotional Junk food that nourishes illusions.
    3. and when it's not, they conclude that God isn't loving them, or that they are excluded from His love
    4. 1. Being loved by God is terrible
    5. Echoes of Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 3.
    6. 1. Burning away
  4. Real love -- Agape -- burns away things that are sinful within us -- it doesn't coexist with the vice within us.
    1. 1. Real love also purifies us from anything that is not morally wrote, but that is disordered or dysfunctional or imperfect
    2. 1. Real love is the greatest good. And because it's the greatest good, it requires us to give up lesser goods. Perceived good and actual goods.
    3. Coping strategies, crutches that helped us in the past
    4. Analogy of the safe -- limited room, silver and gold.
    5. 1. 1 Peter 1:7 So that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
    6. 1. Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
    7. 1. Zechariah 13:9 And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
    8. 1. Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.
    9. 1. Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
    10. 1. Integrity needs
    11. I exist 2. 1. I matter 3. 1. I am good
      1. Attachment needs
    12. Felt safety and protection 2. 1. Felt comfort and reassurance 3. 1. Felt sense of being cherished and delighted in. No experience of that while being corrected, perfected. 4. 11.
    13. 1. xThe cost is up front -- the benefit in the future.
    15. Poor God images
3. We don't understand God. We don't know who he is. -- reflected in the Sharon Jaynes' story of her son at the doctor's office.
4. 1. Lack of confidence in God. Lack of Faith
5. 1. God Images = My emotional and subjective experiences of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is. What I feel about God in my bones. This is my experiential sense how my feelings and how my heart interpret God.
  2. Each part, not in right relationship with the innermost self, has a distorted God image.
    1. 1. God images are often unconscious.
    2. 1. Initially God images are shaped by the relationship that I have with my parents.
    3. 1. My God images are heavily influenced by psychological factors
    4. 1. Different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at a given time.
    5. 1. God images are always formed experientially;
    6. God images flow from our relational experiences and 2. 1. Also how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young. 3.
      1. My God images can be radically different than my God concept.
      2. We all have heretical God images.
      3. Differ from God Concept = What I profess about God. It is my more intellectual understanding of God, based on what one has been taught, but also based on what I have explored through reading. I decide to believe in my God concept. Reflected in the Creed, expanded in the Catechism, formal teaching.
      4. Can take a while to get to these God images -- not on the surface
      5. We don't know God very well.
      6. We refuse Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons And Everyday Spirituality : Allow people to love you as they must love you, not as you want them to love you. Even God does not love us as we wish Him to. Learning to love is learning to accept love as it comes.
      7. I will lose the relationship with God that I have if I push the envelope
  3. And you will. That is true.
    2. Episodes 37-49 on God images.
    3. Really hits on attachment needs.
  4. Poor Self images -- Shame
6. Self-images are much more emotionally driven, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment.
7. 1. Each part, not in right relationship with the innermost self, has a distorted self image.
8. 1. Pastor Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hand of an angry God, 1740s “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire ... you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.”
9. 1. Hiding from God.
  2. Genesis 3.
10. 1. I don't want to find out I am unlovable. I can't bear that.
11. 1. Episode 24 of this podcast, God images and self images.
12. 1. Really hits on integrity needs. Especially the need to be good.
14. Refusal to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be revealed to God.
15. Because for love to be real, for love to be agape means me allowing you to love all of me. All my parts. My entire being
  1. Not just the acceptable parts of me in the shop window, those that I allow others to see.
    2. Fears of being hurt one more time --
  2. Fears of betrayal
    1. 1. Fears of abandonment
    2. We think we can hide.
    3. Self protection -- need to survive. Need to be good.
  3. Lack of courage.
16. Philophobia -- fear of love All of us have parts that fear love.
17. 1. Comfort in the familiarity of the dysfunction we know.
  2. Predictability
  3. Change is scary
    1. Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse “For change to occur in us, we must be willing to enter the wilderness of the unknown and to wander in unfamiliar territory, directionless and often in the darkness....We do not need to keep every little thing under control. In fact, we find ourselves only by allowing some falling apart to happen.”
    2. Erica Jong: I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
    3. Nelson Mandela: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
18. Anger at God, Rebellion against Him. secondary to poor God images. Anger is the ordered emotion in response to injustice.
19. What is a part?
20. Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God.
21. 1. When parts are not integrated, under the leadership and guidance of my innermost self
  2. Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader. 2.
  3. 1. Parts in greater detail -- discussed my parts in Episode 71 A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others.
  4. Good Boy
  5. Evaluator (formerly "the Critic")
  6. Melancholio
  7. Adventurer (formerly my "part who holds fear")
  8. Feisty One (formerly my "angry part")
  9. Challenger (formerly "the Rebel")
  10. Lover Part
  11. Collaborator Parts (formerly my Competent Part)
  12. Guardian (formerly "the Intimidator")
  13. Creative Part
  15. Consequences -- Hell
22. Nothing can separate us from God's love.
  1. Romans 8:38-39 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
  2. Nothing can separate you from the love of God, not even demons -- angel and principalities. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. With one exception. You.
  3. Only you can separate you from the love of God. Only you have the power to do that, by refusing to let that love come it. That's what sin is. It's separating ourselves from God. Sin is damaging our relationship with God.
23. 1. Separation happens
  2. Jesus weeping over Jerusalem Luke 19:41-44 And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.
    1. It's not that God won't protect Jerusalem. It's that he could not protect the Israelites, not without violating their freedom, not without forcing Himself on them. 2.
      1. Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
    2. 1. Pope John Paul II in a 1999 audience, God did not create Hell. Hell “… is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life.”
  3. Catechism of the Catholic Church edited by Archbishop Rino Fisichella 2019 by Our Sunday Visitor Louis Ladaria: To be precise, God did not make Hell. His free creatures make it, inasmuch as they separate themselves from Him. Nor does God send anyone to Hell: it is the damned one who separates himself and does not want to enter into the Father's house. God, St. Irenaeus said, does not really look to punish the damned, but as they are deprived of all good things, it is the penalty that pursues them (Adversus Haereses, V. 27, 2; a similar idea in St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 5, 10: God abandons the sinner to his evil, he does not, properly speaking, give evil to anyone). Because of this, and despite what is said sometimes, we need to insist on the fact that Hell does not say anything against the infinite goodness of God. (p. 863).
    1. 1. Dean Koontz: The Book of Counted Sorrows: “We make Hell real; we stoke its fires. // And in its flames our hope expires.
    2. 1. CCC 30 Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness.
  4. CCC 1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
    1. Not trying to catch us, not with a hand on the trap door to hell. 3. 4. Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC “Ask a Priest: If God loves us so much, why does hell exist?” An analogy might help. Imagine you are on a ship that is searching for survivors from a sunken ocean liner. You see a passenger struggling in the waves behind you. You throw a lifeline to him, but he refuses to grab it. You beg him to take hold of the lifeline, but he ignores your plea. Eventually, he sinks below the waves and drowns. Does his drowning indicate that you were indifferent? When you begged him to grab the lifeline, were you displaying hate? Was his drowning your fault? The answer to all these questions is: no. The person in the water, for whatever reason, refused your help. His drowning was the consequence.
    2. It doesn't matter why we flee from God and why we flee from His love. 5.
    3. 1. Hell as isolation -- cut off from everyone. 1. Images of hell 2. Hell as isolation
    4. Tekla Babyak in 2018 article Dante, Liszt and the alienated agon of hell writes: Dante Alighieri’s Inferno portrays Hell as an alienated realm in which the doomed spirits must spend eternity in isolation and regret. 3. 4. Deepest level of hell, the ninth circle:
    5. "The treacheries of these souls were denials of love (which is God) and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures. As they denied God's love, so are they furthest removed from the light and warmth of His Sun. As they denied all human ties, so are they bound only by the unyielding ice." John Ciardi, Inferno, notes on Canto XXXII, p. 248
    6. Satan encased waist deep in ice. Not fire. 5. Celeste Ng Little Fires Everywhere character of Mia Warren “In all her years of itinerant living, Mia had developed one rule: Don’t get attached to any place, to any apartment, to anything. To anyone.”
    7. 1. In Hell on earth
  5. Fragmentation of Dante's inferno -- lived now.
    1. 1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Life Together “Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he comes involved in it, the more disastrous his isolation.”
    2. 1. Sharon M. Draper Out of My Mind character Melody Brooks “It’s like I live in a cage with no door and no key. And I have no way to tell someone how to get me out.”
    3. 1. Sue Johnson Hold Me Tight “Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response.”
    4. 1. C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce: “That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
  7. Action Plan
24. Pray
  1. Set aside the time. First thing
    1. 1. Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Fathers' Love Fr. Thomas Acklin and Fr. Boniface Hicks. Benedictines, very wise, good grasp of psychology.
    2. 1. Prayer Primer or Fire Within Fr. Thomas Dubay
    3. 1. Read the first letter of John. Lectio Divina
    4. Dan Burke Spiritual Direction.com Lectio Divina, A Guide: What it is & How It helps Prayer Life 2. 1. Appendix on Lectio Divina in Fr. Jacques Philippe's book Called to Life 3. 1. Section on Lectio Divina titled "mediating on Scripture in Fr. Jacques Philippe's book Thirsting for Prayer
      1. Nike Model -- just do it. Set aside perfectionism, desire to do it well.
    5. You're not going to do it well. You're going to do it badly. 2. 1. The most important things in life we either do badly or we don't do at all. 3. 1. St. Therese of Avila. says: “He who neglects mental prayer needs not a devil to carry him to hell, but he brings himself there with his own hands.” 4. 1. St. John of the Cross says: “Without the aid of mental prayer, the soul cannot triumph over the forces of the demon.” 5. 1. St. Teresa of Avila “Prayer is an exercise of love.” (Life 7:12) 6. 6.
    6. 1. Do your human formation work
  2. Relational spirituality -- about relationship
    1. 1. Any difficulties you have in relationships in the natural realm, here on earth -- you are going to bring into your spiritual relationships.
    2. 1. Interior integration
    3. Why is interior integration crucial for union with God? Weekly reflection October 12, 2022 soulsandhearts.com/blog. 2. 1. Get to know your parts
      1. Reason for not praying 3. 1. Jay Earley -- Self Therapy Vol. 1. Now in the Third Edition. Bonnie Weiss Self-Therapy Workbook. 4.
        
        Means
    4. Therapy or counseling -- especially Internal Family Systems therapy with a therapist who is Catholic or who at least respects your Catholic Faith and will not undermine it. 2. 1. Experiential Exercise -- November 21. Splitting those out. 3. 1. Resilient Catholic Community -- you do not have to be alone.
      1. Reopening December 1 -- new cohort
      2. Get to know your parts
      3. I've brought together the best
      4. Wait list -- email on November 10. Sign up soulsandhearts.com/rcc
      5. If interested, contact me.
        
        Crisis@soulsandhearts.com
        
        317.567.9594 conversation hours 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time Every Tuesday and Thursday. (not November 17 -- online conference). 4. 5.
    5. 1. Pray for me
    6. 1. Sent the word out. Let people know about our offerings at Souls and Hearts, this podcast, the weekly reflections. Sign up for those - email. Can see the archive at soulsandhearts.com/blog
    7. Patroness and Patron

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Confusion and controversy abound in the Catholic Church about self-love. Learn four ways to understand self-love, why we avoid self-love, the six reasons it is important to cultivate proper self-love, what is appropriate self-sacrifice, and receive two practical spiritual means for growing in proper self-love: The Litany of Self-Love and also an entirely new way of examining your conscience.

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Summary: In this episode, we review the many ways we fail to love ourselves, through self-hatred and through indifference toward ourselves. We discuss the ways that unlove for self manifests itself, contrasting a lack of love with ordered self-love through the lens of Bernard Brady's five characteristics of love. We discuss the impact of a lack of self-love on your body. I then invite you into an experiential exercise to get to know a part of you that is not loving either another part of you or your body.
Lead-In

“Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie--

Dust unto dust--

The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die

As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell--

Too strong to strive--

Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,

Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng--

The cowed and the meek--

Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong

And dare not speak!”

― Ralph Chaplin, Bars And Shadows

Intro
1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and this is the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcasts, coming to you from the Souls and Hearts Studio in Indianapolis, Indiana.
2. 1. This podcast is all about bringing you the best of psychology and human formation and harmonizing it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
3. 1. In this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, we take the most important human formation issues head on, without trepidation, without hesitation -- we don't mince words as we directly address with the most important concerns in the natural realm, the absolute central issues that we need to address with all of our energy and all of our resources.
4. 1. We have been working through a series on trauma and well-being -- starting with episode 88. In the last episode, episode 96, I Am a Rock: How Trauma Hardens us Against Being Loved -- we discussed the impact of trauma on us accepting love from others, including God.
5. 1. In this episode, we're addressing how trauma sets us up to refuse to love ourselves. Welcome to Episode 97 of Interior Integration for Catholics, titled "Unlove of Self: How Trauma Predisposes You to Self-Hatred and Indifference" It's released on September 5, 2022.
6. 1. It is so good to be with you, thank you for listening in and for being together with me once again. I'm glad we are here and that we are exploring the great unlove of self.
8. The great unlove for self -- like the uncola ads from 7-UP in the late 60s throughout the 70s and 80, even into the late 90s.
9. What does unlove of self mean -- OK, I get it that it's refusing to love myself -- but what does that mean?
10. 1. You might tell me that if I don't love myself, then I am hating myself.
11. 1. All right. Let's go with that. Let's explore self-hatred and self-loathing
  2. Define self-hatred
    1. Self-hatred is hatred directed toward oneself rather than toward others 2. 1. Verywellmind.com article titled "Self-loathing" by Jodi Clarke, a licensed professional counselor Self-loathing, or self-hatred, is extreme criticism of oneself. It may feel as though nothing you do is good enough or that you are unworthy or undeserving of good things in life. Self-hate can feel like having a person following you around, all day every day, criticizing you and pointing out every flaw, or shaming you for every mistake.
      1. Brennan Manning In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.
    2. Not sure I agree with that -- depends on the definitions. Shame and the fear of shame overwhelming the self are such drivers of self hatred. 2. 1. Angel Ploetner, Who Am I? Dissociative Identity Disorder Survivor “Shame plays a huge part in why you hate who you are.”
    3. Shame is so central Check out episodes 37 to 49 of this podcast for a whole series on shame. 3. Eric Hoffer It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world. 4. Basil W. Maturin We never get to love by hate, least of all by self-hatred. 5. Lori Deschene “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”
    5. The primary way we hate ourselves -- for parts of you to hate other parts of you. I am talking about intra-psychic hatred. Hatred within you, for you, by you.
      1. IFS description of the self
  3. Reference Episode 71: A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others
    1. 1. Definition of Parts: Parts are like separate, independently operating personalities within you, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in your life, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has a different attitude or position toward other parts of you and different beliefs and assumptions about your body. Robert Falconer calls these parts insiders.
    2. 1. Like in the movie Inside Out.
    3. 1. Your parts have different roles within your self-system.
    4. 1. Your parts have a very narrow, limited vision when they are not in right relationship with your innermost self. Each of your parts usually has a strong agenda, something that they trying to accomplish, some good that that part is seeking for you.
    5. 1. Polarizations
    6. Examples of polarizations in the most recent weekly reflection -- The Counterfeits of Self-Giving from August 31,2022. How parts get polarized around the idea of giving of self
      1. Compliant surrenderer vs. feisty protector 2. 1. Self-sacrificer vs. rebel 3. 1. Check that out. 4.
        
        Bessel van der Kolk, in his excellent book "The Body Keeps the Score" devotes all of chapter 17 to Internal Family Systems. Very accessible book, I've recommended it before to many non-clinicians. There's a reason it has been the top selling book on trauma for the last seven years running. A book like that comes around once in a generation. In 1992, It was Judith Herman's seminal book Trauma and Recovery. 23 years later, it was The Body Keeps the Score.
        
        To examine Unlove, we are going to contrast unloving with loving. Let's review the five general characteristics of love -- from Bernard Brady, his 2003 Christian Love: How Christians through the Ages have Understood Love.-- drawing heavily from the work of Christian phenomenologists. I introduced his five characteristics of in Episode 94, The Primacy of Love and I expanded on them in Episode 95 Trauma's Devastating Impact on our Capacity to Love. Love is affective, love is affirming, love is responsive, love is unitive, love is steadfast. Those are the five characteristics of love that Bernard Brady distilled from his historical review of how Christians have seen love through the ages. Love is affective, love is affirming, love is responsive, love is unitive, love is steadfast. So let's break down what happens when one part of you is hating another part of you.
        
        Love is affective -- love is emotional
    7. Love rejoices in the beloved -- Protestant Theologian R.H. Neibuhr writes in his 1977 By love, we mean at least these attitudes and actions: rejoicing in the presence of the beloved, gratitude, reverence, and loyalty toward him. p.35 2. 1. Many positive emotions are associated with love
      1. Delight, Bliss, Happiness 2. 1. A sense of fulfillment 3. 1. Warmth, appreciation 4. What does hatred or loathing for another part look like? How do parts hate each other?
      2. Self hatred is also affective -- it's also emotional. But in a very different way that ordered self-love is. 5. 1. Disgust regarding the another part 6. 1. Anger toward another part 7. 1. Contempt for the body -- anger + disgust = contempt 8. 1. Example: Let's say there is a fearful part of you that is very frightened of public speaking – of making presentations in front of other people. And now, for your work, you are required to make an important presentation in front of your supervisors and more senior executives within your company. Another part of you, your perfectionistic part, has led you to rehearse your presentation, to the point where you almost have it memorized. Your last performance in front of your bedroom mirror was so good. But now, in front of your audience, your fearful part locks you up. You find yourself stuttering, stammering, and your inner critic is a railing in hatred against your fearful part. That inner critic is saying things like, "Why are you such a sniveling frightened little coward? It's just a simple presentation, dumb ass, we've practiced it over and over, we have it down. Get yourself together, this is really important, and you are screwing it up and making us all look bad. Who knows what will happen if we can't pull this off." The more intense your inner critic gets in its hateful attack on your fearful part, the more the fearful part freezes. After the presentation ends, the inner critic continues to bash the fearful part, ruminating about how poor the presentation was. 3. Love is affirming
    8. Love says yes to the other at the same time as love says yes to oneself.
      1. In parts thinking, there is a open-hearted yes to all the parts. Not just some parts, not just the "acceptable" parts of us. All part are welcome to the table.
        
        In self-hatred, one or more parts attack the unloved part -- not just superficially, but they hating parts go after the identity of the unloved part
      2. the self-hating parts want to destroy the hated part, or at least banish the hated part from having a voice, from having a seat at the table 2. 1. In our example, you can see how the inner critic is trying to get rid of the fearful part, trying to suppress that part with its fear. 3. 4. From Jodi Clarke's Verywellmind.com article: Typical self-hating thoughts may include:
      3. "I knew we would fail." 5. 1. "Why do I even try?"
      4. "I'm a loser."
      5. "No one wants to be around me."
      6. "Look at me screwing up again."
      7. "Can't I just be normal?"
      8. "I hate myself." 6. Richard Bach The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. 7. When other people affirm the person who is dominated by a self-hating part, the affirmation doesn't really sink in. It doesn't work. The person all caught up in self hatred can't hear the affirmation, can't take the affirmation in.
      9. Richey Edwards “People say to the mentally ill, ‘You know so many people think the world of you.’ But when they don’t like themselves they don’t notice anything. They don’t care about what people think of them. When you hate yourself, whatever people say it doesn’t make sense. ‘Why do they like me? Why do they care about me?’ Because you don’t care about yourself at all.”
      10. Love is responsive:
        
        Love is an active response for the well-being of the other. It's about participating in the promotion of the highest good for the other, potential for the other
  4. How can I help you to flourish? How can I help you toward your highest good?
    1. In self-hatred one or more parts tear down the hated part. There is a response to the hated part, but it's not a positive one.
    2. Rather than attuning to the hated part, the hating parts seek to silence it and suppress it without really getting to know the hated part. Not interested in the hated part's experience -- why the hated part thinks, feels or assumes what it does.
    3. In our example, the inner critic is responsive to the fear of the fearful part, but in hateful way -- seeing the fearful part as counterproductive and threatening the wellbeing of the whole person, and thus feels justified in the bullying, heavy-handed approach taken.
  5. Love is unitive
    1. Bernard Brady: The fruit of love is unity. Love unites. It is in the very nature of love to bring together. p. 279
    2. Hatred divides. It polarizes within. The fearful part and the inner critic have no common ground because of the hatred.
    3. Hatred fragments within. It shatters the self. Order self love helps to integrate all the parts, providing space for all parts to be seen, heard known, and loved.
    4. Love integrates parts, inviting them into a collaborative, cooperative relationship with the innermost self and with all the other parts. We give this internal unity a special name -- interior integration. That is what this podcast is all about. Interior integration for Catholics.
  6. Love is steadfast
12. Steadfastness in self-love requires acceptance of all parts for there to be resilience.
13. 1. Hatred contributes to the inner system of the self being brittle and fragile.
15. Hatred doesn't generally come from our innermost selves
16. Self: The natural core of the person, the center of the person in the natural realm. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader. Unharmed by trauma, by attachment injuries, by relational wounds, by negative life experiences.
  1. Catholics don't believe in John Calvin's concept of total depravity, that we are sinful and morally corrupt through and through. Catholics don't believe we are snow-covered dung heaps, like Martin Luther taught. We are still ontologically good, still made in the image and likeness of God.
  2. We want to be recollected, we want the self governing all of our parts
  3. Like the conductor -- leading the musicians in an orchestra
  4. Like the captain -- leading and governing all the sailors on a ship.
  5. When we are recollected, in self, 8 C's
    1. Calm 6. 1. Curiosity 7. 1. Compassion 8. 1. Confidence 9. 1. Courage 10. 1. Clarity 11. 1. Connectedness 12. 1. Creativity 13. We also have the capacity for kindness
      1. The only exception: unless we've committed the unforgivable sin, blaspheming against the Holy Spirit
        
        CCC 1864: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss” (No. 1864).
        
        Repudiating life, love, truth, mercy, forgiveness -- irrevocably, through hardness of heart. That is possible, or Jesus would not have warned against it. Walking dead.
    2. What does self-hatred mean for our relationships with our body?
17. We are body and soul composites. We are embodied beings.
18. 1. Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score -- groundbreaking work summarizing how much trauma becomes embodied
19. 1. Another way for you to hate yourself -- or more specifically, for a part of you to hate your body.
20. 1. Examples of actively hating the body
  2. Active examples
    1. 4 Extreme cases -- starting with extreme cases -- Suicidal Acts, Body Dysmporphic Disorder, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Self-Harm (aka Self-mutilation).
      1. Suicidal acts -- I did a whole series on suicide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. Episodes 76-80
        
        Suicidal part -- desperately seeking relief from intense pain and distress 2. 1. Other Reason -- these are the core reasons. -- review them in episode 76 and got into how parts are active around suicide in episode 78 The Desperate Inner Experience of Suicidality
        
        Attachment needs not met -- Episode 62
        
        A felt sense of safety and protection, deep sense of security felt in the bones 2. 1. Feeling seen and known heard and understood -- felt attunement 3. 1. Felt comfort, reassurance 4. 1. Feeling valued, delighted in, cherished by the attachment figure 5. 1. Felt support for the best self 2. 1. Integrity Needs not met
        
        All of the above. Each one of us needs help to develop our sense of self, our identity 2. 1. I exist 3. 1. my existence is separate from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate personIs bounded, has boundaries 4. 1. My identity is stable over time and across different situations -- there is a continuity 5. 1. I can regulate myself -- I have some self-control. 6. 1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion 7. 1. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world 8. 1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions. 9. 1. I can make sense of my experience and the world around me 10. 1. Mission and Purpose in life 11. 1. We also need to make good choices -- seek what is good, true and beautiful in life 3. 3. Body dysmorphic disorder 1. Appearance preoccupations: The individual must be preoccupied with one or more nonexistent or slight defects or flaws in their physical appearance. 1. Verbally abusing the body
        
        Body shaming yourself -- a part of you calling your body fat, ugly, physically unattractive, calling your body out on the perceived unattractive features -- my eyes are too far apart, my lips are too thin, my skin is too bumpy, and what about that zit that just appeared. 2. Repetitive behaviors: The individual must perform repetitive, compulsive behaviors in response to the appearance concerns. 1. Behaviors: mirror checking, excessive grooming, skin picking, reassurance seeking, or clothes changing. 2. mental acts
        
        such as a part of you comparing one’s appearance with that of other people. -- getting on tiktok and saying, that person's body is so gorgeous and I'm a just a pig. 3. 1. Ruminating about what others have said about your body or what they might say about your body. Sometimes it's all just in the realm of fantasy. 4. 3. Differentiation from an eating disorder: 4. Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) is a rare, infrequently studied and highly secretive condition in which there is a mismatch between the mental body image and the physical body. Subjects suffering from BIID have an intense desire to amputate a major limb or severe the spinal cord in order to become paralyzed or to become blind or deaf. 5. Self-harm or self-mutilation, sometimes called cutting
        
        Really not understood well by most people -- dismissed as something only a crazy person would do. 6. 1. It's a symptom. 7. 1. Forms include
        
        Cutting 2. 1. Burning or branding, scalding with hot water 3. 1. Picking at the skin, reopening wounds or severe scratching 4. 1. Carving the skin 5. 1. Trichotillomania 6. 1. Head banging
        
        Hitting oneself
        
        Biting oneself
        
        Self-poisoning
        
        Self-starvation (deliberate)
        
        Getting into fights 8. 9. Reasons for Self Harm
        
        The Punished Self, the Unknown Self, and the Harmed Self – Toward a More Nuanced Understanding of Self-Harm Among Adolescent Girls -- August 2021 Frontiers in Psychology Norwegian researcher Line Indrevoll Stänicke1 -- Qualitative Study of 19 adolescent girls
        
        Superordinate themes
        
        “I deserve pain,” 2. 1. “I don't want to feel anything,” 3. 1. “I'm harmed, and no one cares.” 4. 2. 1. “I deserve pain,” 3. 1. “I don't want to feel anything,” 4. 1. “I'm harmed, and no one cares.” 5. 10. 1. 8 Reasons for Self-harm
        
        Desire to release unbearable tension or providing relief from overwhelming emotions At times [self-harm] also silenced the chaos in my head, briefly pausing the repetitive flashbacks and body memories." 2. 1. Desire to regain control 3. 1. Fighting depersonalization -- "Self-harm proved to me I was real, I was alive. (mind.org.uk) 4. 1. Numbness can feel like death -- need to feel anything at all. 5. 1. Self-hatred
        
        Feeling the need to self-punish "I hated my body and blamed it for what I'd been through, so felt it needed punishing. (mind.org.uk)
        
        Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia 2. 6. 2. 2.

“I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death.”

Blaming your body for others' actions
1. romantic partner breaking up with you -- not attractive enough
2. 1. Being raped -- hating body because it attracted unwanted attention of the rapist.
4. To express pain, communicate or share the internal experience to others, to make visible what is felt within.
5. A way to distract from some worse experience, e.g. intrusive thoughts.
6. Association with others who self-harm -- peer group.
7. Five general characteristics of love from Bernard Brady -- looking at how they contrast with parts' hatred for the body.
8. Love is affective -- love is emotional
  1. Hatred regarding the body
    1. 1. Disgust regarding the body
    2. 1. Anger toward the body
    3. 1. Fear of the body
    4. 1. Contempt for the body -- anger + disgust = contempt
    5. 1. Fueled by envy of other people's bodies.
  2. 1. Love is affirming
  3. Devaluing the body -- Body Shaming
    1. Seeing the body as evil 2. 1. De-facto Manicheanism
      1. All matter are seen as evil -- including our bodies 2. 1. St. Augustine adhered to Manicheanism for a while before his conversion, and then strongly refuted it. 3.
        
        Hatred of the body.
      2. Love is responsive
  4. And love is responsive to the body's legitimate needs. or ignored.
    1. 1. In self-hatred toward the body, those needs are condemned 3.
  5. 1. Love is unitive
  6. Can be a kind of separation of the body from the self. I am not my body. This is not by body.
  7. 1. Love is steadfast
  8. So that is self-hatred. But self-hatred isn't actually the most common or important form of failing to love the self.
    1. What is the most common and most important failure to love the self? The great sin against the self, if you will?
  9. Indifference. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. “The Beloved Ego: Foundations of the New Study of the Psyche” by prominent Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel. The text was translated from German into English by Rosalie Gabler and published in 1921.
    1. 1. The quote was expanded and made famous by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel in a 1986 US News and World Report article The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
    2. 1. Indifference is so, so common. We can be so indifferent to ourselves and to others.
    3. ― David Mitchell “The world's default mode is basic indifference. It'd like to care, but it's just got too much on at the moment.” 2. 1. Aristotle “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.”
    4. W. Somerset Maugham British playwright, novelist, short story writer The tragedy of love is indifference
    5. Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote in his book Prayer for Beginners that Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time
    6. What does indifference to the self mean to the parts
9. The biggest form of unlove -- indifference.
  1. Define indifference -- an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, virtual, or physical life. and the world. not caring about oneself. Disregarding oneself, Abandoning oneself, not caring about oneself.
    1. Wait a minute, Dr. Peter -- I thought that was what we Catholics were called to do. 2. 1. Being dead or numb to oneself 3. 4. Evil is the absence of good (privatio boni) -- privation theory of evil --
    2. this idea was implicit in some of Plato's writings, but he never stated it implicitly
    3. Plotinus further developed the idea
    4. And St. Augustine really refined it.
      1. City of God: For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.”
    5. 1. Examples of indifference to the parts
  2. Lack of awareness
    1. Parts disconnected from the self or fused with the self have very partial vision 2.
    3. Lack of caring
    4. Make up some examples here.
    5. Five general characteristics of love -- from Bernard Brady Love is affective, love is affirming, love is responsive, love is unitive, love is steadfast.
      1. Love is affective -- love is emotional
  3. Apathy toward the parts. Not caring about them, not interested. Parts pursuing their own agendas inside with little regard for the wellbeing of others parts.
    1. 1. Trauma begins in terror but ends in apathy.”

― Brian W. Becker

― Khang Kijarro Nguyen “Apathy is as dangerous, invisible, and contagious as an asymptomatic virus carrier.”
“Apathy is a silent killer.” ― Frank Sonnenberg,
Love is affirming
1. “The stronger you cling to your armor of indifference, the more it strips you of your humanity.” ― Abhijit Naskar, No Foreigner Only Family
3. Love is responsive
4. “there are people capable of eating popcorn at the movie of your agony”― StephanieR oberts, Rushes from the River Disappointment
5. 1. Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung “His eyes they held the most dangerous thing, they held the top of the sins. Indifference. Indifference. A vacancy where human care should be."
6. 1. “We may not choose apathy, but when we choose anything other than love and empathetic justice, we get apathy by default.”― Ken Wytsma,
7. Love is unitive
8. Love is never fragmented; it's an inseparable whole which does not delight in bits and pieces. John A. Andrews
9. Love is steadfast
10. Polarizations lead to tension inside and instability
11. What does indifference to the self mean to the body
12. Bessel van der Kolk: … traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: the past is alive in the form of annoying interior discomforts. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and in an attempt to control these processes, the often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings in a numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves.
13. 1. Examples of indifference to the body
  2. Lack of awareness
    1. Parts disconnected from the self or fused with the self have very partial vision 2.
    2. 1. Less extreme, passive examples of indifference to the body -- we've all done at least some of these. 1. Problematic eating or drinking
    3. Too much caffeine (hooked on energy drinks or coffee) 2. 1. Misuse of alcohol 3. 1. Overeating 4. 1. Too much sugar 5. 1. Too much junk food 6. 1. Eating to soothe oneself when upset, sometimes called emotional eating 7. 1. Eating when bored 8. 1. Skipping meals 9. Smoking 10. Not exercising at all -- too little physical activity -- or too much exercise 11. Poor ergonomics 12. Overdoing the screen time -- 10 hours a day on the computer is hard on the eyes 13. Low activity levels
    4. 9.3 hours of sitting per day, more than 7.7 hours of sleeping today
    5. Not going outside 14. Allowing yourself to get really sunburned or dehydrated or exhausted 15. Not using the bathroom when you need to 16. Poor clothing choices -- not bundling up in winter -- the man in the hoodie when it's 15 degrees out in wintertime, woman wearing high heels when it's not a good choice, 17. Misuse of the smartphone -- using your smartphone in bed 18. Poor sleep habits, going to bed too late 19. Misuse of sex -- not caring for your body in sexual situations. 20. Not getting medical or dental care for your body that would be good and right
    6. ignoring a treatable condition 21. 1. Ignoring symptoms 22. Poor hygiene
    7. 1. Five general characteristics of love -- from Bernard Brady Love is affective, love is affirming, love is responsive, love is unitive, love is steadfast. 1. Love is affective -- love is emotional
    8. Indifference to the body. Just not caring about the body, apathy toward the body. 2. 1. Looking at only the utilitarian functionality of the body. The body as a container or vessel for your mind or soul or psyche. 3. 4. Love is affirming -- indifference to the body can mimic detachment or poverty 5. Love is responsive -- Lack of awareness about the body. Very disconnected.
    9. La belle indifference: The term “la belle indifference” is a French term, which translates to “beautiful ignorance.”[1] La belle indifference is defined as a paradoxical absence of psychological distress despite having a serious medical illness or symptoms related to a health condition.
    10. Not being interested in your body. 6. Love is unitive Not seeing your body is part of you, disconnecting from your body 7. Love is steadfast
    11. 1. 1 Cor 3:16-17. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.
    12. Experiential Exercise on Unlove -- the failure to love
14. Cautions
  1. difficult material -- how and why we don't love ourselves.
    1. 1. window of tolerance
    2. Upside -- Fight or flight, sympathetic activation 2. 1. Downside -- Free response -- dorsal vagal activation, shutting down, numbing out, 3.
      1. don’t have to do this exercise, can stop at any time, reground yourself
      2. no steamrolling parts
      3. Good to do this exercise when you have the time and space and privacy -- not while driving or engaging in other activities that would require you to divide your attention. 6.
    3. 1. Options
  2. Take what is useful to you
    1. 1. Feel free to go your own direction if that seems what's best
    2. 1. Feel free to pause the audio and really settle in and do extended work inside if that seems best
    3. 1. Can have pens, pencils and paper to write down things that are helpful -- like a journal -- or to map out things, draw if that's helpful.
    4. 1. Can pause the recording at points where you would like to have more time to do your internal work. 6.
  3. 1. A lot of gentleness with and for yourself. Moment here for your to really care for yourself.
  4. Luke 10:27 Love your neighbor as yourself -- we are supposed to love ourselves in an ordered way
  5. And that means loving the parts of ourself that are in need. With care and compassion
  6. If you get distracted, that's ok, that's common. You can just refocus, or if that's not possible, then focus in on that distraction -- get curious about why a part of you needs to distract you.
  7. 1. Body scan -- locating -- finding. -- Call that a trailhead
  8. Tension in muscles
    1. 1. Stomach pain or gastrointestinal distress
    2. 1. Headaches
    3. 1. Fatigue
  9. 1. Could be other trailheads
  10. Images or dreams that come back to mind
    1. 1. Memories, sounds, beliefs or assumptions
  11. 1. Focus in on that one sensation or inner experience that reflects some kind of distress or agitation about you not loving you.
  12. 1. That experience will lead you to a part -- we will call the part you are focusing on, your target part. A part that is not loving some other part of you in some way
  13. Your target part Might be hating another part of you
    1. 1. Your target part Might just not be caring about another part of you.
    2. 1. Your target part Might be trying to suppress or silence that other part. 4.
  14. 1. Listen in to what that experience, that body sensation or that impulse or desire or image or memory or belief.
  15. Really notice that target part. How do you experience it?
    1. 1. Let's see if we can work with one part at a time. You can do this reflection and guided exercise over again with multiple parts if you'd like. But see if your parts inside can agree to let you work with one part.
    2. 1. We are going to ask that one part not to flood you with its intensity. That's a safety thing. We are asking that part not to overwhelm you with its distress. We want to be separate but near, so that you as the self can have a relationship with that part. If your target part fuses with you or blends with you, you can't have a relationship. See if that part will agree not to overwhelm. Just ask it. See what the response is. If it agrees, then
    3. 1. Really sense that part. See that part or sense that part, however that part is becoming more apparent to you.
    4. How old is that part? Some parts of us are very, very young. Even preverbal.
    5. 1. Really listen to what that target parts wants to share with you, what it wants you to know.
    6. 1. How is that target part trying to help you?
    7. 1. What is that target part's good intentions.
    8. 1. How are you feeling toward that part, toward that experience
    9. Compassion 2. 1. Connection 3. 1. Curiosity -- genuine interest 4. 1. Calm
      1. If feeling negative, can we get concerned protector parts to soften, to relax back so that you, as the self, can connect with your distressed target part?
      2. If not, focus on the concerned protector part. Really get interested about why that part is not ready to let you connect with your target part. There's a reason. Parts always have good intentions for us. 11.
    10. 1. Let your target part tell you all about what its experiencing with the other part -- the unloved part. 1. Emotions
    11. Anxiety 2. 1. Sorrow -- deep emotional pain 3. 1. Anger 4. 1. Numbness 5. Thinking -- assumptions, beliefs
    12. Really be open to these beliefs, asking protectors not to censor them if possible. 6. 1. Concentration issues. 7. 8. Behaviors -- why does the part do what it does? 9. What does this conflict connect back to for your part -- when did the part feel the same way in your history? 10. Checking to see if there's a concerned protector part trying to speak for your target part -- like a spokespart who wants to interpret the parts experience. See if that concerned protector part can soften and relax back and let the target part speak for itself.
    13. 1. How is that part doing now? Changes in your body?
    14. 1. Can the part feel love from you? xWhere are you with:
  16. Compassion
    1. 1. Connectedness
    2. 1. Curiosity
    3. 1. Calm
  17. 1. Winding up
  18. Can write down what you learned, what was helpful, what came to you -- giving your parts a voice on paper.
    1. 1. Can do this exercise again with a different part
    2. 1. Gratitude for all your parts -- all have good intentions are trying to help
    3. 1. This doesn't have to be the end of connecting with your target part -- doesn't have to be a one-off experience, can check in with that part again. 5.
  20. Action Plan
  21. Looking ahead: next episode, number 98 -- ordered self-love -- now that we've covered all the ways that we can fail to love ourselves, we will be learning what it means for us to be loving ourselves in an ordered way.
    1. Fr. Jacques Philippe -- 2008 Book Called to Life: This self-love is good and necessary, not egoism that refers everything to "me," but the grace to live in peace with one's self, consent to be what one is, with one's talents and limitations. Love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self grow together and sustain one another as they grow. If one is absent or neglected, the other to suffer. Like the legs of a tripod, all three are needed in order to stand in each leans on the others.\
    2. St. Thomas Aquinas -- bringing in some of the work of Dr. Mary Julian Ekman, Religious Sister of Mercy.
  22. Self-love is the ground of human action, where the conscious choice to love self transforms self- love into self-friendship.
    1. 1. Proper self-love (amor sui ordinatus) is indispensable for perfecting the human person by making the soul more like God, who knows and loves himself by his very essence.
    2. 1. This movement toward self-perfection is hindered by improper self-love (amor sui inordinatus)
    3. St. Augustine will also help us, as we explore how disordered self-love regards the self as an end, but ordered self-love sees the self as a means to the proper end of love.
  23. Promotions
15. Ann-Marie Klobe -- Ready for Love: An online retreat for single Catholic women over 35 who are ready to connect deeper with their Faith, the Saints, and find a Godly relationship.
  1. The Ready for Love retreat airs October 3-17, 2022
    1. 1. So many single Catholics are operating from a place of disconnection, and my goal is to restore their trust in God’s plan for their life, help them feel like they have a purpose in this world, and provide training on topics such as the Saints, forgiveness, beauty, and trusting in God.
    2. 1. Anne-Marie did an extended experiential exercise with me as part of this retreat. She discovered and explored some hidden reasons that could be obstacles in romantic intimacy. She did some beautiful work that she will share with the women who attend the retreat.
    3. 1. Anne Marie and I are also planning for me to do a 60-minute live Q&A for the Ready for Love retreat -- where the women on the retreat can bring their questions to me about the ways that they reject ourselves as persons, the ways in which they refuse to love themselves, what it would mean to be married, and about discovering their primary identity as a beloved daughter of God. 5.
  2. 1. The website for the retreat was not quite up yet at recording time.
  3. You can go to Anne Marie Klobe's website -- https://www.anne-marieklobe.com
  4. I will be letting you know more about it and provide links in the weekly reflections that I email out on September 14 and 21-- if you haven't been getting the weekly email reflections, sign up for them, and have them delivered to your email inbox every Wednesday. Go to Souls and Hearts.com and click the box that says "Get Dr. Peter's weekly reflection in your email inbox each Wednesday. Those weekly reflections are deep dives that I write each week about critical human formation topics -- those weekly reflections are the written companions to this podcast.
  5. 1. The Resilient Catholics Community. The RCC. I am inviting you on an adventure of being loved and of loving. That is what the Resilient Catholic Community is all about. Check it out at soulsandhearts.com/RCC
  6. The RCC is all about working through your human formation issues -- the ones that lead to all the unlove you have for yourself. The self-hatred and the indifference to self, the failures to love yourself in an ordered way, so that you can love got with all of your being -- with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind and all your strength, with every fiber of your being.
    1. It's all about learning to be gentle but firm with yourself -- it's all about integration. It's all about resilience.
    2. All about restoration -- recovering from being dominated by shame, fear, anger, sadness, pessimism, whatever your struggle is in the depths of your human formation
  7. We do this work experientially -- so many experiential exercises -- so we work not just in your head, and not just in your soul, but also in your heart.
  8. And we do the work step by step -- in a very clear program.
  9. Check it out at soulsandhearts.com/rcc -- we open registration for new members every June and December. I'm inviting you to join me and more than 100 other faithful Catholics on this pilgrimage to much better human formation. Get on the waiting list for the cohort that begins in December 2022. soulsandhearts.com/rcc
  10. 1. Talk with me about it in conversation hours call my cell 317.567.9594 any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time for conversation hours.

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Summary: Real love (agape) is given freely -- but it is not received freely in our fallen human condition. Join me in this episode as we discuss the costs of opening our hearts to love\and the price of being loved fully, of being loved completely, in all of our parts. We review why so many people refuse to be loved -- and we examine the psychological and human formation reasons for turning away from love. Finally we discuss what we can do to get over our natural-level impediments to receiving love.
Lead-in
1. I am a rock I am an island

I've built walls

A fortress deep and mighty

That none may penetrate

I have no need of friendship -- friendship causes pain

It's laughter and it's loving I disdain

I am a rock I am an island

I am a rock -- Paul Simon wrote it in 1965 and Simon and Garfunkel Released it as a single in 1966, and it rose to #3 on the charts -- why because it resonated with people. It was popular because it spoke out loud what many people's parts feel. The desire to become a rock, the impulse to build the walls, to keep everyone out, to repudiate love and laughter, to not need anything or anyone.
Kate McGahan -- untitled poem

I don't need anyone, I said.

Then you came

I need I need!

I NEED YOU.

I needed you.

What did you teach me?

Not to need you.

NOT TO NEED. -

I don't want to be in love, anymore. I just want to be left alone. And no, I am not depressed or something. No suicide is happening here... I am fine. Trust me. Sharmajiassamwale
So you want love. But you also don't want love. But you want love. But you don't. You do. You don't. You're conflicted. How do you understand this conflict within you? Can you and I understand this push-pull, this attraction - avoidance, this Yes and No within us more clearly. Yes we can. And we must. Or we will wind up always skating along the edge of love, never really entering in. And there are consequences for that -- and no one put it more succinctly than the English poet and playwright Robert Browning, who said: “Without love, our earth is a tomb”
Intro
1. We do want to be loved, but we don't. Why? Because we want the benefits of love, but we don't want the costs
2. 1. The Benefits
  2. To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. David Viscott
    1. 1. If you don't have that memory of being loved, you are condemned to search the world for something to fill you up. -- Michael Jackson
  3. 1. The costs.
  4. Real love is given freely, but it is not received freely in this fallen world.
    1. Almost no one talks about the costs of being loved. I find that so strange. People don't think this way.
    2. There are costs to receiving love, to accepting love, to allowing love in to our hearts.
    3. It's painful to be loved in this fallen world.
      1. this is not well understood by many people, especially those who are not in touch with trauma, or who haven't suffered as much as others
        
        Bernard Brady's 2003 book "Christian Love: How Christians Through the Ages have Understood Love
        
        Second sentence of the book, in the preface: "Loving seems entirely natural and being loved seems wonderfully good."
        
        Not to many people
        
        RCC member -- so glad you can discuss tolerating being loved.
  5. Real love -- Agape -- burns away things that are sinful within us -- it doesn't coexist with the vice within us.
3. Bernard Brady: Christian Love, p. 16: "…love transforms those who love and those who are loved."
4. 1. Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.” ― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
5. Change is scary
6. “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
8. Real love also purifies us from anything that is not morally wrote, but that is disordered or dysfunctional or imperfect
9. Real love is the greatest good. And because it's the greatest good, it requires us to give up lesser goods. Perceived good and actual goods.
10. Coping strategies, crutches that helped us in the past
11. Analogy of the safe -- limited room, silver and gold.
12. Vulnerability
13. I will lose what I have
14. I will lose to possibility of being loved in the future
15. I don't want to find out I am unlovable. I can't bear that.
16. Because for love to be real, for love to be agape means me allowing you to love all of me. All my parts. My entire being
17. Not just the acceptable parts of me in the shop window, those that I allow others to see.
19. The greatness of the adventure of loving can be intimidating
20. Love, in some sense, is nothing other than an invitation to great joy and suffering, so they shy away from it. Paul Catalanotto Refusal to love is also refusal to live The Catholic Weekly
21. 1. Dietrich von Hildrebrand those who "wish to linger with small joys in the state of harmless happiness … in which they feel themselves to be master of the situation … lacking any element of surprise or adventure.
22. Let's go on this adventure of being loved and loving together. I want you to come with me into the themes of this podcast. I want you to really engage with what I'm presenting to you. Not just listen like the Athenians listened to Paul about the resurrection of the dead. Acts 17:32: Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” But they weren't really that interested. Only a few of the Athenians joined him. Stay with me in this Episode 96 of Interior Integration for Catholics, released on August 1, 2022, and titled "I Am a Rock: How Trauma Hardens us Against Being Loved" I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, passionate Catholic and I am very pleased that we can share and engage with this information.
23. Why do I think being loved is so important? First because receiving love is absolutely essential. It is our starting point in the spiritual life. And second, because most people will not realxly allow themselves to be loved. Psychiatrist and Harvard Professor George Valliant wrote: It's very hard, for most of us to tolerate being loved.-- That's been my experience as well. The vast majority of people have chosen to severely limit how much love they will let in, how much love they will tolerate.
24. 1. You can't love unless you are willing to be loved.
  2. 1 John 4:19: We love because he first loved us Look at the order here. God loved us first. We can't generate any love on our own. We can reflect love, we can channel love, but we can't create love out of nothing like God can. We have to cooperate in love and be open to love in order to love, in order to follow the two great commandments.
  3. That is what this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast is all about -- it's about preparing the way for you to have a much deeper, richer and much more intimate relationship with God in the three Person of the Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and with the Blessed Virgin Mary our Mother. A deep, personal relationship with God and Mary. That's what I want from you. And if you won't tolerate taking in real love, if you deprive yourself of real love, you are going to wind up in a de facto hell on earth. The most miserable people on earth are the loveless people -- loveless not because no one will love them -- but loveless because they actively or passively reject love. And so many people do that.
  4. And there are spiritual consequences to cutting ourselves off from real love. Our heart become small, they become hard, they become closed, they become fearful, they fester in wounds. And if we persist in refusing to be loved and to love, there is no other place for us to be in the afterlife than in hell. That's what I think hell is -- a place for those who have refused love. That's how serious all of this is. Eternal consequences of the highest order.
25. Hallmark Movie Love
26. What so many of our parts really want is what I call Hallmark movie love -- in Latin, this is rendered "Lovus Hallmarkius" Hallmark love. Yes, I've given it a ridiculous translation, but that because Hallmark love is not only a ridiculous concept, it's a dangerous one. I mean it.
  1. Really Dr. Peter -- all those sweet, feel-good Christmas movies? What are you some kind of grinch, to criticize Hallmark movies? I mean really, come on.. That's a bit much. Hear me out, hear me out.
  2. What is Hallmark love -- love is always just around the corner, painless, fun. They are delightful. Love is so gratifying and enjoyable, love takes away suffering. Clean and tidy. It's a myth. The Hallmark company is selling illusions. Their movie production arm is peddling falsehoods about love to an audience who wants what they are offering to be true. But it isn't.
  3. Kristine Brown captured this theme in her online article Living in a Hallmark Movie December 11, 2015

I want to live in a Hallmark movie.

I want to walk down the cobblestone Main Street into the corner coffee shop where everyone greets you with a smile and a Merry Christmas. I want to move to a new town where you immediately become acquainted with everyone and your child makes instant friends at school and there’s always time to bake Christmas cookies and decorate trees and drink hot cocoa with peppermint sticks.

I want to live in a Hallmark movie.

I want to walk my child to school holding hands and have him tell me how much he loves me and what a great mom I am. I want to live where kids don’t make bad choices and parents don’t make mistakes. Where the toughest decision is whether to stay in the small town where you grew up or chase after a promising dream in the big city. Where things always just work out.

And the movie always ends with a kiss from your true love and snow. Always snow.

But life isn’t a Hallmark movie, not even close.

Example of the life of Christ -- the greatest lover ever, who died in making the greatest act of love ever, and it was nothing like a Hallmark movie.
We assume that we want love -- and we do. Or parts of us do
1. Made for love and in love -- That's a beautiful line in the Litanies of the Heart, written by Dr. Gerry for Souls and Hearts -- "Lord Jesus, you created me in love, for love."
2. 1. Colossians 3:14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
3. Discussion of Parts
4. Reference Episode 71: A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others
5. 1. Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and a whole religion developed around its understanding of God, self, and the relationship between God and self.
6. Parts have different roles within the self system. Narrow slice of experience, very limited vision.
7. Some parts don't care about being loved. They are focused on never being hurt like that again. They are focused on protection from harm, defending the self system against threats from others, very protective. IIC 89: Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection
8. Conflict

“I wished I didn't need an ocean of space to feel comfortable. I still wanted to be loved. Yet again I felt like two people: one who desperately needed a hug, and one who would break apart at the slightest touch. How could I get people to keep their distance without leaving completely? How long would it take for them to get tired of the way I flinched and evaded?”

― Ruby Walker, Advice I Ignored: Stories and Wisdom from a Formerly Depressed Teenager

Using a metaphor to describe how trauma hardens us against being loved
1. Overview
  1. Roots = unresolved trauma
    1. 1. Single trunk -- shame
    2. 1. Five Main stems -- acronym CRIES -- as in cries for help. C R I E S -- Each of these main stems is driven by shame in the trunk, shame that results from the unresolved trauma in the roots.
    3. Cognitions
    4. Relationships
    5. Identity
    6. Emotions
    7. Spirituality
    8. 1. Each main stem has branches -- branches that cross and interweave in this big bush
    9. 1. And the branches have fruits. 6.
  2. 1. Roots -- Unresolved trauma
  3. This includes the original trauma, original sin.
    1. 1. Underground, not seen --
    2. 1. Check out Episodes 88 and 89 -- a lot about the nature of trauma in those episodes
    3. 1. Primary effect of unresolved trauma is shame. 5.
  4. 1. Single Trunk -- Shame
  5. Discussed shame at great length in Episodes 37 to 49 of this podcast.
    1. 1. Definitions of shame in episode 37: Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action.
    2. 1. I encourage you to go through those episodes again -- really get a grip on shame, because understanding shame is the key to understanding almost all psychological dysfunction, and understanding shame is the key to really comprehending why you have difficulties with your human formation. Can't stress that enough.
    3. 1. Shame -- the central role of shame. Issue of survival. Life and death. Deep assumptions that my shame is so bad that it will kill me. Our protector parts assume they have a need to defend against our exiled parts that have burdens of shame -- protectors believe they have to keep the shame out of awareness, keep it buried, distant. They don't know that we can work with shame and the parts that carry the shame in collaborative, cooperative, constructive ways. Our protector parts don't know that shame can be resolved -- the burden of shame can be lifted and there can be healing.
  6. “When you're a child trapped in a situation of physical or psychological deprivation, you learn shame as an efficient, elegant mechanism of survival: shame simultaneously shields you from the reality that danger is out of your control (since the problem is not that you're unloved and deprived; it's that you're Bad) and prevents you from doing or saying anything challenging that might provoke a threat.” ― Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World
  7. Go back and really get the shame piece of this.
  8. 1. Main Stems off the trunk: Cognitions, Relationships, Identity, Emotions, Spirituality -- Acronym CRIES
  9. Emotions Stem: Five aspects Grief, Anger, Fear, Flooding, Shutdown -- GAFFS -- so many of these emotions are generated by the shame that results from unresolved trauma
    1. Love is affective -- Bernard Brady -- discussed this at length in episode 94 Love is a movement from your heart, your soul -- a movement from the innermost depths of your being. From your core self. So the emotions are intimately involved with love 2. 1. Grief
      1. Emotional reaction to deep sense of loss.
      2. Sadness about what you don't have that you need.
      3. Parts want to be seen and heard and known and loved by the one who might love you. All of you wanting to be loved. All of you wanting to be healed. So parts surge up, wanting to come to the surface.
      4. Parts that carry grief have never been loved -- never been connected with in an emotional way, never been included in relationship with your innermost self or with others. Never been seen.
      5. Anticipatory Grief -- if I allow myself to be love, I could lose that love. The one who loves me could die.
    2. Fear -- this is an emotion that drives so much fleeing from love. This really is the big one.
      1. Philophobia -- fear of love All of us have parts that fear love.
      2. Being loved arouses anxiety because it threatens long-standing psychological defenses formed early in life in relation to emotional pain and rejection, therefore leaving a person feeling more vulnerable. Robert Firestone
      3. Fears of being revealed
      4. Fears of vulnerability
      5. Fears of loneliness
      6. Fear of the unknown
      7. Fears of being hurt one more time -- like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football, winding up flat on your back again.
        
        Fears of betrayal 8. 1. Fears of abandonment 9. So much of this fear is driven by shame. 10. All this fear is a barrier to being loved. 11. “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” Betrand Russell 12. All the bruised lives, searching hearts ... Everyone wants a love story but few will risk what it takes to live one. - Donna Lynn Hope 3. Flooding: Emotional overwhelm -- flooding. Emotions become all dysregulated.
      8. Hyperarousal -- moving into fight or flight mode. Intensity of emotions because very great. Often because old emotions from previous unresolved trauma are welling up -- parts that carry the burden of intense emotions want to be seen, heard, known and understood, they no longer want to be exiled, banished into the unconscious -- they want a voice, they want relationship they want redemptions.
        
        Paul Simon 4. 2.

Don't talk of love

Well I've heard the word before

It's sleeping in my memory

I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died

If I never loved I never would have cried

I am a rock I am an island

“Our biggest challenge is that we have an overwhelming desire for an extraordinary love story but low capacity to hold space for it in our nervous system.” ― Lebo Grand
Dietrich von Hildebrand: Fear of losing oneself in intense joys or griefs
Anger
1. So much of this anger is driven by fear driven by shame
2. 1. Our protector parts can use anger to distract from fear and grief.
3. 1. Behind every angry soul is a wounded child that just wanted you to love them for who they are. Shannon L. Alder
5. Shutting down
6. Avoiding inner experiences is one of Nathanson's four defensive scripts for avoiding shame.
7. 1. Hypoarousal -- moving down out of the window of tolerance to the freeze mode.
8. 1. Example of an electrical panel, or breaker panel v-- metal box with a door down in the basement or utility closet
  2. with the main and the circuit breakers
  4. Fruit: We have a very difficult time tolerating being loved when we are not in our window of tolerance. Fight or flight mode or freeze mode -- we move very much into self-protection, to a focus on survival, on just perpetuating our existence.
    1. We're not open to love -- we've moved into survival mode, not seeking connection.
    2. We're not open to God. Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace: The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His grace acts through us. On the other hand, if our soul is agitated and troubled, the grace of God is able to act only with much greater difficulty… God is a God of peace. He does not operate except in peace, not in trouble and agitation.
  5. We need that emotional regulation, that sense of being in our window of tolerance to be able to connect with God.
    1. So many times fear is identified as a barrier
  6. Fear as a result of shame drove Adam and Eve into the bushes -- hiding from God
  7. John 14:27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
  8. Cognition Stem
9. Perceptions
  1. extremely sensitive to stimuli
    1. 1. Very vigilant -- scanning for threats in the environment
  2. 1. Negative self-talk
  3. I am unloved
    1. 1. I am unlovable
    2. 1. I don't deserved to be loved -- bred in families where there is conditional love -- unattainable ideals of perfection
    3. 1. I will be seen and I will see myself.
    4. 1. I might contaminate anyone who would love me with my badness.
    5. 1. I won't live up to the love. 7.
  4. 1. Doubts fostered about goodness in the world, about the nature of others
  5. Skepticism about who actually makes the effort to love
    1. 1. Demanding perfection from others before trying again.
    2. 1. To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

-- Jo Nesbo

Pessimistic evaluation of the future
1. No one will love me
2. 1. I will be deceived, tricked and then betrayed, rejected, abandoned
3. Distractions
4. Paul Simon:

I have my books

And my poetry to protect me

I am shielded in my armor

Fruit
1. we can dwell inwardly, on our own damage -- we can focus on our wounds. Direct our attention to all the things that are wrong with us and pull inward -- self-absorption, ruminating and obsessing about our defects, curling up inside to protect ourselves, not letting anyone in. So common.
2. 1. Or we can reach out and embrace love anyway. We can trust that parts of us may be seeing things inaccurately, thinking about things in ways that are distorted.
4. Identity Stem
5. Drawing from Robert Firestone's Why Do So Many People Respond Negatively to Being Loved? article on psychalive.org
  1. I am inadequate, unworthy of love
    1. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”– Stephen Chbosky
      1. Being valued or seen in a positive light is confusing because it conflicts with the negative self-concept that many people form within their family. Firestone
        
        Being loved can provoke an identity crisis Firestone
    2. Your identity, at least for some of your parts, can be very bound up in being unloved and unloveable 3. 1. Parts may not know who you are if you were loved -- such a radical change
    3. Very disconcerting to lose a sense of who I am, even if the identity is a negative one.
    4. 1. Comfort in the familiarity of the dysfunction I know -- so I accept and even seek out rejection and failure -- they are familiar and harmonize with my life narrative.
    5. 1. Deep sense of having to earn conditional love. But that is not what love is about
  2. “Love is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.” ― Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living
  3. 1. Little or no ordered self-love -- we will be discussing ordered self love in the next episode.
  4. One of Nathanson's four strategies to cope with shame is to attack the self.
  5. 1. Internal disconnects to survive the trauma -- horror of abuse
  6. Love relationships pull for integration
    1. Love is never fragmented; it's an inseparable whole which does not delight in bits and pieces. John A. Andrews 2.
      1. And that integration will bring up the parts of ourselves that we have rejected as too scary, too unacceptable, too unlovable, too dangerous, too overwhelming, too much in some way to be allowed a seat at the table of our consciousness.
      2. Takes a lot of courage to really be loved.
      3. Ursula Wirtz, Trauma and Beyond: The Mystery of Transformation
  7. “I consider love to be the matrix for this transformation, which calls new being into existence. Love has the power to reawaken and bring to the fire what has been entombed or distorted by traumatic forces or has retreated out of defensiveness and self-protection. Without love and compassion for the fragility of human identity in the face of death and the reality of evil, the madness found in these barren spaces of the soul might not be meaningfully encountered. For the stripping away of the constricting cocoon of traumatic fixations and the untangling of what has become distorted and convoluted during painful traumatization, love is needed.” 5.

―

Fruit -- will we let our burdened parts define ourselves-- will we let those traumatized parts of us, and the parts that guard us from those traumatize parts be the ones to determine who we are -- with their limited vision and their narrow slice of experience -- or can we work gently with ourselves and allow ourselves to be seen through the eyes of those who do love us.
Relationship
1. Love affirms the other, love responds to the other, love is unitive -- love is steadfast more of Bernard Brady's characteristics of Agape, of real love described in episode 94
2. 1. Effects of Shame
  2. Lack of trust in others
    1. 1. Lack of confidence
    2. How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved. Sigmund Freud 2.
      1. Fear of exposure
    3. To myself 2. 1. To the one who loves me 4.

“To be deeply loved, means a willingness to cut yourself wide open, exposing your vulnerabilities... hopes, hurts, fears and flaws. Hiding behind the highlight reel of who you are, is the real you and that person is just as worthy of love. There is nothing more terrifying or fulfilling, than complete love, it's worth the risk... reach for it.” ― Jaeda DeWalt

Fear of rejection
1. The fear of rejection makes sense: If we’ve had a steady diet of shame, blame, and criticism, we learned that the world is not a safe place. Something within us mobilizes to protect our tender heart from further stings and insults .The Hidden Reasons We Don't Let Love In -- John Amodeo Ph.D., MFT
2. The one who loves me will hurt me.
3. It's inevitable
4. Fruit in the Behaviors -- all focused around protection from the other leading to relationship sabotage
5. Undue criticism of the other --you are not enough for me.
6. 1. Withdrawal and isolation -- one of Nathanson's strategies for coping with shame.
  2. Paul Simon

Hiding in my room safe within my womb

I touch no one and no one touches me

I am a rock I am an island

And a rock feels no pain

And an island never cries

Avoidance
Pursuing unavailable people

I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with trauma and death.”

― Zachary Quinto

Pushing others away
1. Basically, love is scary when it contrasts with childhood trauma. In that situation, the beloved feels compelled to act in ways that hurt the lover: behaving in a punitive manner, distancing themselves and pushing love away. Robert Firestone
2. 1. “You push people away, Marley. You don't realise it, but you do. You close yourself off to anyone and anything that doesn't fit in your perfect little hamster ball of life. But you can't experience love only on your own terms. It doesn't work that way.”

― Kate Lattey, Dream On

Aggression -- Fueled by anger.
1. Attacking others is one of Nathanson's four strategies of coping with shame. Why do we attack? We are afraid, we are struggling with shame.
2. 1. “Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone. St. Francis de Sales
3. Emotionally disconnecting from the relationship
4. Out of anger. Harden my Heart -- 1982 Hit Sung by Quarterflash … I'm gonna harden my heart, I'm gonna swallow my tears, I'm gonna turn and leave you here
5. 1. Out of fear and shame

“Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the ‘off’ position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - ‘the lost child’ - who is forced to ‘choose’ and habituate to the freeze response… Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type’s defenses develop around classical dissociation.”

― Pete Walker

Dietrich von Hildebrand -- shrinking away from commitment.
Difficulties receiving partial, incomplete, imperfect love -- as replacements for God's love
1. Glazed carrots. Side dish, not the main entrée.
2. 1. Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons And Everyday Spirituality : Allow people to love you as they must love you, not as you want them to love you. Even God does not love us as we wish Him to. Learning to love is learning to accept love as it comes
3. Spiritual
4. Disconnecting from God, who is love.
  1. Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known. Blaise Pascal
    1. We to love God to know Him 2. 1. And so we have to find him lovable -- and so often parts of us don't find him lovable. 3. 1. Need for Faith and Hope -- Infused virtues. 4. 5. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. Timothy Keller
    2. 1. everyone wants perfect love... no one wants to be a perfect lover... - Author: Brijesh Singh
    3. 1. Being loved by God is often even more difficult
  2. I John 4:8 "…God is love." Issues around God images (IIC 23-29)
    1. 1. God is not as tangible, immediate
    2. 1. Transferences to God
    3. 1. Projections onto God.
    4. 1. Edward Vacek: Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. The sequence in loving and being loved. (1) God affirms us; (2) God receives a; (3) we accept God’s love; (4) we affirm God; (5) God forms community with us; (6) we cooperate with God in loving God in the world; and finally (7) we grow in a limited code responsibility with God. p.. 177
    5. Problems with the sequence -- not tolerating enough contact with God to be affirmed, to understand him in a totally different way. 2. 1. 1 John 4:19: We love because he first loved us 3. 6.
    6. Active vs. passive refusal to be loved.
      1. Active refusals to be loved are more obvious
      2. Passive refusals to be loved are more common.
    7. Five attachment tasks
5. Felt sense of safety and protection -- have to go through the valley of shame, fear, anger, grief
6. 1. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood -- have to tolerating being in relationship, being present.
7. 1. Feeling comforted, soothed and reassured
8. 1. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in

“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Feeling the other has your best interests at heart
Love heals
1. The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love. — Bruce D. Perry
2. 1. “Love alone brings a human being to full awareness of personal existence. For it is in love alone that man finds room enough to be what he is.” ― Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love
3. 1. “Trauma ruptures and hollows. Compassion mends and fills; love heals.” ― Na'ama Yehud
4. There you have it from a trauma researcher, a philosopher, and a writer --
5. Example of Sr. Josephine Bakhita
6. Born about 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was a member of the Daju people
7. 1. Uncle was a tribal chief, well-to-do family
8. 1. At age 8, kidnapped by slave traders, forcerd to walk barefoot 600 miles to a slave market
9. 1. Over the next 12 years, bought and sold many times, at least 12 times
10. 1. Trauma of the abduction -- Forgot her given name in captivity -- consider that - - a loss of identity
11. 1. Owners varied in their treatment of her. Some were sadists Family of Turkish general
  2. Josephine wrote that as soon as one wound would heal, they would inflict another.
    1. 1. another woman drew patterns on her skin with flour, then cut into her flesh with a blade. She rubbed the wounds with salt to make the scars permanent. She would suffer a total of 114 scars from this abuse. A total of 114 intricate patterns were cut into her breasts, belly and into her right arm
  3. 1. I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me -- I am awaited by this Love.
  5. Action Plan
12. You gotta pray
13. 1. Point is to focus on developing the relationship with the Persons of the Trinity and with Mary -- as a little child, a little son or daughter.
14. Litanies of the Heart - the Litany of the Closed Heart the litany of the fearful heart, the litany of the wounded heart. Soulsandhearts.com/lit
15. Books
  1. Intimacy in Prayer -- Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love -- by Frs. Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks.
    1. 1. Fr. Jacques Philippe -- Time for God -- excellent guide for learning pray from a more relational perspective. I also like Fr. Jacques Philippe's book The way of Trust and Confidence
    2. 1. Fr. Thomas Dubay -- Fire Within -- more of a Carmelite approach.
    4. If you haven't been to confession recently, go. If you feel like you can't go, I want to hear about it.
    5. Calling all Catholic therapists and -- Interior Therapist Community is starting our fall groups.
  2. 80 therapists and graduate students in mental health fields in community -- each of us working on our own human formation, but not in isolation. New Foundations experiential groups are forming -- and we have advanced groups.
  3. 2022 Webinar Series: Of Beams and Specks: Therapist-Focused Consultation - Peter Malinoski $30
  4. Soulsandhearts.com/itc -- call me at 317.567.9594 or email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
    1. Weekly reflection -- related to this podcast, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday --
  5. We do get around to archiving them in the blog section of our website -- soulsandhearts.com/blog
    1. Conversation hours -- every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time call me at 317.567.9594 or email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. If I don't pick up, I'm on another call leave a voicemail.
  6. Patroness and Patron.

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Summary: In this episode, we focus on how unresolved trauma undermines and sabotages both our capacity and our inclination to love well. We explore how unresolved trauma impacts each of the five characteristics of love -- compromising our ability to love in an affective (emotional), affirming, responsive, unitive and steadfast way. We also dive into how so trauma pulls us to focus inward, and to protect ourselves, undercutting the vulnerability and willingness to engage that are required for deep love and we discuss hope for change.
Lead-in
1. They say love is blind, but it’s trauma that’s blind. Love sees what is.“ — Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships
  1. And Neil Strauss is right on that. Love connects with reality. With God who is the ultimate realness, the ultimate being, the I AM.
    1. 1. Trauma is blind and it blinds us. That's what we are talking about today. Trauma and its impact on live. 3.
  3. Intro:
2. Dear listener, You and I are together in the adventure of this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am thankful to be with you.
3. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, Why are we here? We are here together to bring you the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith. So we can have the best of both. That's why.
4. Today, we're going to take a broad perspective, a bird's-eye view of trauma's destructive consequences to our capacity to love. What is the effect of trauma on our capacity and inclination to love? That is the question for us to explore together today.
5. So welcome to episode 95, of Interior Integration for Catholics, titled Trauma's Devastating Impact on our Capacity to Love, released on July 4, 2022, Independency Day in the USA,
6. This podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com.
7. Review Trauma. We are in the midst of whole series of episodes on trauma. So just a brief thumbnail review.
  1. Started with Episode 88 Trauma: Defining and Understanding the Experience Really important to understand the inner experience of trauma -- so you can recognize it in your own life and recognize it an empathetic and attuned way in others' loves. Part of loving them.
  2. Episode 89 Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection -- a current understanding of how large a role our bodies have in our experience of trauma. Our bodies.
  3. Episode 90: Your Well-Being: The Secular Experts Speak we review how philosophers and modern secular psychologists understand mental health and well-being. In this episode, we look at the attempts to define what make us happy, from the 4th century BC to the present day. Aristippus, Aristotle, Descartes, Freud, Seligman, Porges, Schwartz, and two diagnostic systems. We take a special look at how positive psychology and Internal Family Systems see well-being.
  4. Episode 92: Understanding and Healing your Mind through IPNB neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) and what IPNB can show us about psychological health. We review the triangle of well-being, the nature of secure attachments, and the basis for mental health from an IPNB perspective. We examine the characteristics of a healthy mind and how it functions, and the two signs that reliable indicate all psychological symptoms and mental dysfunction. We discuss the nine domains of integration
  5. Three inner experiential exercises in Episode 93
  6. Episode 94: The Primacy of Love In this episode, I discuss the central importance of love as the marker of well-being from a Catholic perspective -- our capacity to live out the two great commandments. We explore how love is the distinguishing characteristics of Christians, and we discussed Catholic theologian Bernard Brady's five attributes or characteristics of love -- how love is affective, affirming, responsive, unitive and steadfast. We discuss what is commonly missing from philosophical and theological approaches to love, and we briefly touch in the death of love and distortions of love.
  7. So check those out if you haven't already. This
8. Going to address love in general -- focusing on loving
9. In future episodes, will review
  1. Tolerating being loved
    1. Brady quxote
      1. Ordered self-love
    3. The experience of trauma screws up our loves -- where we go to find good. It screws up where we are seeking, how we seek to be loved and how we seek to love.
      1. St. Augustine:
        
        He lives in justice and sanctity who is an unprejudiced assessor of the intrinsic value of things. He is a man who has an ordinate love: he neither loves what should not be loved nor fails to love what should be loved. On Christina Doctrine, I, 27
        
        We need ordered love. Why -- Bernard Brady put it -- Because we become like what we love. Whatever we embrace in our love, we become like that person or that thing.
        
        As Augustine considered the dissipation of this youth, he wrote "I loved beautiful things of a lower order, and I was going down to the depths." Confessions.
      2. So much of the problem with disordered love comes from misdirected seeking to get your attachment needs meet. That's the problem.
        
        We have legitimate attachment needs Trauma strips away our sense of
    4. A felt sense of Safety and security
    5. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood
    6. Feeling comforted, soothed, reassured
    7. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in
    8. Feel the other person wills my highest good.
    9. All from Brown and Elliott 2016, Attachment disturbances in Adults
      1. Where do we find our safety and security? In both the natural and spiritual realms, we find it in attachment security needs being met.
  2. Five primary attachment security needs (Brown and Elliott)
    1. A felt sense of safety and protection, a deep sense of security, felt in my bones
      1. It makes it so much easier to love when we feel safe and secure. 2. 1. "People want to be safe, and comfortable. If safety and comfort is to be found in guns, then they will take up guns—of their own accord, in their own need. And when safety and comfort are found in libraries, then the guns rust.“ — Algis Budrys American writer Source: Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 6 (p. 122) 2. 1. Feeling seen, heard, known, and understood 4.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.“ — Katherine Mansfield New Zealand author 1888 - 1923

Being comforted, soothed, and reassured
Feeling valued, cherished, treasured, delighted in
1. You are my sunshine published by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell on January 30, 1940

You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray

You'll never know, dear

How much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away

Feeling that the other person wills my highest good, the best for me
We have to turn inward to find the road to God.
1. Etienne Gilson explained Augustine's approach to God as "a path leading from the exterior to the interior and from the interior to the superior." Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine p. 20
2. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self: By going inward, I am drawn upward. The Making of Modern Identity 134
3. Turning inward is the route to God, not God. Brady, 120
4. Often resisted by Catholics as being selfish.
Edward Vacek: Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. The steps in loving and being loved. (1) God affirms us; (2) God receives a; (3) we accept God’s love; (4) we affirm God; (5) God forms community with us; (6) we cooperate with God in loving God in the world; and finally (7) we grow in a limited code responsibility with God. p.. 177
1. 1 John 4:19 We love, because he first loved us.
2. Last episode -- Bernard Brady's description of the five characteristics of Love Christian Love: How Christians through the Ages have Understood Love.-- drawing heavily from the work of phenomenologists Jules Toner and Margaret Farley
3. Love is affective, affirming, responsive, unitive and steadfast. (repeat) Five characteristics. Five aspects. Repeat.
  1. We described and discussed these at length in the last episode, episode 94 of the IIC podcast, The Primacy of Love
  2. We will briefly review each of them
  3. And then discuss how trauma impacts each of them, bringing in the effects or the sequelae of trauma from Episode 88 -- Trauma: Defining and Understanding the Experience.
4. 1. Love is affective
  2. Love is an emotion
  3. Love is a movement from your heart, your soul -- a movement from the innermost depths of your being. From your core self.
    1. St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa: Consequently the freezing or hardening of the heart is a disposition incompatible with love: while melting denotes a softening of the heart, whereby the heart shows itself to be ready for the entrance of the beloved.“
  4. Love rejoices in the beloved
  5. Love rejoices in the beloved -- Protestant Theologian R.H. Neibuhr writes in his 1977 book the Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry: By love, we mean at least these attitudes and actions: rejoicing in the presence of the beloved, gratitude, reverence, and loyalty toward him. p.35

„After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.“ Judith Herman

Brené Brown US writer and professor 1965 Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.
Misattributed to Sigmund Freud Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.
Brady: Love is the directive and dominant center of emotions. p. 267
1. Many emotions are associated with love
  1. Delight, Bliss, Happiness
    1. 1. A sense of fulfillment
    2. 1. Warmth
    3. 1. Grief
    4. 1. Sadness
    5. 1. Anxiety
    6. 1. Distress
  2. 1. If there is no emotion, there is no agape, no love. The heart must be moved for love to be anything like complete.
  3. 1. We cannot love like a Vulcan, like Mr. Spock without emotion.

„Even the most elevated psychological understanding is not a loving understanding.“ — Karl Jaspers German psychiatrist and philosopher 1883 - 1969

Effects of trauma -- from episode 88, Trauma: Defining and Understanding the experience
1. Emotional and Psychological effects
  1. Emotional overwhelm
    1. 1. Shock
    2. 1. Shame as an emotion
    3. 1. Guilt
    4. 1. Irritability, anger, rage
    5. 1. Anxiety, fear, panic attacks, phobia, panic attacks, Fears of trauma repeating
    6. Jenny Han, book Always and Forever, Lara Jean Being vulnerable, letting people in, getting hurt… it's all part of being in love.
      1. Sadness, depression
      2. Mood swings
      3. Hopelessness, despair
        
        Emotional constriction, shutting down
        
        Difficulty experiencing positive emotions
        
        Anhedonia
        
        Apathy
    7. Brady 273. Love does not die because of hate but because of apathy. 6.
    8. 1. Cognitive Effects -- impact on sensation, perceptive, higher-order thinking
  2. Alexithymia -- inability to recognize or describe one's own emotions -- can't put my feelings into words.
    1. Can't conceptualize your feelings either
    2. Feelings in others could be overwhelming -- can't recognize what others are feeling
    3. Can't express my feelings well
    4. Can't connect affectively, emotionally.
      1. That takes vulnerability
        
        Confusion, distraction
        
        Spacing out with dissociation
      2. Physical Effects of trauma -- preoccupation with the body
      3. Behavioral Symptoms
  3. Relational apathy
    1. 1. Social withdrawal
  4. 1. Existential Symptoms
  5. Despair about humanity -- overgeneralized to the other person
    1. 1. Cynicism
    2. 1. Disillusionment
  6. 1. Identity issues -- shame.
  7. I'm not worth you connecting emotionally with me
  8. What could I ever offer you emotionally?
  9. I'm such a downer.
    1. Strong self-criticism
  10. Fragmentation
  12. Love is affirming
2. Love affirms the other
3. 1. Love says yes to the other person at the same time as love says yes to oneself.
4. 1. "Agape is the simple yet profound recognition of the worthiness of and goodness in persons." p. 268
5. 1. Edward Vacek: Love is an affective, affirming participation in the goodness of a being (or Being).… Love is an emotional, affirming participation the dynamic tendency of an object to realize its fullness.”
6. 1. Brene Brown -- Rising Strong Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.“
7. 1. Affirmation happens at two levels
  2. One level is the basic level of human dignity shared by all persons.
    1. 1. Second level of affirmation is the uniqueness of the person.
    2. When you love your neighbor you truly see the other as a person.
    3. Jules Toner, SJ -- "I love you because you are you."
    4. 1. We need to affirm at both levels. The basic dignity of the person and the uniqueness of the person.
  3. 1. Affirmation implies acceptance of the other and knowledge of the other. This is not an endorsement of the other's vices or bad habits, but a recognition of them and an acceptance of who the person is as an entire being. Not picking and choosing the attractive bits.
  4. Self-acceptance of the same things.
  5. 1. Affirmation requires freedom -- freedom to get outside the self.
  6. 1. Effects of trauma
  7. Emotional and Psychological effects
    1. Turning inward -- self-protection. Connections vs. protection -- Episode 89
      1. Where is the safety? 2. 1. How can I escape the danger? 3. 1. Not letting anyone in to love me. 4. 2. 1. Feeling disconnected or numb or detached -- dorsal vagal response. Freeze response. Deer in the headlights Bodily response
      2. Emotional Constriction, Shutdown 3. 1. Shame -- what is my affirmation of you worth? I'm not worth much, my affirmation isn't worth much. 4. 1. Feeling very fragile, vulnerable -- not resilient enough -- I can't engage 5. 1. Irritability, hostility, 6. 1. Depression -- lethargy 7. 1. Mood swings -- unpredictability, others can't trust me. 8. 1. Emotional detachment, disconnection -- in relationships 9. 1. Helplessness 10. 1. Difficulty experiencing positive emotions 11. 1. How can I reach out? White knuckling. Feels very forced. 12.
        
        Cognitive Effects -- impact on sensation, perceptive, higher-order thinking
    2. Racing thoughts -- so distracting, I can attend to you, I can't attune to you, I can't affirm you. My house is on fire. 2. 1. Extreme alertness - suspicion of you -- are you a threat? Will you trigger me? 3.
      1. Physical Effects
      2. Behavioral Symptoms
    3. Argumentative behavior 2. 1. Social withdrawal and relational apathy. 3. 1. Avoidance
      1. Existential Symptoms
    4. Ruminating about evil in the world
      1. Identity issues -- shame
    5. If I affirm you I will see myself in a bad light because of my shame 2. 1. Affirmation involved a positive evaluation -- so tempting to see myself negatively. 3.
      1. Fragmentation
    6. Lack of affirmation from the whole self
      1. Toner [Radical love] "is giving self; for it is myself who am in the loved one by my love, not merely by my possessions, or even my thoughts, my wit, my joy, my wisdom, my strength. It is I myself." 2. 1. Toner: Loving someone in depth… Means loving from the lovers most personal self, with sincerity, intensity, endurance… To affectively affirm this unique person in a response informed by full, detailed knowledge, which catches the delicate shadings of his profoundest attitudes, moods, likes, and dislikes, ideals, fears, hopes, capabilities, weaknesses, etc. The experience of love 160 8.
      3. Love is Responsive
8. Love is an active response for the well-being of the other. This is where Brady includes benevolence. It's about participating in the promotion of the highest good for the other, potential for the other's full humanity.
  1. How can I help you to flourish? How can I help you toward your highest good?
  2. 1. This is where self-sacrifice comes in. love will call for self-sacrifice.
  3. 1. Responsiveness implies an attunement to the other -- a resonance, and understanding. The capacity to respond well. It's not just any responsiveness. The ability to be aware of and to respond effectively to the needs of my neighbor. So there is a capacity about this. It's not just an act of the will.
  4. Attunement can be described as a kind of resonance.
    1. Toner: Radical love is experience as being in accord with the loved one, vibrating as it were, in harmony with the beloved's act of being and so with the whole melody of the beloved's life. It is a welcoming of the loved one into the lover's self and his life-world, as fitting there, making a harmony with the lover's being and life.
  5. 1. But there must also be action: "Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." ` John 3:18.
  6. Parents "Doing the best they can"
    1. 1. Love bottled up inside. -- Not expressed. Then it's not love. Love that is not shared, that is not relational is not love. 3.
  7. 1. Brene Brown: Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen. Rising Strong 2015
  8. Madeleine L'Engle Walking on water (1980) When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
    1. 1. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.“ — Clive Staples Lewis, book The Four Loves
  9. 1. The Letter of James 2:45-17. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
  10. Responsive to needs
    1. 1. Not just physical needs, but the emotional needs, psychological needs, relational needs
  11. 1. St. Bernard of Clairvaux: We must remember that love reveals itself, not by words or phrases, but by actions and experience. It is Love with speaks here, and if anyone wished to understand it, let him first love.
  12. 1. Effects of trauma
  13. Emotional and Psychological effects
    1. Overwhelm 2. 1. Shock 3. 1. Shame 4. 1. Irritability, anger, rage 5. 1. Anxiety, fear, apprehension 6. 1. Guilt 7. 1. Sadness, depression, grief 8. 1. Helplessness, despair 9. 1. Mood swings -- swept away by our own experience 10. 1. Anhedonia -- difficulty experiencing positive emotions. 11. 1. Apathy 12. 1. Protection vs. connection. I'm on fire inside, I am frozen inside. It's chaotic inside
      1. Intense self-preoccupation. Not selfishness. It's really hard to judge the moral quality of these things accurately. 2. 1. When we are preoccupied with the intensity of our own experience, it's hard to be responsive to the other person. 3. 13. 2.
      3. Cognitive Effects -- impact on sensation, perceptive, higher-order thinking
9. “When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are re-experiencing and reenacting the past - they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen.”

― Bessel Van Der Kolk

Difficulty concentrating, even focusing on the other person. Confusion.
1. Others sense the disconnect. Not attuned.
Guardedness -- protecting against vulnerability
Questioning "Why me?" makes it hard to respond to you.
Physical Effects
Behavioral Symptoms
1. Startle responses
2. 1. Argumentative behavior
3. Social withdrawal and relational apathy.
4. Avoidance
5. Reducing activity levels
6. Existential Symptoms
7. I am permanently damaged. How could I ever be responsive in love. Who would want me?
8. 1. Can be unconscious.
10. Identity issues -- shame
11. I am permanently damaged.
12. 1. Fragmentation -- not a consistent, complete, unified response to the other -- partial responses that seem very incomplete, maybe insincere to the other person.
  2. Love requires our whole being
    1. Fr. Jules Toner: in the full concrete experience of love, our whole being, spirit and flesh, is involved: cognitive acts, feelings and affections, freedom, bodily reactions – all these are influencing each other and all are continually fluctuating in such a way as to change the structure and intensity of the experience. The experience of love. P. 65
13. Love is Unitive
14. Brady: The fruit of love is unity. Love unites. It is in the very nature of love to bring together. p. 279
15. 1. Brady: When you love, you step out of yourself and experience the other.
  2. There is still a separateness. Not a blending or a fusion or a loss of identity. But you are no longer just within yourself. You've entered into the space of another.
  3. And you've allow the other to enter into your space
16. 1. Loving an enemy -- you are like me. We are similar on a fundamental human level -- No dehumanization.
17. 1. Agape pulls for unity, even with strangers.
18. 1. The mystics describe the unity we are called to in God -- Union with God.
19. 1. Jules Toner: Radical love is not a tendency affection but a being affection by which I am in union with, am present with the loved one.
20. 1. Effects of trauma -- Protection vs. Connection
  2. Emotional and Psychological effects
    1. Emotional instability, inconsistency -- unpredictability. Makes it hard for the other to trust you. 2. 1. Preoccupation pulls you inside -- guilt, shame -- self protection.
      1. St. Augustine: "..if [a man] loves himself on his own account, he does not turn himself toward God, but being turned toward himself, he does not care for anything immutable…." On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapter 22 2. 1. And the why doesn't matter nearly so much as people think it does. 3. 1. Evil comes from loving some good thing inordinately -- blog post on this -- check it out. Dangerous love, from June 22, 2022
        
        That good thing might be the means that parts of us are seeking to try to provide us with a sense of safety and security. 2. 4. 3. 1. Fear of vulnerability
      2. When trust is lost, traumatized people feel that they belong more to the dead than to the living.“ — Judith Herman Trauma and Recovery 2. 1. Love is a battlefield -Pat Benatar 1983 -- music video about all the conflict with her father, and with others seeking to use her as a sexual object. 3. 4. 1. Fear of overwhelming suffering 5. 1. Shutdown 6. 1. Alexithymia
        
        Cognitive Effects -- impact on sensation, perceptive, higher-order thinking
    2. Distraction, rumination, racing thoughts interfere with capacity to attune, to unite 2. 1. So much internal stimulation -- so much internal noise -- makes it difficult to resonate with the other person, to really understand the other -- to enter into the other's phenomenological world. 3. 1. So much of that distraction is around finding safety and protection -- cognitive restlessness 4. 1. Dissociation and disconnections are experienced as off-putting. Have you ever been with someone who is spacing out when you are talking with them?
      1. Physical Effects
      2. Behavioral Symptoms
    3. Blaming 2. 1. Discharging anger and aggression -- parts so want to be heard and healed.
      1. Desperation can lead to boundary crossings and boundary violations.
      2. Attempts to use the other person to meet intense needs -- not a conscious effort to exploit the other, but exploitation can happen anyway. 3.
      3. Existential Symptoms
    4. Shame -- feeling unworthy of connection 2. 1. Not knowing who I am -- makes it really complicated to be in relationship. 3.
      1. Identity issues
    5. Fragmentation - which part of me is uniting with you right now? What are other parts doing. 2. 1. The need for disconnects within in order to not be overwhelmed - inevitably leads to disconnects with other people
      1. You can't give what you don't have. 2. 3. 1. I'm not lovable, why would you want to be united with me? 4. 1. Dissociation
      2. Identity alteration: The sense of being markedly different from another part of yourself 2. 1. Identity confusion: A sense of confusion about who you really are 5. 7.

we will have a lot more to say about dissociation in future episodes, but for now -- disconnection.

I need to know who I am and I need to know who you are to know who we are together, in relationship.
Love is steadfast
1. God's love endures.
  1. Psalm 891-2 I will sing of thy steadfast love, O Lord,[a] for ever;

with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations.

For thy steadfast love was established for ever,

It may not always be mutual or reciprocal
People want predictability
Steadfastness requires resilience, to roll with the punches in the relationship. Any close relationship will have conflicts and difficulties.
1. The fragility in the system that trauma imposes is a real obstacle to resilience necessary to be steadfast in relationship, to not quit and walk away from loving the other person.
Jules Toner: "The lover is present to the loved one and has the loved one present to himself." The experience of love, 117
Effects of trauma
1. Emotional and Psychological effects
  1. Mood swings -- effect of different parts, each with its own intense emotions
    1. 1. Helplessness -- despair -- can be intermittent
    2. 1. Emotional shutdown -- dorsal vagal response.
    3. 1. Being reactivated or triggered emotionally.
    4. 1. Disappointment in the other -- you are not helping me
    5. Can lead to frustration and rejection. 2. 6.
    6. 1. Cognitive Effects -- impact on sensation, perceptive, higher-order thinking
  2. Intrusive thoughts, intrusive memories.
    1. 1. Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, body, from memories or sense of identity. This disconnection is automatic and completely out of the person's control.
    2. Amnesia: Often described as "gaps" in memory that can range from minutes to years 2. 1. Depersonalization: Feeling disconnected from your body or thoughts 3. 1. Derealization: Feeling disconnected from the world around you 3.
    3. 1. Physical Effects
  3. Impact of hyperarousal
    1. 1. Impact of hypoarousal
  4. 1. Behavioral Symptoms
  5. Withdrawal
    1. 1. Avoidance -- refusal of consistent vulnerability
    2. 1. Alcohol and drug use

„For me, vulnerability led to anxiety, which led to shame, which led to disconnection, which led to Bud Light.“ — Brené Brown US writer and professor 1965 Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Switching among parts
Existential Symptoms
1. Deep sense of not being loved, not being lovable
2. 1. There is no love in the world. At least not for me. So why unite with anyone.
3. 1. Loss of meaning and purpose.
5. Identity issues
6. Fragmentation
7. 1. Unstable identity makes it hard to be consistent in the loving
8. The death of love
9. Brady 273. Love does not die because of hate but because of apathy. The death of love is often preceded by the denial of the basic dignity of the other. The death of love happens when we reject instead of affirm the other's special personal and unique goodness. The death of love is encouraged when we ignore the other's needs and wants while prioritizing our own wants. The deal of love occurs when we pursue discord, division, disassociation, and distance in the place of unity.
  1. That is sin.
  2. Malice is not necessary for love to die. Apathy doesn't have malice in it. In apathy, the other does not register in your consciousness. He or she doesn't matter. He or she doesn't exist for you.
  3. We don't have to active deny the basic dignity of the other. We just have to not notice it. Not attend to it
  4. We don't have to actively reject the other's special and unique goodness, we just have to not notice it, not attend to it.
  5. We don't have to actively ignore the other's needs and wants -- we just have to be preoccupied with our own trauma and its effects.
11. Hope
12. Romans 8:28 We know that in everything God works for good[a] with those who love him,[b] who are called according to his purpose.
13. 1. Julian of Norwich: And because of the tender love which our good Lord has for all who will be saved, he comforts readily and sweetly, meaning this: it is true that sin is the cause of all this pain, but all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.
14. 1. Widow's mite
  2. Luke 21:1-4 He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; 2 he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. 3 He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; 4 for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
    1. 1. Ratios
  3. 1. Martin Luther King: Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of the world. Strength to Love 47-48
  4. 1. Psychologist Peter Levine: Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.
  5. 1. Romans 5:20 ..where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
  6. 1. 1 John 3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
  7. 1. Romans 8 35-39 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
  8. Call to Action
15. Kent Keith The Paradoxical Commandments -- Resilience. Mother Theresa had pinned this up in one of her convents.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

Where we are going
1. If you want to love, you have to first be loved and know you are loved.
  1. Tolerating being loved -- many people assume that we just want to be loved -- that's not anything like entirely accurate.
  2. 1 John 4:19 We love, because he first loved us.
2. 1. Ordered self love.
4. Check out our blogs -- weekly email reflections
5. June 15 -- Seven ways to understand sin

Sin as breaking the law

Sin as a burden

Sin as a debt

Sin as “missing the mark”

Sin as a violating your conscience

Sin as breaking or harming relationships

Sin as the failure to love, or the “anti-love”

June 22 Dangerous Love -- we really get into St. Augustine's description of sin as a disordered or misdirected love, and I share how when we that misdirected love is oriented toward getting our attachment needs met, it's not only misdirected love, it's a dangerous love.
June 29 Conflicting loves inside you -- we get into how to understand the conflicting loves inside of us -- from a parts perspective -- multiplicity and unity of the self.
Email me crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- call my cell 317.567.9594 any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time for conversation hours.
Let others know about this podcast. Put the word out. There's somebody you know dealing with trauma -- get them on board with the rest of us with the IIC podcast. All the major podcast player -- Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Audible, Podbean, Podchaser, CastBox, Overcast, Podcast Addict, all of them, we're on all of them. Soulsandhearts.com/iic
You have until July 10. The RCC -- Come with me on an adventure. Come with me on an adventure of being loved and of loving. That is what the Resilient Catholic Community is all about. Check out the Resilient Catholics Community at soulsandhearts.com/RCC The RCC is all about working through your human formation issues -- the ones that inhibit you from receiving the love you need and from loving God completely, with every fiber of your being, with your body, with all your parts, with all your emotions, thoughts, all your inner experience with all of you, with no part of you left behind, no part of you left out.
1. It's all about learning to be gentle but firm with yourself -- it's all about integration. It's all about resilience.
2. All about restoration -- recovering from being dominated by shame, fear, anger, sadness, pessimism, whatever your struggle is in the depths of your human formation
3. And we do this work experientially -- so many experiential exercises -- this is not just intellectual knowledge, we're working with all of you.
  1. Informed by Internal Family Systems and the best of the rest of psychological and human formation resources
    1. 1. All grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person
    2. 1. All focused on helping you to better accept love and to love more fully, to carry out the two great commandments of our Lord.
    4. Are you up for the challenge? Would you like to join me and the rest of the pioneers in this adventure? Do you want to be a part of the community?
  2. Are you ready to prevail over whatever hinders your human formation -- would you like to no longer be dominated by fear, anger, shame, sadness, pessimism? And would you like to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey --
  3. If so join me. Join all of us in the Resilient Catholics Community. The RCC
    1. We are taking applications throughout until July 10 -- extended the deadline. for our third cohort, those in that cohort will start their adventure in June and July by taking our Initial Measures Kits and be getting feedback on their parts in a personal Zoom session with me. It's a great chance for us to get to know each other, really know each other at the level of parts. You'll get a 5 or 6 page report on your internal system and then be eligible for our weekly company meetings and programming to begin in late August or early September.
    2. Talk with me about it in conversation hours call my cell 317.567.9594 any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time for conversation hours.
  4. Patroness and Patron

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Summary, In this episode, I discuss the central importance of love as the marker of well-being from a Catholic perspective -- our capacity to live out the two great commandments. We explore how love is the distinguishing characteristics of Christians, we detail the eight different kinds of love, and we discuss Catholic theologian Bernard Brady's five attributes or characteristics of love -- how love is affective, affirming, responsive, unitive and steadfast. We discuss what is commonly missing from philosophical and theological approaches to love, and we briefly touch in the death of love and distortions of love.
Lead-in
1. I want to speak to you from my heart today. I want to share with you heart to heart about what it most important to me. And maybe what is most important to you. I want to talk with you today about love. Real love. Fundamental Love. Radical love. The real thing. Not the counterfeits of love that you and I have pursued in our lives in one way or another -- the fakes loves we've mistaken for real love, or the lesser loves that we've tried to inflate into more than they could possibly be.
2. 1. I think love is not only the most essential experience in the whole world, it's also the most confusing for us. Think about it. What else has confused you more than love? What has been more enduringly puzzling than love? What has been more elusive for you? What has been more enigmatic than love in your life? What have you struggled with more than love?
3. 1. Love -- the word is evocative. The word is provocative, it stirs us up. You parts react in so many different ways to the word love. And so that's where we are going today. Into the mystery of love.
4. Intro:
5. Maybe you are feeling like you're just struggling to survive.
  1. I want more for you than that.
6. 1. Maybe much of the time you feel like things are OK, maybe pretty good.
  2. I want more for you than that.
  3. 1. I want to share with you the very best of what I have with you on the central focus of well-being from a Catholic perspective.
  4. 1. Broad overview
  5. Let's review a little. In episode 88, we began a series on trauma with that piece Trauma: Defining and Understanding the Experience -- that one was a huge hit -- so many people interested in it, by far the most downloads of any episode.
  6. In episode 89, called Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection -- we did a deep dive into the effects of trauma on the body, really understanding trauma from the perspective of Polyvagal theory by Steven Porges and Deb Dana.
  7. From there, though, I really wanted to look at well-being -- how does secular psychology understand well-being --
    1. It's so important to understand what well-being is, what it looks like, how it feels. So many people have never really experienced well being. It's possible that you've never really experienced well-being.
    2. So I started a subseries on well-being within the broader trauma series.
  8. So shared with you the secular views of well being in Episodes 90 and 92 of this podcast
  9. We really dived into what the best of current psychological theorizing says about well-being
    1. Episode 90 Your Well-Being: The Secular Experts Speak
      1. DSM 5 -- which doesn't have a description of well being 2. 1. PDM 2 3. 1. Hedonic Well-being 4. 1. Eudemonic Well-being 5. 1. Freud's ideas of well-being 6. 1. Contributions of Positive Psychology - pioneered by Martin Seligman 7. 1. Polyvagal Theory -- Stephen Porges, Deb Dana 8. 1. Internal Family Systems 6. 1. Episode 92 Understanding and Healing your Mind through IPNB
      2. Interpersonal Neurobiology -- Daniel Siegel -- a lot to say about the healthy mind, a sense of well-being. Very well developed. 2. 7. 1. Episode 93 consisted of three experiential exercises
      3. The first on the ways in which you reject yourself or condemn yourself as a person 2. 1. The second on protection vs. connection -- your internal reactions to your wounds. That one was based off of polyvagal theory 3. 1. The third was on exploring your own inner chaos and rigidity within -- based off of Daniel Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology and one point he makes is that all psychological symptoms can be thought in terms of rigidity and/or chaos. Rigidity and chaos are signs of having lost a sense of well-being. 4. 1. I invite you to check those out if you haven't already, there's a lot of opportunities in those experiential exercises for you to do your inner work. 5. 8. 9. As you know, I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, passionate Catholic, and I am the voice of this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics
    2. In this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we take on the most important psychological questions. We take the most important human formation issues head on, directly, without mincing words, without trepidation, without vacillation, without hesitation -- We are dealing with the most important concerns in the natural realm, the absolute central issues that we need to address with all of our energy and all of our resources. 10. 1. And up until now, the most important episodes I've done are numbers 37 to 49 -- that was the 13-episode series on shame. Why? Because shame is the major driver of so much emotional distress, so many identity issues, and so many psychological symptoms. 11. 1. But these new few episodes, these episodes on well-being from a Catholic perspective, informed first by the perennial wisdom of the Catholic Church, and then secondarily by the best of psychological science, theory, research and practice, these episodes on love, these are the most important. Why? Because, in two words, love heals. Love restores. Love makes new. Love is our mission, love is our goal, love is the destiny we are called to. 12. 1. This is episode 94 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, released on June 6, 2022 and it's titled Well-Being from a Catholic Perspective: The Primacy of Love
    3. Love as the Center
7. We were made in love and for love and to love.
  1. Prayer to God in the Litanies of the Heart: "Lord Jesus, You created me in love, for love. Bring me to a place of vulnerability within the safety of your loving arms." Discussed the Litanies of the Heart with Dr. Gerry at length in Episode 91 of this podcast, a special episode all about the litanies of the heart.
    1. 1. Inviting to the adventure of loving
    2. So many people are just surviving -- their vision is so reduced, they are not even looking to be loved or to love. Maybe that's you, to some degree. 2. 1. They are not on the adventure -- the are jaded, disillusioned, tired, wounded by betrayal or abandonment, cautious now, skeptical, calculating when it comes to love. They hear the word love, and it activates shame, grief, loss, sorrow, fear in parts of them. Parts of them don't want the vulnerability, the risk of being hurt again. Maybe that's you, too. 3. 1. They are not on the adventure. I want you to come on the adventure. The greatest adventure. The adventure of loving. Stay with me in the podcast. That can be a fresh start if you need one. A new start on the adventure of loving.
      1. St. Augustine: To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the great human achievement.
      2. St. Therese Lisieux "I know of no other means to reach perfection than by love. To love: how perfectly our hearts are made for this! Sometimes I look for another word to use, but, in this land of exile, no other word so well expresses the vibrations of our soul. Hence we must keep to that one word: love. 4. 3.
    4. Our Great Mission as Catholics is summed up in the two Great Commandments
8. Two Great Commandments
  1. Mark 12:28-31:28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
    1. 1. Loving with our whole heart. Jules Toner, 1968 book The experience of love
    2. In the full, concrete experience of love, our whole being, spirit and flesh, in involved. Cognitive acts, feelings and affections, freedom, bodily reactions -- all these are influencing each other and all are continually fluctuating in such a way as to change the structure and the intensity of the experience. 2. 3.
    3. 1. Love is the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian
  2. John 13:35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
  3. 1. Baltimore Catechism
  4. First Lesson on the End of Man, question 6
    1. Q. Why did God make you?
    2. A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
    3. 1. To love God implies both that we know Him and that we serve Him
  5. 1. CCC
  6. 2392 Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. (quoting St. John Paul II Familiaris Consortio, paragraph 11)
    1. 1. 2134 The first commandment summons man to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him above all else.
  7. 1. Matthew 6:21: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
  8. 1. Quotes for St. Therese of Lisieux It is love alone that counts.
  9. Catholic well-being is not hedonism, feeling good all the time - It is all about being equipped to live out our mission of being loved and loving God, our neighbors (including our enemies) and ourselves.
    1. So many secular approaches emphasize the Pursuit of happiness -- they operate off of a hedonistic anthropology.
  10. Carrie Snow -- stand up comedian who was raised in a Jewish family: The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
    1. Mick Cady 2019 blog: At age 19, Augustine of Hippo read a dialogue by the Roman philosopher Cicero in which Cicero stated that every person sets out to be happy, but the majority are thoroughly wretched. Truly, no one dreams as a child of one day growing up to be miserable, and yet many people’s lives are characterized by conflict, frustration and unfulfilled longings.
  11. Augustine was convinced that what defines a person more than anything is what they love. He said that when we ask if someone is a “good” person, what we are asking is not what they believe or what they hope for, but rather what they love.
    2. We need an anthropology, a revealed religion or we will never get it.
  12. Psychology alone cannot answer the deep questions about what we should love and what love is ordered and disordered --- as many psychologies as there are anthropologies -- psychology cannot answer the questions that are properly in the realm of theology, philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics.
  13. G.K. Chesterton: “We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.” Charles Dickens, A Critical Study
  14. Definitions of Love
9. English is a very difficult language when it comes to describing inner experience -- Jose's anecdote
10. 1. Different Types of Love --
  2. Eros (romantic, passionate love) The first kind of love is Eros, named after the Greek God of fertility. Eros is passionate, sensual, romantic love with an intense romantic and sexual feelings.
  3. Philia (affectionate love) The love between friends -- friendship. Some call this platonic love, love “without physical attraction.”
  4. Storge (familiar love) Storge is a natural form of affection experienced between family members. This protective, kinship-based love is common between parents and their children, and children for their parents.
    1. Storge can also describe a sense of patriotism toward a country or allegiance to the same team. 4. Mania (obsessive love) When love turns to obsession, it becomes mania.
    2. Stalking behaviors, co-dependency, extreme jealousy, and violence are all symptoms of Mania. 5. Ludus (playful love) The Ancient Greeks thought of ludus as a playful form of love. It describes the situation of having a crush and acting on it, or the affection between young lovers. 6. Pragma (enduring, committed love) Pragma is a love built on commitment, understanding and long-term best interests.
    3. It is a love that has aged, matured and about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, also showing patience and tolerance. 7. Philautia (self love) The Greeks understood that in order to care for others, we must first learn to care for ourselves. As Aristotle said “All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.” 8. Agape (selfless, universal love) selfless universal love, such as the love for strangers, nature, or God.
    4. This love is unconditional, bigger than ourselves, a boundless compassion and an infinite empathy that you extended to everyone, whether they are family members or distant strangers. 9. 1. Bernard Brady, p. 267 2003 Book Christian Love: How Christians through the Ages have Understood Love. Agape does not neglect, deny or destroy eros or indeed philia, it informs them. 10. 1. Agape is what we are focusing on. 11.
    5. 1. Jules Toner looking for what he call "radical love" -- phenomenologist. 1. from the latin radix or root, the love the is the foundation for all other loves. 2. Toner describes how radical love is a response to the beloved's total reality.
    7. Interdisciplinary approach
11. Not just theology and philosophy
  1. Philosophers and Theologians generally don't understand the impact of trauma on being loved and loving. They don't get it.
    1. Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person -- almost nothing on trauma and its impact. Nothing in the index. 2.
  2. 1. Phenomenology -- an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.
  3. This is really important because it's what people relate to. 2.
  4. 1. Spiritual Writers and Saints
  5. 1. Best of psychology
  6. Bernard Brady's description of Love Christian Love: How Christians through the Ages have Understood Love.-- drawing heavily from the work of phenomenologists Jules Toner and Margaret Farley
12. Love is affective, affirming, responsive, unitive and steadfast. (repeat) Five characteristics
13. 1. Love is affective -- emotional components of love can often be neglected in philosophical or theological discussions of love.
  2. Love is an emotion
  3. Love is a movement from your heart, your soul -- a movement from the innermost depths of your being. From your core self.
  4. Love is prior to reason and transcends reason.
    1. You might say it's "bigger" than reason.
    2. Love is best captured, not in the dry academic language of the philosopher, but in the verses of the poet
    3. Blaise Pascal -- The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
  5. Love rejoices in the beloved -- Protestant Theologian R.H. Neibuhr writes in his 1977 book the Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry: By love, we mean at least these attitudes and actions: rejoicing in the presence of the beloved, gratitude, reverence, and loyalty toward him. p.35
  6. Love is the directive and dominant center of emotions. p. 267
    1. Many emotions are associated with love
      1. Delight, Bliss, Happiness 2. 1. A sense of fulfillment 3. 1. Warmth 4. 1. Grief
        
        John 11:32-36 32 Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; 34 and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 2. 5. 1. Sadness 6. 1. Anxiety
        
        Dolly Parton: Love is something sent from heaven to worry the hell out of you. 7. 1. Distress-- as when our Lady, Mother Mary and St. Joseph were searching for the missing 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem
        
        Luke 2:48. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress. 8. 6. 7. If there is no emotion, there is no agape, no love. The heart must be moved for love to be anything like complete.
    2. We cannot love like a Vulcan, without emotion. 8. 1. Limitations of benevolence alone -- when I was but a wee therapist…
      1. Love is an act of the will 2. 1. I didn't have to like my clients 3. 1. But warmth and affection toward them, a warm and inviting emotional response was so much better. 4.
      2. Love is affirming
  7. Love affirms the other
    1. 1. Love says yes to the other person at the same time as love says yes to oneself.
    2. 1. "Agape is the simple yet profound recognition of the worthiness of and goodness in persons." p. 268
    3. 1. Affirmation happens at two levels
    4. One level is the basic level of human dignity shared by all persons.
      1. Affirmation on this first level has an equal regard for everyone -- all persons are ontologically good, all bear the image and likeness of God.
      2. St. Thomas "Love the sinner and hate the sin."
      3. Not about the personal merits or individual characteristics of the person.
        
        Philosopher Gene Outka describes this as equal regard for each and every person. 4. 2. 1. Second level of affirmation is the uniqueness of the person. 1. In loving the other person, we acknowledge and affirm the uniqueness of the beloved.
        
        Her gifts
        
        Her beauty
        
        Her unique qualities and traits 2. When you love your neighbor you truly see the other as a person. 3. Jules Toner, SJ -- "I love you because you are you." 4. A deep respect for the other person, a reverence for the individuality of the person. 5. Augustine in his confesssions: O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one! 3. 1. We need to affirm at both levels. The basic dignity of the person and the uniqueness of the person.
      4. Brady: We do not want to be loved merely because we are a person (no one wants to be generically loved) nor do we want to be loved because of particular characteristic or physical trait (what if my full head of dark hair is no longer full or dark). We want to be loved in our totality. p. 268.
        
        That's why my clients didn't respond to my cool efforts at benevolence. I was not finding and not taking in their good qualities. Sometimes I was not looking for their uniqueness. I was not seeing them as persons. My attempts at benevolence actually avoided who they were, because I was threatened. I wasn't sure I could handle the intensity of their pain, their shame, their grief, their rage. 2.
        
        God loves us as individuals. God loves us in our unique particularity. "God calls us each by name." Isaiah 43:1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
        
        Jesus -- who does he connect with? Paupers and nobles, lepers and rich men, Samaritan women and Roman centurions, fishermen and lawyers, tax collectors and Pharisees, the sick and the strong, the dying and the robust, the political zealots and the housewives, the prostitutes and the Sanhedrin.
        
        Jules Toner "You are why I love you." 1. "Loving someone in depth…means loving from the lover's most personal self, with sincerity, intensity, endurance….to affectively affirm this unique person in a response informed by a full, detailed knowledge which catch the delicate shadings of his profoundest attitudes, moods, likes, and dislikes, ideals, fears, hopes, capabilities, etc. "
        
        Affirmation implies acceptance of the other and knowledge of the other. This is not an endorsement of the other's vices or bad habits, but a recognition of them and an acceptance of who the person is as an entire being. Not picking and choosing the attractive bits. 1. Self-acceptance of the same things. 2. Leo Tolstoy: When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.
        
        Conrad Baars' affirmation therapy -- quoting from baarsinstitute.com: A person’s ability to love is unlocked when that person experiences himself or herself as good, worthwhile, and lovable. According to Christian psychiatrists Conrad W. Baars and Anna A. Terruwe, this process is called “affirmation.” Affirmation is a three-step process which occurs when one person is the source of unconditional love and emotional strengthening for another person. These three steps are: the person is open and receptive to the goodness and lovableness of the other; over time, the person allows himself to be moved with affection, love, delight, etc., by the other person; and third, the person reveals these feelings to the other primarily through his countenance, tone of voice, gentle touch, etc.
      5. Love is Responsive
  8. Love is an active response for the well-being of the other. This is where Brady includes benevolence. It's about participating in the promotion of the highest good for the other, potential for the other's full humanity.
    1. How can I help you to flourish? How can I help you toward your highest good? 2. 1. 1 John 3:18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth. 3. 1. James 2:26: For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead. 2.
    3. This is where self-sacrifice comes in. There are times, and sometimes it's often when agape, when love will call for self-sacrifice.
      1. It does not necessarily mean allowing oneself to be exploited or used or destroyed or mistreated.
      2. That is often different than self-giving -- and we are going to discuss this at length in future episodes in this series.
    4. Brady: A dominant feature of agape is a readiness and a willingness to subordinate the fulfillment of my needs so as to be able to help the other fulfill her needs. p. 279
      1. That subordination may at time call for my life. For martyrdom.
  9. St. Therese of Lisieux: Little things done out of love are those that charm the Heart of Christ… On the contrary, the most brilliant deeds, when done without love, are but nothingness.
    1. Loving God or my neighbor can never demand that I violate my integrity, my deepest values, the core of who I am.
    2. Margaret Farley -- I can sacrifice what I have, but I can never sacrifice who I am.
  10. Responsiveness implies an attunement to the other -- a resonance, and understanding. The capacity to respond well. It's not just any responsiveness. The ability to be aware of and to respond effectively to the needs of my neighbor. So there is a capacity about this. It's not just an act of the will.
    1. Attunement can be described as a kind of resonance.
  11. Toner: Radical love is experience as being in accord with the loved one, vibrating as it were, in harmony with the beloved's act of being and so with the whole melody of the beloved's life. It is a welcoming of the loved one into the lover's self and his life-world, as fitting there, making a harmony with the lover's being and life.
  12. Augustine: “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”
  13. Love is Unitive
14. Brady: The fruit of love is unity. Love unites. It is in the very nature of love to bring together. p. 279
  1. John 17: 20-23 “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one,
    1. 1. Colossians 3:12-14: Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
    2. 1. Acts 4:32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul
    3. 1. Philippians 2:2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.\
  2. 1. Brady: When you love, you step out of yourself and experience the other.
  3. There is still a separateness. Not a blending or a fusion or a loss of identity. But you are no longer just within yourself. You've entered into the space of another.
  4. And you've allow the other to enter into your space
    1. "Come live in my heart and pay no rent." — Samuel Lover
    2. 1. Loving an enemy -- you are like me. We are similar on a fundamental human level. 1. No dehumanization.
    3. 1. Loving doesn't necessarily lead to a mutuality or reciprocity. Not all love is accepted or taken in. Witness John 6, the discourse of the bread of life when Jesus was offering the greatest gift ever, the entirety of himself, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to his disciples:
  5. The response: John 6:60 and 66: Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” … After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
  6. 1. But you still reach out to the beauty and inner goodness of the other.
  7. 1. Agape pulls for unity, even with strangers. Right now, devastating wars are actively going on in the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, among other places. Food crises are becoming more urgent as international food trade and distribution channels are breaking down. This will move hearts that love with agape.
  8. Jesus wept over Jerusalem Luke 19:41-44 And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
  9. 1. The mystics describe the unity we are called to in God -- Union with God.
  11. Love is steadfast
15. God's love endures. '
16. 1. Psalm 136 opens:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

for his steadfast love endures for ever.

O give thanks to the God of gods,

for his steadfast love endures for ever.

O give thanks to the Lord of lords,

for his steadfast love endures for ever;

Love can change, though. For us humans, it can deepen, it can mature.
1. H.R. Neibuhr -- "Love can have a history."
It may not always be mutual or reciprocal
1. Story of the prodigal son.
2. 1. Story of St. Monica and St. Augustine.
3. 1. Story of St. Augustine and God
  2. Quote from Confessions: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”
5. Martin Luther King
6. Essay -- Loving your Enemies
  1. To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’ ”
8. Psalm 36: 5-10

5 Thy steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,

thy faithfulness to the clouds.

Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God,

thy judgments are like the great deep;

man and beast thou savest, O Lord.

How precious is thy steadfast love, O God!

The children of men take refuge in the shadow of thy wings.

They feast on the abundance of thy house,

and thou givest them drink from the river of thy delights.

For with thee is the fountain of life;

in thy light do we see light.

O continue thy steadfast love to those who know thee,

and thy salvation to the upright of heart!

Desire for this in the modern era: 1983 songs Cyndi Lauper -- If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting… Time after Time
Jules Toner -- Love is the not just "giving of self" but giving self.
1. Giving of myself -- sharing something of what I am -- I may share my wit, my knowledge, by strength, my sense of joy, my playfulness.
  1. These are all qualities of my being.
  2. They are things I possess.
2. Giving myself -- that radical love, according to Toner, is the gift of my self. It is me. I am the gift. Not just my qualities or my possessions. So I am loving from the core of my being -- the loving is the most personal act.
Integration
Resilience
Distortions
1. Loving the wrong things.
2. 1. Augustine: “In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.” Confessions
3. 1. "We are shaped and fashioned by those we love." — Goethe
4. 1. "Tell me who you love and I’ll tell you who you are." — Creole Proverb
5. The death of love
6. Brady 273. Love does not die because of hate but because of apathy. The death of love is often preceded by the denial of the basic dignity of the other. The death of love happens when we reject instead of affirm the other's special personal and unique goodness. The death of love is encouraged when we ignore the other's needs and wants while prioritizing our own wants. The deal of love occurs when we pursue discord, division, disassociation, and distance in the place of unity.
  1. It is not just the pursuit of these things. If whatever we are pursuing, even if it is a good but not the highest good results in ignoring or rejection of others' needs -- or if it results in discord, division, disassociation, and distance. I might want to become physically fit and start training two hours per day for a marathon. If I did that, I would wind up neglecting my family's needs.
  2. Malice is not necessary for love to die. Apathy doesn't have a lot of malice in it. Hatred has a lot more malice than apathy. If you are hating someone, you are still at least in relationship with the hated one. You are thinking about the hated one. The hated one still exists for you. But in apathy, the other does not register in your consciousness. He or she doesn't matter.
8. Where we are going
9. Tolerating being loved -- many people assume that we just want to be loved
  1. Brady: page vii, second sentence. Loving seems entirely natural and being loved seems wonderfully good.
    1. 1. I take issue. Being loved can be very, very painful. It can feel very unnatural to very many people, especially those with complex trauma.
    2. 1. This kind of sentence would never be written by a depth psychologist, or anyone really experienced with the terror, the shame, the grief, and the walls that those who have experienced abandonment and betrayal traumas suffer with. 4.
  2. 1. Assumption -- we naturally love ourselves. I take issue with that.
  3. Ordered Self Love
  4. 1. Love and Identity
  5. 1 John 3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2.
  6. 1. Learning to love by loving
  7. St. Bernard of Clairvaux: We much remember that love reveals itself, not by words or phrases, but by actions and experience. It is Love with speaks here, and if anyone wished to understand it, let him first love. 2.
  8. 1. What gets in the way of loving
  9. Sin -- the great unlove
    1. Missing the mark
      1. Trauma
    2. Protection vs. Connection -- Polyvagal theory, Episode 89: 2. 1. Rigidity and Chaos IPNB, Episode 92
      1. Original Sin => original trauma
      2. Shame
      3. Differences between unlove and desolation
    4. The RCC -- Come with me on an adventure. Come with me on an adventure of being loved and of loving. That is what the Resilient Catholic Community is all about. Check out the Resilient Catholics Community at soulsandhearts.com/RCC The RCC is all about working through your human formation issues -- the ones that inhibit you from receiving the love you need and from loving God completely, with every fiber of your being, with your body, with all your parts, with all your emotions, thoughts, all your inner experience with all of you, with no part of you left behind, no part of you left out.
      1. It's all about learning to be gentle but firm with yourself -- it's all about integration. It's all about resilience.
      2. All about restoration -- recovering from being dominated by shame, fear, anger, sadness, pessimism, whatever your struggle is in the depths of your human formation
      3. And we do this work experientially -- so many experiential exercises -- this is not just intellectual knowledge, we're working with all of you.
  10. Informed by Internal Family Systems and the best of the rest of psychological and human formation resources
    1. 1. All grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person
    2. 1. All focused on helping you to better accept love and to love more fully, to carry out the two great commandments of our Lord.
    4. Are you up for the challenge? Would you like to join me and the rest of the pioneers in this adventure? Do you want to be a part of the community?
  11. Are you ready to prevail over whatever hinders your human formation -- would you like to no longer be dominated by fear, anger, shame, sadness, pessimism? And would you like to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey --
  12. If so join me. Join all of us in the Resilient Catholics Community. The RCC
    1. We are taking applications throughout June of 2022 for our third cohort, those in that cohort will start their adventure in June and July by taking our Initial Measures Kits and be getting feedback on their parts in a personal Zoom session with me. It's a great chance for us to get to know each other, really know each other at the level of parts. You'll get a 5 or 6 page report on your internal system and then be eligible for our weekly company meetings and programming to begin in late August or early September.
    2. Sign up for the June waiting list -- Souls and Hearts.com/rcc -- or just do an internet search for the Resilient Catholics Community.
    3. Human Formation Retreat -- August 12-14, 2022 details will be put on the website. Meet me in person. Only for RCC members
  13. Patroness and Patron

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Summary: In this episode I discuss the crucial role of the right kinds of corrective and healing experiences in our lives. I then offer you three inner experiential exercises to help you understand three questions: 1) In what ways do you not love yourself (with a special focus on inner critics); 2) your inner tension between connection and protection; and 3) your internal battles with rigidity and chaos.
Lead in:
1. Experience.
2. I have been wanting for a long time to offer you some experiential exercises
  1. In episodes 89, 90, and 92, I gave you a lot of conceptual information about polyvagal theory, about interpersonal neurobiology, some more about Internal family systems, but something has been missing
  2. And what's been missing, in my opinion, is the experiential part of this for us.
    1. Julius Caesar "Experience is the teacher of all things" De Bello Civilli
    2. John Stuart Mill: There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. -- On liberty
3. Experience. There is no substitute for experiential learning
  1. Otherwise it can stay all in the conceptual realm, all in your head, all in your mind.
    1. Michael Smith: The major problem is that we tend to live our life in our head, in our thoughts and stories, cut off from our actual experience.
    2. 1. What I want for you is much more than that. I want you to be able to change for the better in the deepest ways.
    3. And you can't think or study your way there
    4. 1. Not the same experiences over and over -- some people have that kind of life.
    5. Rather, a capacity for experience -- the ability to take in, process, and integrate new experiences as part of your human formation.
    6. George Bernard Shaw: Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
    8. What holds us back?
  2. Many would say fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of putting ourselves out there. Fear keeps us from new experiences and for the corrective effects of new experiences. And I think that's true. But I don't think fear is the primary obstacle. There's some thing deeper than fear that holds us back.
    1. 1. What is it that really holds us back from new experiences? What goes deeper than our fear? [Drum roll]
  3. Our Shame. It is our shame that holds us back from new experiences and the healing that new experiences can bring to us.
  4. The fear is a secondary reaction. We wouldn't have the fear if we didn't have the shame, the gnawing sense of inadequacy or not being good enough. Too much shame makes us fragile, way to concerned about protecting ourselves
  5. And in the natural realm, it's shame that most often keeps us from taking in the love from God, from others, and from ourselves -- it's shame that generates our fear, the desire to protect our wounds, that shuts us off from ourselves and other people
    1. Shame generates fear -- fear fuels our self-protection and shuts down the openness to experience. The shame to fear to self-protection progression builds walls around our hearts. We see vulnerability as dangerous. 5. 1. Brené Brown, Daring Greatly Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.
      1. Shame is so important, I spent 13 episodes of this podcast just on that one topic. Those 13 episodes, episodes 37 to 49 on it
  6. Those episodes on shame are foundational -- they are the most fundamental episodes of this podcast. So many of our problem go back to shame, and nearly all psychological dysfunction in the natural realm has its root and origin in shame.
    1. 1. If you haven't listened to those episodes, or if it's been a long time, go back and listen to them.
    3. So now, in this episode, I am bringing to you the kinds of experiential exercises, the kind of experiential learning that can help you understand yourself so much better and get you started toward a more solid natural foundation for your spiritual life, much better human formation.
    4. And what I want for you most of all is for you to experience love. To be able to receive love -- to receive love from others, from yourself, from God. And to love. To join those men and women who are on an adventure of love
  7. 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
    1. 1. How does it do that? How does perfect love cast out fear -- does it just numb fear while leaving your shame intact? No, I really don’t think that's how it works for me and you.
    2. 1. Love is the antidote for shame. Love cures shame. Three kinds of love.
    3. Love from God
    4. Love from others, including the saints, especially our Mother Mary
    5. Love from ourselves to ourselves.
    7. I invite you to join me on this great adventure of loving, especially in this episode, right now, this episode number 93 of this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, let us journey together
    8. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we can have the relational encounters we need to learn to be loved and to love.
    9. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts. Souls and Hearts brings you the best of psychology and human formation grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
    10. We are continuing our series on how the best of secular psychological approaches define mental health, psychological well-being. We started with Episode 89 on Polyvagal Theory and covered Positive Psychology, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems in Episode 90.
    11. Today's episode, number 93 is entitled "Three Experiential Exercisesx" and it's released on May 2, 2022 and today, I am offering you
  8. Three longer experiential exercises today, about 20 minutes each
4. Informed by IFS -- can check out episode 71 of this podcast to find out more about IFS -- A new and better way of understanding yourself and others. Great preparation for these exercises.
  1. Grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person
5. 1. Three experiential exercises
  2. In what ways do you not love yourself? -- where are the gaps in your human formation? What parts of you are going unloved by you? -- Episode 90 Your Well-being, the Secular experts speak
    1. 1. Your inner battle: Protection vs. Connection -- Episode 89 Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection
  3. Rigidity and Chaos -- episode 92 Understanding and Healing your Mind through IPNB
  5. Overall guidelines for these exercises
6. Cautions
  1. window of tolerance
    1. Upside -- Fight or flight, sympathetic activation 2. 1. Downside -- Free response -- dorsal vagal activation, shutting down, numbing out, 3.
      1. don’t have to do this exercise, can stop at any time, reground yourself
      2. no steamrolling parts
      3. Also bringing in God from a Catholic perspective, which may activate some parts in some people.
      4. Good to do this exercise when you have the time and space and privacy -- not while driving or engaging in other activities that would require you to divide your attention. 6.
    2. 1. Options
  2. Take what is useful to you
    1. 1. Feel free to go your own direction if that seems what's best
  3. There will be some quiet moments in the exercises to give you time to do your inner work. If it's helpful, feel free to pause the audio and really settle in and do extended work inside if that seems best
  4. Can have pens, pencils and paper to write down things that are helpful -- like a journal -- or to map out things, draw if that's helpful.
  5. Can do these exercises multiple times, with different parts
  6. 1. A lot of gentleness with and for yourself. Moment here for your to really care for yourself, to really see what your parts need from you.
  7. Luke 10:27 Love your neighbor as yourself -- we are supposed to love ourselves in an ordered way
  8. And that means loving the parts of ourself that are in need. With care and compassion
  9. If you get distracted, that's ok, that's common. You can just refocus, or if that's not possible, then focus in on that distraction -- get curious about why a part of you needs to distract you.
  10. Experiential Exercise 1 --In what ways do you reject yourself, or condemn yourself as a person? In what ways do you not love yourself?
    1. A part of you finds it hard to love or even accept some other part of you. That's true for almost everybody, in our fallen world.
  11. Leads to inner conflict
    1. You can't delegate that responsibility of loving yourself to anyone else. No one else, not even God, can take your place in loving yourself.
    2. Working on the natural realm here.
    3. We're not focusing on unloved parts yet. We are asking that parts that bear the burden of shame -- our shame bearers, can they be patient, to not flood or overwhelm.
    4. As you ask that question, In what ways do you reject yourself, or condemn yourself as a person?
  12. What part of you is doing that -- an inner critic?
  13. What is happening in your body?
  14. In response to that question. How am I rejecting or condemning myself. \
    1. Find the bodily response
    2. Focus in on that bodily response. We call that a trailhead. Connected with your inner critic.
    3. Might not be a bodily response. Could be other trailheads
  15. Images, thoughts, desires, impulses, memories, sounds, beliefs or assumptions -- any internal experience in response to the question -- what do I need.
    2. Focus in on that one sensation or inner experience that reflects some kind of self-condemnation or negative judgement of yourself as a person..
    3. Fleshing out
  16. Listen in to what that experience, that body sensation or that impulse or desire or image or memory or belief.
    1. Really notice that inner critic. How do you experience it. 2. 1. Let's see if we can work with one part at a time. You can do this reflection and guided exercise over again with multiple parts if you'd like. But see if your parts inside can agree to let you work with one part.
    2. We are going to ask that one part not to flood you with its intensity. That's a safety thing. We are asking that part not to overwhelm you with its distress. We want to be separate but near, so that you as the self can have a relationship with that part. If your target part fuses with you or blends with you, you can't have a relationship. See if that part will agree not to overwhelm. Just ask it. See what the response is. If it agrees, then
    3. Really sense that part. See that part or sense that part, however that part is becoming more apparent to you.
      1. How old is that part? Some parts of us are very, very young. Even preverbal.
    4. Really listen to what that target parts wants to share with you, what it wants you to know.
      2. How are you feeling toward that part, toward that experience
  17. C's
    1. Compassion 2. 1. Connection 3. 1. Curiosity -- genuine interest 4. 1. Calm
      1. If feeling negative, can we get concerned protector parts to soften, to relax back so that you, as the self, can connect with your distressed target part?
      2. If not, focus on the concerned protector part. Really get interested about why that part is not ready to let you connect with your target part. There's a reason. Parts always have good intentions for us.
      4. Befriending
  18. Let that part tell you all about what it struggles with.
    1. 1. Emotions
    2. Anxiety 2. 1. Sorrow -- deep emotional pain 3. 1. Anger 4. 1. Numbness
      1. Thinking -- assumptions, beliefs
    3. Really be open to these beliefs, asking protectors not to censor them if possible. 2. 1. Concentration issues. 3. 4. Behaviors -- why does the part do what it does
    4. Positive intentions 5. Spiritual and existential issues 6. What does this part need from you? 7. What does this part need from God?
      1. Fears
  19. What if it doesn't do this job.
    2. Does it know that you exist -- that it doesn't have to pursue an agenda.
    3. Where are you with:
  20. Compassion
    1. 1. Connectedness
    2. 1. Curiosity
    3. 1. Calm
    4. Can the part feel love from you?
    5. Winding up
  21. Can write down what you learned, what was helpful, what came to you -- giving your parts a voice on paper.
    1. 1. Can do this exercise again with a different part
    2. 1. Gratitude for all your parts -- all have good intentions are trying to help
    3. 1. This doesn't have to be the end of connecting with your target part -- doesn't have to be a one-off experience, can check in with that part again. 32.
  22. Experiential Exercise 2 -- Protection vs. Connection -- based off of polyvagal theory. Episode 89
7. ANS heavily involved in the ongoing weighing of two fundamental human needs -- two major objectives.
  1. To survive -- Protection
  2. To bond relationally with others -- Connection
  3. This is the central theme of this discussion of our bodies and our traumas -- Protection and Connection. How can we have both?
  4. We have on the one hand a drive to survive -- cause if we don't, you know, we're dead. On the other hand, we have this yearning to connect, to be in relationship with others
  5. We need both -- to be protected and to be connected, but trauma puts those two indispensable needs -- protection and connection into tension. Can't have both.
8. 1. If we are experiencing trauma, our ANS automatically moves us away from seeking connection with others to a position of protection.
  2. In the state of protection -- we are seeking only survival. Our nervous system is closed to connection with others. It is closed to change. There's only one goal. Survive. If we don't survive, nothing else is possible. When we are in a state of protection, it's all about one that one thing: survival. Nothing else matters.
  3. However, when we are in a state of connection, we have so many more possibilities
    1. Health 3. 1. Growth 4. 1. Restoration 5. 1. Change
    2. 1. Coming at this a different way
    3. 1. Going inside
    4. 1. Major question -- which parts of me are protecting -- my protectors in IFS
  4. Managers -- protecting proactively
    1. 1. Firefighters -- protecting reactively
    2. 1. Protecting exiles and protecting against exile
  6. Experiential Exercise 3 -- Rigidity vs. Chaos -- Episode 92
9. When a system is not optimally self-organizing, it veers toward
  1. Rigidity -- everything seems predictable
    1. Dorsal vagal shutdown, the freezing and numbing out state like in dissociation
      1. we discussed this in Episode 89 on polyvagal theory 2. 1. This leads to rigidity 2. 1. Examples
      2. Extreme example would be hysterical paralysis
      3. Another example -- a deep, major depression 3.
        
        Chaos -- everything seems completely unpredictable
    2. PTSD symptoms
      1. Flashbacks 2. 1. Nightmares 2. 1. Panic attacks
        
        Or both -- e.g. bipolar disorder
    3. Depressive episode -- rigidity. 2. 1. Manic episode -- chaos
      1. Daniel Siegel: Every symptom of every disorder of the DSM-5 can be framed in terms of chaos or rigidity
        
        "Human suffering can be summed up in chaos and rigidity."
        
        Health is found in the internal integration, where there is neither chaos nor rigidity.
    4. 1. When do I feel rigid
    5. 1. When do I feel chaotic
    6. 1. Rigidity is often a protector's response against chaos.
    8. If you really understand the important of experience -- of experiencing change, not just thinking about it, not just considering it, but really experiencing it throughout your being, I have an invitation for you.
      1. If you really responded to these experiential exercises, I have an invitation for you
      2. I want to invite you to the Resilient Catholics Community -- the RCC
      3. There is nothing else really like it out there
  2. All about being loved and loving with your whole hear -- all of your being, every fiber of who you are, all your parts.
    1. 1. It's all about resolving the human formation issues that have thwarted your capacity to be loved and to love. To be vulnerable, to be connected rather than protecting yourself so much.
    2. 1. All about restoration -- recovering from being dominated by shame, fear, anger, sadness, pessimism, whatever your struggle is in the depths of your human formation
    3. And we do this work experientially -- so many experiential exercises, more than 100 of them for you, you can't get these reflections and guidance anywhere else.
  3. Informed by Internal Family Systems and the best of the rest of psychological resources
    1. 1. All grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person
    2. 1. All focused on helping you to better accept love and to love more fully, to carry out the two great commandments of our Lord.
    4. The RCC is a serious commitment -- the whole first year is just that -- a year-long experience of 44 weekly company meetings with those who will be accompanying you on a pilgrimage to much better human formation.
  4. On that pilgrimage you have a companion to journey with and for daily connection.
    2. Are you up for the challenge? Would you like to join me and the rest of the pioneers in this adventure? Do you want to be a part of the community?
  5. Are you ready to prevail over whatever hinders your human formation -- would you like to no longer be dominated by fear, anger, shame, sadness, pessimism? And would you like to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey --
  6. If so join me. Join all of us in the Resilient Catholics Community. The RCC
    1. We are taking applications throughout June of 2022 for our third cohort, those in that cohort will start their adventure in June and July by taking our Initial Measures Kits and be getting feedback on their parts in a personal Zoom session with me. It's a great chance for us to get to know each other, really know each other at the level of parts. You'll get a 5 or 6 page report on your internal system and then be eligible for our weekly company meetings and programming to begin in late August or early September.
    2. Sign up for the June waiting list -- Souls and Hearts.com/rcc -- or just do an internet search for the Resilient Catholics Community.
  7. Not ready for that yet? Sign up for my email reflections every week at soulsandhearts.com -- addressing the topic of lying and deception in this current series. Every Wednesday.
  8. Patronness and Patron

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Summary: In this episode, I invite you to explore and understand with me neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) and what IPNB can show us about psychological health. We review the triangle of well-being, the nature of secure attachments, and the basis for mental health from an IPNB perspective. We examine the characteristics of a healthy mind and how it functions, and the two signs that reliable indicate all psychological symptoms and mental dysfunction. We discuss the nine domains of integration, mindsight, and the healthy mind platter, and I share my exchange with Dr. Siegel about whether and how IPNB can be integrated with Catholicism.
Lead in: Today I want to share with you an approach to understanding ourselves and guiding ourselves toward health that I am really excited about, that I think has great potential to help us in our human formation as Catholics.
1. We are together in this great adventure, this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am honored to be able to spend this time with you.
2. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
3. 1. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
4. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology and human formation grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. We are continuing our series on how the best of secular psychological approaches define mental health, psychological well-being. We started with Episode 89 on Polyvagal Theory and covered Positive Psychology, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems in Episode 90.
6. 1. Today's episode, number 92 is entitled "Understanding and Healing your Mind through IPNB" and it's released on April 4, 2022.
7. 1. We are going to unpack what IPNB is, what is says about our human condition and I will share with you an exchange I recently had with neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel, who brought this whole integrative framework into being, about whether IPNB can be reconciled with Catholicism.
8. 1. Stay with me for a really interesting deep dive into this fascinating way of understanding ourselves and others.
9. Interpersonal Neurobiology or IPNB
10. Let's start by understanding what IPNB is. Interpersonal neurobiology.
11. 1. Breaking down the name interpersonal neurobiology
  2. Inter = between us, among us -- implies relationship. Relational model.
    1. Not just between you and me, but also between you and you -- inner relationships within you, inner relationships within me.
    2. 1. Personal -- very relational.
    3. Inter-personal and intrapersonal
    4. IPNB is all about the way my deep inner experiences connect with your inner experiences
    5. 1. Neurobiology -- not just the field of neurobiology, but all the branches of scientifically studying how human development takes place and how we can promote well-being in our lives.
    6. Neurobiology brings in all the embodied, physical dimension of our existence. Our bodies, our brains, our whole nervous system and all of our embodied biology being, that what the neurobiology part refers to
    7. 1. Interpersonal neuro-biology or IPNB -- works to be a wholistic approach to the human person.
    9. IPNB was developed in the 1990s by neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel who brought together more than 40 professionals, more than 40 experts from a wide range of scientific disciplines to discuss and demonstrate how the mind, brain, and relationships integrate to influence and change each other.
    10. Questions that IPNB asks and addresses these questions, five questions standing out to me:
  3. What is the human mind?
    1. 1. How does the mind develop?
    2. 1. What does the human mind look like when it's doing really, really well, when it's functioning optimally?
    3. 1. How can we encourage, nurture and cultivate a healthy, strong mind?
    4. 1. How can we take what we've learned about the mind and find practical applications that make a real difference in our daily lives?
    5. Guidance for how to live our lives
    6. Pointers for what may need to change in our thinking and behavior to help us live more fully.
    7. Very practical -- not just academic ivory-tower, pie-in-the-sky speculation -- Daniel Siegel really wants IPNB to bring healing, growth and well-being to people. I like that. I'm into that.
    9. What IPNB is Not
  4. Not a therapy.
    1. Not a way of doing therapy. Rather, a way of understanding that can inform different schools of therapy.
    2. 1. IPNB is not a discipline. It's not a specific branch of knowledge.
    4. Rather, IPNB is a framework that draws on all the different disciplines with a rigorous and structured approach to studying things – not just science – They all have a place in the framework.
  5. It's a consilient framework:
    1. Consilience: E. O. Wilson Assessing the universal findings discovered and recognized as real or true across fields and disciplines
    2. 1. The fields contributing to IPNB
    3. Anthropology 2. 1. Art 3. 1. Biology (developmental, evolution, genetics, zoology) 4. 1. Chemistry 5. 1. Cognitive Science 6. 1. Computer Science 7. 1. Contemplative Traditions 8. 1. Developmental Psychopathology 9. 1. Liberal Arts 10. 1. Linguistics 11. 1. Neuroscience
      1. Affective 2. 1. Cognitive 3. 1. Developmental 4. 1. social 12. 1. Mathematics 13. 1. Medicine 14. 1. Mental Health 15. 1. Music 16. 1. Physics 17. 1. Poetry 18. 1. Psychiatry 19. 1. Psychology
      2. Cognitive 2. 1. developmental 3. 1. Volutionary 4. 1. Experimental 5. 1. of religion 6. 1. Social 7. 1. attachment theory 8. 1. memory 20. 1. Sociology 21. 1. Systems Theory (chaos and complexity theory)
        
        All of these disciplines, all of these fields of inquiriy contribute to IPNB findings
        
        IPNB also seeks a common language for these disciplines to be able to share and discuss about these big topics:
    4. What is the human mind? 2. 1. How does the mind develop? 3. 1. How can we make a healthy, strong mind? 4. 1. How can we take what we've learned about the mind and find practical applications that make a real difference in our daily lives.
      1. Thus IPNB is a going for the big picture.
      2. IPNB emphasizes a need for humility and openness in the work.
      4. Definition: Interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB): a consilient field that embraces all branches of science and now other disciplined ways of understanding reality, such as contemplative traditions and a liberal arts, as it seeks the common universal findings across independent ways of knowing in order to expand our understanding of the mind and well-being. p.506
    5. The Human Mind
12. If we want a strong ordered mind, it helps to know what the mind actually is. If we want mental well-being, it's really valuable to slow down and ask the question -- what is the human mind.
13. 1. A central question for IPNB is "what is the human mind."
  2. The mind is rarely defined -- you know how important definitions are to me. And the mind is often discussed but rarely defined.
    1. Insert quotes about the importance of definitions
    2. Insert quotes about the mind.
    3. 1. When the mind is defined, most often defined as the output of the brain.
    4. Problem of Hippocrates: Our mind comes only from our brain
      1. echoed by the famous psychologist William James in his highly influential 1890 book "Principles of Psychology" 2. 1. The mind is essentially just the product of the brain. The activity of the brain generates the activity of the mind. So the mind's activity is solely the product of the brain's activity. 3.
        
        American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate Roger Sperry -- Mental process cannot be reduced to brain mechanisms. Even if they are dependent on them, it doesn’t make them the same. 1. Although the mind may depend on the activity of brain cells, the firing of neurons in the brain, the mind is not the same the same thing as the firing of neurons. The mind is not the brain, and it's not just the products of nervous system activity.
      2. According to Daniel Siegel and IPNB, the mind is a term that at a minimum includes what we’re familiar with when we think of mind. 1. mental activity that includes
    5. Consciousness 2. 1. emotions 3. 1. Mood 4. 1. Thinking 5. 1. information processing 6. 1. problem-solving 7. 1. decision making 8. 1. Memory 9. 1. Narrative 10. 1. meaning-making 11. 1. Intention 12. 1. Belief 13. 1. Hope 14. 1. Attitudes 15. 1. Assumptions 16. 1. Desire 17. 1. Longing 18. 1. Dreams 19. 1. Our subjective feeling of being alive. 20. 21. all of these are mental activities which are beautiful, powerful descriptions of what people mean when they say mind. 22. The mind constructs its own experience of reality.
      1. Critical point: the mind emanates from the interactions within the brain -- so there's the neurobiology -- the brain, the nervous system, the body -- but the mind is not just the product of neurobiology -- there's also the interpersonal aspect -- the mind also radiates from our internal relationships within ourselves and our relationships with other people. There's the interpersonal part of interpersonal neurobiology. The mind encompasses both the embodied brain and our relationships.
      2. Definition of Mind from p. 507 The Developing Mind, 3rd Edition. :
        
        The mind is a process that includes at least four fundamental aspects: (1) personal, subjective experience; (2) awareness; (3) information processing; and (4) a regulatory function that is an emergent, self-organizing, embodied, and relational process of the extended nervous system and relationships.
        
        This facet of a core aspect of mind offers a working definition of "mind" as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.
        
        In this perspective, the brains activities an important part of mind, but mind is broader than the brain and bigger than the individual body. The mind is fully embodied and fully relational.
      3. Let's break that down. In IPNB, the mind is a process. The mind is not so much a thing, as it is a process, the activity within us that regulates the flow of both energy and information through its neurocircuitry, which is then shared and regulated between people through engagement, connection, and communication.
      4. Facets of the Mind
  3. Personal, subjective Experience -- the felt texture of life
    1. 1. Awareness or consciousness
    2. 1. Information Processing -- and that information processing can be conscious or not
  4. The emergent, self-organizing, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information – flow happens within (embodied) and between (relational).
    1. If you don't understand all that in the first go-round, that's OK. You don't need to understand it all, there's come complexity here.
    2. The critical thing to remember about your mind for our purposes is that your mind can change your brain and be changed by your brain -- your mind can change your relationships and your mind can be changed by your relationships -- and your brain can also be changed by your relationships.
  5. Our attachment relationships experiences shape the structures in the brain that correlate with key features of our inner and inter mind as we carry these neuroplastic changes forward in life – open to new growth and learning – as they continue to shape our internal world and our interpersonal lives across the lifespan.
  6. Secure, healthy relationships can heal your mind and your brain. You can see this in the neuro-electrical firing xand neurochemical activity in the brain with neurotransmitters, and also in the anatomy of the brain.
  7. Raissa Miller in her 2016 Article titled Interpersonal Neurobiology: Applications for the

Counseling Profession

Finally, the mind can influence the brain and relationships. Consistent with characteristics of a complex system, the mind both emerges from and in turn influences the functioning of the brain and relationships. How one focuses attention affects neural structure and function. Furthermore, through processes not yet fully understood — perhaps through resonance circuitry or mirror neurons — the mental processes of one person can influence the mental processes of another person.
The Triangle of Well-Being -- Imagine a triangle with three vertices or corners. One vertex is The Brain, a second vertex is the Mind, and the third vertex is Relationship. So we have a triangle, and at the top, where the point is, we have relationship, and at another corner, we have brain and at the other corner we have mind.
1. The Mind -- we've been covering that:
2. The Brain -- the embodied mechanism of energy and information flow
  1. Definition: Brain: here are viewed as the extended nervous system distributed throughout the entire body and intimately interwoven with the physiology of the body as a whole. It is the embodied neural mechanism that shapes the flow of energy and information. p. 502
    1. Not just the grey matter inside our skull but our whole nervous system. 2. 1. Justin Sonnenburg, Erica Sonnenburg on May 1, 2015 Scientific American Gut Feelings–the "Second Brain" in Our Gastrointestinal Systems . The enteric nervous system is often referred to as our body’s second brain. There are hundreds of million of neurons connecting the brain to the enteric nervous system, the part of the nervous system that is tasked with controlling the gastrointestinal system. This vast web of connections monitors the entire digestive tract from the esophagus to the anus. The enteric nervous system is so extensive that it can operate as an independent entity without input from our central nervous system, although they are in regular communication.
      1. Energy and information flow is what the embodied brain is all about
      2. Relationships -- the sharing of energy and information flow between people
  2. Energy and information flow between people
    1. 1. Energy and information are shared in relationships.
    2. 1. Integration – the differentiation and linkage of parts of a system – within the relationship is essential to understanding resonance, which is different from mirroring or giving up your individual needs and sense of differentiation
    3. 1. PART model of verbal and nonverbal relationships -- Presence, Attunement, Resonance, and Trust.
    4. Presence: Openness; awareness of present moment experience:
      1. Presence is the portal to integration; an open, receptive awareness of the unfolding of moment-to-moment experience
      2. the opposite of presence is unintentional mind-wandering
    5. Attunement: Focus of attention on the internal world of self or other
      1. Internal Attunement: Focusing of attention on my internal world 3. 1. Interpersonal Attunement: Focusing of attention on the internal world of another 4. 1. if a parent is attuned to the child’s mind, much better outcome than if just reacting to the child’s behavior. 5. 1. Mirror neurons may be activated in attunement 6. Resonance: Being shaped by another
      2. Next step -- interpersonal attunement allows for two individuals to resonate with one another,
        
        A deeper sense of connection, of being with each other. 2. 1. To feel felt by one another. 3. 1. As the two are resonating, feeling felt by one another, joined in relationship they are still separate. They are not fused, there is no loss of individual identity. You are still you when you are in relationship with me, and I am still me. This is really important, that the individual, differentiated nature of each person is not lost.
        
        Two tuning forks, at the same frequency. 4. 7. 8. Trust: A deep sense of openness and reliability
      3. States of safety vs. states of threat 9. 1. Trust creates a sense of receptivity
        
        Social engagement system is turned on
        
        Integration allows us to differentiate streams of energy, freeing us from default-mode processing dominating our experience in the moment
        
        New ways of thinking, imagining, considering 3. 1. Allows our faculty of imagination to develop. 4. 10.
        
        Connection refers to a process of mutual resonance occurring between two individuals, leading to attunement and a sense of we
        
        Ruptures are inevitable in relationships, and they can be thought of as opportunities for repair and the deepening of connection
        
        Four critical concepts in IPNB: Empathy, compassion, kindness and forgiveness
    6. Empathy has many facets, including feeling the feelings of another, perspective-taking, and cognitive understanding
      1. Empathy: the capacity to make a map of another's mental state that includes at least the five functions of
        
        emotional resonance
        
        perspective taking
        
        empathic understanding
        
        empathic joy, and
        
        empathic concern. 2. 1. For most individuals, empathy is a requirement for compassion. Integration enables empathic connection to be harnessed without losing differentiation and fusing with another's experience. p.504
        
        Compassion: The way in which we perceive the suffering of another, imagine how to help, and then take action to alleviate the suffering
      2. Compassion: the capacity to sense suffering, to imagine what might be done to reduce that suffering, and to take effective action for that purpose. Compassion can be directed towards one's inner experience – sometimes called "self-compassion" – as well as toward others in what is sometimes called "other-directed" compassion. These two directions in the flow of compassion can be called "inner compassion" and "inter compassion." p. 503 3. 1. Kindness: Acting with no expectation of getting something in return; honoring and supporting one another’s vulnerabilities -- sounds a lot like the Christian concept of charity; others may think of this as altruism 4. 1. Forgiveness can be thought of as giving up all hope for a better past; acceptance of what was. 5.
        
        The brain, the mind, and relationships are all critical elements of the triangle of well-being.
      3. Secure attachments
3. Siegel in "The Developing Mind," 3rd Ed. p. 225: Attachment at its core is based on parental sensitivity and responsivity to the child's signals, which allow for collaborative parents-child communication. Contingent communication gives rise to secure attachment and is characterized by a collaborative give-and-take of signals between the members of the pair. Contingent communication relies on the alignment of internal experiences, or states of mind, between the child and caregiver. This mutually sharing, mutually influencing set of interactions – this emotional attunement or mental state residents – is the essence of healthy, secure attachment.
  1. Neural networks are activated and shaped by these relational experiences
    1. Our relational experiences reshape not only our minds but our brains. 2. 2.
    2. 1. The four Ss of building a secure attachment: Feeling Seen, Safe, Soothed, and Secure
  2. Seen
    1. I feel that my needs are being accurately perceived by the other
    2. My mind is seen beneath my behavior
    3. 1. Safe
    4. I feel protected from harm, from danger 2. 1. The other person is not a source of fear
      1. Soothed
    5. I can be reliably comforted and calmed by the other in times of stress 2. 1. Ruptures are readily repaired
      1. Secure
    6. I am able to explore my environment 2. 1. I can go back to the other as a safe base 5.
    8. What is the basis for health or mental well-being -- the integration of the mind.
      1. Daniel Siegel proposes that integration of the mind is the basis for health.
        
        I made this argument way back in episode 15 of this podcast, long before I was all that familiar with IPNB.
        
        Supported by more than 20 years of research now.
      2. Raisa Miller helps us break this down. Mental Well-Being Mental well-being, from an IPNB perspective, is defined in terms of integration.
        
        Functionally distinct components within the complex mind system differentiate (i.e., specialize)
    9. Each component has a unique role in the system. 2. 3. and then link with other components of the system to form a greater whole -- but you don't blend them. 4. The metaphor of a fruit salad versus a fruit smoothie is often used to illustrate integration. 5. Each ingredient in a fruit salad maintains its unique quality (differentiating) 6. while also combining (linking) to make a new, more complex dish (an “integrated” fruit salad). 7. Optimal organization depends on linking differentiated parts of the system (integration) you do not have the differences among those parts disappear (not homogenization). Coherence instead.
      1. Integration is defined as the linkage of differentiated elements. The mind's process of linking differentiated parts (distinct modes of information processing) into a functional whole is postulated to be the fundamental mechanism of both. Without integration, chaos, rigidity, or both ensue. Integration is both a process and a structural dimension, and can be examined, for example, in the functional and anatomic studies of the nervous system. p. 506
  3. Considerable evidence indicates that the mind is the self-organizing, emergent embodied relational process that utilizes the differentiation and linkage of aspects of the system the mind is in. When that goes well – health arises. When it goes poorly, chaos or rigidity or both rise up.
    1. 1. When a system is not optimally self-organizing, it veers toward
    2. Rigidity -- everything seems predictable
      1. Dorsal vagal shutdown, the freezing and numbing out state like in dissociation
        
        we discussed this in Episode 89 on polyvagal theory 2. 1. This leads to rigidity 2. 1. Examples
        
        Extreme example would be hysterical paralysis
        
        Another example -- a deep, major depression 3. 2. 1. Chaos -- everything seems completely unpredictable
      2. PTSD symptoms
        
        Flashbacks 2. 1. Nightmares 2. 1. Panic attacks 3. 1. Or both -- e.g. bipolar disorder
      3. Depressive episode -- rigidity. 2. 1. Manic episode -- chaos 4. 1. Daniel Siegel: Every symptom of every disorder of the DSM-5 can be framed in terms of chaos or rigidity 2. "Human suffering can be summed up in chaos and rigidity." 3. Health is found in the internal integration, where there is neither chaos nor rigidity.
        
        When you improve self-organization within a system leading to harmony and integration, including the mind, you find five qualities. Acronym FACES
  4. Optimal Self organization involves the integration of elements of the system leading to harmony described as a FACES flow
    1. 1. Individuals operating at greater levels of integration are more open to possibilities and flexible in response to their natural proclivities -- this is described as a FACES flow.
    2. 1. FACES flow your mind is:
    3. Flexible -- your mind can think outside the box, be innovative and come up with new and original ideas and solutions to problems, your mind can be imaginative, and creative. Flexible 2. 1. Adaptive -- your mind can adjust to new situations, change course as needed, roll with the punches and handle the various challenges and demands that life throws at you. 3. 1. Coherent -- your mind stays clear, lucid, orderly inside, and you have the full use of your intellect and reason. You can think logically and sensibly 4. 1. Energized -- your mind is alert, active, dynamic, and animated, with stamina and vitality 5. 1. Stable -- your mind is balanced, calm, steady and you have a sense of being solidly grounded and secure. 6.
      1. Nine domains of integration list them.
    4. Consciousness – differentiating the knowing from the knowns of what we are aware of. Knowns and unknowns
      1. Awareness of the body, mental/emotional, relational, and outside world. Openness to things as they are 2. Bilateral – the differentiated functions of the left and right hemispheres.
      2. Left hemisphere is logical and linear, very literal, verbal
      3. Right side is more creative, metaphoric, and symbolic, nonlinear, intuitive, nonverbal 3. Vertical – linking the body’s signals and the lower neural regions of the brainstem and limbic area to the higher cortical regions.
      4. Gut, heart, and lungs all have neural networks that seek to communicate with the brain. Too many people are disconnected from the awareness from our bodies. 4. 5. Memory – linking the differentiated elements of implicit memory to the autobiographical and factual experience of explicit memory.
      5. Implicit and explicit memory integration. 6. 1. When traumas become implicit memory, a schema, we are stuck in the past. 7. 1. To integrate memory, we make implicit memories explicit and weave them into our narrative, the story of our lives in a coherent and meaningful way 8. Narrative – making sense of memory and experience such that one finds meaning in events that have occurred. 9. State – respecting the differentiated states of mind that make up the wide array of clusters of memory, thought, behavior, and action that are the nature of our multi-layered selves.
      6. we are multiple selves sharing a body. Three parts: We need to learn to honor our states (intrastate), interstate, honor that we have different needs at the same time and we need to pay attention to that, and interpersonal states, maintaing my own states while in relation with others. 10. 1. In IFS language, these states are somewhat analogous to parts. 11. 12. Interpersonal – honoring one another’s inner experience and linking in respectful communication. -- involves nurturing. Not fusing, being separate but near, being with. 13. Temporal – the capacity to represent ‘time’ or change in life and reflect on this ‘passage of time’ (e.g. life versus death).
      7. Making maps of time. Connected to narrative - we seek certainty, but change is the only constant. We also become aware of our eventual death. 14. 15. Identity – the sense of agency and coherence potentially associated with feelings of belonging.
      8. The identity of a bodily self expands beyond the boundary of the skin - we sense our interconnection time, place, and people. Integration of integration 10.
      9. Mindsight
4. Mindsight-the ability to see the internal world of self and others p. 54
  1. Mindsight is likely to be essential and healthy relationships of many kinds
    1. 1. Mindsight permits integrative communication in which individuals are honored for their differences and compassionate connections are cultivated that link one mind to another
    2. 1. Daniel Siegel proposes that interpersonal integration promotes the growth of integrative fibers in the brain. The neural circuits linking differentiating areas to one another are the regulatory and social circuits of the brain. 54
  2. 1. Three Components of Mindsight -- insight, empathy and integration.
  3. Insight: Reflecting with awareness by focusing attention on the internal, subjective world of one’s own interior mental experience, including feelings, thoughts, memories
  4. Empathy: Sensing the inner experience of another within one's own mind; forming a mental map of another; feeling felt by an empathic other is the foundation of a supportive relationship
  5. Integration: The differentiation or specialization, and, ultimately, linkage of systems including the brain and interpersonal relationships; without integration, chaos, rigidity, or both emerge, resulting in a state of mental dysfunction; with integration, harmony emerges with flexibility, adaptability, coherence, stability, and energy (a FACES flow)
    1. Mindsight: the ability to see the internal world of self and others, not just to observe behavior. It is the way we not only sense but also shape energy and information flow within the triangle of mind, brain, and relationships and move that flow toward integration. Using mindsight, integration made visible is kindness and compassion. p.506
    2. Integration made visible is kindness, compassion, and well-being
  6. How do we get there. Lots of recommendations from IPNB. Lots of models and acronym.
5. Can check out Dr. Dan Siegel's website at https://drdansiegel.com/ Lots of resources there if IPNB resonates with you. Books and courses and blogs and videos and all kinds of things, most of it free, and he's a very good speaker and teacher. He's done a lot to help parents raise very young children, informed by the science of IPNB and to help parents and their adolescent children understand and connect with each other.
  1. Wheel of awareness -- A reflective practice that integrates consciousness using the metaphor of a wheel in which the hub represents the knowing of being aware and the room contains the elements of the knowns, from the first five senses to mental activity such as emotions, thoughts, and memory. p.511
  2. other resources
  3. I'm going to focus on one resource today, one of many resources
7. Healthy Mind Platter
8. I'm going to focus on one particular element. Healthy Mind Platter In 2011, the USDA change from a food pyramid (nearly two decades) to a food plate. Inspired David Rock and Daniel Siegel to design the "Healthy Mind Platter"
9. 1. The Healthy Mind Platter has seven daily essential mental activities necessary for optimum mental health.
  2. These seven daily activities make up the full set of “mental nutrients” that your brain and relationships need to function at their best.
  3. By engaging every day in each of these servings, you promote integration in your life and enable your brain to coordinate and balance its activities. These essential mental activities strengthen your brain’s internal connections and your connections with other people and the world around you.
10. We’re not suggesting specific amounts of time for this recipe for a healthy mind, as each individual is different, and our needs change over time too.
  1. The point is to become aware of the full spectrum of essential mental activities, and as with essential nutrients, make sure that at least every day we are bringing the right ingredients into our mental diet, even if for just a bit of time.
  2. List of the Health Mind Platter elements:
    1. Sleep Time 3. 1. Physical Time 4. 1. Downtime 5. 1. Focused Time 6. 1. Playtime 7. 1. Time in 8. 1. Connecting Time 9. 1. (repeat)
      1. Components of the Health Mind platter -- drawing from various sources by Dan Seigel and also a video by Marie Holowaychuk Psychotherapy Networker article The Heathy Mind Platter May 2020
  3. Sleep Time
    1. When we give the brain the rest it needs, we consolidate learning and recover from the experiences of the day. 2. 1. This is important for lots of reasons, especially because sleep directly affects inflammation in the brain. It’s also critical because when we get seven to nine hours of quality sleep, the toxins secreted by active neurons during our waking hours are cleaned up. Without enough sleep, we’re likely to have increased brain inflammation and decreased ability to focus, remember, stabilize our mood, and even process calories 3. 1. memory consolidation and processing, learning and task integration, emotional regulation and positivity, insight, creativity and problem-solving
      1. Physical Time
    2. When we move our bodies, aerobically if medically possible, we strengthen the brain in many ways.
    3. It’s easy to become a couch potato when we’re spending so much time in front of screens, so we need this time when we really focus on moving our body. Therapists can consider doing this in between sessions or even with clients.
    4. Helps to maintain brain health and plasticity
    5. increases learning and memory
    6. improves cognitive and executive functions
    7. enables us to focus in spite of distractions
    8. benefits of reducing stress, anxiety, and depression
      1. Downtime
    9. When we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, we help the brain recharge. 2. 1. This is space to not do anything specific and just chill out. Our minds need this. As opposed to moments when we find ourselves unintentionally getting distracted, down time involves intentionally letting our minds wander. This might include watching a show or listening to music, drawing on a pad of paper, or simply playing with water in the sink as you do the dishes. 3. 1. we let our mind simply wander or relax 4. 1. downtime allows our brains to recharge permits integration of previous thoughts and experiences 5. 1. we get a generation of new insights because it enables integration across the left and right hemispheres 6. 1. struggle with a complex problem, but when you start feeling anxious or stressed or hit the wall, distract yourself from with from the problem by doing something completely unrelated 7. 1. sudden insight often follows
      1. Focus Time:
    10. When we closely focus on tasks in a goal-oriented way, we take on challenges that make deep connections in the brain. 2. 1. This is time spent focusing on something external with discipline, like reading a book. Say to yourself, “For this half hour, I’m not going to be distracted by the news or anything else.” Research suggests that when we focus our attention like this, we release a number of substances, including BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which enhance brain growth. When we have a singular focus of attention, we learn more, remember more, and enjoy the experience more. 3. 1. Paying close attention to some project
      1. you’re not multitasking, instead you are focusing in a goal oriented way, thinking efficiently and effectively
      2. you’re not getting distracted by all sorts of other things, phone and email alerts are off.
      3. Really focusing attention on just one thing a time
      4. Can come with a feeling of success, of mastery because you were able to really accomplish something, to do something new.
      5. Focus time gets the brain to secrete to chemicals to allow the neurons which are firing to strengthen their connections to one another.
      6. This helps your attention and concentration -- helps develop your prefrontal cortex and your sharpens and clarifies your mind.
        
        Cal Newport's Book Deep Work taught me so much about this component of the healthy mind platter -- and others as well. Highly recommended, with very practical tips that have helped me a lot in producing this podcast.
      7. Playtime
    11. When we allow ourselves to be spontaneous or creative, playfully enjoying novel experiences, we help make new connections in the brain. 2. 1. This doesn’t refer to sports but to doing something that allows you to laugh and be spontaneous—without judgments or feeling that there’s a right or wrong way to do it. The notion here is to engage in an activity, perhaps with others, in which the enjoyment and creative unfolding of the moment is the focus. Too often adults lose this sense of playfulness. To cope with this pandemic, we need to keep our humor and our vitality alive and well! 3. 1. this can be thought of being playful of letting novelty failure experience that letting you be spontaneous often with a sense of humor and the light. Children do this naturally, adolescents less so, and in adulthood we get very serious so it’s important to have playtime. Because when you allow the brain to make these new combinations and create a sense of safety and a willingness to expand which are used to doing to expand beyond the familiar. This is a playfulness actually keeps the brain young and keeps the connections in the brain growing. That’s playtime. 4. 1. Forget all about work and other commitments, and be social in an unstructured way flexible emotional responses to unexpected events. 5. 1. Practicing spontaneous and novel motor and social skills, facilitates learning creativity and memory 6. 1. stimulates dopamine release, which helps to establish new neuronal pathways in the brain 7. 1. game night with friends or coworkers, going outside to build a snowman, adult coloring books
      1. Time in
    12. When we quietly reflect internally, focusing on sensations, images, feelings and thoughts, we help to better integrate the brain. 2. 1. This is time you may already spend engaged in a formal mindfulness practice, like yoga or meditation. Inward reflection can include the three pillars of focusing attention, opening awareness, and cultivating kind intention. 3. 1. This is when we are able to quietly able to reflect internally 4. 1. focusing on sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts in the present moment 5. 1. focusing on acceptance of the process, rather than the content 6. 1. balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems 7. 1. improved attention and more flexible Prospectives about life 8. 1. better control emotions and stress 9. 1. improving compassion and empathy towards our self and others
      1. Connecting Time
    13. When we connect with other people, ideally in person, and when we take time to appreciate our connection to the natural world around us, we activate and reinforce the brain's relational circuitry 2. 1. This is time you put into intentionally connecting with people, even if you can’t be in their immediate physical presence. This relational time involves communicating not only with other people, but also with nature. Finding time to connect with people and the planet can help with the sense of isolation we may feel these days. 3. 1. When we are able to connect with other people, ideally in person 4. 1. taking time to appreciate our connections to the world around us 5. 1. improves relational circuitry in the brain, and benefits the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems 6. 1. a buffering effect in on stress by helping us to have a positive outlook, form secure attachments, and have efficient restorative behaviors in times of stress 7. 1. make time to connect with others, especially your spouse, your partner, family, and friends 8. 1. plan outings, date nights, or activities into your weekly routine, to make sure that your personal connections are maintained
      1. Review of components
    14. Sleep Time 2. 1. Physical Time 3. 1. Downtime 4. 1. Focused Time 5. 1. Playtime 6. 1. Time in 7. 1. Connecting Time 11.
    15. How to connect Interpersonal Neurobiology with Catholicism? Harmonizing.
11. I'm in a six-month intensive course with Dan Siegel, it is his Comprehensive Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) Course and as part of that course, we have Q&A sessions.
12. 1. I was really interested in how open the IPNB model might be to Catholicism -- I wanted his thoughts on that.
13. 1. Remember that IPNB draws from so many disciplines, and not just scientific ones, but any discipline with a rigorous approach to learning, including the liberal arts, poetry, and even contemplative traditions.
14. 1. And I like Dan Siegel -- he is very approachable, open, receptive, and I have a deep sense that he has a big heart, a lot of concern for our human condition, a genuine compassion for his neighbor. Not just an academic sense.
15. 1. So I asked Dr. Siegel. I sent him this question:
16. 1. Q. How does the integrative, multidisciplinary framework of IPNB, which draws from the findings of so many fields, consider the wisdom (based on divine revelation) that revealed religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, Islam) claim to offer about human well-being to their followers – or is that way of “knowing” considered “unscientific” or “not rigorous” and therefore not invited into the IPNB framework? Re-read it
17. 1. And he responded --

A: Thank you for the question, Peter. Initially, IPNB was created through the weaving of western-based

academic disciplines from math and physics to biology and psychology to sociology and anthropology. It

began with an effort to ask, what is the mind and how are mind and brain related to one another? As

the notion of consilience later became clear, the approach broadened to include any disciplined way of

understanding the nature of reality. For that reason, systematic “disciplined” ways of exploring reality,

questioning what emerges, and then re-considering what is found in an attempt to build a broad

framework for understanding includes the ancient wisdom traditions of Indigenous knowledge and

contemplative insights. In meeting with religious leaders from the faiths you have mentioned, the

plane-of-possibility view as the “generator of diversity” seems to fit with the deepest aspects of their

teachings, part of what Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith might have referred to as perennial wisdom. I

have also met with some teachers, not leaders, but local teachers, in various faiths who say their view is the only true view, and that to try to find a consilience across ways of knowing, from various religions and from science, is an assault on their unique and privileged “knowing of what the truth is.” In this case, that mental stance of absolute belief in the veracity of their perspective is not a part of a consilient mindset, and so it is difficult to see how, though their views would be welcomed to be examined, not just accepted because the individual believes them to be true, people with such a viewpoint would xcollaborate in looking for common ground. I hope this response makes sense.

Reread the bolded part.
I thought his response was gracious and I appreciate Dan Siegel's directness and honesty. I was not surprised by the content. The way I interpret this is that there's not room in IPNB from Dan Siegel's point of view for one to be Catholic and participate in the search for common ground. No revealed religion's tenets could be included because they are not open to being challenged, questioned and discarded if they don't seem to line up with the findings of the other disciplines. That's one of his non-negotiable principles for IPNB. So his consilient framework doesn't draw from all available knowledge.
So Dan Siegel and I disagree about epistemology -- how you know things. For him, divine revelation is not a valid source of knowing that can inform IPNB. For me, it divine revelation is not only essential, it's the starting point. It's the reference point, like the North Star. And that's likely to lead to disagreements between Dan Seigel and me about metaphysics. But I don't ignore the valuable work of DNA discoverers James Watson and Francis Crick who described the beauty of the double helix structure of DNA-- I don't ignore their work or discount it because both Watson and Crick displayed intense anti-Catholic bigotry. So I'm certainly not going to ignore the really valuable work of Dan Siegel in IPNB -- let's draw the good from it. And I've not seen anything that condemns or criticizes Catholicism from Dan Siegel. He's not Catholic, I don't expect him to embrace the Church's teaching. Let's not be afraid of the work of IPNB and other secular approaches, let's conform it to what we already know to be true by faith.
So the upshot of all this is, for those that really want to ground human formation and psychology in a Catholic understanding of the human person, for us Catholics to not only be Catholic with a capital C, but also with a small c. "catholic" meaning universal. We find the good in all these secular approaches and harmonize it with our faith. Not the other way around. And there is no tension between authentic science and the Faith.
1. CCC Paragraph 159: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
That's what I am here to help you do. To take the best of secular approaches to science, like IPNB and ground them in an authentic Catholic understanding of the human person. That's what I am all about, that is what this podcast Interior Integration for Catholics is all about that is what Souls and Hearts is all about.
1. I accept the authority of the Catholic Church to teach definitively in the areas of faith and morals. That's my starting point. I hold those truths to be indeed true. I am open to the possibility and the potential that I have for misunderstanding those truths. I have misunderstood some of them before, and I may well be misunderstanding some of them now. But one main reason for divine revelation is to show us those truths that we could never have figured out using the light of natural reason alone. I really do believe that the reason our Lord came when he did in human history is because the Greeks had gotten about as far as natural reason would take them in philosophy and the Romans had gotten about as far as natural reason would take them in law.
2. 1. So my mission, my calling is to bring you the best of psychological and human formation resources firmly rooted in a Catholic anthropology.
3. 1. This is entirely consistent with the teaching of the Church as expressed in Vatican II, in paragraph 62 of The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: "in pastoral care, sufficient you should be made, not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of secular sciences, especially psychology and sociology; in this way the faithful will be brought to a purer and more mature living of the faith"
4. Closing
5. Really excited about next month's episode -- Episode 93, coming out on May 1, 2022, where I will be offering you three experiential exercises that integrate what we've been learning in episode 89 on polyvagal theory, episode 90 on Positive Psychology, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems and this current episode, 92 on Interpersonal Neurobiology -- all these secular approaches, I'm going to be drawing from them in these experiential exercises to really help you know yourself better, understand your needs, find where you may have internal disconnects, and also get some direction on what the next steps are. So look for that on Monday, May 1, new episodes come out the first Monday of the month.
6. 1. Weekly emails -- been doing a whole series on enemies, lots of surprising things on enemies.
7. 1. Check out our Litanies of the Heart -- really excited to just have released these. The last Episode 92 was all about the Litany of the Closed Heart, the Litany of the Fearful Heart and the Litany of the Wounded Heart. So much great feedback. Soulsandhearts.com/lit.
8. 1. Conversation Hours You are a listener to this podcast, and in that sense, you are with me. I am also with you! Remember, can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time for our regular conversation hours. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
9. 1. If you really like this podcast, if you are finding it to be of great benefit to you -- consider the Resilient Catholics Community. Waiting list is open for The Resilient Catholics Community at Soulsandhearts.com/rcc for our June 2022 So much information there and videos.
10. 1. I want to invite you to the Resilient Catholics Community
  2. The Why of the RCC -- It's all about loving with your whole heart -- all of your being. Getting over all the natural level issues that hold you back from tolerating being loved and from loving God and others.
    1. 1. Who
    2. Who is the Resilient Catholics Community for?
      1. It's for you. If you really are into this podcast, if these ways of conceptualizing the human person and integration and human formation and resilience are appealing to you, then the Resilient Catholics community, the RCC may be for you. 2. 1. I am looking for listeners who want to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey, on this adventure of human formation with me. 3. 1. Who deeply desire a personal, intimate relationship with God and with Mary, a real human, close connection 4. 1. And who recognize they have some natural-level impediments to that deep relating 5. 1. and who are willing to make sacrifices in time, effort, money, humility and courage to grow in human formation and overcome natural-level impediments to being loved and to loving 6. 1. What want to shore up their natural foundation for the spiritual life, because grace perfects nature. 7. 1. Who want to become saints. 8. 1. Who are willing to be pioneers at the cutting edge in this adventure of human formation. Really at the tip of the spear, the first explorers of this human formation ground for laymen and laywomen. 9. 2. 1. First of all the RCC is My Tribe, my people, bringing together two groups into one
      2. First, faithful, orthodox, serious Catholics who are wounded and suffering and know it 2. 1. And Second, who are psychologically minded (or at least want to be psychologically minded), who believe in the unconscious and who embrace the unity and multiplicity of the human person 3. 1. And who want to see through the lens of a core self and parts. Unity and multiplicity make sense. 4. 3. 1. Go to Soulsandhearts.com/rcc and register for the June wait list. I'd like to journey with you. 4. 3.
      4. Patron and Patroness

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We discuss the brand new release of Souls and Hearts' Litanies of the Heart. These prayers were composed to be very attuned to the needs of closed hearts, fearful hearts, and wounded hearts, bringing in the best of psychological science around how we trust, how we connect and how we form bonds with others in our humanness -- all to help us better develop a deep, personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Join us as we discuss the origin of the Litanies, their development, and recommendations for praying them in a way that suits your particular needs.

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Summary: Join us as we review how philosophers and modern secular psychologists understand mental health and well-being. In this episode, we look at the attempts to define what make us happy, from the 4th century BC to the present day. Arristipus, Aristotle, Descartes, Freud, Seligman, Porges, Schwartz, and two diagnostic systems. We take a special look at how positive psychology and Internal Family Systems see well-being.
Lead in
1. In June of 1991 I was really traumatized
  1. Just left a spiritually and psychologically abusive group and I was struggling
    1. 1. How could this have happened
    2. 1. I thought I was giving my life to God -- and then I find out the community I was in was like this --
    3. 1. Had to confront my own behaviors in the community -- manipulation, deception, betrayals of trust -- things like that.
    4. 1. I knew I had to recover. And so I went on a quest
    5. 1. I was still Catholic, I never lost my faith, but I felt really burned by the Catholic Church
    6. 1. I wanted to learn everything I could about social influence, about group dynamics, about psychological manipulation -- in part so what happened before would never happen again, and also to tap into wisdom that I didn't have access to in my very sheltered community.
    7. 1. In short, I was on a quest to find out the best of what secular psychology had to offer.
    8. 1. I would have gone to a Catholic Graduate 10.
  2. 1. What I was looking for
  3. 1. What I found
  4. Introduction
2. Question may arise, "Why Dr. Peter, since you are a Catholic psychologist, why are you even looking at these secular sources? Why even bother with them? Don't we have everything we need in Scripture, in the traditions of the Church, in the writings of the Church Fathers and the saints, and in magisterial teaching? I thought this was a Catholic podcast here.
  1. Let me ask you question in return then -- Let's say you're experiencing serious physical symptoms -- something is wrong medically. You have intense abdominal pain, right around your navel, your belly is starting to swell, you have a low-grade fever, you've lost your appetite and you're nauseous and you have diarrhea. How would you react if I were to say to you: "Why are you considering consulting secular medical experts? What need have you of doctors and a hospital? Don't you have everything you need in Scripture, in the traditions of the Church, in the writings of the Church Fathers and the saints, and in magisterial teaching?
    1. If I responded to you like that, you might think I'm a crackpot or that I believe in faith healing alone or that I just don't get what you are experiencing.
    2. Those are the symptoms of an appendicitis, and that infected appendix could burst 48-72 hours after your first symptoms. If that happens, bacteria spread infection throughout your abdomen, and that is potentially life-threatening. You would need surgery to remove the appendix and clean out your abdomen.
  2. Remember that we are embodied beings -- we are composites of a soul and a body. The 17th Century Philosopher Rene Descartes' gave us a lot of great things, including analytic geometry, but he was wrong splitting the body from the mind in his dualism. Descartes' mind-body dualism, the idea that the body and the mind operate in separate spheres, and neither can be assimilated into the other which has been so influential in our modern era.
    1. In the last several years we are realizing just how much of our mental life and our psychological well-being is linked in various ways to our neurobiology -- the ways that our nervous systems function. And the relationship between our embodied brain and our minds is reciprocal -- each affects the other in complex ways that we are just beginning to understand. In other words, brain chemistry affects our emotional states. And our emotional states and our behaviors affect brain chemistry. It's not just our minds and it's not just our bodies and it's not just our souls -- it's all of those, all of what makes me who I am, body, mind, soul, spirit, all of it. 3. 1. And since Scripture, the Early Church Fathers, the Catechism and so on are silent on neurobiology, neurochemistry, neurophysiology and so many other areas that impact our minds and our well-being, as a Catholic psychologist I am going to look elsewhere, I'm going to look into secular sources. I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican to be experts in these areas -- it's not their calling. I just don't think anyone is going to find an effective treatment for bulimia by consulting the writings of the Early Church Fathers or in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. That is unreasonable . And it's just as unreasonable, in my opinion, to ignore the body and just try to work with the mind. 4. 5. I also believe that God works through non-Catholics in many ways -- many non-Catholic researchers and clinicians and theorists are using the light of natural reason to discover important realities that help us understanding well-being, and they are inspired to seek what can be known with good motivations, with good hearts and sharp minds to help and love others. I am a Catholic with upper-case C, a big C and I am catholic with a lower-case C -- a little C. Catholic with a little C. According to my Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, Third Edition, which I rely on for wordfinding, according to this thesaurus, the synonyms for Catholic with a small c include the following terms: universal, diverse, broad-based, eclectic, comprehensive, all-encompassing, all-embracing and all-inclusive. That's what catholic with a small c means. So I am Catholic with a big C and catholic with a small c. 6. And a final point about why I look to secular sources -- The Church herself encourages us to look to all branches of knowledge and glean what is best from them.
    2. From the CCC, paragraph 159 "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
    3. And from the Vatican II document, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, paragraph 62 reads: In pastoral care, sufficient use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology, so that the faithful may be brought to a more adequate and mature life of faith. 7. Finally, I will say that considering the whole person -- Soul, spirit, mind and body -- all of the person is so much more helpful in the process of recovery that just splitting off the mind and working with it alone, or just trying to work with the mind and the soul but not the body. So there are pragmatic considerations, practical aspects to this. I like to practice psychology in ways that actually work. The fruit that comes from considering the body and working with the body as well the mind and soul is just so much better. And so we want to work in an integrative way. That what this podcast Interior Integration for Catholics is all about -- this is episode 90 released on March 7. 2022, titled Your Well-Being: The Secular Experts Speak and I am I am clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, your host and companion today, and also president and Co-Founder of Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com -- our mission in Souls and Hearts is to bring the best of psychology and human formation grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person to help wounded Catholics rise above our psychological issues and human formation problems which hold us back from embracing love from Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God our Father and Mary our Mother and loving them back with our whole souls and hearts, with all our parts.
    5. Secular Sources
3. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 -- DSM-5 for short.
  1. From the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the DSM-5 The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the handbook used by health care professionals in the United States and much of the world as the authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. DSM contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It provides a common language for clinicians to communicate about their patients and establishes consistent and reliable diagnoses that can be used in the research of mental disorders. It also provides a common language for researchers to study the criteria for potential future revisions and to aid in the development of medications and other interventions.
  2. So you would think, given that glowing description of its prowess and authority that it would tell us what psychological well-being is, it would let us know what mental health is. But if you thought that, you'd be wrong.
  3. Nowhere in the nearly 1000 pages of this tome is there are definition. You can't find it. No definition of mental health or psychological wellbeing. You get a definition of mental disorder and a couple of descriptions of what is not a mental disorder. This is a quote from page 20.
  4. Definition of a mental disorder: A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.
  5. But no definition of what optimal functioning, or happiness or well-being or psychological health would look like.
  6. That's a real problem. How are we supposed to know what psychological disorder is when we don't know what psychological health should entail?
    1. Canadian Blogger, author and Christian pastor Tim Challies published a blog titled "Counterfeit Detection" in which he describes how Canadian federal agents are trained to detect counterfeit bills -- they first get very familiar with the real money. Real bills. Those Canadian follow what John MacArthur wrote in his book Reckless Faith. "Federal agents don’t learn to spot counterfeit money by studying the counterfeits. They study genuine bills until they master the look of the real thing. Then when they see the bogus money they recognize it." Only then are they equipped to spot the forgeries. 7. 1. So we need a standard, we need to know what well-being looks like so we can use it as a reference point for contrasting anything which is out of order in our psyches. We're not going to get that reference point from the DSM-5, so let's turn to history. Let's go back in time to the philosophers of ancient Greece who wrote about well-being and start there. Let's see if we can find out from our secular sources what the good life is. What psychological well-being is, what mental health is. 8.
    2. 1. Hedonic wellbeing -- basically this is about feeling good: 1. Aristippus, a Greek philosopher in the fourth century BC argued that the primary and ultimate goal in life should be to maximize pleasure. English philosophers Thomas Hobbes 17th century and Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century, crossing into the 19th century also embraced Hedonic well being. 2. Definition: Hedonic wellbeing "focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance” Ryan and Deci, 2001 On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology
    3. How much pleasure can I get? 3. 1. How much pain can I avoid -- Hedonic wellbeing. 4. 1. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The term “hedonism,” from the Greek word ἡδονή (hēdonē) for pleasure, refers to several related theories about what is good for us, how we should behave, and what motivates us to behave in the way that we do. All hedonistic theories identify pleasure and pain as the only important elements of whatever phenomena they are designed to describe. 5. 6. Back to Ryan and Deci “the predominant view among hedonic psychologists is that well-being consists of subjective happiness and concerns the experience of pleasure versus displeasure broadly construed to include all judgments about the good/bad elements of life. Happiness is thus not reducible to physical hedonism, for it can be derived from attainment of goals or valued outcomes in varied realms Ryan and Deci, 2001 On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology 7. Summary statement: Hedonic well-being -- maximize the pleasure, minimize the pain. 8. And that makes sense to us -- we all have some innate attraction to pleasure and some innate avoidance of pain.
    4. 1. Eudaimonic wellbeing
  7. "producing happiness," 1856, from Greek eudaimonikos "conducive to happiness," from eudaimonia "happiness," from eu "good" (see eu-) + daimōn "guardian, genius" (see daimon).
    1. 1. In contrast to hedonic wellbeing's focus on pleasure, we have eudaimonic well-being, which focuses on meaning and purpose in life.
    2. 1. Trace this back to Aristotle also in the 4th Century BC, contemporary of Aristippus. Aristotle argued, especially in his Nichomachean Ethics --
    3. Aristotle argued that the best things are the ones who perform their function to the highest degree. My son John Malinoski used this example in his senior thesis for Wyoming Catholic college. His thesis was titled Into the Jung-le: Exploring How Modern Psychological Methodology Relates to and Transforms the Classical Understanding of Man’s Psyche and it has this passage which precisely describes how Aristotle saw well-being, using an illustrative example of a squirrel and then describing what well-being is for us as human persons: 4.

Aristotle begins his quest for the happy man with one of these endoxa: the generally held, plausible truth that the best things are the ones who perform their function to the highest degree. It seems self-evident that we would judge the worth of a squirrel based on how fast that squirrel can run, how high it can leap, or how much food it can find. In other words, the best squirrel is the one that best fulfills its squirrel nature. Correspondingly, the best man must be the man who excels at being a man; he performs the functions of man to the highest degree. While man has many functions which he shares in common with plants and animals--life, growth, sensation, and so on--he has one particular ability which is unique to him: the ability to reason. Since this higher faculty distinguishes and elevates man above the lesser beings below him, Aristotle claims that it must be the most important aspect of his soul, the characteristic function of man: “We posit the work of a human being as a certain life, and this is an activity of soul and actions accompanied by reason.”6 Since “each thing is brought to completion well in accord with the work proper to it,” it follows that “the human good becomes an activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and if there are several virtues, then in accord with the best and most complete one.”7 This is Aristotle’s brief summation of the human good, or happiness.

In short, the truly virtuous man has ordered his soul to the fullest extent: not only are all his actions ordered towards reason and the good, but all his inclinations point him toward these properly ordered actions as well.

Gale and colleagues 2009 article in the Journal of Personality The eudaimonic perspective of wellbeing – based on Aristotle’s view that true happiness comes from doing what is worth doing – focuses on meaning and self-realization, and defines wellbeing largely in terms of ways of thought and behavior that provide fulfillment.
Freud
1. Let's fast forward 2400 years now to Freud. From the 4th century BC to the 20th Century AD. To Freud
2. 1. A lot of people believe that Freud was really a hedonist -- in part because of his pleasure principle. In Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the pleasure principle is that driving impulse of the id -- the id is the most basic, primitive part of the personality driven by instincts, mostly buried deep in the unconscious. The pleasure principle describes how the id seeks immediate gratification of all its needs, wants, and urges, seeking with force to satiate hunger, quench thirst, discharge anger, and experience sexual pleasure.
3. 1. "To Love and to Work" -- summarizing in one pithy statement what a healthy man or woman should be able to do well.
4. 1. “Love and work…work and love, that's all there is…love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” -- Civilization and its Discontents
5. 1. Play: Freud believed and taught that play was important -- play is a creative activity, play is an adaptive activity, and play is also a therapeutic activity because play generates pleasure through the release of tension.
6. 1. Summarize Freud's position on happiness -- the ability to Love, work and play.
7. 1. Freud in his 1895 book "Studies on Hysteria" coauthored with Josef Breuer. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.”
  2. Freud did not promise that his psychoanalytic method would remove "common unhappiness." He taught that psychoanalysis had its limits.
    1. 1. Which leads us to fast forward 100 years to the late 1990's and the advent of Positive Psychology, which is not satisfied by just accepting common unhappiness. Positive psychology posits that we can do something about that common unhappiness and make it better -- so it is more ambitious in its goals and promises than Freud ever was. 3.
  4. Positive Psychology:
    1. Definitions:
  5. Peterson 2008
    1. “Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” 2. 1. positive psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” 3. 4. the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing -- flourishing really is the focus of positive psychology, it's a critical word. And there's a focus on flourishing in three primary domains.
    2. Flourishing intrapersonally -- which means within one's own person, within one's own being -- intrapersonally (e.g. biologically, emotionally, cognitively)
    3. Flourishing interpersonally (e.g. relationally), in our personal relationships
    4. And flourishing collectively (e.g. institutionally, culturally and globally) -- in our culture and society -- flourishing collectively
    5. So flourishing is the key word, and the focus is on flourishing intrapersonally, interpersonally, and collectively
      1. So what makes the good life according to positive psychologists, according to Martin Seligman?
  6. Seligman in his 2002 book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment details four different forms of what he calls "the good life." Four different forms or ways of living well, four kinds of well-being. These are the 1) the pleasant life; 2) a good life; 3) a meaningful life; and 4) a full life. Repeat them. We'll go through each one of these starting with the pleasant life.
    1. 1. The pleasant life: according to Martin Seligman, the pleasant life is a simple life, he says "a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past and future" He elaborates, "The pleasant life is wrapped up in the successful pursuit of the positive feelings, supplemented by the skills of amplifying those emotions." This takes us back to the hedonic wellbeing we discussed earlier, as originally posited by Aristippus, our Greek philosopher in the fourth century BC. All about the pursuit of good feelings, maximizing positive emotions.
    2. 1. The good life: The good life, according to positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman means "using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in the main realms of one’s life" So in this good life, you are able to use your particular talents and unique skills, your special strengths, being true to your own character, being true to your values and virtues, so this sense of "authenticity" is very important in the good life. So we have the pleasant life, all about positive emotions; and now the good life, in which you have abundant gratification by you doing you, by you being authentic through using your signature qualities in in the world. The good life is not a permanent state -- we are not always going to be able to use our special talents and qualities in a way that is gratifying to us -- rather, the good life has to be a process of ongoing growth, a process of development. It's all about continuing to grow.
    3. 1. Then we have the meaningful life, that's the third form, the meaningful life. Seligman describes this as "using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are" In this way of living well, you have a strong bond to "something larger than yourself." In this way of well-being, it's up to each individual what that "something larger than yourself" is going to be. So at this point we've covered three of the four kinds of well-being: we have the pleasant life, all about maximizing your pleasant emotions, we have the good life, which is all about using your signature strength and virtues to be gratified, and we have the third form, the meaningful life, in which we use our signature strengths and virtues in the service of something larger than us. This level of well-being brings us back to Aristotle and his eudaimonic well-being, which focuses on pursuing meaning and purpose in life.
    4. 1. That leaves us with the fourth way, the full life. Seligman describes the full life as follows: «Finally, a full life consists in experiencing positive emotions about the past and future, savoring positive feelings from pleasures, deriving abundant gratification from your signature strengths, and using these strengths in the service of something larger to obtain meaning» So what is added to the first three ways of well-being in this last way, the fourth way, the full life is the concept of service. Here's where he starts to sound a little like Bob Dylan's 1979 song "Gotta Serve Somebody." In the full life, a man uses his strengths and abilities in the most optimized way to serve something larger than himself." In the full life, a woman gets outside herself and brings her talents and virtues to serve a greater good in a way that shines. The full life reflects optimal human functioning. Seligman thus is very Aristotleian in how he argues that a person has the best experience of life, the greatest sense of well-being when that person is functioning optimally, bringing all the particular talents, skills, strengths and virtues to bear in the services of the greater good.
    6. Effort to refocus psychology on wholeness and wellness -- not on illness or disorder or weaknesses or problems
  7. Focus on positive aspects A to Z list from Chapter 2 of the book Well-Being, Recovery, and Mental Health by Lindsay Oades and Lara Mossman: altruism, accomplishment, appreciation of beauty and excellence, authenticity, best possible selves, character strengths, coaching, compassion, courage, coping, creativity, curiosity, emotional intelligence, empathy, flow, forgiveness, goal setting, gratitude, grit, happiness, hope, humor, kindness, leadership, love, meaning, meditation, mindfulness, motivation, optimism, performance, perseverance, positive emotions, positive relationships, post-traumatic growth, psychological capital, purpose, resilience, savoring, self-efficacy, self-regulation, spirituality, the good life, virtues, wisdom and zest.
    2. Origin of Positive Psychology is often attributed to Abraham Maslow's 1954 book "Motivation and Personality."
    3. Really took off in the late 1990's when positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman became president of the American Psychological Society and was able to effectively popularize positive psychology
  8. Increase human strength -- make people more "productive"
    1. 1. Nurturing of genius and fostering greater human potential
    2. 1. Calling for research on human strength and virtue.
    3. 1. How do human being flourish at the individual level, the community level, and at the societal level?
    4. Emphasis on Different interventions that have been found to improve levels of happiness and well-being.
  9. Best possible self -- writing about yourself at your best, remembering yourself at your best
  10. Working on forgiveness -- I find this really interesting that forgiveness -- Robert Enright has done a lot of research in this area, with a focus on letting go of anger, resentment and bitterness toward those who have caused me pain.
    1. Getting a more balanced view of the offender 3. 1. Reducing negative feelings toward the offender and possibly increasing compassion 4. 1. Relinquishing the right to punish the offender or demand restitution. 5. 6. Increasing gratitude -- finding things to be thankful for, reflecting on blessings, expressing gratitude in a variety of ways -- Gratitude is the expression of appreciate for what I have. Research shows many positive psychological benefits to deliberately practicing gratitude 7. Fostering optimism -- the tendency to anticipate favorable outcomes. Things are going to work out. The glass is half full. The idea is that optimism can be learned. It can be practiced and developed and when it is, people feel better. 8. Cultivating Mindfulness the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment“ (Kabat-Zinn, Reference Kabat-Zinn2003, p. 2) 9. Listening to uplifting music 10. Positive Psychotherapy 11. Savoring (savoring can be past-focused (reminiscing about positive experiences), present-focused (savoring the moment) or future-focused (anticipating positive experiences yet to come) (Smith et al., 2014) 12. Self-compassionate writing -- being gentle with yourself in your journal
    2. PDM 2 -- Now completely revised (over 90% new), this is the authoritative diagnostic manual grounded in psychodynamic clinical models and theories. Explicitly oriented toward case formulation and treatment planning, PDM-2 offers practitioners an empirically based, clinically useful alternative or supplement to DSM and ICD categorical diagnoses.
      1. A clinically useful classification of mental disorders must begin with a concept of healthy psychology. Mental health is more than simply the absence of symptoms. Just as healthy cardiac functioning cannot be defined as an absence of chest pain, healthy mental functioning is more than the absence of observable symptoms of psychopathology. p.3
      2. Three major axes: Personality Organization, Mental Functioning, and Symptom Patterns
      3. Personality Organization P Axis
  11. What level of personality organization does the person have? 4 major categories -- psychotic, borderline, neurotic, and healthy.
    1. 1. What style personality or pattern does one have -- e.g. depressive, hypomanic, masochistic, dependent, anxious-avoidant (aka phobic), obsessive-compulsive, schizoid, somatizing, hysteric/histrionic, narcissistic, paranoid, psychopathic, sadistic, and borderline. You've got one of these styles.
    3. Mental Functioning -- overall description of mental functioning -- the capacities involved in psychological health or pathology -- looking at the inner mental life of the person
    4. Symptom Patterns -- S axis -- looks at emotional states, cognitive processes, bodily experiences, and relational patterns -- looks at the person's personal experience of his or her difficulties
    5. Psychodiagnostic Chart-2 by Robert Gordon and Robert Bornstein -- downloadable
  12. Use
    1. 1. Breaking it down
    2. Personality Organization P Axis -- What level of personality organization does the person have. 4 major categories -- psychotic, borderline, neurotic, and healthy. What style personality or pattern does one have -- e.g. depressive, hypomanic, masochistic, dependent, anxious-avoidant (aka phobic), obsessive-compulsive, schizoid, somatizing, hysteric/histrionic, narcissistic, paranoid, psychopathic, sadistic, and borderline. You've got one of these styles.
      1. To be able to understand oneself in complex, stable, and accurate ways
      2. To maintain intimate, stable, and satisfying relationships
      3. To use more healthy defenses and copings strategies -- anticipation, self-assertion, sublimation, suppression, altruism and humor
      4. To appreciate, if not necessarily conform to, conventional notions of what is realistic
      5. Life problems rarely get out of hand
      6. There is enough flexibility to accommodate to challenging realities
        
        Mental Functioning M axis
      7. Cognitive processes
        
        capacity to regulate thinking, attention, learning 2. 1. Capacity to communicate one's thoughts to others 2. 1. Emotional processes
        
        to be able to experience a full range of emotions 2. 1. To regulate emotions well 3. 1. To understand one's own emotions 4. 1. To be able to communicate one's emotions 3. 1. Identity -- deals with the question, who am I?
        
        Capacity for differentiation -- a solid sense of being psychological separate from others -- not fused, or enmeshed or co-dependent 2. 1. Regulation of self-esteem 3. 1. Awareness of internal experience 4. 1. Relationships
        
        Capacity for relationships 2. 1. Capacity for intimacy 5. 1. Defenses and coping
        
        Impulse control -- regulation of impulses 2. 1. Defensive functioning -- able to use effective coping strategies
        
        e.g. extreme denial vs. humor 3. 1. Adaptation -- this is a state, reflecting how an individual deals with specific stressors going on in life right now 4. 1. Resilience -- this is a trait -- general ability
        
        Check out episodes 20, 21, 22, and 23 of this podcast for a four part series on resilience
        
        American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress— such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.”
        
        So resilience is a trait. 5. 1. Strength 6. 1. Self-awareness
        
        Self-observing capacities -- psychological mindfulness 2. 1. Self-direction 7. 1. Capacity to construct and use internal standards and ideal
        
        A sense of meaning and purpose in life 8. 3. 1. Symptom patterns -- S Axis the severity of psychological symptoms 10.
        
        Polyvagal theory -- we spent the last episode, episode 89 titled "Your Body, Your Trauma: Protection vs. Connection discussing Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory.
        
        Deb Dana: Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection The ventral vagal system truly powers the journey to well-being
        
        Now remember, the ventral vagal system corresponds to the ventral branch of the vagal nerve-- and the ventral vagal system serves the social engagement system -- remember -- that's the relational connection system. The ventral vagal nerve dampens the body’s regularly active state. The ventral vagal nerve allows activation of the autonomic nervous system in a nuanced way, thus offering a different quality than sympathetic activation -- that's how you can being excited and celebrate your favorite sports team score again against their rivals without becoming overwhelmed by a fight or flight response.
        
        What is it like to be in a ventral vagal state? It's a positive state -- it's not just the absence of being in sympathetic hyperarousal when you are in fight or flight. It's also not just the absence of being in a dorsal vagal hypoarousal shutdown or freeze state. It's more than just those two systems being downregulated. It's the ventral vagal system being activated. It's an active state with these properties
  13. Physical responses
    1. Reduced heart rate 2. 1. Steady breathing 3. 1. Relaxed digestion 4. 1. Rest and recuperation 5. 1. Vitality 6. 1. Circulation to extremities 7. 1. Stress reduction
      1. Psychological responses
    2. A sense of calm 2. 1. A sense of safety 3. 1. Feeling grounded 4. 1. Joy 5. 1. Mindfulness 6. 1. An ability to be very much in the present moment
      1. Relational responses
    3. Desire for connection with others. 2. 1. A genuine interest in others 3. 1. Openness and receptivity in relationship 4. 1. Acceptance and embracing of vulnerability 5. 1. Empathy and compassion for others
      1. Oxytocin is released that stimulates social bonding 2. 1. Ability to related and to connect with others without anxiety 6. 1. This state changes the way we look and sound to others -- the tone and rhythm of your voice is more inviting
        
        Story -- I'm in a good place, I can be loved and love, I can connect with others, there is good in the world. Live is so worth living, and I want to share joy and peace and even sorrow and challenges with other people.
        
        So polyvagal theory is going to focus specifically on the regulation of your nervous system in assessing your well-being. The more you can be in a ventral vagal state, whether you are resting or excited, the better. So for those therapists who use polyvagal theory, there is a focus on resetting the autonomic nervous system, helping us in a bodily way to get back to a ventral vagal state. And we contrast that to the sympathetic fight or flight response and the dorsal vagal shutdown response.
        
        Danger activates the sympathetic system, we are all about survival now
  14. Physical responses
    1. Body is mobilized for action. Ready to run / Efforts to escape 2. 1. Hypervigilance -- body goes on high alert, pupils dilating, letting more light 3. 1. Very high levels of energy in this state, adrenaline rush 4. 1. Muscles get tense 5. 1. Blood pressure rises 6. 1. Heart rate accelerates 7. 1. Adrenaline releases 8. 1. Extra oxygen is circulated to vital organs 9. 1. Digestion decreases 10. 1. Immune response is suppressed
      1. Psychological responses
    2. Emotional Overwhelm
      1. usually worry moving to anxiety to fear to panic 2. 1. Or frustration to irritation to anger to rage
        
        confrontational, aggressive 3. 2. 1. Scanning for threats 3. 1. Capacity for complex, flexible reasoning is very much reduced -- leads to confusion 4. 1. No sense of safety, you start missing signs of safety and misreading signs of safety
        
        Relational responses
    3. Sense of separation, isolation from others-- cut off from others, no sense of relational connection anymore -- the connection is sacrificed in order to seek greater protection 2. 1. Disconnection from self, others, world, disconnected spiritually.-- you can't see others, really, except through the lens of danger and safety 3. 1. If we don't feel safe, there's no way we can provide a sense of safety to others.
      1. Story: The world is unsafe and people are dangerous, unfriendly, scary, falling apart
      2. When the mobilization doesn't bring a resolution to the distress -- then the ANS takes the final step, and shoots the last arrow it has in its quiver. This is the freeze response. When there is a deep sense that my life is threatened and the sympathetic activation doesn't resolve the perceived threat, then the dorsal vagal system kicks in. That's the freeze response, that's the collapse into "dorsal vagal lifelessness"
  15. Physical response
    1. Heart rate decreases, slows way down 2. 1. Blood pressure drops 3. 1. Body temperature decreases 4. 1. Muscle tone relaxes 5. 1. Breathing becomes shallow 6. 1. Immune response drops 7. 1. Pain threshold increases -- greater pain tolerance because of endorphin release that numbs pain. 8. 1. Immobilization response -- appearing physically dead 9. 1. Digestion and metabolism slows way down -- going into conservation mode, like hibernating until the life threat passes. 10.
      1. Psychological response
    2. Sense of helplessness 2. 1. Depression, despondency, lethargy 3. 1. Numbing out 4. 1. Disconnection 5. 1. Thinking become very foggy, fuzzy, unclear 6. 1. Dissociation, Spacing out, feeling disconnect from the present, untethered, floating, derealization 7. 1. Feeling trapped
    3. Preparing for death
    4. Feeling hopeless
    5. Shutting down and feeling psychologically inert, paralyzed
    6. Feeling a deep sense of shame
      1. Relational response
    7. Very isolated 2. 1. Can't listen to others, don't notice them very well, because of how shut down and self-absorbed you are in this state 3. 1. Can't share very well, difficulty with words 4. 1. Very little agency 5. 1. Can't focus
      1. Story: A story of despair. I am unlovable, invisible, lost, alone, in desperate straits, about to die.
      3. So polyvagal theory is going to focus specifically on the regulation of your nervous system in assessing your well-being.
        
        According to polyvagal theory if we are in sympathetic arousal, the fight or flight mode, we are focused on the perceived dangers around us and we focus on self-protection. This leads us to sacrifice connection with others.
        
        If we are in the dorsal vagal shutdown, the freeze response, we hiding from the prospect of imminent death, shutting down into a conservation mode, hoping to survive the perceived imminent lethal danger by becoming immobile.
        
        So for those therapists informed by polyvagal theory, there is a focus on resetting the autonomic nervous system, helping us in a bodily way to get back to a ventral vagal state, to leave the dorsal vagal shutdown state, to leave the sympathetic fight-or-flight state and get back to a peaceful bodily state. These therapists start with the body, not so much the mind.
    8. Internal Family Systems or IFS-- developed by Richard Schwartz, described in the first edition of Internal Family System Therapy which was published in 1995
8. IFS brings systems thinking inside -- it conceptualized the human person as a living system. Richard Schwartz is a family therapist who was trained in family systems work. He recognized that the inner life of a person mirrored family life, from a systems perspective. But before we go much further, let's ask the question --
  1. What is a system: Definition from Ben Lutkevich at techtarget.com Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. The systems thinking approach contrasts with traditional analysis, which studies systems by breaking them down into their separate elements.
    1. 1. Wellbeing according to IFS is when inner system of the person shows certain qualities
    2. Balance -- the degree of influence that each member has in the system on decisions making is appropriate and that the boundaries are balanced and appropriate within the system. 2. 1. Harmony -- an effort is made to find the role each member desires and and for which he is best suited. Members of the system work together, cooperatively. The harmony of the system allows each member to find and pursue his own vision while fitting that member's vision into the broader vision of the system as a whole. There is cooperation and collaboration among the members of the system. 3. 1. Leadership --One or more members of the system must have the ability and respect to do the following:
      1. Mediate polarizations 2. 1. Facilitate the flow of information withing the system 3. 1. Ensure that all members of the system are protected and cared for and that they feel valued and encouraged to pursue their individual vision within the limits of the system's needs 4. 1. Allocate resources, responsibilities, and influence fairly 5. 1. Provide a broad perspective and vision for the system as a whole 6. 1. Represent the system in interaction with other systems 7. 1. And interpret feedback from other systems honestly 4. 1. Development -- the members of the system and the system itself can grow -- developing the skills and relationships needed to carry out the vision of the system. 5.
        
        IFS model of the person
    3. Person is composed of a body, plus his parts, plus his self -- that's the internal system of a person -- body, parts, and self 2. 1. This will be a review for many of you who listen to the podcast 3. 1. Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader, with a deep sense of recollection on the natural level. You can also experience being in self as an expansive state of mind
      1. We want to be recollected, we want the self governing all of our parts
      2. Like the conductor -- leading the musicians in an orchestra
      3. Like the captain -- leading and governing all the sailors on a ship.
      4. When we are recollected, in self, 8 C's -- this is the ideal state
        
        Calm -agitation, frustration, anxious, stressed, angry 5. 1. Curiosity -- indifferent, disinterested, seeing other parts and seeing other people in two dimensions, one dimension, or no dimensions -- Episode 72 -Y- nuanced vs. reductionistic understandings of ourselves and others.
        
        Compassion -- cold, uncaring, unfriendly, hard, reserved, unsympathetic
        
        Confidence -- timid, pessimistic, doubtful and insecure
        
        Courage -- fearful, shy, faint-hearted, irresolute
        
        Clarity -- confused, muddled inside, things are obscured, dark inside, foggy, sees vague forms moving in a shadow world.
        
        Connectedness -- internal fragmentation, disjointed, distant, aloof
        
        Creativity -- uninspired, inept, very conventional, repetitive futility, doing the same thing over and over again, with no different results 2. Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. 4.
        
        IFS has two states
  2. Unblended -- this is when one is in a state of self
    1. 1. Unburdened -- this is when our parts are freed from their burndens. 3.
  4. Interpersonal Neurobiology -- pioneered by Daniel Siegel
    1. Definition -- Interpersonal Neurobiology is not a separate discipline -- it's not something that would have its own academic department within a university, for example. Rather, it is an interdisciplinary framework -- and that means that Interpersonal Neurobiology or IPNB for short, draws from many different disciplines -- many different approaches that have their own individual and unique rigorous approaches to studying phenomena relevant to well-being.
    2. I'm very into IPNB -- taking a Master Class with Daniel Siegel right now.
    3. We're going to get into Interpersonal Neurobiology and it's views on mental health and well being in Episode 92 of this podcast
  5. Closing
9. Weekly emails
10. 1. Special bonus podcast will be coming to you on Friday, March 25, 2022 -- the feast of the Annunciation, with an exciting announcement, this is just an extra podcast about a major effort that we are involved in at Souls and Hearts. Dr. Gerry Crete will be joining me to discuss this with you. So tune in then for all the new happenings at Souls and Hearts
11. 1. Catholic Therapists and Grad Students -- I will be doing a free Zoom webinar at from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time on Saturday March 26, 2022 on Internal Family Systems and loving your neighbor -- it's all about how understanding myself and others from an IFS perspective can help us love each other -- any Catholic therapist or grad student in a mental health field is free to attend. Email Patty Ellenberger, our office manager at admin@soulsandhearts.com for a registration link.
12. 1. Dr. Gerry's Catholic Journeymen Community has relaunched within Souls and Hearts. Men -- you are welcome to join a group of faithful Catholic men seeking restoration, wholeness, and integrity in areas of sexuality and relationship with God, self, and others. Catholic Journeymen is a safe space for men to share burdens, receive support, and be nourished by a distinctive program combining behavioral health science and Catholic spirituality. Check that out at soulsandhearts.com/catholic-journeymen.
13. 1. Conversation Hours You are a listener to this podcast, and in that sense, you are with me. I am also with you! Remember, can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time for our regular conversation hours. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
14. 1. Waiting list is open for The Resilient Catholics Community at Soulsandhearts.com/rcc for our June 2022 So much information there and videos.
15. 1. Patron and Patroness

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Summary: Join Dr. Peter as he explains how trauma impacts our bodies, through the lens of polyvagal theory. Through quotes, examples, questions for reflection and experiential exercises, Dr. Peter walks you through a current understanding of how large a role our bodies have in our experience of trauma.
Introduction
1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, bringing to you, my listener the best of psychology and human formation and harmonizing it with our Catholic Faith
2. 1. This is the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast -- you are part of it, right here, right now and I am glad to be with you. This podcast is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com -- we have vibrant communities, we have courses, we have podcasts, we have blogs and shows, all kinds of resources at soulsandhearts.com, check it out.
3. 1. Trauma. Last month, we began a whole series of episodes on trauma -- such an important topic
  2. Quote from trauma therapist and research Peter Levine: “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” – Peter Levine
  3. 1. We started with an overview of the best of the secular understandings of trauma. In that first episode in the series, number 88, we got into the definitions of trauma and attachment injuries, and we dived into the experience of trauma -- what trauma is like.
  4. 1. That sets us up for today's episode, number 89 -- Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection. Today, we are getting into the body's response to trauma, really focusing in on what happens in our nervous system. What happens in the brain, what happens in our spinal cord and our nerves and throughout our bodies
  5. We will be especially tuning into our own nervous system. 2.
  6. 1. There's going to be some vocabulary here, I will help you with that. There will some big words, but I am going to walk you through the concepts and make them easier to understand.
  7. 1. In the past two decades we have learned so much about how trauma impacts the body -- the physiological effects of trauma
  8. So what is physiological? Physiology
    1. the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts
      1. organ systems, individual organs, cells, and right down to the level of biomolecules 2. 1. The parts within us carry out the chemical, electrical and physical functions within our bodies. Our bodies are living systems 2. 1. Put simply, physiology is the study of how the human body works 3. 1. Today we are looking at how trauma impacts physiology -- how trauma affects the workings of our body, especially in our nervous system. 4.
      2. Lots of misconceptions out there. 1. Old way of understanding stress -- what I learned in graduate school. Most prominent. 1. You were either stressed or not stressed 2. fight or flight or rest and digest 3. Stress on or stress off. No nuance, very simple way of understanding 2. Today, we are going to do much better than that, go much deeper than that.
      3. Review: Definition of Trauma
        
        Integrated Listening Systems website: Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.
        
        from Duros and Crowley 2014: …what happens to a person where this is either too much too soon, too much too long, or not enough for too long.
        
        From Stephen Porges: Trauma is a chronic disruption of connectedness.
      4. Most clients come to therapy for one main reason. One main, overarching reason. They are dysregulated. What does that mean? They are poorly regulated.
        
        Overwhelmed with emotion or on the other side, Emotional shutdowns, numbing out
        
        Can't control their thoughts, so distracted, intrusive thoughts, ruminations, racing thoughts, obsessions, disorientation, having a sense that their thoughts are no longer under control
        
        Impulses -- rising up
        
        Intrusive memories
        
        They are having trouble keeping it together
        
        High reactivity
        
        Mood swings
        
        Anger management issues
        
        Intense depression
        
        Feeling unreal, depersonalized, not myself, identity issues -- don't know who I am
        
        Feeling fragile, vulnerable, about to fall apart
        
        In one word, they come in to therapy because they can't manage their lives well anymore and they feel losing control and that makes them feel unsafe and scared.
      5. Polyvagal theory --
        
        Great discoveries in recent years about the vagus nerve.
        
        The vagus nerve is responsible for the regulation of internal organ functions, such as digestion, heart rate, and respiratory rate, as well as vasomotor activity, and certain reflex actions, such as coughing, sneezing, swallowing, and vomiting
        
        10th of 12 cranial nerves -- On Old Olympus Towering Top, a Finn and German Viewed Some Hops. Memorizing the cranial nerves
        
        Longest nerve of the body, and the most complex, it branches into 11 different directions.
        
        Responsible for slowing down all the organs from the next down to the colon. Parasympathetic response -- slowing or shutting down.
        
        Responsible
    2. Heart rate 6. 1. Digestion 7. 1. Breathing 8. 1. Sweating 9. 1. Motor functions for the muscles needed for swallowing and speech 10. 1. Reflex actions, such as coughing, sneezing swallowing and vomiting
    3. Polyvagal theory was developed by Stephen xPorges -- Ph.D. in psychology over the last 20 years -- writes in an academic way.
    4. Relying heavily on the work of Deb Dana Licensed Clinical Social worker and a great writer and speaker - translates him so well
4. Polyvagal exercises for Safety and connection -- introduction and first three chapters
5. 1. Polyvagal Theory and Trauma – Deb Dana Nearly 2 hours, on YouTube
6. Deb asks this question: What would it be like for you if your body could help you feel safe and secure, much more protected when you start feeling scared?
7. Fundamental discovery: Our nervous system is shaped by early experience and reshaped by ongoing experience -- there is connection between our nervous system and our experience.
8. Formation of connections and associations
9. Reshaping -- changing the way our bodies respond to stress -- breaking the old patterns, fashioning new patterns deliberately
10. Change is gradual
  1. Fleeting moments of peace --> more consistent sense of well-being, more resilience in the face of challenges, perceived threats, stress.
    2. Very much at a body level -- not thinking -- about rewiring. Very basic, bodily level.
  2. Three organizing principles of polyvagal theory: Autonomic hierarchy, Neuroception, Co-regulation
11. Autonomic hierarchy
  1. Autonomic Nervous System -- the part of the nervous system responsible for control of the bodily functions not consciously directed, such as breathing, the heartbeat, and digestive processes. Critical theme here -- control of bodily functions not consciously directed. Regulates what we don't pay attention to.
    1. Qualities of ANS according to Deb Dana
      1. Platform for our lived experience 2. 1. Internal surveillance system 3. 1. Biological resource 4. 1. Where our stories begin 5. ANS heavily involved in the ongoing weighing of two fundamental human needs -- two major objectives.
      2. To survive -- Protection
      3. To bond relationally with others -- Connection
      4. This is the central theme of this discussion of our bodies and our traumas -- Protection and Connection. How can we have both?
      5. We have on the one hand a drive to survive -- cause if we don't, you know, we're dead. On the other hand, we have this yearning to connect, to be in relationship with others
      6. We need both -- to be protected and to be connected, but trauma puts those two indispensable needs -- protection and connection into tension. Can't have both. 6. If we are experiencing trauma, our ANS automatically moves us away from seeking connection with others to a position of protection.
      7. In the state of protection -- we are seeking only survival. Our nervous system is closed to connection with others. It is closed to change. There's only one goal. Survive. If we don't survive, nothing else is possible. When we are in a state of protection, it's all about one that one thing: survival. Nothing else matters.
      8. However, when we are in a state of connection, we have so many more possibilities
        
        Health 3. 1. Growth 4. 1. Restoration 5. 1. Change 7. ANS is divided into three parts -- three pronged fork -- the whole fork is the ANS, but the three prongs are the Dorsal vagal system, the Sympathetic System and the Ventral Vagal System. Vagal nerve is part of the parasympathetic system, so in broad terms, it slows us down. 1. Dorsal vagal system (back)
        
        Earliest, most basic system.
        
        Strategies of immobilization. Playing dead.
        
        Very disconnected, very shut down.
        
        Freeze response
        
        Deb Dana uses the image of a turtle hiding in its shell.
        
        Protection through disappearing 2. Sympathetic system (not vagal)
        
        Next to develop in evolution 3. 1. Strategies of hyper-mobilization. 4. 1. Fight or flight 5. 1. Deb Dana: Darting movements of a fish to escape a predator 6. 1. Protection through action. 7. Ventral vagal system (front)
        
        Unique to mammals -- don't see this in reptiles.
        
        Ability to experience a felt sense of safety
        
        Through connection and social engagement
        
        Very relational 8. Dissolution -- predictable way that things break down in us when we are overwhelmed. 1. Neuroimaging studies have repeatedly shown that in overwhelming situations in which we are flooded, our prefrontal cortex shuts down
        
        The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain needed for rational thought -- for planning, considering different options. 2. 1. On imaging studies that look at electrical activity in the brain, when we are flooded, overwhelmed, our prefrontal cortex, which we really need for higher-order thought, shuts down. It does dark. It goes offline. Not accessible. 3. 1. And then other, more primitive parts of the brain take over. These more primitive parts of the brain can't really think rationally. But these primitive parts of our brain, when they are activated in overwhelming situations can and do react and respond. And this feels to us very automatic, not considered. 4. 5. Experience in the ventral vagal state. -- Example here
        
        Ventral vagal system is all about connection and social engagement 6. 1. Warmth, positivity, connectedness.
        
        Wellbeing, able to accurately interpret cues for safety
        
        Social, engaged
        
        Connected internally
        
        Connected to the world
        
        Flexibility, resilience
        
        Sense of hope
        
        Capacities
        
        Tune into the present moment 9. 1. Filter out distractions 10. 1. Can co-regulate
        
        Can Self-regulate
        
        Able to reach out to others and provide support and resources
        
        Engage all of our brain, including higher-order thinking
        
        Explore options
        
        Compassion for self and others 11. Lots of possibilities for connection. 12. The story we have active is a good story, one with goodness and peace and joy. 7. Questions for reflection from Deb Dana
        
        What is it like for you when you are in the ventral vagal state -- warm toward others? 8. 1. What are some of the stressful events in life or difficult relationships that might take you out of that connected, socially engaged ventral vagal state and move you toward sympathetic arousal, the fight or flight mode? 2.
        
        What happens when the ventral vagal system shuts down
12. Compromised by
  1. Feeling deeply alone -- loss of a loved one -- romantic breakup, divorce, death, but also ways that are not so obvious -- adult children not reaching out
    1. 1. Too many responsibilities in the day, to many things to do, the checklist has so much that is not crossed off, we start getting worked up, you can feel the tension inside rising to a fight or flight level.
    2. 1. Being distressed in relationship -- relational conflicts, arguments, coldness, distance.
    3. 1. Bring in the example
  3. When the sympathetic system is activated, we are all about survival now
13. Familiar to us as the "Fight or Flight" mode.
14. 1. Very high levels of energy in this state, adrenaline rush
15. 1. Body is mobilized for action. The Klaxons are going off, Battle stations. Not a lot of relationality when you are in fight or flight
16. 1. Capacity for complex, flexible reasoning is very much reduced
  2. Can you imagine playing a good game of chess while you are in a fight or flight mode?
    1. 1. Running away from a tiger -- not time to digest your Power Bar. 3.
  3. 1. Muscle tension in back -- muscles getting locked up. Tight, rigid back muscles. Not responsive to stretching doesn't work, massage, chiropractic, rollers, physical therapy -- downregulating can be so helpful.
  4. 1. No sense of safety.
  5. 1. Potential for panic
  6. 1. Potential for rage
  7. 1. Confusion
  8. 1. Overwhelmed
  9. 1. Angry
  10. 1. Confrontational
  11. 1. Ready to run
  12. 1. Properties
  13. You have a sense of unease and impending danger
    1. 1. Your body is mobilized for fight or flight -- inner Klaxons are going off, the alarms
    2. High levels of energy, endocrine system is now active, adrenaline rush, 2.
      1. Active aggression -- Damn the torpedos, full speed head. -- lashing out before he even knows what he is doing…
      2. Efforts to escape
      3. Hypervigilance -- high alert, pupils dilating, letting more light.
    3. Looking for and listening for danger
      1. Missing and misreading signs of safety
      2. Sense of separation, isolation -- cut off from others, no sense of relational connection anymore
      3. Disconnection from self, others, world, disconnected spiritually.
    4. Therefore We can't provide safety to others in this sympathetic activation state. 9.
    5. 1. We can't sustain this -- adrenaline, cortisone up all the time. Can't take it. Heart couldn't stand it.
      2. Story: The world is unsafe and people are dangerous, unfriendly, scary, falling apart
  14. I am crazy, I am toxic,
    1. 1. Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”― Mark Goulston MD
  15. Questions for reflection from Deb Dana
17. What does mobilization feel like for you -- when you get revved up?
18. 1. Where does mobilization take you? Into fight or flight.
20. When the mobilization doesn't bring a resolution to the distress -- then the ANS takes the final step, and shoots the last arrow it has in its quiver. This is the freeze response.
21. Situation is so desperate, there is nothing I can do.
22. Collapse into "dorsal vagal lifelessness" -- Dorsal vagal system takes over, and shut us down.
23. Everything goes offline, almost all the brain.
24. Shifting into conservation mode.
25. Response to what seems inescapable
26. Properties
  1. Conservation mode
    1. 1. Numbing out
    2. 1. Disconnection
  2. Dissociation, Spacing out, feeling disconnect from the present, untethered, floating, derealization
  3. Fogginess, fuzziness
  4. Collapse -- rape example
  5. Alone, lost, unreachable
  6. Invisible
  7. Loss of identity, depersonalization
  8. Safety and hope are lost\
  9. Loss of consciousness altogether
  10. Lethargy -- can feel really sloggy, like you are heavily sedated
    1. Experience of being stuck, frozen. 11. 12. Despondency 13. Shame -- episode 37-49 14. Dark, silent, cold 15. Could be overly calm 16. I am a rock, I am an island -- Paul Simon -- doesn't work. All about protection there, not connection.
      1. Loss of abilities
  11. Can't listen.
    1. 1. Can't share very well, difficulty with words
    2. 1. Very little agency
    3. 1. Can't focus
    4. Story: A story of despair.
  12. Message of I am unlovable, invisible, lost, alone
  13. The world is cold, empty, unhabitable. Vincent -- Don McClean
  14. Questions for reflection from Deb Dana
27. Is the experience of dorsal vagal shutdown familiar to you?
28. 1. How does the sense of disconnection happen for you?
29. Review of the autonomic hierarchy -- first of three organizing principles
30. Connection vs. Protection
31. 1. Drive to survive vs. drive to bond with others.
  2. Where is the safety?
32. 1. ANS is divided into three parts -- three pronged fork -- the whole fork is the ANS, but the three prongs are
  2. Ventral Vagal System
  3. the Sympathetic System
  4. the Dorsal vagal system
33. Second of the three organizing principles in Polyvagal Theory: Neuroception
34. Definition: Detection without awareness -- we sense something but it is below the limit of what we can consciously experience.
35. 1. Neuroception is the way our autonomic nervous system listens below the level of awareness -- deeply subcortical experience -- not in our rational, prefrontal cortex brain. Reactions happen long before conscious thought. Really important to understand that neuroception is not a conscious process.
  2. inside our body -- to our organs
  3. Outside of us -- in our environment -- checking
  4. And between, sensing connections to others, especially others' nervous systems -- this is all about relationships.
  5. At work all the time.
36. 1. Neuroception picks up on cues, all the time
  2. Cues of safety lead us to ventral vagal activation and interpersonal connection, social engagement -- so a neuroception of safety calms, connects, and dampens the need for protection.
    1. 1. Cues of danger -- lead us into the sympathetic arousal, fight or flight
    2. Facial expressions 2. 1. Tone of voice 3. 1. Not just words. Vocal bursts 4. 1. Interpreting head movements
      1. Nodding head, welcoming. 2. 1. Straight unmoving head is a cue for danger 3. 1. Slight tilt is inviting, a welcome sign 5. 1. Subtle cues 6. Cues of life-threat lead us into dorsal vagal shutdown, moving toward that collapse, that state of total numbing and disconnection. 7. Our neuroception is constantly scanning inside and outside -- what is the social temperature of the people in the room
    3. Friendly and inviting 8. 1. Hot and bothered 9. 1. Cold and calculating 10. Neuroception of safety is incompatible with a neuroception of danger or life-threat. 11. When we are in distress, when we are dysregulated
    4. We miss cues for safety 12. 1. We misread neutral cues as dangerous. 13. 14. Autonomic patterns and autonomic profiles can be reshaped -- we start with neuroception -- unlike a lot of therapist, which start with much higher-order thinking -- like cognitive-behavioral therapy.
    5. Order -- Neuroception - Perception - State - Emotions - Behavior - Story.
      1. Neuroception
      2. Perception
      3. State
      4. Emotions
      5. Behavior
      6. Story -- our Narrative
    6. What is our story? How much of our life is about protection and how much of our life is about connection?
      1. Dovetail here with Brown and Elliott
        
        Felt sense of safety and protection -- not enough that there be actual safety and protection -- it has to be felt, it has to be taken in. 2. 3. 4. We want to be able to edit the story. 5. Trauma stories are carried in states of dysregulation.
        
        Review of Neuroception:
  3. Definition: Detection without awareness. Sensing below conscious awareness.
    1. 1. In my body, outside of me in my environment, between me and my environment.
    2. 1. Cues of safety -- lead us to ventral vagal activation, interpersonal connection, social engagement
    3. 1. Cues of danger lead us to sympathetic arousal, fight or flight
    4. 1. Cues of life threat lead us to dorsal vagal activation, freeze response, shutting down. 6.
  4. 1. Questions for personal reflection from Deb Dana'
  5. Your neuroceptive cues
    1. What is a cue of safety inside your body -- calm and expansive -- feels like I have a big open heart. 2. 1. What is a cue for danger from inside your body 3. 1. What is a cue of safety for you from your environment 4. 1. What is a cue for danger in your environment 5. 1. What is a cue of safety between you and another person 6. 1. What is a cue for danger between you and another person? 7. 1. Review these for me.
      1. What is a cue of safety inside your body -- calm and expansive -- feels like I have a big open heart, like my heart is reaching out to others.
      2. What is a cue for danger from inside your body -- jaw clench. Also, icewater in veins.
      3. What is a cue of safety for you from your environment -- I like quiet, warm, rooms with sunlight and comfortable furniture and drinking tea.
      4. What is a cue for danger in your environment -- dogs. Very suspicious of dogs -- days as a runner. Semi trucks not holding the lane on the freeway. And any teenage child of mine learning to drive.
      5. What is a cue of safety between you and another person -- genuine smile -- smiling with eyes, Duchenne smile. Soft voices, gentle laughter.
      6. What is a cue for danger between you and another person? Yelling in anger, sensitive to sarcasm, especially if I perceived contempt.
      8. Experiential exercise
  6. Going inside right now.
    1. 1. Protection
    2. 1. Connection
  7. Co-regulation
37. Deb Dana: When we feel alone in the world, we suffer. When that feeling is chronic, medical and mental health risks multiply.
38. 1. Deb Dana: Our autonomic nervous system longs for connection with another system and sends signal out into the world searching for signals in return.
39. Stephen Porges (2016). Survival is dependent on opportunities to successfully co-regulate.
40. Co-regulation is essential for us for our well-being. In short, we need each other. People need people.
  1. Connection is a wired-in biological necessity
  2. Fisher (2014) Without the experience of an organizing other, the nervous system is stunned.
  3. Trauma survivors suffer from a lot of dysregulation -- unpredictable shifts inside, rapid mood swings, thoughts that seem out of control, imagery that can be terrifying and then rapidly cease, body sensations that are so intense that they overwhelm, impulses that can seem bizarre -- we covered all those symptoms of trauma in the last episode, number 88: Trauma: Defining and Understanding the Experience -- you can check that out.
41. Central idea: The ability to regulate oneself is built on ongoing experiences of co-regulation
42. Through co-regulation, we connect with others and experience a shared sense of safety. Safety together. Safety in relationship.
43. We need a reliable person in our lives to help us engage in what Deb Dana calls the "rhythm of reciprocity" and build shared experiences of safety in connection.
  1. A safe person in a safe place
    1. Sue Johnson' “Emotional connection is crucial to healing. In fact, trauma experts overwhelmingly agree that the best predictor of the impact of any trauma is not the severity of the event, but whether we can seek and take comfort from others.” 2. 1. Lilly Hope Lucario: “I have a gaping, painful hole in my soul… where good, loving parents and a normal, safe childhood, should have been.” – Lilly Hope Lucario 3. Can listen. 4. This goes back to long before birth -- Mother and baby are sharing at an autonomic level -- nervous systems are actually connected in various ways. 5. Right after birth -- two births, Grace 1998 and James 2010. Contrast in birthing practices
    2. Kangaroo care, skin-to-skin, 6. 1. Positive outcomes for babies Jeffries (2012)
      1. heart, temperature, breathing stabilization 2. 1. More organized sleep 3. 1. Babies depend on their caregivers, their mommies, to bring their regulated nervous systems to the connection. 7. 8. Uninterrupted attunement is not necessary -- really only need about a third of the time (Ostlund and colleagues 2017) 9. Joy, playfulness, love 10. We are in the present. 11. Sense of well being. 12. This state of well-being is where we can offer a sense of safety to others. Recollection. 13. What happens after a mismatch? This is the key thing. 14. Mismatch
    3. Inability to calm defense systems in safe environments
      1. Alarm 2. 1. Hypervigilance 15. 1. Inability to activate defenses in risk environments
      2. Dulled 2. 1. Unaware 3. 1. High risk-taking 16.
        
        Without it
  2. Health challenges
    1. 1. Distress in relationships (no safety)
    2. 1. Daily experience of suffering.
    3. This is really were Daniel Siegel's interpersonal neurobiology shines.
  3. Interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) or relational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary approach developed to describe and explain human development and functioning. It emerged in the 1990s pioneered by Daniel J. Siegel who sought to bring together a wide range of scientific disciplines in demonstrating how the mind, brain, and relationships integrate to alter one another.
    1. Psychology 2. 1. Cognitive Science 3. 1. Biology 4. 1. Psychiatry 5. 1. Sociology 6. 1. Systems theory -- chaos theory and complexity theory. 7. 1. Anthropology 8. 1. Computer Science 9. 1. Linguistics 10. 1. Mathematics 11. 1. Physics 12. In IPNB, the mind is viewed as a process that regulates the flow of both energy and information through its neurocircuitry, which is then shared and regulated between people through engagement, connection, and communication. Drawing on systems theory, Siegel proposed that these integrated processes within interpersonal relationships can shape the genetically programmed maturation of the nervous system.[2] Seigel thus believes that the mind has an irreducible quality which informs his approach. 13. Interpersonal neurobiology also proposes that there is a substantial impact of interpersonal experiences on brain development during early developmental years.[3][4] Siegel assumes that disruptions to the continuity, presence, and availability of the caregiver result in attachment disorders that manifest as physical changes[5][6] in the neural structures that shape the perception of reality.[7] The claim is that this can influence one's emotional intelligence, complexity of behaviours, and flexibility of responses later in life.[5] IPNB is thereby argued to be a 'cause and effect' systematic interaction between genetic composition and social experiences influencing neurobiological and psychological functioning.[8][9]
      1. Being with each other.
    2. Exercise -- Informed by Deb Dana
44. Cautions.
45. 1. First Part
  2. Noticing where you are right now on the autonomic map
    1. 1. Name the state
    2. 1. Turn toward your experience
    3. 1. Bring curiosity and compassion to the experience
    4. 1. Listen to the story. 6.
  3. 1. Baby in a state of sympathetic arousal
  4. Warning
    1. 1. Noticing what happens inside your body
    2. Moving from one state to another
      1. Ventral Vasal -- warm, connected state
      2. Sympathetic arousal -- fight or flight
      3. Dorsal Ventral -- shutting down, freeze response
      4. Cues -- meaning, messages
      5. How might it related to your history? 2. 3.
    3. 1. Toddler laughing
  5. Noticing what happens inside your body
    1. Moving from one state to another
      1. Ventral Vasal -- warm, connected state
      2. Sympathetic arousal -- fight or flight
      3. Dorsal Ventral -- shutting down, freeze response
      4. Cues -- meaning, messages
      5. How might it related to your history? 2. 2.
    3. Not judging
46. Judge not that you not be judged. Matthew 7:1.
47. 1. 1 Samuel 16:7 for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
48. 1. So much of our internal experience is outside of the influence of our immediate will
49. 1. Great mistake we make -- illusion of willpower
50. Future Directions -- where we will be zeroing in
51. Thank you for being here with me
52. 1. This episode was bringing to you the impact of trauma on the body through the lens of polyvagal theory
53. 1. Next episode Common treatment modalities -- EMDR and other ways of treating trauma -- that's a really important one. How do we heal from trauma
54. 1. Then we will get into an Internal Family Systems approach to trauma
55. 1. Then we will bring all this groundwork on trauma together to address the spiritual dimensions of trauma
  2. Really neglected area
    1. 1. So important. How trauma impacts the spiritual life. 3.
  3. 1. You are a listener to this podcast, and in that sense, you are with me. I am also with you! Remember, can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM for our regular conversation hours. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
  4. 1. Sign up for the RCC waiting list.
    2. Check out soulsandhearts.com
  5. Resources
56. Polyvagal Theory Explained Simply Sukie Baxter\
57. 1. Polyvagal Theory and Trauma – Deb Dana Nearly 2 hours, on YouTube

View Details

Summary: In this episode, we gain a deeper understanding of the experience of trauma, the impact of trauma. we clarify definitions of different aspects of trauma, various categories of trauma, the immediate and delayed signs and symptoms of trauma, and the effects of trauma. Then I share an experiential exercise with you to help you discover potential areas that might be fruitful for future exploration of your own internal experience.
Opening Dramatic Short
1. Brief descriptions of the experience of trauma
2. 1. “Outside, the sun shines. Inside, there’s only darkness. The blackness is hard to describe, as it’s more than symptoms. It’s a nothing that becomes everything there is. And what one sees is only a fraction of the trauma inflicted.”

― Justin Ordoñez

“My current life, I realized, was constructed around an absence; for all its richness I still felt as if the floors might give way, as if its core were only a covering of leaves, and I would slip through, falling endlessly, never to get my footing.” ― Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
“I wish I’d fallen softly. Light and graceful like a feather drifting slowly to the earth on a warm and dreamy summer’s day. I wish that I’d landed softly too. But there is nothing soft or graceful about that devastating moment when the worst has come to pass. The unavoidable truth is that it is hard, cold and brutal. All that you know to be true and good in life shatters in an instant. You feel like a delicate pottery bowl violently tossed from your place of rest, watching yourself crash and scatter across the hostile dark earth. The sound is deafening. Time stops. Inside, the quiet ache of shock and heartbreak slowly makes its grip known. They cut deep, these jagged edges of broken sherds. You gasp for air hungrily, yet somehow forget how to breathe.”― Jodi Sky Rogers
Introduction
1. We are born into a not only a fallen world, but a traumatized world
2. 1. We not only share in a fallen human condition, but a traumatized condition.
  2. “No matter what kind of childhood we’ve had, nobody escapes trauma while growing up.”― Kenny Weiss
  3. The Fall goes way back, before the world was even created, to the fall of the Lucifer, the light-bearer, the morning star and his angels -- and then the fallenness entered our world through original sin, the sin of Adam and Eve, and these are the original traumas, the fall of the angels and original sin.
3. 1. You and I are together in the adventure of this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am thankful to be with you.
4. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
5. This podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com.
6. Trauma. We are just beginning a whole series of episodes on trauma. You’ve been asking for this -- so many requests for us to address trauma head on. It's such a tough topic and such an important topic, and we are taking on the tough and important topics that matter to you.
7. Really important to understand the inner experience of trauma -- so you can recognize it in your own life and recognize it an empathetic and attuned way in others' loves. Part of loving them.
8. Today, we're going to get an overview of the best of the secular understandings of trauma.
  1. So much has changed since I entered graduate school in 1993 -- back then there was one seminal text on trauma, Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery. Now, especially in the last 10-15 years, there has been an upsurge of new, fresh and much better ways of understanding trauma.
9. Outline
  1. Impact of Trauma
    1. 1. Definitions of terms
    2. Definition of trauma 2. 1. Definition of Attachment injury 3. 1. Definition of relational hurt 4. 1. Definition of adverse experience. 5.
      1. Categories of Trauma
      2. Recognizing Trauma from the Reactions, signs and symptoms.
      3. Discuss commonly accepted effects of trauma
      4. Go over the traumatic effects of what didn't happen, what was missing
      5. Experiential exercise to help you identify areas of your internal experience that are impacted by trauma
    3. Impact of Trauma
10. From the North Dakota Department of Human Services Fact Sheet

• People who have experienced trauma are:

◉ 15 times more likely to attempt suicide

◉ 4 times more likely to abuse alcohol

◉ 4 times more likely to develop a sexually transmitted disease

◉ 4 times more likely to inject drugs

◉ 3 times more likely to use antidepressant medication

◉ 3 times more likely to be absent from work

◉ 3 times more likely to experience depression

◉ 3 times more likely to have serious job problems

◉ 2.5 times more likely to smoke

◉ 2 times more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary

disease (COPD)

◉ 2 times more likely to have serious financial problems

16-minute TED MED talk from How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime | Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris September 2014
Definitions of Trauma
1. Lots of confusion
2. 1. Briere & Scott (2006) Principles of Trauma Therapy: people use the term trauma to refer to
  2. either a traumatic experience or event
    1. 1. the resulting injury or stress,
    2. 1. or the longer-term impacts and consequences 4.
  3. 1. American Psychological Association Website: Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.
  4. Problem in emphasizing the emotional aspects. It's much more than that
    1. 1. Misses the overwhelming aspect.
    2. 1. Does get the "response" part right. 4.
  5. 1. Integrated Listening Systems website: Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.
  6. 1. DSM-5 PTSD, Acute Stress Disorder. Not going to address those here, not worth the time.
  7. Highly criticized by many professionals for being very limited and behind the curve, not recognizing the nuances and categories of trauma responses. 2.
  9. Attachment Injury
    1. Definition: Dr. Sue Johnson defines an attachment injury as “a feeling of betrayal or abandonment during a critical time of need.”
  10. Very relational.
    1. Uniformed Services University Human Performance Resources sheet: An attachment injury is an emotional wound to an intimate, interdependent relationship. It usually happens after a breach of trust—particularly in a time of need or a moment of loss or transition. Once an attachment injury occurs, it can leave one or both partners feeling betrayed or abandoned.
    2. Examples of causes of attachment injuries from John Gottman "What Makes Love Last: How to build trust and avoid betrayal"
  11. Conditional Commitment: You or your partner are one the lookout for someone more attractive, more desirable, someone who is a better soul mate.
    1. 1. A Nonsexual Affair: sometimes emotional affairs - emotional connection in an exclusive relationship with someone else.
    2. 1. Lying: Deception, dishonesty, little white lies.
    3. 1. Forming a Coalition Against the Partner: Pulling the kids in, trying to isolate the other person. No longer collaborative.
    4. 1. Absenteeism or Coldness: Not prioritizing each other at a time of need -- distancing instead -- can have a devastating impact. Whether failing to support during highly stressful events or consistently missing opportunities to turn towards each other during the rigors of life, both are destructive.
    5. 1. Withdrawal of Sexual Interest: This can really be wounding. Sometimes one spouse is ok with this and the other is not.
    6. 1. Disrespect: quote by John Gottman… “A loving relationship is not about one person having the upper hand – it’s about holding hands.” This includes refusing to acknowledge hurting your partner and a lack of willingness to apologize to your partner.
    7. 1. Unfairness: Dishonesty. Lack of balance in housework, lack of collaboration on finances.
    8. 1. Selfishness: When one partner lives mostly in a self-focused way; behaviors driven by self-absorption can be very wearing on relationship.
    9. 1. Breaking Promises: Repeated disappointments around broken or unfulfilled promises results in disillusionment and undercuts trust between the spouses. The one breaking promises can unwittingly communicate the message, “You don’t matter.”
    10. Additional examples from Lana Isaacson
  12. abuse (emotional- gaslighting, power and control, economic, verbal, physical, or sexual),
    1. 1. refusal to forgive or accept partner or let go of resentments (includes excessive criticism, moving out of your home and refusing to return, etc.) after your partner has done significant personal and relational growth work and demonstrating change.
  13. Relational Hurts - Lori Epting at GoodTherapy.org Relational Hurt or Attachment Injury? How to Tell the Difference April 5, 2018
3. Painful experiences in an attachment relationship inflicted by the other person, but that don't lead to rupture of the relationship
  1. Still a sense of love and connection between the people
    1. 1. Still trust and mutuality.
    2. 1. Still a capacity for the couple to move forward
    3. 1. Does the other spouse still love and care for you? Answer: Yes.
    4. 1. Examples: forgotten anniversaries, insults, or intense arguments. 6.
  3. Adverse Experiences: Adverse Childhood Experiences
4. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) cover a wide range of difficult situations that children either directly face or witness while growing up, before they have developed effective coping skills. ACEs can disrupt the normal course of development and the emotional injury can last long into adulthood. The loss of a parent; neglect; emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; and divorce are among the most common types of Adverse Childhood Experiences.
5. 1. Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences:
  2. Mental Health Connection of Tarrant County fact sheet -- with studies documenting each statistics.
    1. Four of every 10 children in American say they experienced a physical assault during the past year, with one in 10 receiving an assault-related injury. (2)
    2. 2% of all children experienced sexual assault or sexual abuse during the past year, with the rate at nearly 11% for girls aged 14 to 17. (2)
    3. Nearly 14% of children repeatedly experienced maltreatment by a caregiver, including nearly 4% who experienced physical abuse. (2)
    4. 1 in 4 children was the victim of robbery, vandalism or theft during the previous year. (2)
    5. More than 13% of children reported being physically bullied, while more than 1 in 3 said they had been emotionally bullied. (2)
    6. 1 in 5 children witnessed violence in their family or the neighborhood during the previous year. (2)
    7. In one year, 39% of children between the ages of 12 and 17 reported witnessing violence, 17% reported being a victim of physical assault and 8% reported being the victim of sexual assault. (3)
    8. More than 60% of youth age 17 and younger have been exposed to crime, violence and abuse either directly or indirectly. (4
    9. More than 10% of youth age 17 and younger reported five or more exposures to violence. (4)
    10. About 10% of children suffered from child maltreatment, were injured in an assault, or witnessed a family member assault another family member. (4)
    11. About 25% of youth age 17 and younger were victims of robbery or witnessed a violent act. (4)
    12. Nearly half of children and adolescents were assaulted at least once in the past year. (4)
    13. Among 536 elementary and middle school children surveyed in an inner city community, 30% had witnessed a stabbing and 26% had witnessed a shooting. (5)
    14. Young children exposed to five or more significant adverse experiences in the first three years of childhood face a 76% likelihood of having one or more delays in their language, emotional or brain development. (6)
    15. As the number of traumatic events experienced during childhood increases, the risk for the following health problems in adulthood increases: depression; alcoholism; drug abuse; suicide attempts; heart and liver diseases; pregnancy problems; high stress; uncontrollable anger; and family, financial, and job problems. (6)
6. According to the Centers for Disease Control -- root causes of many chronic diseases, most mental illnesses, and most violence.

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Verbal abuse

Physical neglect

Emotional neglect

A family member who is depressed or diagnosed with other mental illness

A family member who is addicted to alcohol or another substance

A family member who is in prison

Witnessing a mother being abused

Losing a parent to separation, divorce or death

61% of adults across 25 states experienced oat least one ACE --
Nearly one in six American adults experienced four or more.
Lead to increases in adulthood -- years down the road.
1. Physical injuries
  1. TBI
    1. 1. Fractures
    2. 1. Burns
    3. Mental Health problems
  2. Depression
    1. 1. Anxiety
    2. 1. Suicide
    3. 1. PTSD
    4. Maternal Health
  3. Unintended pregnancy
    1. 1. Complications in pregnancy
    2. 1. Miscarriage
    3. Infectious Disease
  4. HIV
    1. 1. STDs
    2. Chronic disease
  5. Cancer
    1. 1. Diabetes
    2. Risky Behaviors
  6. Alcohol and Drug abuse
    1. 1. Sexual acting out
    2. Loss of opportunities
  7. Education
    1. 1. Occupation
    2. 1. Income
  8. Categories of Trauma
2. Acute vs. Chronic, Causes: Natural vs. Human, Big T trauma vs. little t trauma, Secondary Trauma, Acknowledged vs. Unacknowledged.
3. 1. Acute vs. Chronic vs. Complex Trauma
  2. Acute Trauma: Psychology Today article Acute trauma reflects intense distress in the immediate aftermath of a one-time event and the reaction is of short duration. Common examples include a car crash, physical or sexual assault, or the sudden death of a loved one.
    1. 1. Chronic Trauma: can arise from harmful events that are repeated or prolonged. It can develop in response to persistent bullying, neglect, abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual), and domestic violence.
    2. 1. Complex Trauma: can arise from experiencing repeated or multiple traumatic events from which there is no possibility of escape. The sense of being trapped is a feature of the experience. Like other types of trauma, it can undermine a sense of safety in the world and beget hypervigilance, constant (and exhausting!) monitoring of the environment for the possibility of threat. 4.
  3. 1. Big T trauma vs. little t trauma
  4. Trauma here is used to describe the adverse experience
  5. Big T Trauma -- Big T Trauma is a reaction to a deeply disturbing, life-threatening event or situation
    1. Powerlessness or helplessness is also a key factor of large ‘T’ traumas,
    2. Examples of Big T Trauma
      1. Violent crime 3. 1. natural disaster 4. 1. terrorist attack 5. 1. sexual assault 6. 1. Combat 7. 1. a car or plane accident 8. 1. Death of a parent for a child 3. Little T Trauma: Little 't' traumas are described as smaller, more personal distressing events that disrupt our functioning and compromise our capacity to cope. These distressing events are not inherently life or bodily-integrity threatening,Examples of Little T Trauma
    3. Interpersonal conflict 4. 1. Infidelity 5. 1. Conflict with a boss 6. 1. Job change 7. 1. Geographic relocation -- moving to a new part of the country 8. 1. Romantic breakup 9. 1. Abrupt or extended relocation 10. 1. Death of a Pet 11. 1. Legal trouble 12. 1. Financial worries or difficulty 13. Problems -- these describe the event -- as though the event measures the experience. Not so. Originally had some support and still do, because of the emphasis on the importance of less obvious events.
    5. Natural vs. Human Causes
4. Naturally Caused (so called "Acts of God") Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  1. Separated into the four elements Earth, Water, Air and Fire
    1. 1. Earth
    2. Earthquakes 2. 1. Landslides 3. 1. fallen boulders 4. 1. Meteorites 5. Water
    3. Floods 6. 1. Tsunamis 7. 1. Avalanches 8. 1. Blizzards 9. Air
    4. Tornadoes 10. 1. Cyclones 11. 1. Typhoons 12. 1. Hurricanes 13. 1. dust storms 14. 1. fallen trees 15. Fire
    5. volcanic eruptions 16. 1. Lightning Strikes 17. 1. Wildfires 18. Health
    6. physical ailments or diseases 19. 1. Epidemics 20. 1. Famines
    7. 1. Human Caused -- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  2. Accidental Acts
    1. Train derailment, roofing fall, structural collapse, mountaineering accident, aircraft crash, car accident due to malfunction, mine collapse or fire, radiation leak, crane collapse, gas explosion, electrocution, machinery-related accident, oil spill, maritime accident, accidental gun shooting, and sports-related death.
      1. Intentional Acts
    2. arson, terrorism, sexual assault and abuse,(see three episode IIC series on Rape, Incest, Shame and Silence, episodes 40, 43,and 44) homicides or suicides, mob violence or rioting, physical abuse and neglect, stabbing or shooting, warfare, domestic violence, poisoned water supply, human trafficking, school violence, torture, home invasion, bank robbery, genocide, and medical or food tampering, harassment, street violence, and bullying
      1. Actions vs. Omissions
    3. e.g. abuse vs. neglect 4.
    5. Secondary Trauma: Psychology Today Article: Secondary or vicarious trauma arises from exposure to other people’s suffering and can strike those in professions that are called on to respond to injury and mayhem, notably physicians, first responders, and law enforcement. Over time, such individuals are at risk for compassion fatigue, whereby they avoid investing emotionally in other people in an attempt to protect themselves from experiencing distress.
    6. Acknowledged vs. unacknowledged trauma
5. Frame of reference -- that just how it was
6. 1. Defining trauma away -- Just because my Dad was a raging unemployed alcoholic and Mom was stressed out with her job and all the housework and we struggled financially and my parents fought all the time, that wasn't trauma, that was just normal. I never was hit or nothing. Not like my classmate Billy. Billy suffered trauma. His Dad used to hit him with a golf club and he came to school with bruises. Now that's trauma. Or the kids that were sexually abused. That never happened to me. I just had a rough childhood, but I've moved on, it's all in the past.
8. Recognizing Trauma from the Signs and Symptoms -- So important. Drawing from many sources here, but Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. HHS Publication No. (SMA) 13-4801 2014. Chapter 3 of Understanding the Impact of Trauma
9. Emotional & psychological Symptoms of Trauma:
  1. Immediate
    1. Emotional overwhelm
      1. Characteristic of trauma 2. 1. Shock 3. 1. Denial, disbelief 4. 1. Feeling disconnected or numb or detached 5. 1. Anxiety or severe fear, even panic attacks 6. 1. Guilt -- including survivor guilt 7. 1. Anger, rage 8. 1. Sadness 9. 1. Helplessness 10. 1. Mood swings -- exhilaration about surviving then survivor guilt 11. 1. Emotional Constriction, Shutdown
        
        Delayed Emotional Signs
    2. Irritability, hostility, edginess 2. 1. Depression 3. 1. Mood swings 4. 1. Anxiety
      1. Phobia
      2. Generalized anxiety
        
        Fears of trauma happening again
        
        Grief
        
        Shame
        
        Feeling very fragile, vulnerable
        
        Emotional detachment, disconnection -- in relationships
        
        Hopelessness, despair
        
        Anhedonia -- inability to enjoy anything
        
        Difficulty experiencing positive emotions 3.
    4. Cognitive Symptoms of Trauma
10. Immediate Cognitive Reactions
  1. Disorientation
    1. 1. Difficulty concentrating
    2. 1. Ruminating, obsessing
    3. 1. Racing thoughts
    4. 1. Intrusive thoughts -- e.g. Replaying the traumatic event over and over again
    5. 1. Visualizations of the event.
    6. 1. Time Distortion
    7. 1. Space Distortion
    8. 1. Extreme alertness; always on the lookout for warnings of potential danger
    9. 1. New sensitivity to loud noises, smells, or other things around you
    10. 1. Memory problems -- unable to remember the event
    11. 1. Feeling out of control
    12. 1. Feeling unreal, depersonalized, not yourself, like you are watching someone else.
    13. Depersonalization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one were an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body (e.g., feeling as though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body or of time moving slowly).
    14. 1. Derealization: Persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings (e.g., the world around the individual is experienced as unreal, dreamlike, distant, or distorted). 15.
  2. 1. Delayed Cognitive Signs
  3. Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, body, from memories or sense of identity. This disconnection is automatic and completely out of the person's control.x
    1. Amnesia: Often described as "gaps" in memory that can range from minutes to years 2. 1. Depersonalization: Feeling disconnected from your body or thoughts 3. 1. Derealization: Feeling disconnected from the world around you 4. 1. Identity alteration: The sense of being markedly different from another part of yourself 5. 1. Identity confusion: A sense of confusion about who you really are 2.

we will have a lot more to say about dissociation in future episodes, but for now -- disconnection.

Alexithymia
1. the inability to recognize or describe one's own emotions. -- Can't put my feelings into words. The experience of trauma can initially defy speech.
2. 1. “People who suffer from alexithymia tend to feel physically uncomfortable but cannot describe exactly what the problem is. As a result they often have multiple vague and distressing physical complaints that doctors can't diagnose. In addition, they can't figure out for themselves what they're really feeling about any given situation or what makes them feel better or worse. This is the result of numbing, which keeps them from anticipating and responding to the ordinary demands of their bodies in quiet, mindful ways. If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can't take care of it. If you don't feel hunger, you can't nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. And if you can't feel when you're satiated, you'll keep eating.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk

Intrusive memories -- keep coming and coming
Reactivation of previous traumatic events -- those from before the most recent trauma
Nightmares
Confusion, distractions
Highly critical of self -- blaming the self, what I could have done better
Preoccupation with the event -- all I can think about
Denial of the event

“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”

― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Difficulty with decision making
Magical thinking that certain behaviors (including avoidance) will protect me against future harm
Suicidal ideation, fantasies
Physical symptoms:
1. Quotes
  1. “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” (p.97)” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, 2.
  3. Immediate physical reactions
2. Nausea, gastrointestinal distress
3. 1. Sweating, shivering
4. 1. Fainting
5. 1. Muscle tremors, uncontrollable shaking
6. 1. Racing heart, fast breathing, elevated blood pressure
7. 1. Physical agitation
8. 1. Extreme fatigue, exhaustion
9. 1. Exaggerated startle responses
10. 1. Headaches
11. 1. Ringing in the ears
12. Delayed Physical symptoms
13. Sleep disturbances, insomnia
14. 1. Aches, pains, somatization of psychological distress
15. 1. Appetite change
16. 1. Difficult with digestion
17. 1. Persistent fatigue
18. 1. Elevated cortisol levels
19. 1. Hyperarousal
20. 1. Chronic muscle tension
21. 1. Long-term health problems -- heart, liver, adrenal glands, autoimmune problems, COPD
22. Behavioral Symptoms:
23. Immediate Behavioral Reactions
  1. Exaggerated startle responses
    1. 1. Restlessness
    2. 1. Argumentative behavior
    3. 1. Increased use of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco
    4. 1. Social withdrawal and relational apathy
    5. 1. Avoidant behaviors
  2. 1. Delayed Behavioral symptoms
  3. Avoidance of activities or places that trigger memories of the even
    1. 1. Social relationship disturbances
    2. 1. Decreased activity level
    3. 1. Engagement in high-risk behaviors
    4. 1. Increased use of alcohol and drugs
    5. 1. Impulse control problems
    6. 1. Social withdrawal, which can lead to isolation

“Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.”

― Judith Lewis Herman

Difficulty maintaining close relationships
Sexual dysfunction
Existential Symptoms
1. Immediate Existential Reactions
  1. Intense use of prayer
    1. 1. Restoration of faith in the goodness of others (e.g., receiving help from others)
    2. 1. Loss of self-efficacy
    3. 1. Despair about humanity, particularly if the event was intentional
    4. Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world
      1. Immediate disruption of life assumptions (e.g., fairness, safety, goodness, predictability of life)
    6. Delayed Existential Reactions
2. Feeling as though one is permanently damaged
3. 1. Questioning (e.g., “Why me?”)
4. 1. Increased cynicism, disillusionment, about the future, about humankind
  2. “Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.” ― Mark Goulston MD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder For Dummies
  4. Increased self-confidence (e.g., “If I can survive this, I can survive anything”)
  5. Loss of purpose
  6. Renewed faith
  7. Hopelessness
  8. Reestablishing priorities
  9. Redefining meaning and importance of life
  10. Reworking life’s assumptions to accommodate the trauma (e.g., taking a self-defense class to reestablish a sense of safety)
  11. Effects of Trauma -- Going beyond the surface level, what is more readily observable in self or others suffering from trauma
5. Going into survival mode
  1. Necessity of coming out of this alive. Very primitive, basic responses. Drive to survive.
    1. “We don’t learn things that help us to thrive when we are in survival mode. It’s only when we are in sensual mode that we do.” ― Lebo Grand
      1. Many, many people live chronically in 3.
    2. 1. Increasing fragmentation -- decreasing integration
  2. Overwhelming intensity of experience.
    1. Overwhelming Grief -- episodes 81-83
    2. 1. Integration much more difficult, even impossible in the current conditions
    3. We need disconnects -- we need to not know that if A=B and B=C, then A=C, because A=C is too threatening for us
      1. Example of little girl with a sexually abusive father -- can't come to the full implications of that without being overwhelmed. 2. 2.
        
        Loss of a sense of time
    4. “When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are re-experiencing and reenacting the past - they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen.” 2. 4.

― Bessel Van Der Kolk

Identity issues
1. Who am I?
  1. “I felt as though everything inside me had been obliterated.

However much I tried, however much I wanted to go back to being who I was before, it was impossible--all that was left was an empty husk of my former self.”

― Shiori Itō, Black Box

Shame (episodes 37-49)
1. Trauma generates and activates and exacerbates and perpetuates shame.
2. 1. Generates Shame
  2. “Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one’s authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically.” ― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
    1. 1. Genesis 3
  3. 1. Activates Shame
  4. Preexisting, unresolved shame can come up.
    1. A plausible explanation for why the adverse event happened or is happening. 2.
  5. 1. Deep sense of not being loved, not being lovable -- often denied, because it's so painful.

“...one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.” She was right. I had been groping for the right words to express that murky feeling of betrayal inside, the horrible hollow ache, and to hear Ruth say it—“the pain of not being loved”—I saw how it pervaded my entire consciousness and was at once the story of my past, present, and future.” ― Alex Michaelides

Decreased capacity for relationships
1. Decreasing vulnerability within the self or with others
2. 1. Out of touch with so much of ourselves.
3. 1. Lack of Trust
  2. “The words "I love you," used to be enough for me. They used to mean the world to me, today they don't mean shit. Oh you love me? Really? Why? How? When did it start? Why? Give me reasons, show me behaviors that PROVE you love me, or get the fuck out of my way. I am not interested in diamonds and platitudes, I want to know that I GENUINELY matter to you, because I don't have time to waste on pretty lies that are ugly beneath the surface.” 2.

― Devon J Hall

Desperation
1. Can lead to suicidal impulses. Episodes 76-80.
3. Spiritual Effects
4. God image issues -- episodes 23-29.
5. 1. Unconscious and conscious
6. 1. Problem of evil.
8. What didn't happen
9. Attunement - Daniel Brown and David Elliott
  1. Feeling safe and protected afterward
    1. 1. Feeling seen, heard, known, and understood -- someone else making sense of the adverse experience
    2. “Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.” 2. 3.

― Danielle Bernock,

“To survive trauma one must be able to tell a story about it.”

― Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir

Feeling comforted, soothed, calmed, reassured
1. “Feeling listened to and understood changes our physiology. Being able to articulate a complex feeling and having our feelings recognised lights up our Limbic brain, and creates an ‘ah-ha’ moment. In contrast, being met by silence and incomprehension kills the spirit.” ― Bessel van der Kolk
2. Feeling cherished, treasured, loved, delighted in
3. Feeling that someone had my best interests in mind.
4. Experiential Exercise -- No-Go Zones.
5. Not therapy
6. Pencil or pen and paper -- some way to record -- could be your phone.
7. Safety issues
  1. Zone of tolerance
    1. 1. If this doesn't suit you, don't do it.
    2. 1. Can stop at any time.
    3. 1. Take what is helpful to you.
    4. 1. No driving, can stop the recording until you're in a good place for it.
    5. 1. Asking that no part of you overwhelm you.
    7. Not going to open up any traumatic place. We are focused on delineating where those places are within you.
    8. Going to the lowest place within us.
    9. Really slowing it down
    10. Notice what is going on inside you right now.
  2. Can you be curious
  3. Can you have a big open heart
  4. Can you accept what you find if it's not overwhelming
  5. Can you be receptive to new ways of understanding yourself.
    1. Notice the reactions
  6. Body Sensations
    1. 1. Emotions
    2. 1. Visual Images
    3. 1. Memories
    4. 1. Inner voice
    5. 1. Thoughts or Beliefs or Assumptions
    6. 1. Impulses
    7. 1. Desires
    8. 1. Fantasies
    9. Any concerns about this so far? Is it OK? If not discontinue. Not the time. If it's OK, then continue.
    10. Word list -- noticing the reactions to 30 words -- write down any words that you notice reactions to and the reactions if you wish -- body sensations, especially, but also the rest of the list. Again, we're not trying to explore any areas of trauma, but if you parts are willing, to understand a bit more about your internal world, your inner experience.
  7. School
  8. Love
  9. Body
  10. Not being seen or heard
  11. Playground
  12. Loneliness
  13. Arguing
  14. Sickness
  15. Alcohol, Drugs
  16. Fear
  17. Safety
  18. Chaos
  19. Sex
  20. Escape
  21. Mom
  22. Help
  23. Shame
  24. Protection
  25. Pain
  26. Distress
  27. Trust
  28. Dad
  29. Wound
  30. Abandonment
  31. Abuse
  32. Sadness
  33. Nothing
  34. Guilt
  35. Anger
  36. Survival
  37. Any other words or images or thoughts or anything else in your experience.
    1. Gratitude.
  38. Future Directions -- where we will be zeroing in
8. This episode was bringing to you the conventional secular understandings of trauma. But there are two area in the secular conceptualizations of trauma that really warrant much deeper exploration.
9. 1. Physiological or bodily response to trauma -- that's the next episode, episode 89
  2. Not just about memories -- not just about psychology
    1. Trauma involves the whole person.
      1. Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. Bessel Van der Kolk 2. 2. 2.
      2. So much happens in our bodies with trauma -- and so much of that is beyond our capacity to control by sheer willpower in the moment. 1. “PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.”

― Susan Pease Banitt

The Body Keeps the Score -- by Bessel Van der Kolk
Polyvagal theory -- Steven Porges. Recovery
“We cannot outrun our past trauma. We can’t bury it and think that we will be fine. We cannot skip the essential stage of processing, accepting, and doing the hard, yet necessary trauma recovery work. There’s a body-mind connection. Trauma can manifest itself into chronic physical pain, cancer, inflammation, auto-immune conditions, depression, anxiety, PTSD, Complex PTSD, addictions, and ongoing medical conditions.”

― Dana Arcuri

Common treatment modalities -- EMDR and other ways of treating trauma
Then we will get into an Internal Family Systems approach to trauma -- episode 90
Then we will bring all this groundwork on trauma together to address the spiritual dimensions of trauma
1. Really neglected area
2. 1. So important. How trauma impacts the spiritual life.
4. You are a listener to this podcast, and in that sense, you are with me. I am also with you! Remember, can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM for our regular conversation hours. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
5. Time is running out -- opportunity available only until January 15.
6. The Resilient Catholics Community at Soulsandhearts.com/rcc. So much information there and videos.
7. 1. How did you respond to that experiential exercise? What did you learn? Was that interesting to you? Can you see the potential for doing more of that kind of work?
8. 1. I want to invite you to the Resilient Catholics Community
9. 1. The Why of the RCC -- It's all about loving with your whole heart -- all of your being. Getting over all the natural level issues that hold you back from tolerating being loved and from loving God and others. It's all about your human formation, informed by Internal Family Systems and grounded in our Catholic Faith.
10. 1. If you really are into this podcast, if these ways of conceptualizing the human person and integration and human formation and resilience are appealing to you, then the Resilient Catholics community, the RCC may be for you.
11. 1. What of the RCC
  2. $99 nonrefundable registration fee gets you The Initial Measures Kit -- which generates a 5 page report, all about your parts
    1. 1. Weekly premium Inner Connections podcast, just for RCC community members --Lots of experiential exercises.
    2. 1. A complete course for working on your human formation 44 weekly sessions over the course of a year for $99 per month subscription
    3. 1. Check it out -- discernment Process
  3. 1. The When of the RCC
  4. We open twice per year, next time will be in June 2022, --we've extended the enrollment as far as we can, until January 15. We are open now. Soulsandhearts.com/rcc to register.
    1. 1. Call me with questions! 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
    2. 1. So sign up Soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Waitlist if you get this after January 15. 4.

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Summary: In this episode, we explore the conventional secular and the traditional spiritual ways of understanding scrupulosity, bringing in the experts to define scrupulosity, tells us the signs of being scrupulous, speculate on the causes of the trouble, discuss that standard remedies in the secular and spiritual realms. Then I share with you my views on it, looking at scrupulosity through an Internal Family Systems lens, grounded in a Catholic worldview. We discuss how parts have different God images and the role of shame and anger in the experience of scrupulosity.
Description of Scrupulosity
1. Suddenly my stomach tightens up, there’s a choking in my throat, and my torture begins. The bad thoughts come. . . . I want to drive them out, but they keep coming back. . . . It is terrible to be in a struggle like this! To have a head that goes around and around without my being able to stop it; to be a madman and still quite rational, for all that. . . . I am double. . . . at the very time that I am trying to plan what I want to do, another unwanted thought is in my mind. . . . Distracting me and always hindering me from doing what I want to do.

-- Quoted in Albert Barbaste, “Scrupulosity and the Present Data of Psychiatry,” Theology

Digest, 1.3 (Autumn 1953) 182.

Fr. William Doyle: Around 1900 “My confessions were bad. My confessor does not understand me, he is mistaken in me, not believing that I could be so wicked. I have never had contrition. I am constantly committing sins against faith, against purity. I blaspheme interiorly. I rashly judge, even priests. The oftener I receive Holy Communion, the worse I become,” Around 1900
My story just turned 19 -- terrible bout of scrupulosity.
1. Around sexuality
2. Just started dating the first woman I might consider marrying
3. Physical touching -- romantic contact How far was too far?
  1. Thoughts of sex with her -- plagued me.
    1. 1. Do I break up with her? How do I handle this?
    2. 1. What was sinful, what was not? Was I on the road to hell? Was I putting her on the road to hell?
    3. 1. I thought I was going crazy. 7.
  2. Review: I encourage you to review the last episode, number 86 -- Obsessions, Compulsions, OCD and IFS
4. That episode went deep into obsessions and compulsions and serves as a basis for today's episode.
5. 1. Today's episode, number 87 is entitled Scrupulosity: When OCD Gets Religion and it's released on December 6, 2021, St. Nick's Day.
6. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
7. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
8. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
9. Overview
  1. Start out with definitions of scrupulosity both from spiritual and secular sources, really want to wrap our minds around what scrupulosity is and the different types of scrupulosity. We will discuss the connection between scrupulosity and OCD -- discussion of OCD
    1. 1. We will then move to the signs of scrupulosity -- how can you tell when there is scrupulosity?
    2. 1. Then we will get into the internal experience of scrupulosity. What is it like to experience intense scruples? Had a taste in the intro, but we will get much more into that.
    3. 1. We will discuss what religious and secular experts have to say about the causes of scrupulosity
    4. 1. Then what religious and secular experts have to say about the treatment of scrupulosity -- that most recommended therapy approach and the medications typically prescribed.
    5. 1. After we've discussed the conventional secular and spiritual approaches to treating scrupulosity, I will how I think about scrupulosity, the root causes of scrupulosity, and how scrupulosity develops and how it can be treated. I will give you an alternative view, grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person and informed by Internal Family Systems thinking. 10.
  2. Definitions: You know how important definitions are to me. We really want to make sure we understand what we are talking about.
    1. Scruple comes from the Latin word scrupulum,
  3. "small, sharp stone" -- like walking with a stone in your shoe.
  4. Ancient Roman weight of 1/24 of an ounce or 1.3 grams.
  5. Something tiny, but that can cause a lot of discomfort.
    1. Definitions from Spiritual Sources
  6. Fr. William Doyle, SJ. Scruples and their Treatment 1897: Scrupulosity, in general, is an ill-founded fear of committing sin.
    1. 1. Fr. Hugh O'Donnell: Scrupulosity may be defined as a habitual state of mind that, because of an unreasonable fear of sin, inclines a person to judge certain thoughts or actions sinful when they aren't or that they are more gravely wrong than they really are… Scrupulosity involves an emotional condition that interferes with the proper working of the mind and produces a judgement not in accordance with object truth, but with the emotion of fear.
    2. 1. Fr. James Jackson, article "On Scrupulosity"
    3. A very good definition
    4. Scrupulosity is an emotional condition, an ultra-sensitivity to sin, which produces excessive anxiety and fear from the thought of eternal damnation…This condition is a religious, moral and psychological state of anxiety, fear and indecision. It is coupled with extreme guilt, depression and fear of punishment from God. However, each person who suffers from it does so uniquely.
    5. 1. Fr. Marc Foley: The Context of Holiness: Psychological and Spiritual Reflections on the Life of St. Therese of Lisieux
    6. Excellent, very psychologically informed study of the Little Flower 2. 1. Not only the best psychological profile of St. Therese of Lisieux, but the best psychobiography of any saint from any author I've read. 3. 1. A very in-depth look at her mother, St. Zelie as well and the limitations and lack of attunement in the Martin family 4. 1. Highly recommended reading -- all of chapter 12 is on The Little Flower's scrupulosity. 5. 1. Scrupulosity is an extremely painful anxiety disorder. It consists of annoying fear that one is offended God or could offend God at any moment and that God will cast her into hell. To protect yourself from eternal damnation, the scrupulous person dissects every thought, motive, and action in order to ascertain if she has send. And since she is deathly afraid that she might have sent, the scrupulous person seeks absolute certitude that she hasn’t send in order to assuage her fears.
      2. Definitions from Secular Sources
  7. Timothy Sisemore, Catherine Barton, Mary Keeley From Richmont Graduate University Scrupulosity is a "sin phobia."
    1. 1. Jaimie Eckert, Scrupulosity Coach: Scrupulosity is where faith and OCD collide.
    2. 1. International OCD Foundation Fact Sheet: What is Scrupulosity? By C. Alec Pollard: A form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) involving religious or moral obsessions. Scrupulous individuals are overly concerned that something they thought or did might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine.
    3. Bridging the Secular and the Spiritual
  8. Joseph W. Ciarrocchi’s The Doubting Disease: Help for Scrupulosity and Religious Compulsions -- published in 1995, and still the most cited text in Catholic circles, even more than a quarter century later.
    1. Dr. Ciarrocchi, a former Catholic priest, trained as a clinical psychologist and served as professor and chairman of pastoral counseling at Loyola University in Maryland prior to his death in 2010.
    2. Scrupulosity refers to seeing sin where there is none.
    3. He viewed scrupulosity as a sub-set of obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD), basically a kind of “religious OCD.”
    4. He distinguishes
      1. developmental scrupulosity
        
        self-limited form of scrupulosity
        
        often occurring in adolescents 2. 1. or shortly after a conversion experience (e.g. St. Ignatius of Loyola) 3. 1. Temporary, usually disappears. 2. emotional scrupulosity -- symptoms of OCD
        
        More enduring conditions 3. 1. Can vary in intensity over time, from being overwhelming to just mildly irritating 4. 1. Can last for years. 5. 1. Core experience of scrupulosity: "an intrusive idea, often associated with a sinful impulse, which the person abhors but cannot shake." 6. 1. "The French label the emotional condition which is sometimes part of scrupulosity "the doubting disease." 7. 11.
        
        Signs of Scrupulosity What do we see.
10. A lot we don't see. Fr. Thomas Santa, past director of Scrupulous Anonymous and Author of the book Understanding Scrupulosity
  1. When people struggle with the scrupulous disorder, most of the suffering, fear, and anxiety they experience happens in isolation. Scrupulosity is mostly an interior struggle, seldom manifesting itself with easily identifiable or observable mannerisms or behaviors. You can’t tell if people are scrupulous by looking at them. While some compulsions of obsessive-compulsive disorder are identifiable, most of the suffering associated with the disorder is personal. Only the sufferer fully knows its debilitating nature. 2.
  2. 1. Sources
  3. IOCDF Fact Sheet
    1. 1. Jaimie Eckert Scrupulosity Coach
    2. 1. The Gateway institute website
    3. 1. Doubting Disease 1995 by Joseph Ciarrocchi
    4. Obsessions -- excessive concerns about
  4. Fears of Blaspheming, accusing God of being negligent or abusive or evil, cursing God
    1. 1. Fears of Sacrilege, abusing our Lord in the Eucharist for example
    2. 1. Fears about impulses -- taking one's clothes off in Church, screaming obscenities during Mass
    3. Example of the man concerned about touching his infant daughter's genitals
    4. 1. Sexual thoughts about a romantic partner
    5. 1. Sexual thoughts or images about a religious figure -- Jesus, Mary, a saint, or possibly a priest or religious.
    6. 1. Fears around harming others
    7. I might cause the death of someone if I sneeze or cough during Mass -- I coughed. Maybe I'm sick. Maybe I have COVID. Maybe I'm a spreader. 2. 1. A pharmacist worries she will fill prescriptions incorrectly and poison customers at her pharmacy. 3.
      1. Fears around aggression -- Driver goes over a bump in the Church parking lot in the dark after the parish council meeting. Is concerned he may have run over the pastor.
      2. Cooperating in the sins of others
    8. "Man participates in a discussion about a historical figure dead for more than 1000 years, who is alleged to have been a homosexual. He worries that he has committed the sin of detraction." -- Example from Joseph Ciarrocchi. 2.
      1. Being a sinful person, dishonest, lacking integrity -- honesty
      2. Ruminating about past mistakes, errors, past sins
      3. Purity -- looking for moral perfection
      4. Not Loving Others enough -- Mother worrying she doesn't love her children enough.
      5. Going to hell
      6. Death
      7. A loss of impulse control
      8. Cyclical Doubts
    9. Often about salvation, selling your soul to the devil, in mortal sin
      1. Intrusive thoughts and images
    10. 666, Satan, Hell, pornographic images, etc. 2.
      2. Compulsions
  5. Behavioral Compulsions
    1. Excessive trips to confession 2. 1. Repeatedly seeking reassurance from religious leaders and loved ones 3. 1. Repeated cleansing and purifying rituals 4. 1. Acts of self-sacrifice 5. 1. Repetitive religious behaviors 6. 1. Avoiding situations (for example, religious services) in which they believe a religious or moral error would be especially likely or cause something bad to happen 7. 1. Avoiding certain objects or locations because of fears they may be sinful
      1. Mental Compulsions
    2. Excessive praying (sometimes with an emphasis on the prayer needing to be 2. 25.

perfect) I compulsions about praying. Tithing prayer. 1.6 hours vs. 2.4 hours.

Needing to pray perfectly or at least adequately enough.
Repeatedly imagining sacred images or phrases
Repeating passages from sacred scriptures in one’s head
Making pacts with God to avoid hell or buy time or just to get a little relief in the present moment.
Intense sense of guilt-- feeling guilty all the time -- about things that don't carry moral weight.
Inflated sense of responsibility
Not distinguishing between thoughts and actions.
Example: Joseph Ciarrocchi
1. The Smith family traditionally joins hands around the dinner table to give thanks in prayer before the meal. Susie, age 4, and Billy, age 6 sometimes are fidgety (and always hungry). Mrs. Smith worries that Susie, Billy, and perhaps herself haven’t not “truly prayed” due to the multiple distractions: Susie is scratching her mosquito bite, Billy is leering at the chocolate pudding, and Mrs. Smith remembers she has a school board meeting after dinner. She doubts that their prayers were “heard,” and so request of the family repeat their prayers. Sometimes she makes the whole family repeat them, and sometimes only the children. Once the children needed to repeat them four times, even the Mr. Smith tried to intervene after the second time. Mrs. Smith sought advice from her pastor who urged her not to repeat the prayers, either for herself or the children. When she attempts to follow this advice, however, her entire meal is ruined as she attempts to sort out in her head whether this is acceptable to God. She will continue to worry about it throughout the rest of the evening, including her school board meeting.
3. Distinguishing Scrupulosity of normal religious practice
4. IOCDF Fact Sheet: Unlike normal religious practice, scrupulous behavior usually exceeds or disregards religious law and may focus excessively on one trivial area of religious practice while other, more important areas may be completely ignored. The behavior of scrupulous individuals is typically inconsistent with that of the rest of the faith community.
5. Internal Experience of Scrupulosity
6. Plutarch: a first century priest for the Greek god Apollo at the Temple at Delphi. He wrote about the so-called “superstitious” man, who…
  1. And so is the soul of the superstitious man. He turns pale under his crown of flowers, is terrified while he sacrifices, prays with a faltering voice, scatters incense with trembling hands, and all in all proves how mistaken was the saying of Pythagoras that we are at our best when approaching the gods. For that is the time when the superstitious are most miserable and most woebegone....
  2. 1. OCD Center of Los Angeles: One of the first documented references to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) was in a 1691 sermon by Anglican Bishop John Moore of Norwich in which he discussed men and women who were overwhelmed with unwanted thoughts, and tormented by feelings of guilt and shame over what he described as “religious melancholy.” Priests had started to notice that some churchgoers were attending confession several times a day, and repeatedly confessing to the same sins and shortcomings that they feared would result in divine judgment and eternal damnation. Their penance and absolution would provide only a fleeting glimpse of peace, and then their fears would come roaring back.
    2. William Van Ornum, A Thousand frightening fantasies: understanding and human scrupulosity in obsessive-compulsive disorder 1997

24-year-old computer programmer writes, “what worries me is that at any moment and in only a few seconds I can commit serious sin. The only remedy is confession. I worry about what I’ve done until I confess it; then it’s all over. The problem is that I fall or worry again and need to go back.”

Fr. Thomas Santa:
1. Being possessed by a thousand frightening fantasies
2. Constructing a spider web in the mind.
3. People with the disorder often feel as if they are isolated in darkness. They describe this feeling as a “cloud” that perpetually engulfs them. They feel the disorder constantly and uncomfortably, even in the background of day-to-day living. Scrupulosity demands constant attention and can feel like a severe and unrelenting master. At best, most people who suffer with the disorder have learned to live with it. They hope it does not get more pronounced or spill into other areas of life. Relief does not exist, so any promises of relief through activities like rituals are essentially dead ends. For those who are religious, consistent spiritual practices can help and at the same time be debilitating.
From Joseph Ciarrocchi's Book "Doubting Disease
1. Bob is 28-year-old married Jewish man who works for an accounting firm. He is thrilled with the birth of his first child, a bubbly infant girl. Bob is about to be totally involved with her as a parent and share in all aspects of childcare. He was shocked by the following experience: Bob was changing his daughter’s diaper when the thought, idea, or image (he wasn’t quite sure which close parentheses flashed through his mind – “Touch her private parts.” The first time it happened he shuddered, tried to dismiss the idea, and hurriedly completed diapering her. All they tried not to think about it. The next time he changed her diaper, however, the idea came back, but this time in the form of a graphic picture of Bob engaging in the dreaded behavior. This time he felt nausea, became dizzy, and called his wife to finish, saying he thought he was ill and would pass out. The idea began to torment Bob. He found himself not wanting to be alone with his daughter, Les T “give in” to the simples. He refused to bathe her or change her diaper. Sensing something was drastically wrong his wife urged him to seek help. He talked to his rabbi who tried to assure him that he was not a child molester and should dismiss the thoughts.
3. Psychodynamic perspective
4. Sources
  1. Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis --
    1. 1. Psychdynamic Diagnostic manual
  2. 1. Thinking and Doing predominate over Feeling, sensing, intuiting, listening, playing, daydreaming, enjoying the creative arts and other modes that are less rationally driven or instrumental
  3. 1. Hold themselves to very high standards, sometimes impossibly high.
  4. 1. Central conflict: Rage and being controlled vs. fear of being condemned or punished.
  5. Cooperation and rebellion
  6. Initiative and sloth
  7. Cleanliness and slovenliness
  8. Order and disorder
  9. Thrift and improvidence
  10. Polarizations inside.
    1. Emotion is unformulated, muted suppressed, unavailable, or rationalized and moralized. Except anxiety and sometimes depressed mood
    2. Consign most feelings to an undervalued role, associated with childishness, weakness, loss of control, disorganization and dirt
    3. Cognition
  11. Condemning oneself for internal thought crimes -- consciously or unconsciously
    2. Body states
  12. Hyperarousal -- expressing anxiety through the body
    1. 1. Often health problems due to excessive washing
    2. Difficulties with
  13. Play
  14. Humor
  15. Spontaneity
    1. Pain about isolation.
  16. Shame about being considered weird and unacceptable to others
  17. Capable of loving attachments, but often not able to express their tender selves without anxiety and shame
  18. Relational patterns -- seek relationships in which they can control the partner, sometimes partners who can reassure them
    1. Being intimate in relationships
      1. Emotional connection 2. 1. Sexuality 4.
      2. Causes of Scrupulosity
5. Spiritual Sources
  1. Fr. James Jackson
    1. The Fathers of the Church considered scrupulosity – or psychasthenia, as the Greek Fathers called it – to be a spiritual problem which leads to a psychological malfunction. 2. 1. Timothy A. Sisemore. Catherine Barton, Mary Keeley -- The History and Contextual Treatment of Scrupulous OCD
      1. 15th and 16th Century -- connected scruples to moral reasoning, addressed under conscience -- concept of erroneous conscience. -- frees the person to act without resolving the doubt. 2. 2.
      2. Secular Sources
  2. IOCDF Fact sheet: The exact cause of scrupulosity is not known. Like other forms of OCD, scrupulosity may be the result of several factors including genetic and environmental influences.
    1. 1. OCDUK.com Lots of controversy.
    2. Biological factors 2. 1. Strep infections affecting the Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders associated with Streptococcal Infection -- PANDAS 3. 1. Genetic factors
      1. Runs in families -- 2001 metaanalytic review reported that person with OCD is 4 times more likely to have another family member with OCD than a person who does not have the disorder 4. 1. Cognitive theory
      2. Everyone experiences intrusive thoughts at times
      3. People with OCD have an inflated sense of responsibility and interpret these thoughts as very significant and important
        
        Caught up in a pattern of Try to resist, block or neutralize them 3. 1. What is the meaning of the thought to the person? 5.
        
        Joseph Ciarrocchi citing David Barlow -- OCD causes
    3. Those temperamentally disposed to having high levels of nervous energy, more pronounced bodily reactions to stress, greater levels of anxiety 2. 1. OCD is different from other anxiety disorders because those with OCD believe that certain kinds of thoughts are dangerous in themselves
      1. If I think certain thoughts those events will happen. 2. 1. If I think certain thoughts or spontaneously imagine certain things, or if I have an impulse to do such a thing, then I am the kind of person who would do such things.
        
        No moral distance between the spontaneous thought or image or impulse and actually doing the act.
        
        I must be bad. Unclean. Unworthy. 3.
        
        Model for the development of Scrupulosity
      2. Strong belief that certain thoughts are dangerous and unacceptable 2. 1. Leads to the occurrence of these same intrusive thoughts 3. 1. This generates significant anxiety 4. 1. Leading to strong efforts to suppress the thoughts 5. 1. Which accelerates the frequency of the same kinds of thought 6. 1. Leading to a need to "turn off" the anxiety by any means
        
        Mental rituals 2. 1. Physical rituals 3. 1. These rituals are the compulsions 7. 1. And then there is a temporary respite, a bit of relief. The compulsive rituals are reinforced because they temporarily decrease anxiety. But then we loopback to the occurrence of the intrusive thoughts again. 8. 4. 4.
        
        Psychodynamic understanding Nancy McWilliams -- Psychoanalytic Diagnosis Obsessive and Compulsive Personality styles:
        
        Marc Foley's Approach in The Context of Holiness about St. Therese of Lisieux's scrupulosity
        
        Parental figures who set high standards of behavior and expect early conformity to them
  3. E.g. making little kids sit still during Mass
    1. Strict and consistent in rewarding good behavior and punishing malfeasance
    2. Risk of condemning not only behaviors but the feelings that go with them
  4. Especially anger
    1. Issues of control in families of origin.
    2. Alternative -- a really lax family in which children are underparented
  5. Child concludes he has to model himself after a parental figure that he invents himself
    1. 1. Child might have an aggressive, intense temperament -- projected on to that idealized parental figure.
    3. Self esteem comes from meeting the demands of internalized parental figures who hold them to a high standard of behavior and sometimes thought.
    4. Value self-control over nearly all other virtues.
  6. Discipline
  7. Order
  8. Loyalty
  9. Integrity
  10. Reliability
  11. Perseverance
  12. Is a particular religion a cause?
    1. No:
  13. Timothy Sisemore, Catherine Barton, Mary Keeley: A tendency to blame religion, but no more than counting OCD to be blamed on math class
    1. 1. Joseph Ciarrocchi "Religion doesn't cause scrupulosity and more than teach someone French history causes him to believe he is Napoleon. All human beings exist in some cultural context.
    2. 1. IOCDF Fact sheet: Scrupulosity is an equal opportunity disorder. It can affect individuals from a variety of different faith traditions. Although more research is needed to truly answer this question, there is currently no evidence to link scrupulosity to a specific religion.
  14. OCD Center of Lost Angeles It is worth noting that Scrupulosity is not partial to any one religion, but rather custom fits its message of doubt to the specific beliefs and practices of the sufferer.
    1. Yes:
  15. Joseph Ciarrocchi
    1. …religion may contribute when its content is presented in an overly harsh, punitive manner. Students of such presentations are likely to associate the context of the religious message with fear and anxiety.
      1. Jonathan Edwards, 18th Century Pastor and Theologian in the Congregational Church
        
        The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell. 2. 3. Heresies from Fr. James Jackson:
    2. Manicheanism: Manichaeism states, on principle, that all matter is evil. If, for example, a child grows up with an extreme attitude to modesty – where the flesh is seen as evil because it is the cause of forbidden impulses – then the slightest catering to the demands or needs of the flesh can result in a torment which rejects the goodness of the body. 4. 1. Pelagianism: There was once a British monk named Pelagius, who taught that a man can observe God’s laws by human effort alone, that grace was not needed to do so. If the heresy of Pelagianism works its way into the soul it is an easy step to thinking that any lack of perfection is entirely one’s own fault. One thinks, “this business of salvation is my work, so I’d better be perfect when I …” Thus salvation becomes something one must achieve by personal effort instead of by cooperation with grace. 5. 1. Jansenism: Jansenism is another heresy in which scrupulosity can grow well. It emphasizes that Christ did not die for all, stresses man’s sinfulness, and requires extreme penances on a regular basis. It leads to infrequent communions and flowers into scrupulosity as a matter of course.
      1. Jansenism flourished within Roman Catholicism primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but was condemned as heresy by Pope Innocent X in 1653. Jansenism was also condemned in 1713 by Pope Clement XI in his famous Bull Unigenitus. 2. 1. Jansenism focuses on how it was impossible for men and women to obey the Lord’s commandments and to be redeemed without God’s special, divine, irresistible grace. Jansenism taught that Christ died only for the elect -- a real sense of predestination 3. 1. Fr. Marc Foley agrees: Jansenism identified as the "remote cause: of St. Therese of Lisieux's troubles growing up.
        
        Biographer Conrad de Meester: "Zelie's mother, who taught her daughters an excessive fear of offending God, used to harp on the phrase 'that's a sin' to curb the least imperfections."
        
        Zelie had an excessive fear of sin and hell. Zelie was terrified that her five-year-old daughter Helene was in purgatory or perhaps even in hell, because she once told a lie. 4. 6.
      2. Spiritual Means of Recovery
6. Joseph Ciarrocchi “Scruples in the History of Pastoral Care” (chapter four of the Doubting Disease) puts scrupulosity in the context of church history before it was viewed through the modern lens of psychiatric diagnosis.
  1. He describes several principles for the treatment of scruples from the pastoral care tradition.
    1. Act contrary to the scruples. 2. 1. Follow the example of others without lengthy and burdensome moral reasoning. 3. 1. Rely on the guidance of one spiritual advisor rather than consulting multiple spiritual authorities. 4. 1. Put oneself in situations that trigger the obsessional thought. 5. 1. Avoid religious rituals/prayers, which serve as compulsions. 6. Ciarrocchi writes that these main pastoral principles “contain the seeds of modern behavioral treatments” that include modeling by others, exposure to the upsetting situation, and blocking the compulsive response.
    2. 1. Fr. William Doyle 1873-1917 -- more than 100 years ago. 1. General Remedies from Fr. William Doyle
    3. Prayer -- pray in temptation 2. 1. Vigilance 3. 1. Struggle against depression -- sadness increases scrupulosity 4. 1. Obedience to an experienced confessor -- perfect, trustful and blind obedience
      1. Obedience of action putting into practice the freedom of conscience 2. 1. Obedience of understanding -- soul remaining in revolt and persisting in its own erroneous ideas. Vanquishing errors of the intellect. 5. 1. Generosity in Self-Conquest -- acts of self-denial 6. Particular remedies from Fr. William Doyle 19th century
    4. Doubts must be ignored 7. 1. Belief in the easiness of forgiveness 8. 1. Presuming decisions (of the spiritual director) 9. 1. Lenient view of one's faults -- magnifying glass 10. 1. Promptness in acting on decisions 11. 1. Broad-minded interpretation of advice -- broadening the way. 12. 1. Not piling up questions
    5. 1. Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous -- Fr. Thomas Santa, CSsR (2013)
  2. Without exception, you shall not confess sins you have already confessed.
    1. 1. You shall confess only sins that are clear and certain.
    2. 1. You shall not repeat your penance or any of the words of your penance after confession—for any reason.
    3. 1. You shall not worry about breaking your pre-Communion fast unless you put food and drink in your mouth and swallow as a meal
    4. 1. You shall not worry about powerful and vivid thoughts, desires, and imaginings involving sex and religion unless you deliberately generate them for the purpose of offending God
    5. 1. You shall not worry about powerful and intense feelings, including sexual feelings or emotional outbursts, unless you deliberately generate them to offend God.
    6. 1. You shall obey your confessor when he tells you never to repeat a general confession of sins already confessed to him or another confessor.
    7. 1. When you doubt your obligation to do or not do something, you will see your doubt as proof that there is no obligation
    8. 1. When you are doubtful, you shall assume that the act of commission or omission you’re in doubt about is not sinful, and you shall proceed without dread of sin
    9. 1. You shall put your total trust in Jesus Christ, knowing he loves you as only God can and that he will never allow you to lose your soul
    10. Pastoral approach here. Predestination for heaven, Jesus will make us go to heaven. A lot of scrupulous clients are well enough formed to not believe that. 2. 11.
    11. Secular means of recovery
7. IOCDF: Scrupulosity responds to the same treatments as those used with other forms of OCD. Cognitive behavior therapy featuring a procedure called “exposure and response prevention” is the primary psychological treatment for scrupulosity. A certain kind of medicines called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) is the primary drug treatment for OCD. Treatment for scrupulosity may also include consultation from

leaders of the patient’s faith tradition.

Exposure and Response prevention
1. See the last Episode
2. 1. Difficulties with ERP for scrupulosity.
  2. Joseph Ciarrocchi "Doubting Disease": My opinion, based on the clinical and theoretical aspects of scruples, is that scruples are resistant to change because their religious nature places many of them in the domain of overvalued ideas. In other words, the person sees the stakes are so high in religious doubts (i.e. salvation depends and being correct) that the senselessness of the behavior is less evidence. After all, faith itself implies looking beyond sensory experiences in the surface meaning of reality. Scrupulous people usually know that their peers do not act the way they do. But since religious salvation is such an individual experience, can one really take a chance and ignore that’s “inner voice”? Therefore, the religious aspects of scruples create a motivational drive around the symptoms which become overvalued ideas, and hence resistant to change.
    1. 1. Jaimie Eckert Scrupulosity Coach: ERP can feel like it has deep moral and spiritual implications. Although it is a method that is helping you develop a normal spirituality, it can feel terribly frightening. For example, the woman who prays compulsively, repeating her prayers dozens of times until she feels they are done “right,” might be asked to pray only once and then stop, no matter how she feels. This can easily feel like a denial of faith. So scrupulous sufferers begin dropping out of treatment when ERP gets more intense.
    2. 1. Kevin Foss, Founder of the California OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center in Fullerton, CA:
    3. People suffering with Religious Scrupulosity struggle with the ERP process because they fear that exposure therapy will result in a genuine sin, convey that they are OK with sin and that they do not respect God or God’s will. Furthermore, Scrupulosity sufferers are generally knowledgeable of their faith’s doctrine and Biblical texts, so they are quick to present chapter and verse explaining why they should avoid exposure and give in to compulsive acts. Despite my reminders of clients' logical arguments, they respond with “But you never know” and “But what if God mistakes my intention in the exposure and I’m now really guilty of sin?”
    4. So, to do anything that could potentially put that into question or undermine it was experienced as possibly damaging the practice of faith, challenging one's fundamental belief in God, or leaving one vulnerable to shifting beliefs and a slippery slope into sin. 4.
  4. Psychodynamic approaches for treating OCD but can be applied to scrupulosity. McWilliams
3. Ordinary kindness -- they know they are exasperating for reasons that are unclear to everybody
  1. Priests get frustrated.
    1. 1. Parents get frustrated
  2. 1. Do not hurry them, advise them, criticize them.
  3. 1. Avoid becoming the equivalent of the controlling, demanding parent -- no power struggles
  4. 1. But still relate warmly. A lot of acceptance.
  5. 1. Avoid intellectualization
  6. 1. Help them express anger.
  7. 1. Discover their emotions and help them enjoy them.
  9. Joseph Ciarrocchi. Doubting Disease
4. Treatment program is laid out in his book, Doubting disease. It is essentially exposure and response prevention.
  1. Target the scruples you want to change
    1. Identify your obsessional scruples through self-monitoring. Write them down. 2. 1. Identify you compulsive scruples -- write them down. Avoidance acts to reduce anxiety 3. 1. Record the circumstances surrounding the scruples 4. 1. Making ratings of the intensity of the anxiety triggered by each of the obsessions and compulsions. 5. 1. Record the amount of time spent worrying about the scruples 6. 1. Lots of forms and charts, all in the book. 7. 8. Increase your Motivation to Change
    2. Looking at how motivated you are, and where you are in Prochaska and Di Clemente's stages of motivation to change. 9. 10. Developing a Personal Motivation Plan
    3. Listing the Benefits of eliminating scruples 11. 1. Listing the Costs of not changing scruples 12. Preparing for Change 13. Setting up the plan for repeated exposure to the feared object or condition.
    4. From the very start of the fear response, the body actually starts a counter-response mean to return the body to normal activity levels.
      1. Habituation. Nervous system gets bored with the danger, returns to normal. 2. 1. Example of jackhammer breaking up the asphalt on your road. 3. 4. Exposure must be prolonged 5. Exposure must generate significant anxiety 6. Exposure must be repeated 14. The compulsive response must be blocked. Prevented from happening so it breaks the cycle of some relief from the compulsion. Blocking the physical compulsion or the mental compulsion. 15. More charts and forms
      3. What I think about scrupulosity. IFS-Informed Approach
5. I'm going to start with the bottom line. I think scrupulosity is generated by a desperate attempt to find safety from a terrible, dangerous and uncaring God for shameful, undeserving, despicable sinner
  1. Scrupulosity is a twisted, frantic attempt to find some kind of safety from an angry, heartless God for me, a reprobate, a delinquent, an evildoer.
    1. 1. At the core, scrupulosity starts with really appalling, awful God Images -- and the scrupulous person usually isn't aware of the how terrible his or her God images really are, because they are not allowed into conscious awareness.
    2. 1. I discuss God images at length in episode 23-29 of this podcast, a seven episode series, all about God images, so check that out. 4.
  2. 1. God Images = My emotional and subjective experiences of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is. What I feel about God in my bones. This is my experiential sense how my feelings and how my heart interpret God.
  3. God images are often outside of our conscious awareness
    1. 1. Initially God images are shaped by the relationship that I have with my parents.
    2. 1. My God images are heavily influenced by psychological factors
    3. 1. Different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at a given time.
    4. 1. God images are always formed experientially;
    5. God images flow from our relational experiences and 2. 1. Also how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young. 3.
      1. My God images can be radically different than my God concept.
    6. God Concept = What I profess about God. It is my more intellectual understanding of God, based on what one has been taught, but also based on what I have explored through reading. I decide to believe in my God concept. Reflected in the Creed, expanded in the Catechism, formal teaching. 2. 7.
    7. 1. Now I'm really going to apply IFS to Scrupulosity, grounding it in a Catholic understanding of the human person. 1. Discussed Robert Fox and Alessio Rizzo's Internal Family Systems approach to OCD in the last episode -- number 86 -- Obsessions, Compulsions, OCD and Internal Family Systems. 2. Brief review: Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God. You can also think of them as separate modes of operating if that is helpful. 3. Brief review: Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader.
    8. 1. Here is the critical idea: Each Part has a God Image -- each part has a way of understanding God based on its limited experience and how it understands that experience
  4. We have as many God images as we have parts.
    1. 1. How God images form in parts. Parts have distorted God images for three main reasons:
    2. Parts learn via experience and the ways they interpret experience, especially in their spiritual inferences, can be markedly different than what God has revealed about Himself through the Catholic Church -- for example, a part whose role is to be dissociated from the rest of the system so as not to overwhelm the core self and other parts with its burden of interpersonal trauma may see God as distant, disconnected and uncaring, in a Deistic way;
    3. Parts may be very afraid of, angry at, disappointed with or disinterested in God and therefore refuse to connect with Him, preventing them from having needed corrective relational experiences of a loving God
      1. Part's understandings of God can vary wildly. One part may be angry and rejecting of God, another parts may be terrified of God, a third grieving the loss of God, a fourth distant and cold toward God and a fifth part, in the same person, may not believe that God even exists. 3. 1. As different parts come up and blend with the self, becoming more prominent in the system, they bring their God images into conscious awareness.
        
        That explains how our conscious perspectives of God can shift. Whichever part of us has taken over, which ever part of us has blended and is driving our bus, that part's God image is dominating in the moment 4.
        
        So, in my view, a scrupulous person's parts are in a life and death battle with each other about God. It's more than physical life or death. It's about spiritual life or death, eternal life or death, the stakes couldn't be higher. The scrupulous person's managers believe that if they don't suppress parts with negative God images, the consequence could be to be damned to hell for all eternity. 1. Manager parts are trying to appease God -- seek his approval, make things all right, strive to meet his demands, to be perfect
      2. Fr. Thomas La Santa: I will make God love me by becoming perfect. In this way God will have to love me. An enormous amount of energy is wasted by the scrupulous person trying to "fix" himself or herself or trying to become perfect. 2. 1. Fr. Marc Foley: The command "Be ye perfect..." does not enjoin us to strive for a flawless performance in the various tasks of life, but to do them as God wills us. We feel driven to do an A+ job on projects in which we have overinvested our egos. But doing God's will often demands the courage to do a C+ job because God bids us to spend our time and energy on other tasks. 3. 1. In order to do that, the manager parts have to suppress or exile the parts that have "offensive" God images or who may otherwise seem inappropriate or unacceptable to God.
        
        Those that are angry at God
        
        Those that are disappointed in God
        
        Those who are disgusted with God.
        
        Those that are indifferent toward God.
        
        Those that don't believe God exists.
        
        All those ways of construing God makes sense if you understand the part's experience and how it construes its experience. They are not accurate, they don't correspond to how God really is, but the part doesn't know that.
        
        Those that generate impulses to get God's attention via acting out in negative ways.
        
        Manager parts reject any part that experiences God in any negative way.
        
        Parts seeing other parts as evil, harmful, and terrifying.
        
        Demons
        
        Lepers
        
        Tax collectors
        
        Prostitutes
        
        Dangerous sinners -- banishing them.
        
        Manager Parts can speak for God -- they assume they know what God wants. Not in relationship with him, though. Really following a code or a list of rules or expectations. It's not about relationship, really. 5.
        
        First two conditions for secure attachment -- 1) felt safety and protection; 2) feeling seen known, heard and understood. Drawing from Daniel P. Brown and David S. Elliott 2016 book Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair. 1. Felt safety and protection
      3. In Scrupulosity, there is no felt sense of safety and protection for so many parts, because of their God images and their fears about the God images of other parts being expressed. .
        
        The first primary condition of secure attachment is not met.
        
        The most basic relational need is not met -- no felt safety, no felt protection.
        
        The first primary condition for secure attachment is felt safety and security. It has be felt. And not just by other parts, but by the target part.
        
        We all have heretical God images.
        
        Pastor Jonathan Edwards: The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
        
        How are you going to feel safe with a God like that? 2. 5.
      5. Feeling Seen, Known, Heard, Understood
6. because there is no feeling of safety and protection for some parts, they don't want to be seen, heard, known and understood by God. They don't want to be near God, they don't trust him
  1. And that makes sense, given how they see God. 2.
  2. 1. Some parts may want to be seen heard known and understood by God, even if they don't feel safe -- they are desperate for attention, any kind of attention from God, even negative attention, so they signal distress by intense impulses toward acting out, especially in ways designed to get God's attention -- blasphemy, for example. Just like a neglected little kid, desperate for some kind of attention from his father may act out.
  4. Scrupulosity is the son of anger and the grandson of shame. Core issues of shame that are suppressed and generate anger. Anger is suppressed and generates fear and scruples.
    1. Shame -- the root of so much psychological and emotional distress -- whole 13-epsiode series on shame, from episode 37 to 49.
  5. All goes back to identity. Who am I and Who is God.
    1. Scrupulous individuals have a very hard time allowing their anger with God to emerge into conscious awareness and with anger in general. Dangerous emotion
    2. But look at the unreasonably demanding and exacting God images their manager parts have -- Their God images are unjust.
    3. Who would want to be with a God like that? No part has a really positive God image
  6. Not wanting hell
    1. 1. But not really wanting heaven either -- to be face to face with a God like that for all eternity?
    2. 1. So God has no opportunity to show the scrupulous person, in relationship, who He really is. Self-perpetuating. I wrote a blog on this on the Souls and Hearts website last week, on Inner Pre-Evangelization: A Focus on Internal Trust. 7.
  7. My Approach
7. Lead from Self --The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader.
  1. We want to be recollected, we want the self governing all of our parts
  2. Like the conductor -- leading the musicians in an orchestra
  3. Like the captain -- leading and governing all the sailors on a ship.
  4. When we are recollected, in self, 8 C's
    1. Calm 5. 1. Curiosity 6. 1. Compassion 7. 1. Confidence 8. 1. Courage 9. 1. Clarity 10. 1. Connectedness 11. 1. Creativity 12. 1. Kindness
    2. 1. Self as the secure internal attachment figure for the parts. Parts coming to trust the self -- Blog on
    3. 1. Working collaboratively with the parts -- contracting with them to not overwhelm
  5. Really accepting the parts right now, where they at.
    1. 1. Trusting that God is good enough to understand and tolerate our parts' feelings. 3.
  6. 1. Scrupulosity as a gift, a signal. Look for the disorder underneath it.
  7. 1. Not a question of willpower.
  8. 1. Diabolical aspects
  9. Leaving people to their own devices
    1. 1. Discouragement, inward focus, despising self, 3.
  10. 1. Spiritual Approach
  11. Not about overcoming scrupulosity
    1. 1. Blessed are the merciful for mercy shall be theirs
    2. 1. Childlike Simplicity and trust lessens our burdens. Parvulos. Little Children. Dust and ashes.
    3. 1. Example of a parent -- would you prefer your child to be working on self-perfection
    4. 1. Perfectionism draws us to be big, perfect, competent, having it all together.
    5. 1. Jacques Phillipe:
    6. The Way of Trust and Love -- particularly helpful for those struggling with scrupulosity.
      1. p. 7 : The heart of Christian life is to receive and welcome God's tenderness and goodness, the revelation of his merciful love and to let oneself be transformed interiorly by that love.
      2. “We would like to be experienced, irreproachable, never making mistakes, never fall, possess unfeeling good judgment and unimpeachable virtues. Which is to say, we would like to have no more need of forgiveness or mercy, no more need of God and his help. 41
      3. If we accept ourselves as we are, we also accept God’s love for us. But if we reject ourselves, if we despise ourselves, we shut ourselves off from the love God has for us, we deny that love. 48-49
      4. We need to practice gentleness toward ourselves so as not to get discouraged and condemn ourselves when faced with their weakness while also nurturing a great desire for holiness. But not a desire for extraordinary perfection. Holiness is different; it is a real desire to love God and our neighbor, and, issuing a kind of halfway love, go to loves extremes. 52
      5. …we shouldn’t fall into a kind of stubborn “therapeutic obstinacy,” with the aim of ridding ourselves absolutely of all imperfections or healing every wound. In doing that, we risk becoming impatient and concentrating our efforts on something God isn’t specifically asking of us or, ultimately, paying more attention to ourselves than to him. 56-57
      6. The more we accept ourselves as we are and are reconciled to our own weakness, the more we can accept other people and love them as they are. 49
      7. What this podcast is all about.
      8. Contrast that with Pastor Jonathan Edwards -- sinners in the hand of an angry God: The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.
  13. Remember, you as a listener can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
  14. The Resilient Catholics Community at Soulsandhearts.com/rcc. So much information there and videos.
    1. I want to invite you to the Resilient Catholics Community
    2. The Why of the RCC -- It's all about loving with your whole heart -- all of your being. Getting over all the natural level issues that hold you back from tolerating being loved and from loving God and others.
    3. Who
  15. Who is the Resilient Catholics Community for?
    1. It's for you. If you really are into this podcast, if these ways of conceptualizing the human person and integration and human formation and resilience are appealing to you, then the Resilient Catholics community, the RCC may be for you. 2. 1. I am looking for listeners who want to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey, on this adventure of human formation with me. 3. 1. Who deeply desire a personal, intimate relationship with God and with Mary, a real human, close connection 4. 1. And who recognize they have some natural-level impediments to that deep relating 5. 1. and who are willing to make sacrifices in time, effort, money, humility and courage to grow in human formation and overcome natural-level impediments to being loved and to loving 6. 1. What want to shore up their natural foundation for the spiritual life, because grace perfects nature. 7. 1. Who want to become saints. 8. 1. Who are willing to be pioneers at the cutting edge in this adventure of human formation. Really at the tip of the spear, the first explorers of this human formation ground for laymen and laywomen. 9.
      1. First of all the RCC is My Tribe, my people, bringing together two groups into one
    2. First, faithful, orthodox, serious Catholics who are wounded and suffering and know it 2. 1. And Second, who are psychologically minded (or at least want to be psychologically minded), who believe in the unconscious and who embrace the unity and multiplicity of the human person 3. 1. And who want to see through the lens of a core self and parts. Unity and multiplicity make sense. 4.
      2. What of the RCC
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    8. 1. And there also is opportunities for some parts-based individual coaching as well.
    9. 1. Essentially, the What of the RCC is a pilgrimage together.
    11. The When of the RCC
  17. We open twice per year to new members in December and June, open until December 31.. We are open now. Soulsandhearts.com/rcc to register.
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Join Dr. Peter to go way below the surface and find the hidden meanings of obsessions, compulsions and OCD. Through poetry and quotes, he invites you into the painful, distressing, fearful and misunderstood world of those who suffer from OCD. He defines obsessions and compulsions, discusses the different types of each, and evaluates two conventional treatments and one alternative treatment for OCD. Most importantly, he discusses the deepest natural causes of OCD, which are almost always disregarded in conventional treatment, which focuses primarily on the symptoms.
Lead-in
1. OCD is not a disease that bothers; it is a disease that tortures. - Author: J.J. Keeler
2. 1. “It can look like still waters on the outside while a hurricane is swirling in your mind.” — Marcie Barber Phares
3. 1. Poetry or word picture (prayer of the scrupulous)

Aditi Apr 2017

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD. That is what we are addressing today.
1. Here is what OCD is like for Toni Neville -- she says: “It’s like being controlled by a puppeteer. Every time you try and just walk away he pulls you back. Are you sure the stove is off and everything is unplugged? Back up we go. Are you sure your hands are as clean as they can get? Back ya go. Are you sure the doors are securely locked? Back down we go. How many people have touched this object? Wash your hands again.”
Introduction
1. We are together in this great adventure, this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am honored to be able to spend this time with you.
2. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
3. 1. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
4. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. Today, we are getting into obsessions and compulsions -- a really deep dive into what's really going on with these experiences.
  2. I know many of you were expecting me to discuss scrupulosity today -- And you know what? I was expecting I would be discussing scrupulosity well, but in order to have that discussion of scrupulosity be well-founded, we really need to get into understanding obsessions and compulsions first. I have to bring you up to speed on obessions and compulsions before we get into scrupulosity, and there is a lot to know
6. 1. The questions we will be covering about obsessions and compulsions.
  2. What are Obsession and Compulsions? Getting into definitions.
    1. Also What are the different types of obsessions and compulsions, the different forms that obsessions and compulsions can take
    2. What is the experience of OCD like? From those who have suffered it.
    3. 1. Who suffers from obsessions and compulsions -- how common are they? Who is at risk?
    4. 1. Why do obsessions and compulsions start and why do they keep going?
    5. 1. How do we overcome obsessions and compulsions? How do we resolve them?
    6. What does the secular literature say are the best treatments" -- Medication and a particular kind of therapy called Exposure and Response Prevention
    7. Alternatives
    8. Can we find not just a descriptive diagnosis, but a proscriptive conceptualization that gives a direction for healing, resolving the obsessions and compulsions Not just symptom management. 5.
  4. Definitions
7. Obsessions
  1. DSM-5: Obsessions are defined by (1) and (2):
    1. Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or impulses that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress. 2. 1. The individual attempts to ignore or suppress such thoughts, urges, or images, or to neutralize them with some other thought or action (i.e., by performing a compulsion). 3. 1. Not pleasurable 4. 1. Involuntary
      1. My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice. - Author: Paul Rudnick 2. 1. To resist a compulsion with willpower alone is to hold back an avalanche by melting the snow with a candle. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. - Author: David Adam 5. 1. Individual works to neutralize the obsession with another thought or a compulsion. 6.
        
        From the International OCD Foundation: Obsessions are thoughts, images or impulses that occur over and over again and feel outside of the person’s control. Individuals with OCD do not want to have these thoughts and find them disturbing. In most cases, people with OCD realize that these thoughts don’t make any sense. Obsessions are typically accompanied by intense and uncomfortable feelings such as fear, disgust, doubt, or a feeling that things have to be done in a way that is “just right.” In the context of OCD, obsessions are time consuming and get in the way of important activities the person values.
        
        Common Obsessions
    2. Sources
      1. What is OCD? Article by the International OCD Foundation on their website 2. 1. WebMD article How Do I Know if I Have OCD? By Danny Bonvissuto February 19. 2020 3. 1. Northpointrecovery.com blog What Types of OCD Are There? Get the Breakdown Here by the Northpoint Staff from May 3, 2019 4. 1. Article entitled Common Types of OCD: Subtypes, Their Symptoms and the Best Treatment by Patrick Carey dated July 6, 2021 on treatmyocd.com 2. 1. Contamination
      2. Body fluids --- blood, urine, saliva, feces - I gave my baby niece a serious illness when I held her -- I'm sure I got a disease from using the public restroom. 2. 1. Germs for communicable diseases -- may be afraid to shake hands, worried about catching gonorrhea 3. 1. Environmental contaminants -- radiation, asbestos 4. 1. Household chemicals -- cleaners, solvents 5. 1. Dirt 6. 1. If you put the wrong foods in your body, you are contaminated and dirty and your stomach swells. Then the voice says, Why did you do that? Don't you know better? Ugly and wicked, you are disgusting to me. - Author: Bethany Pierce 7. Losing Control
      3. Giving in to an impulse to harm yourself -- I could jump in front of this bus right now. 8. 1. Fear of acting on an impulse to harm others -- what if I stabbed my child with this knife? 9. 1. Fear of violent or horrific images in your mind 10. 1. Fear of shouting out insults or obscenities -- 11. 1. Fear of stealing things 12. Harm
      4. Fear of being responsible for some terrible event (causing a fire at an office building) 13. 1. Fear of harming others because of not being careful enough (leaving a stick in your yard that fell from a tree in a wind storm that may trip and hurt an neighbor child) 14. Relationships
      5. Doubts about romantic partner -- is she the right one for me? Is there a better one I am supposed to find? What if we are not meant to be together, but we wind up marrying each other? 15. 1. Is my partner faithful? 16. Unwanted Sexual Thoughts
      6. Forbidden or perverse sexual thoughts or images 17. 1. Sexual obsessions involving children 18. 1. Obsessions about aggressive sexual behavior toward others 19. Obsessions related to perfectionism
      7. Concern about evenness or exactness 20. 1. need for things to be in their place
        
        Arranging things in a particular way before leaving home 21. 1. Concern with a need to know or remember 22. 1. Inability to decide whether to keep or discard things 23. 1. Fear of losing things 24. 1. Fear of making a mistake -- may need excessive encouragement from others 25. 1. Needing to make sure that your action is just right -- I need to start this email over, something is not wright with the wording. 26. 27. Obsessions about your Sexual Orientation 28. Obsessions about being embarrassed in a public situation 29. Getting a non-communicable disease such as cancer 30. Superstitious ideas such as unlucky numbers or certain colors 31. Religious Obsessions (Scrupulosity)
      8. Concern with offending God 32. 1. Concerns about blasphemy 33. 1. Concerns about right and wrong, morality.
      9. Compulsions
  2. Definitions
    1. DSM-5 Compulsions are defined by (1) and (2):
      1. Repetitive behaviors (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly. 2. 1. The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing anxiety or distress, or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent, or are clearly excessive. 3. 1. Most people with OCD have both obsessions and compulsions. 4. 2. 1. From the International OCD Foundation
      2. Compulsions are the second part of obsessive compulsive disorder. These are repetitive behaviors or thoughts that a person uses with the intention of neutralizing, counteracting, or making their obsessions go away. People with OCD realize this is only a temporary solution but without a better way to cope they rely on the compulsion as a temporary escape. Compulsions can also include avoiding situations that trigger obsessions. Compulsions are time consuming and get in the way of important activities the person values.
        
        Common Compulsions in OCD
    2. Sources
      1. What is OCD? Article by the International OCD Foundation on their website 2. 1. WebMD article How Do I Know if I Have OCD? By Danny Bonvissuto February 19. 2020 3. 1. Northpointrecovery.com blog What Types of OCD Are There? Get the Breakdown Here by the Northpoit Staff from May 3, 2019 4. 1. Article entitled Common Types of OCD: Subtypes, Their Symptoms and the Best Treatment by Patrick Carey dated July 6, 2021 2. 1. Washing and Cleaning
      2. Washing hands excessively or in a certain way 2. 1. Excessive showering, bathing, toothbrushing, grooming 3. 1. Cleaning items or objects excessively 4. Checking
      3. Checking that you did not or will not harm anyone 5. 1. Checking that you did not or will not harm yourself 6. 1. Checking that nothing terrible happened 7. 1. Checking that you did not make a mistake 8. 1. Checking specific parts of your body 9. Repeating
      4. Re-reading or re-writing 10. 1. Repeating routine activities
        
        Going in and out of doors 2. 1. Getting up and down from chairs 11. 1. Repeating body movements
        
        Tapping 2. 1. Touching 3. 1. Blinking 12. 1. Repeating activities in multiples
        
        Doing things three times, because three is a good, right or safe number 13. 14. Mental Compulsions
      5. Mental review of events to prevent harm (to oneself others, to prevent terrible consequences) 15. 1. Praying to prevent harm (to oneself others, to prevent terrible consequences) 16. 1. Counting while performing a task to end on a “good,” “right,” or “safe” number 17. 1. Cancelling” or “Undoing” (example: replacing a “bad” word with a “good” word to cancel it out) 18. Putting things in order or arranging things until it “feels right” or are in perfect symmetry 19. Telling asking or confessing to get reassurance 20. Avoiding situations that might trigger your obsessions
        
        Obsessions and Compulsions go together
  3. The vicious cycle of OCD -- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) at helpguide.org
    1. Obsessive thought -- I could stab my nephew with this knife. 2. 1. Anxiety -- that would be a terrible thing to happen, I can't let that happen 3. 1. Compulsion -- Locking all the knives away, checking to make sure they are all accounted for when your sibling and her family are visiting 4. 1. Temporary relief -- the knives are all there.
      1. “A physical sensation crawls up my arm as I avoid compulsions. But if I complete it, the world resets itself for a moment like everything will be just fine. But only for a moment.” — Mardy M. Berlinger 5.
      2. Harm Obsession
    2. Compulsion: Keeping all knives hidden away somewhere
    3. What if I killed my nephew and I just can’t remember? Repeatedly going back to check if you ran someone over
      2. DSM-5 Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
  4. Presence of obsessions, compulsions, or both:
    1. 1. The obsessions or compulsions are time-consuming (e.g., take more than 1 hour per day) or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
    2. 1. The obsessive-compulsive symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition.
    3. 1. The disturbance is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder
    4. 1. Specify if:
    5. With good or fair insight: The individual recognizes that obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are definitely or probably not true or that they may or may not be true. 2. 1. With poor insight: The individual thinks obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are probably true. 3. 1. With absent insight/delusional beliefs: The individual is completely convinced that obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are true. 4% 4. 1. With Tic disorder up to 30%
      2. What is the experience of OCD
  5. Poem By Forti.no
    1. 1. Quotes:
    2. “You lose time. You lose entire blocks of your day to obsessive thoughts or actions. I spend so much time finishing songs in my car before I can get out or redoing my entire shower routine because I lost count of how many times I scrubbed my left arm.” — Kelly Hill 2. 1. “Ever seen ‘Inside Out’? With OCD, it’s like Doubt has its own control console.” — Josey Eloy Franco 3. 1. “Imagine all your worst thoughts as a soundtrack running through your mind 24/7, day after day.” — Adam Walker Cleveland 4. 1. “Picture standing in a room filled with flies and pouring a bottle of syrup over yourself. The flies constantly swarm about you, buzzing around your head and in your face. You swat and swat, but they keep coming. The flies are like obsessional thoughts — you can’t stop them, you just have to fend them off. The swatting is like compulsions — you can’t resist the urge to do it, even though you know it won’t really keep the flies at bay more than for a brief moment.” — Cheryl Little Sutton 5. 1. “It’s like you have two brains — a rational brain and an irrational brain. And they’re constantly fighting.” — Emilie Ford 15.
    3. Who
8. 12 month prevalence is 1.2% with international prevalence rates from 1.1 to 1.8% NIH Women have a higher prevalence 1.8% than men 0.5%. Males more affected in childhood. Lifetime prevalence 2.3%
9. 1. Risk Factors:
  2. DSM-5
    1. Temperamental Factors
      1. Greater internalizing symptoms 2. 1. Higher negative emotionality 3. 1. Behavioral inhibition 2. 1. Environmental Factors
      2. Childhood physical abuse 2. 1. Childhood sexual abuse 3. 1. Other stressful or traumatic events 3. 1. Genetic
      3. Monozygotic concordance rates --.57 2. 1. Dizygotic concordance rates .22 4. 1. Physiological
      4. Dysfunction in the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and striatum have been implicated.
      5. Streptococcal infection can precede the development of OCD symptoms in children 5. 2.
      7. Therapy
10. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) -- Developed originally in the 1970s Stanley Rachman's work
  1. a type of behavioral therapy
    1. that exposes the person to situations that provoke their obsessions
    2. causing distress, usually anxiety which leads to
    3. the urge to engage in the compulsion
    4. that gives them the temporary relief.
    5. 1. The goal of ERP is to break the cycle of obsessions --> anxiety --> compulsion --> temporary relief. So you are exposed to you anxiety provoking stimulus, and have the obsession, but you prevent the compulsive response, and you don't get the temporary relief.
    6. Basic premise: As individuals confront their fears and no longer engage in their escape response, they will eventually reduce their anxiety.
    7. The goal is to habituate, or get used to the feelings of the obsessions, without having to engage in the compulsive behavior. This increases the capacity to handle discomfort and anxiety. Then one is no longer reinforced by the temporary anxiety relief that the compulsion provides.
    8. 1. Patrick Carey writes that: Any behavior that engages with the obsession– e.g. asking for reassurance, avoidance, rumination– reinforces it. By preventing these behaviors, ERP teaches people that they can tolerate their distress without turning to compulsions. It thereby drains obsessions of their power.
    9. 1. Division 12 of the APA

Essence of therapy: Individuals with OCD repeatedly confront the thoughts, images, objects, and situations that make them anxious and/or start their obsessions in a systematic fashion, without performing compulsive behaviors that typically serve to reduce anxiety. Through this process, the individual learns that there is nothing to fear and the obsessions no longer cause distress.

From the IOCDF :
1. With ERP, the difference is that when you make the choice to confront your anxiety and obsessions you must also make a commitment to not give in and engage in the compulsive behavior. When you don’t do the compulsive behaviors, over time you will actually feel a drop in your anxiety level. This natural drop in anxiety that happens when you stay “exposed” and “prevent” the compulsive “response” is called habituation.
2. Instead, a person is forced to confront their obsessive thoughts relentlessly. The goal is to make the sufferer so accustomed to their obsessions that they no longer feel tempted to engage in soothing compulsions.
Types of Exposure -- GoodTherapy.org article
1. Imaginal Exposure: In this type of exposure, a person in therapy is asked to mentally confront the fear or situation by picturing it in one's mind. For example, a person with agoraphobia, a fear of crowded places, might imagine standing in a crowded mall.
2. 1. In Vivo Exposure: When using this type of exposure, a person is exposed to real-life objects and scenarios. For example, a person with a fear of flying might go to the airport and watch a plane take off.
3. 1. Virtual Reality Exposure: This type of exposure combines elements of both imaginal and in vivo exposure so that a person is placed in situations that appear real but are actually fabricated. For example, someone who has a fear of heights—acrophobia—might participate in a virtual simulation of climbing down a fire escape.
4. Steven Pence, and colleagues in a 2010 article in the American Journal of Psychotherapy: "When exposures go wrong: Troubleshooting guidelines for managing difficult scenarios that arise in Exposure-based treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
5. The present article reviews five issues that occur in therapy but have been minimally discussed in the OCD treatment literature:

1) when clients fail to habituate to their anxiety -- they don't calm down

2) when clients misjudge how much anxiety an exposure will actually cause

3) when incidental exposures happen in session -- other fears in the fear hierarchy intrude.

4) when mental or covert rituals interfere with treatment -- covert compulsive behaviors

5) when clients demonstrate exceptionally high anxiety sensitivity.

Stacey Smith Counseling at stacysmithcounseling.com -- ERP failures
1. Utilizing safety behaviors
2. 1. Not sitting with the anxiety until it dissipates -- distracting yourself
3. 1. Not working through all the irrational, unhelpful thoughts
4. 1. Not practicing often enough.
6. ERP criticisms
7. Can be really unpleasant for clients -- repeated exposures to terrifying stimuli -- can there be a better way?
  1. Concerns about safety and security
    1. 1. Concerns about flooding with anxiety
    2. Ben Blum: Inside the Revolutionary Treatment That Could Change Psychotherapy Forever elemental.medium.com July 21, 2020
      1. Robert Fox is haunted by a memory of a germophobic woman with OCD whom he met once while she was hospitalized. As part of her ERP therapy, the therapists took her into the bathroom and had her wipe her hands over the toilet and sink and then rub them through her hair. She wasn’t permitted to shower until the next morning. 2.
        
        Concerns about dropout rates. 1. Dropout rate of 18.7% across 21 ERP studies with 1400 participants Clarissa Ong and colleagues in 2016 article in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2. Dropout rate of 10% among youth for ERP in a 2019 meta-analysis by Carly Johnco and her colleagues in the Journal "Depression and Anxiety" 11 randomized trials 4.
      2. I'm concerned that it doesn't go deep enough 1. Not getting to root causes -- staying at the symptom level -- seeing symptoms as nonsensical
    3. One thing which I can't stress enough is that OCD is completely nonsensical and will not listen to reason. This is one of the most frightening things about having it. I knew that to anyone I told, there are Salvador Dali paintings that make more sense. - Author: Joe Wells 2. What is the fear really about. Let's not just ignore it. Fear is a response to something. 3. Tracing back layers, going back through grief and anger, all the way to shame. 4. Shame episodes 37-49. 5. Doesn’t get to any spiritual issues
    5. Medication
8. International OCD Foundation
  1. Drugs and dosages High doses are often needed for these drugs to work in most people.
    1. 1. Research suggests that the following doses may be needed:
    2. fluvoxamine (Luvox®) – up to 300 mg/day 2. 1. fluoxetine (Prozac®) – 40-80 mg/day 3. 1. sertraline (Zoloft®) – up to 200 mg/day 4. 1. paroxetine (Paxil®) – 40-60 mg/day 5. 1. citalopram (Celexa®) – up to 40 mg/day* 6. 1. clomipramine (Anafranil®) – up to 250 mg/day 7. 1. escitalopram (Lexapro®) – up to 40 mg/day 8. 1. venlafaxine (Effexor®) – up to 375 mg/day
      1. How Do These Medications Work? From the International OCD Foundation. It remains unclear as to how these particular drugs help OCD. The good news is that after decades of research, we know how to treat patients, even though we do not know exactly why our treatments work. We do know that each of these medications affect a chemical in the brain called serotonin. Serotonin is used by the brain as a messenger. If your brain does not have enough serotonin, then the nerves in your brain might not be communicating right. Adding these medications to your body can help boost your serotonin and get your brain back on track.
    4. Discussion of conventional approaches
      1. Medication
  2. I am not a physician -- I'm a psychologist and I don't have prescription privileges
    1. I don't give advice on medication choices or on dosages or anything like that. 2. 1. If you think your medication is helping your OCD, I'm not going to argue with you about that -- I don't want to try to dissuade anyone from taking medication for psychological issues if they think it's helping them. 3.
      1. Here's the thing, though. So much of your thinking about medication depends on what you see as the cause of the problem
    2. It makes sense to take medication if you think the obsessions and compulsions pop up because of chemical imbalances. You take the medication to restore the chemical balance and reduce the symptoms. 2. 1. So many of treatments for OCD treat the obsessions and compulsions as meaningless, as irrational, as just the random epiphenomena of consciousness, or just as nonsensical expressions of miswiring in the brain or just the effects of poorly balanced neurochemical in the brain. 3. 1. And so these approaches, like ERP that and medication that target the obsessions and compulsions for eradication, that seek to vanquish them result in multiple problems 4. 1. I think that is a major, major mistake. 5. 1. And here is what I want to emphasize. Obsessions and Compulsions are symptoms. They are symptoms. Obsessions and compulsions, as painful and as debilitating as they are for many people, those obsessions and compulsions are not the primary problem. They are the effects of the primary problem. Obsessions and compulsions happen late in the causal chain. I see meaning in every obsession and in every compulsion. I see a message in every obsession and compulsion. A cry for help, a signal of deeper distress. 6. 1. There are cases in which a psychological problem can be purely or primarily organic -- due to a medical condition -- for example due to head trauma that causes brain damage. Or a brain tumor on the pituitary gland that disrupts your whole endocrine system, resulting in mood swings.
      1. But, Most of the time, though, psychological symptoms have psychological causes.
        
        As a Catholic psychologist, I want to move much further back in the causal chain. I want to address and resolve the underlying issues that give rise to the obsessions in the first place. 3.
    3. Self Help Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) at helpguide.org
9. Identify your triggers
  1. Can help you anticipate your urges
    1. 1. Create a solid mental picture and then make a mental note. Tell yourself, “The window is now closed,” or “I can see that the oven is turned off.”
    2. 1. When the urge to check arises later, you will find it easier to re-label it as “just an obsessive thought.”
  2. 1. Learn to resist OCD compulsions
  3. by repeatedly exposing yourself to your OCD triggers, you can learn to resist the urge to complete your compulsive rituals -- exposure and response prevention (ERP)
    1. 1. Build your fear ladder -- working your way up to more and more frightening things.
    2. Resist the urge to do your compulsive behavior
    3. The anxiety will fade
    4. You're not going to lose control or have a breakdown
    5. Practice 3.
  4. 1. Challenge Obsessive thoughts
  5. Thoughts are just thoughts
    1. 1. Write down obsessive thoughts and compulsions
    2. Writing it all down will help you see just how repetitive your obsessions are. 2. 1. Writing down the same phrase or urge hundreds of times will help it lose its power. 3. 1. Writing thoughts down is much harder work than simply thinking them, so your obsessive thoughts are likely to disappear sooner.
      1. Challenge your obsessive thoughts. Use your worry period to challenge negative or intrusive thoughts by asking yourself
    3. What’s the evidence that the thought is true? That it’s not true? Have I confused a thought with a fact? 2. 1. Is there a more positive, realistic way of looking at the situation? 3. 1. What’s the probability that what I’m scared of will actually happen? If the probability is low, what are some more likely outcomes? 4. 1. Is the thought helpful? How will obsessing about it help me and how will it hurt me? 5. 1. What would I say to a friend who had this thought?
      2. Create an OCD worry period. Rather than trying to suppress obsessions or compulsions, develop the habit of rescheduling them.
  6. Choose one or two 10-minute “worry periods” each day, time you can devote to obsessing.
    1. 1. During your worry period, focus only on negative thoughts or urges. Don’t try to correct them. At the end of the worry period, take a few calming breaths, let the obsessive thoughts go, and return to your normal activities. The rest of the day, however, is to be designated free of obsessions.
    2. 1. When thoughts come into your head during the day, write them down and “postpone” them to your worry period.
    3. Create a tape of your OCD obsessions or intrusive thoughts. Focus on one specific thought or obsession and record it to a tape recorder or smartphone.
  7. Recount the obsessive phrase, sentence, or story exactly as it comes into your mind.
    1. 1. Play the tape back to yourself, over and over for a 45-minute period each day, until listening to the obsession no longer causes you to feel highly distressed.
    2. 1. By continuously confronting your worry or obsession you will gradually become less anxious. You can then repeat the exercise for a different obsession.
    3. Reach our for support
  8. Stay connected to family and friends.
    1. 1. Join an OCD support group.
    3. Manage Stress
  9. Quickly self-soothe and relieve anxiety symptoms by making use of one or more of your physical senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste—or movement. You might try listening to a favorite piece of music, looking at a treasured photo, savoring a cup of tea, or stroking a pet.
    1. Practice relaxation techniques. Mindful meditation, yoga, deep breathing, and other relaxation techniques can help lower your overall stress and tension levels and help you manage your urges. For best results, try practicing a relaxation technique regularly.
    2. Lifestyle changes
  10. Exercise regularly
    1. 1. Get enough sleep
    2. 1. Avoid alcohol and nicotine
    3. Not sure this is going to work. Doesn't get to root causes.
  11. IFS as an alternative
10. From Verywellmind.com What is Internal Family Systems? By Theodora Blanchfield, August 22, 2021

What Is Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy?

Internal family systems, or IFS, is a type of therapy that believes we are all made up of several parts or sub-personalities. It draws from structural, strategic, narrative, and Bowenian types of family therapy.

The founder, Dr. Richard Schwartz, thought of the mind as an inner family and began applying techniques to individuals that he usually used with families.

The underlying concept of this theory is that we all have several parts living within us that fulfill both healthy and unhealthy roles. Life events or trauma, however, can force us out of those healthy roles into extreme roles.

The good news is that these internal roles are not static and can change with time and work. The goal of IFS therapy is to achieve balance within the internal system and to differentiate and elevate the self so it can be an effective leader in the system.

Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders.
Robert Fox and Alessio Rizzo have done the most work with IFS to work with obsessions and compulsions.
1. Sources
  1. IFS and Hope with OCD with Alessio Rizzo and Robert Fox -- Episode 102 of Tammy Sollenberger's podcast The One Inside -- September 17, 2021
    1. 1. Podcast IFS Talks: Hosts Aníbal Henriques & Tisha Shull A Talk with Robert Fox on OCD-types -- Robert Fox February 20, 2021
    2. Robert Fox, IFS therapist with OCD
  2. Ben Blum: Inside the Revolutionary Treatment That Could Change Psychotherapy Forever elemental.medium.com July 21, 2020
    1. https://elemental.medium.com/inside-the-revolutionary-treatment-that-could-change-psychotherapy-forever-8be035d54770 4.

Robert Fox, a therapist in Woburn, Massachusetts, also wishes more people knew about IFS. Diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder at age 21 after a lifetime of unusual compulsions, he spent 23 years receiving the standard care: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure response prevention (ERP). Neither had much effect, especially ERP, which involved repeatedly exposing himself to things he was anxious about in the hopes of gradually habituating to them.

“When you think about it, it’s a very painful method of therapy,” he says.

Fox discovered IFS in 2008. Before, he had always been encouraged to think of his compulsions as meaningless pathologies. Now, for the first time, they began making sense to him as the behavior of protectors who were trying to manage the underlying shame and fear of exiles.

After two particularly powerful unburdenings, his symptoms abated by 95% and stayed that way.

“[OCD] used to be almost like kryptonite around my neck when I would have serious flare-ups,” he says. “I feel a lot of freedom and peace and I really owe it to Dick [Schwartz] and the model.”

Concerns about ERP
1. ERP doesn't bring the curiosity -- why did this happen?
2. Obsessions are not irrational and Compulsions are not meaningless
3. Alessio Rizzo Conventional OCD diagnosis and treatment ERP and medication -- nothing points back to underlying causes.
Alessio Rizzo: Evidence-based approaches for OCD that work -- they work by drawing a manager part into a role of suppressing OCD symptoms Needing to continue ERP.
Causes: Fox
1. Repressed anger. -- not a parent who could witness
2. 1. Intense shame that is dissociated
  2. Shame from childhood -- exiled
    1. 1. Shame from the OCD itself. -- sarcasm from others, especially from his older brother.
    2. “OCD is like having a bully stuck inside your head and nobody else can see it.” — Krissy McDermott
    3. 1. We hide what we are ashamed of -- not easy to treat.
    4. 1. Fox on his treatment: Right. I didn't see it myself until one day I was out for a walk with my dog Gizmo around my block, walking around the block with him and I had been to all these lectures about shame and I was walking one day and all of a sudden it was like, it just came to me “Holy, Holy, Holy shit. I carry that shame.” And it was like a dark cloud that was overhead and just kind of followed me wherever I went. And it was actually not an awful thing to realize. That's what had been basically walking around on my back for so long. It was this deep shame.
  3. In agreement with how central I think shame is to OCD
  5. Obsessions and compulsions develop gradually and experiment with different ways of drawing attention away from the intensity of underlying experience. All happens in silence in the inner world.
  6. An obsession or compulsion distracts us from the pain of an exile. If I'm worrying about the gas in the lawnmower overflowing and blowing up the house -- takes me away from the shame of feeling inadequate at work.
    1. Needs to be powerful enough to hijack my mind
    2. So many layers of protectors -- takes time
  7. Alessio Rizzo Post dated March 3, 2021 entitled "IFS and OCD -- A Comparison Between CBT and IFS for OCD. https://www.therapywithalessio.com/articles/ifs-and-ocd-how-does-the-ifs-method-work-for-ocd
3. In IFS, we use the language of parts to describe how we function. As a consequence, the OCD is considered a part of the person. This means that, even if the OCD seems quite a strong presence in the client’s life, there is much more to a person than OCD.
4. 1. At this stage CBT and IFS might look similar because CBT also encourages clients to label the anxieties and the intrusive thoughts that form the OCD and not engage with them.
5. 1. The main difference between CBT and IFS is in how we relate to the OCD part.
6. 1. One of the foundational elements of IFS is that all parts are welcome, and, therefore, the OCD part is not dismissed or ignored, but it is respected. Respect does not mean that the client will believe the content of intrusive thoughts or that they will follow up on whatever behaviour the OCD wants. IFS gives us a way to make sure that there is enough safety and calm before offering respect to the OCD part. This might take a different amount of attempts depending on the severity of the OCD, and on the strength of the relationship between therapist and client.
7. 1. Healing OCD with IFS
8. 1. The main difference between CBT and IFS is in the definition of “cure” of OCD.
9. 1. CBT therapy has the ultimate goal of empowering the client to overcome OCD thoughts and anxieties by never engaging with them or by using exposure therapy to demonstrate that the OCD fears and obsessions have got no evidence to exist.
10. 1. IFS believes that healing is the result of the re-organisation of parts so that extreme behaviour is substituted by more functional ways of thinking and acting, and, above all, IFS aims at healing the traumatic events that have led to the development of OCD symptoms.

The result of healing the trauma that fuels OCD is a spontaneous decrease of OCD anxieties and intrusive thoughts and, in my opinion, this form of healing is preferable to the one described by CBT. Using IFS language, the CBT approach aims at creating a new part in the system that is tasked with managing the OCD, while there is no attention paid to discovery and healing of the trauma that is fueling the OCD.

Choosing the method that best suits you

There is no way of saying what method works best for a person.

Therapy outcomes depend on many factors and not only on the method used. Sometimes the quality of the therapeutic relationship is the biggest healing factor, and it is ultimately up to the client to find the best combination of therapist and method that can best suit them.

Colleen West, LMFT LMFT December 20 post on her website colleenwest.com Treating OCD with Internal Family Systems Parts Work
1. Just a word about treating OCD with IFS versus Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). Treating obsessive and compulsive parts with IFS is diametrically opposed to treating it in the Exposure and Response Prevention, the most commonly recommended approach. IFS treats OCD parts as what they are--managers and fire fighters, they have jobs to do. If you can help the exiles underneath these protectors, there will be less need for the OCD behaviors. (This might be complicated if there are still constant stressors in the client's life, for which they need the protection.)

IFS does work, and I have successfully treated people with full blown OCD who now have about 5% of their original symptoms only during moments of high stress, and they do not consider themselves OCD anymore. These clients have been helped by taking SSRIs as well, which I will say more about below.

ERP works to suppress those same protectors that IFS seeks to understand/care for. It does "work", as people get a strategy for the thoughts that are driving them nuts, but the folks I know who have gone through this treatment find they have to do their 'homework' forever or the OCD comes back, and they always feel it threatening. In short, it is stressful, and the fight is never over.

For anyone doing ERP, they have to commit fully to that approach, the homework is hours a day, and one cannot be halfhearted about it or it won't work. The good thing about ERP is that it gives people some control, which they strongly desire, because they feel so powerless.

Next episode Episode 87, will come out on December 6, 2022
1. Scrupulosity -- I have such a different take -- Scrupulosity is what happens with perfectionism and OCD get religion. Spiritual and Psychological elements.
  1. In the last episode we really got into understanding perfectionism. In this episode, we worked on really getting to know about obsessions and compulsions. Next episode, we get much more into scrupulosity. My own battle with scrupulosity.
  2. Remember, you as a listener can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
2. 1. Resilient Catholics Community. Talked a lot about it in episode 84, two episodes ago. We now have 106 on the waiting list. Reopening the community on December 1 for those on the waiting list first. Can learn a lot more about the RCC and you can sign up at soulsandhearts.com/rcc. We have had heavy demand. We may have to limit how many we bring in. I am working to clear time in my calendar to review the Initial Measures Kits and help new members through the onboarding process -- all the individual attention takes time. I'm also hiring more staff to help.
3. 1. Pray for me. Humility. Childlike trust
4. 1. Invocations

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Join me as we discover explore all the elements of perfectionism, from its root causes to its surface manifestations, through an Internal Family Systems lens, grounded in a Catholic world view. Through poetry, quotes, research findings, personal examples and the current professional literature, I pull together many strands into a unified whole to help you deeply grasp the internal experience of perfectionism.
Intro
1. The Quintessential Persona Leanna Smith
2. 1. We are together in this great adventure, this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am honored to be able to spend this time with you.
3. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
4. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
5. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
6. Let's get into answering the questions -- the who, what, where, when, why, and how of perfectionism. This is episode 85 of the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast it's titled: Perfectionism: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How
7. Perfectionism -- a major, major problem for so many Catholics. A major, major problem for so many of us. Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill 2019 Psychological Bulletin Article: Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016
  1. reviewed dozens of studies from a 27 year timespan all using the same instrument the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale by Hewitt and Flett
    1. 1. 164 study samples comprising more than 41,000 college students in the US, Canada and Great Britain between 1989 and 2016
    2. 1. Results: there is no doubt. Perfectionism among college students is on the rise.
    3. Between 1989 and 2016,
      1. the scores for socially prescribed perfectionism — or perceiving that other have excessive expectations of me — increased by 33%.
      2. Other-oriented expectations — putting unrealistic expectations on others — went up 16%
      3. and self-oriented perfectionism — our irrational desire to be perfect — increased 10% 9.
  2. The Who of Perfectionism -- the Parts
  3. The What of Perfectionism -- What is it? What are the different kinds of perfectionism, what are the elements?
  4. Where Does Perfectionism Come From Within Us
  5. When Does Perfectionism Get Activated?
  6. Why Does Perfectionism Start and Why Does it Keep Going?
  7. How Do We Overcome Perfectionism? How do we resolve it? Not just a descriptive diagnosis, but a proscriptive conceptualization that gives a direction for healing, resolving the perfectionism. Not just symptom management, this is your cross nonsense. There are real crosses that God gives us. Yes. But those crosses fit well. The crosses we impose upon ourselves do not fit well.
  8. What -- What is perfectionism? You know that I want precise definitions when we dive into deep topics together. I think it's ironic that there is a lot of unclear, sloppy thinking about perfectionism by perfectionists. Shining a bright clear light on it.
    1. Definition of Perfectionism
  9. Brene Brown: The Gifts of Imperfection: Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels the primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize painful feelings or shame, judgment and blame
    1. 1. Marc Foley O.C.D. Editor of Story of a Soul: Study Edition There is an unhealthy striving for perfection which psychologists call perfectionism. Perfectionism is the state of being driven to achieve a standard of perfection in an area of life that is fueled by either the fear of failure or the need for approval. This unhealthy striving is not the type of perfection to which God calls us.
    2. So you may have perfectionistic parts that would like to challenge me on this. Your perfectionistic parts may say to me
  10. So, Dr. Peter, Mr. Catholic Psychologist, you want us to have low standards, huh? You think that would be better, for us to be lazy, to be weak, to take our ease, to relax, to give up the fight, to be mediocre, to be lukewarm, huh? Is that what you are saying? Didn't St. Jerome say: Good, better, best, never let it rest, 'till your good is better, and your better's best
    1. First off, let's start with your quote. Often attributed to St. Jerome, but there's no evidence for it in his writings:
      1. Fr. Horton addresses this alleged quote on his blog fauxtations. September 26, 2016 post. "Good, better, best: St. Jerome?"
        
        Oldest google books attribution is from 2009. 2. 1. 1904 Dictionary of Modern Proverbs 3. 1. 1897 Christian Work: Illustrated Family Newspaper. 4. 1. Others attribute it to Tim Duncan, NBA all-star player, often considered the greatest power forward of all time. 5. 6. I want you to pursue excellence. 2.
        
        Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence or a commitment to self-improvement. There is a critical distinction between striving for excellence and perfectionism. Let's discuss what perfectionism is not.
        
        Brene Brown: Perfectionism is not self-improvement./ Perfectionism is, at it’s core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused – How can I improve? Perfectionism – is other focused – What will they think?” End quote. 1. What will they think?
        
        Brene Brown Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead: “Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.”
        
        Agnes M. Stairs, Smith, Zapolski, Combs, and Settles: Clarifying the construct of perfectionism Assessment 2012 732 people
  11. 15 different perfectionism measures -- Factor analytic modeling
    1. 1. Found nine different personality traits associated with perfectionism: Need for Order, Need for Satisfaction of a Job Well Done, Details and Checking, Perfectionism toward Others, High Personal Standards, Black and White Thinking about Tasks, Perceived Pressure from Others, Dissatisfaction with Personal Performance, Reactivity to Mistakes.
    2. 1. 9 personality traits
    3. Order
      1. I like things to be neat 2. 1. Things should always be put away in their place 3. 1. I like to be orderly in the way I do things 2. 1. Satisfaction
      2. I feel satisfied with my work after I do something well 2. 1. I get excited when I do a good job 3. 1. I feel great satisfaction when I feel I have perfected something 3. 1. Details and Checking
      3. I often check my work carefully to make sure there are no mistakes 2. 1. It takes me a long time to do something because I check my work 4. 11.

many times

Perfectionism toward Others
1. I have high standards for the people who are important to me
2. 1. I expect a lot from my friends
3. 1. I expect others to excel at whatever they do
4. High Standards
5. I set extremely high standards for myself
6. 1. I expect high levels of performance from myself
7. 1. I have very high goals
8. Black and White Thinking about Tasks and Activities
9. I will not do something if I cannot do it perfectly
10. 1. There’s no point in doing something if I cannot do it perfectly
11. Perceived Pressure from Others
12. People expect high levels of performance from me
13. 1. Others expect me to be perfect
14. 1. I often feel that people make excessive demands of me
15. Dissatisfaction
16. It feels like my best is never good enough
17. 1. I often don’t live up to my own standards
18. 1. I rarely feel that what I have done is good enough
19. Reactivity to Mistakes
20. When I make a mistake, I feel really bad
21. 1. If one thing goes wrong, I feel that I cannot do anything right
22. 1. I feel like a complete failure if I do not do something perfectly
23. Signs of Being a Perfectionist GoodTherapy.org article last updated 11-05-2019
24. Not be able to perform a task unless they know they can do it perfectly.
25. 1. View the end product as the most important part of any undertaking. As a result, they may focus less on the process of learning or completing a task to the best of their ability.
26. 1. Not see a task as finished until the result is perfect according to their standards.
27. 1. Procrastinate. People with perfectionism may not want to begin a task until they know they can do it perfectly.
28. 1. Take an excessive amount of time to complete a task that does not typically take others long to complete.
30. Examples of Perfectionistic Behaviors -- GoodTherapy.org article last updated 11-05-2019
31. Spending 30 minutes writing and rewriting a two-sentence email.
32. 1. Believing that missing two points on a test is a sign of failure.
33. 1. Difficulty being happy for others who are successful.
34. 1. Holding oneself to the standards of others' accomplishments or comparing oneself unfavorably and unrealistically to others.
35. 1. Skipping class or avoiding a chore because it is pointless to make an effort unless perfection can be achieved.
36. 1. Focusing on the end product rather than the process of learning.
37. 1. Avoiding playing a game or trying a new activity with friends for fear of being shown up as less than perfect.
38. The Who of Perfectionism -- the Parts
39. Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. You can also think of them as separate modes of operating if that is helpful.
40. 1. Types of perfectionism -- Jay Early IFS therapist Self-Therapy Volume 3.
  2. Four types of perfectionist parts --
    1. Not-enough perfectionist 2. 1. Creative Block perfectionist 3. 1. Control perfectionist 4. 1. Inner Critic 5. Not-Enough perfectionist
    2. Always must do more on your projects -- not good enough yet. 6. 1. Working right up to deadlines, perfecting. 7. 1. Afraid to finish project because your perfectionistic parts believe this will expose your shortcomings and led to being judged and ridiculed -- humiliation. 8. 9. Creative Block Perfectionist
    3. Need to be perfect the first time 10. 1. Ideas are not good enough 11. 1. Fear of being judged and rejected. 12. 1. Mike Litman: You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going.
      1. This podcast is an example. Didn't know what I was doing. Early episodes were very different. Learning curve. How many people listened? Not many.
        
        Control perfectionist
    4. World must be perfectly in control and in order. 15. 1. I must always do the right thing. 16. 1. I must always make the right choice 17. 1. Rigid control over behavior
      1. Saps vitality 2. 1. Obliterates sponteneity 18. 1. Need predictability to feel safe 19. Inner Critic
    5. Enforces the goals of being perfect
      1. Judges and shames about your work, your life, your spiritual practices 2. 1. Labels you stupid, incompetent, sloppy, inadequate or bad. 3. 1. Good intention: to help you avoid being judged or shamed for mistakes. 20. 1. Types of Inner Critic: Jay Earley Personal-Growth-Programs.com -- Transforming your Inner Critic. Freedom from your Inner Critic.
      2. Perfectionist
        
        This critic tries to get you to do things perfectly. 2. 1. It sets high standards for the things your produce, and has difficulty saying something is complete and letting it go out to represent your best work. 3. 1. It tries to make sure that you fit in and that you will not be judged or rejected. 4. 1. Its expectations probably reflect those of people who have been important to you in the past. 5. Guilt-Tripper
        
        This critic is stuck in the past. It is unable to forgive you for wrongs you have done or people you have hurt. 6. 1. It is concerned about relationships and holds you to standards of behavior prescribed by your community, culture and family 7. 1. It tries to protect you from repeating past mistakes by making sure you never forget or feel free. 8. Underminer
        
        This critic tries to undermine your self-confidence and self-esteem so that you won’t take risks. 9. 1. It makes direct attacks on your self-worth so that you will stay small and not take chances where you could be hurt or rejected. 10. 1. It is afraid of your being too big or too visible and not being able to tolerate judgment or failure. 11. Destroyer
        
        It makes pervasive attacks on your fundamental self worth. 12. 1. It shames you and makes you feel inherently flawed and not entitled to basic understanding or respect. 13. 1. This most debilitating critic, comes from early life deprivation or trauma. 14. 1. It is motivated by a belief that it is safer not to exist. 15. Molder
        
        This critic tries to get you to fit into a certain mold based on standards held by society, your culture or your family. 16. 1. It wants you to be liked and admired and to protect you from being abandoned, shamed or rejected. 17. 1. The Molder fears that the Rebel or the Free Spirit in you would act in ways that are unacceptable. So it keeps you from being in touch with and expressing your true nature. 18. Taskmaster
        
        This critic wants you to work hard and be successful. 19. 1. It fears that you may be mediocre or lazy and will be judged a failure if it does not push you to keep going. 20. 1. Its pushing often activates a procrastinator or a rebel that fights against its harsh dictates. 21. Inner Controller
        
        This critic tries to control your impulses: eating, drinking, sexual activity, etc. 22. 1. It is polarized with an Indulger –addict who it fears can get out of control at any moment. 23. 1. It tends to be harsh and shaming in an effort to protect you from yourself. 24. 1. It is motivated to try to make you a good person who is accepted and functions well in society.
        
        Three Main Manager Roles Contribute to Perfectionism in Catholics.
        
        Often in serious Catholics there is a triumvirate of managers who govern the system if there is not sufficient self-energy.
        
        Triumvirate trium virum, genitive plural of tres viri "three men," from tres "three" (see three) + viri, plural of vir "man" a group of three men holding power, in particular ( the First Triumvirate ) the unofficial coalition of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in 60 BC and ( the Second Triumvirate ) a coalition formed by Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian in 43 BC.
      3. Standard Bearer, Primary Manager and the Inner Critic. 2. 2. Talking only about Catholics here, Catholics who take their faith seriously. 3. I'm going to simplify this down. Three roles. 4. Most people are mostly blended most of the time. 1. Rare for someone to be really recollected at a natural level 2. And most of the time with reasonably well functioning people, the blend is with a manager.
      4. Managers are the parts who run our systems in such a ways as to proactively minimize exiles being activated and breaking through
      5. Managers handle the day-to-day activities
      6. Some of these managers are very, very competent, very good at what they do. Efficient, effective.
      7. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe.
      8. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging,
      9. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 5. Three major roles in perfectionism. The standard bearer, the primary manager, and the internal critic. 1. Standard Bearer
      10. Definition of a Standard for a military unit -- Wikipedia: A bright, colorful flag acting as a strong visual beacon to the soldiers of the unit -- -- it doesn't always have to be a flag. The standard for a Roman Legion was their aquila -- their eagle.
        
        The standard of the Roman Legion, the eagle had quasi-religious importance to the Roman soldier, far beyond being merely a symbol of his legion. 2. 1. To lose a standard was extremely grave, and the Roman military went to great lengths both to protect a standard and to recover it if it were lost 2. 1. Is the standard the deep and loving relationship with God? Nope. 2. Is the standard the close, intimate relationship with our Mother Mary? Nyet. 3. What is the standard that the standard bearer carries aloft
        
        The standard is the unwritten list of rules and expectations that the standard bearer has come up with by his or her own limited vision, about what he or she things Gods wants from us. 4. 1. The standard is the code of conduct that the standard bearer wishes to impose on all the parts
        
        The standard might be quite unreasonable, especially in the extreme cases of perfectionism and scrupulosity 2. 1. And the standard needs to be interpreted -- other parts are not deemed capable of deciphering the standard. Oh no. Who needs to decipher and interpret the standard? That's right, you've got it -- the standard bearer. 3. 1. In the tripartite Freudian model of the mind, The standard bearer corresponds to the superego. 4. 1. The standard bearer wants to act in the role of conscience, giving directives to the system. 5. 1. Why? To keep us safe and secure. That's the goal. Safe from internal enemies (such as exiles with their burdens -- especially shame -- the exiles with their burdens are Freud's Id) and external enemies. Satan, demons, villains of all kinds 6. 1. And also to keep us safe from God's Wrath. Or God's Apathy. Or God's disappointment. Or Something Undesirable from God -- you like, like being smited with a thunderbolt. 5. 6. Good Boy in my system IIC 71 -- A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others
        
        If blended. That's key if he blends with me, takes over with other managers, he will lapse into this role of being a standard bearer. Otherwise, he's not like that. 7. 3. Primary Manager
      11. This is a part that is blended and in charge almost all the time in fairly "well-adjusted people." 4. 1. When there seems to be a consistent single "personality" you are often seeing what I call the primary manager part.
        
        This part can have a lot of self-energy, and only blend to certain degree.
        
        This part can also believe that it is essentially the self, or that it needs to function in the role of the self
        
        Primary manager parts either
        
        Doesn't trust the self 2. 1. Or forget. Lapse back into old patterns 3. 1. Or get caught up when exiles are activated. 4. 3. 5. 1. Collaborator in my system -- formerly the Competent One 6. Inner Critic
      12. Evaluator in my system. Formerly my Internal Critic.
        
        My internal critic's attitude toward farms growing up in Wisconsin.
        
        If I ever have a farm.
        
        Now I have a farm. Radical new views. Never painted my barn. 7.
        
        How my parts work together on this podcast episode
    6. When I am blended and have taken over the self, I set the standards. I speak for God. I am in the role of standard bearer. 7. 1. When I am blended, I shielded Good Boy from the unreasonableness of his demands. I goaded Collaborator, pressed him on to ever better performance. 8. 1. I am the workhorse. Executing. Trying to make it all happen 9. 1. I'm a firefighter. I get angry and rebel against the triumvirate of managers -- YouTube time.
      1. Other firefighter activity -- Chocolate, video games, masturbation, porn, food, shopping, chocolate.
      2. Backlash exacerbates the polarization.
    7. I work to protect us.
    8. Where Does Perfectionism Come From
41. Perfectionism is a symptom. It's an effect of a deeper issue. Still a problem in itself.
42. 1. Curran and Hall: Our findings suggest that self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism have increased over the last 27 years. We speculate that this may be because, generally, American, Canadian, and British cultures have become more individualistic, materialistic, and socially antagonistic over this period, with young people now facing more competitive environments, more unrealistic expectations, and more anxious and controlling parents than generations before.
43. Pete Walker “Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.”
44. Jay Earley: Self-Therapy Vol. 3 chapter on perfectionism.
  1. Fear
  2. Need for approval
  3. Marie Forleo, Everything is Figureoutable “Perfectionism at its core isn't about high standards. It's about fear. Fear of failure. Fear of looking stupid, fear of making a mistake, fear of being judged, criticized, and ridiculed. It's the fear that one simple fact might be true: You're just not good enough.
  4. Michael Law “At its root, perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success.”
45. Hiding -- driven by shame. Genesis 3.
  1. Chinonye J. Chidolue “Perfection is a faux. It’s a mask carved by our own poor esteem to hide who we really are and make others see what really isn’t us.”
46. But what's behind those? Let's go deeper
  1. Shame. Deep sense of fundamental inadequacy. Not being loved. Not being lovable. Essentially flawed. Being bad. Unworthy.
    1. 1. Episodes 37-49
  2. When Does Perfectionism Get Activated?
    1. Some are perfectionistic all the time
    2. Some are episodic. Some of the time. Situation factors or internal factors activate Shame.
    3. Fear
    4. Anger
    5. Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action.
  3. Why Does it Keep Going?
47. Self Images
  1. Shame -- that is the main driver of perfectionism.
    1. I am unacceptable as I am right now. I have to engage in a self-improvement program.
      1. That's what he took away from experience. Not just taught, but construed.
      2. The potential to become good enough to earn the love -- provides hope for the future in the short run.
        
        But hamster on a wheel.
        
        Breeds rebellion, acting out. 2.
  2. 1. Perfectionistic parts always get what they don't want. Winding up alienated, isolated, alone
  3. Glennon Doyle Melton "We can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved."
    1. 1. Ze Frank -- salty quote: “Perfectionism may look good in his shiny shoes, but he's a bit of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties.”
  5. How Do We Overcome Perfectionism?
48. Standard Advice -- focused on symtpoms Oregon Counseling
  1. Become more aware of your tendencies toward perfectionism
    1. 1. Focus on the Positives
    2. 1. Allow yourself to make mistakes
    3. 1. Set more reasonable goals
    4. 1. Learn how to receive Criticism
    5. 1. Lower the pressure you put on yourself
    6. 1. Focus on meaning over perfection
    7. 1. Try not to procrastinate
    8. 1. Cut out negative influences
    9. 1. Go to therapy. 11.
  2. 1. Others Sharon Martin, LCSW in California
  3. Practice self-compassion
    1. 1. Adopt a growth mindset
    2. 1. Instead of focusing on outcomes, enjoy the process
    3. 1. Be true to yourself rather than trying to please everyone
    4. 1. Be more assertive with your own needs
    5. 1. Love your imperfect self. 7.
  4. 1. Tanya Peterson Choosing Therapy.com
  5. Keep track of your thoughts
    1. 1. Practice mindfulness
    2. 1. Focus on your strengths
    3. 1. Stop comparing yourself to others
    4. 1. Find your own meaning and purpose
    5. 1. Rekindle your sense of pleasure and gratitude
    6. 1. Think about your life at age 100
    7. 1. Let yourself experiment. 9.
  6. 1. These are almost all symptom based approaches. Superficial. Likely to not get to the root cause. Sound good.
  7. Hard to accomplish though because of the perfectionism and its roots.
  8. 1. Two major types of approaches
  9. Treat perfectionism as an enemy to be ignored, dismissed, fought against, or overcome. \
    1. Byron Brown based on the Diamond Approach 1999 Souls without Shame. 2. 1. Robert W. Firestone and colleagues in their Voice Therapy approach Conquer your Inner Critical Voice 3. 1. Rick Carson in his 1983 book Taming Your Gremlin 4. 1. By far the approach most serious Catholic favor in dealing with perfectionism and scrupulosity
      1. Will power 2. 1. Suppression 3. 1. Domination over the undesireable internal experience. Triumph of the will! Victory.
        
        Never works. Not for long. And when it seems to work, it's unstable, tenuous, shaky. 4. 1. Revenge of the repressed. 5. 1. But what if perfectionism and the parts around it have something important to say to you? 6. 5.
        
        Treat perfectionism as an ally to be seen, heard, to be accepted, befriended, understood, and ultimately transformed. 1. Hal and Sidra Stone based on Voice Dialogue, 1993 Embracing your inner critic: turning self-criticism into a creative asset 2. Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss based on Internal Family Systems therapy 2010 Self-therapy for your inner critic: transforming self-criticism into self-confidence 3. Ann Weiser Cornell based on Inner Relationship Focusing in her 2005 book The Radical Acceptance of Everything 4. Pat Allen also takes this approach in her 1995 book Art Is a Way of Knowing.[14] 5. These approaches see the inner critic as attempting to help or protect the person—but in a covert, distorted, or maladaptive way. This perspective makes it possible to connect with the critic and transform it over time into a helpful ally.
        
        Earley's approach.
        
        Getting to the root. Shame IIC 37-49.
        
        Engage with the parts burdened with shame.
        
        Neural Networks -- one neural network 1. Dan Siegel's interpersonal neurobiology.
      2. Lee Health IFS is considered a brain-based psychotherapy designed specifically to access and modify neural networks through intentional interactions via a guided meditative processes. These brain based interactions are the key to helping create different pathways often referred to as “rewiring” or “remapping”.
      3. IEADP Foundation These processes serve to engage the brain stem, limbic system and prefrontal cortex simultaneously in the safe and emotional tolerable setting of the therapist’s office. This increase in the individual’s ability to stay in the window of tolerance while being present with strong emotional states, body sensations and memories allows the client to engage the “witnessing mind” and increases the response flexibility to the strong emotional states that previously would elicit eating disorder behaviors 7.
      5. Experiential Exercise
      6. What did you think -- let me know call or text 317.567.9594. Also, if you have found great resources that were helpful for your scrupulosity or perfectionism let me know.
      7. Next episode Episode 86, will come out on November 1, All Saints Day
49. Scrupulosity -- I have such a different take -- Scrupulosity is what happens with perfectionism gets religion.
  1. One more element that we haven't discussed that is so central to scrupulosity, that make scrupulosity much more than a religious spiritual perfectionism.
  2. My own battle with scrupulosity.
  3. Grandpa Roberts: God helps those who help themselves.
  4. Today we laid a foundation for understanding perfectionism. Next episode, we get much more into Solutions for scruplosity and perfectionism.
50. 1. Remember, you as a listener can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
51. Resilient Catholics Community. 84 on the waiting list. Greater discussion of that in the last episode, episode 84. We have been working through the Individual Results Sheet for dozens of RCC members -- amazed at how our Initial Measures Kit can provoke all kinds of new thinking about their parts and their internal worlds. Work with Catholic Standard Bearers, Primary Managers and Inner Critics
52. Catholic therapists or therapists in training -- If you are really interested in Internal Family System and you want to be with me and other Catholic therapists, working on your human formation with your colleagues, The Interior Therapist Community is for you. We have a couple more spots open in the last Foundations Experiential Group for the fall of 2021, so check out all our offerings at soulsandhearts.com/itc.

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In this episode, I lay out the whole mission and purpose of the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast -- answering the six central questions so that you can make an informed decision about whether this podcast fits you and your needs. Get the latest in my discernment about this podcast and the Resilient Catholics Community, where we are going.
Lead in: [cue Sundancer music] Who, What, Where, When, Why and How -- those are the six questions we're addressing today about this podcast.
1. Why those questions? It's all about fit. It's all about being clear about the target audience for this podcast and whether or not you fit. I'm putting all my cards on the table, total transparency, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to engage with me or not.
2. So let's ask the questions. Who is this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast for -- yes, it's for Catholics, but it's only for a small number of Catholics, maybe about 3700 Catholics in the world. How did I get to that number -- stay with me for the calculations later in this episode.
3. What is this podcast all about -- what is the mission, what is the purpose of the podcast?
4. Where does this podcast focus? Spoiler alert: -- Deep inside you, but you'll have to stay tuned to find out more about that…
5. When: what is the new frequency and episode length for this podcast?
6. Why: Why should you listen? I'm asking you for time, attention, concentration and effort -- why should you engage with this podcast at all? I'll be fleshing out all the reasons
7. How: How do we make it all happen with you, for you and in you?
8. Find out the answer to all of these questions in this episode of Interior Integration for Catholics, number 84, The Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of the IIC Podcast [cue intro music]
Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, thank you for being here with me, I am honored to be here with you, and today we are discussing you and me and us and this podcast. We are going to get all relational as we often do here. Because this is a relational podcast. I'm not just a talking head in podcastlandia, I'm a real person, you're a real person and I'm into real relationships.
1. I am clinical psychological Peter Malinoski and you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast -- the IIC podcast for short). Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the English-speaking Catholic world through our website soulsandhearts.com. Check that out, soulsandhearts.com for so many great resources that bring psychology and Catholicism together in a way that is faithful to the truths of our Faith.
2. Let's get into answering the questions -- the who, what, where, when, why, and how of this podcast.
Who is the IIC Podcast For? It's for You.
1. Ideal listener
  1. If you have it all together, if you're sky high on life, if you continually leap from one pinnacle of natural excellence to an even higher summit of human greatness, bounding upward, always with grace and precision and a laser focus on perfection -- good for you. I'm happy for you and in awe of you. But you don't need this podcast.
    1. 1. Let me put it this way. This podcast is for the Catholic who admits he or she is hurting, struggling, a lost sheep, in need of help.
  2. This podcast is for you who are like me, who are very imperfect, wounded, harmed in various ways, who are confused and frustrated, who are weary, who are lonely, who are burdened in different ways.
  3. It's for your parts.
    1. we are a unity but also a multiplicity. We don't have a single, unified, homogenous, monolithic personality. We have several or many parts, each one with its own personality. This concept of parts of us is absolutely central to this podcast. If this idea of parts does not appeal to you, you probably won't like these episodes. I believe there were two major discoveries in psychology, one at the end of the 19th Century -- the discovery of the unconscious -- Freud popularized that. And the other near the end of the 20th century -- the discovery of the multiplicity of self which Richard Schwartz popularized. 4. 1. Definition of part: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and sense of identity, who you are. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. You can also think of them as separate modes of operating if that is helpful. 5. 1. This podcast is especially for your inner outcasts, those parts of us that you reject -- inner lepers, inner tax collectors, inner Pharisees, inner critics, our inner prostitutes, the untouchables within us, our inner rebels, fugitives, inner vagabonds and bums, our inner abused children. Our refugees, our inner imprisoned convicts the parts that don't get to see the light of day, the parts that may have never been loved by you or any other human being who walks the face of the earth.
    2. As I've discussed in so many previous episodes, especially Episode 71: A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others -- I firmly believe that the concept of a core self and these several or many parts helps us to make so much more sense of our experiences, helps to explain so much. And as I laid out in Episode 73, Is IFS Really Catholic, I believe that with some modifications, IFS can be harmonized with our Catholic Faith.
    3. St. Augustine, Confessions “My inner self was a house divided against itself.” That's parts.
    4. Romans 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
    5. It's not just about willpower
      1. Romans 7:18b I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 6. 1. This isn't about willpower -- Paul had amazing willpower. It's not about the intellect. Its about those two discoveries in psychology -- the unconscious and the fact that we have parts. 7. 6. Openness and receptivity to learning and growing. 7. This podcast is for you, you, the one who deeply desires an intimate, personal relationship with God and with Mary, even if you struggle with it\ 8. You who want to be able to come to God our Spiritual Father and Mary our Spiritual Mother with childlike trust and complete confidence 9. Overcoming your natural-level impediments 10. Anything that compromises our capacity to relate and love in the natural realm will compromise our capacity to relate and love God and Mary. Period. Full stop. 11. Invested in own human formation, and is motivated to grow
    6. Psychologically-minded 12. 1. Embraces the multiplicity/unity aspects of the human person and wants to relate better with self internally. 13. 1. Willing to tolerate some suffering -- it will cost you to really engage with these podcasts
      1. Attention and concentration 2. 1. Experiential exercises 14. Wants to love self in a much more ordered way, overcoming shame, overcoming self-absorption 15. Wants to love others in a much more ordered way 16. Orthodox, practicing Catholics 17. Willing to sacrifice 18. Let's do the numbers
    7. There are 70 million Catholics in the US, 13 million in Canada, 5 million in the UK, and 5 million in Australia. Adding in the Catholics of a few other countries, New Zealand and so on, we can round it to about 100 million English speaking Catholics in the entire world. 19. 1. The Catholic Man Crisis Fact Sheet (pp. 36-41) and the Catholic marketing agency Fuzati both assert that only about 10% of Catholics are committed to their faith and practice it regularly by frequenting the sacraments, praying, and engaging in parish or other community life. I think that's generous. Sherry Weddell who does all kinds of work evangelizing in parishes says that 98% of Catholics have no other contact any with Catholic resources other than their parish. Let's go with one tenth, though, one tenth are committed Catholics. One tenth of 100 million leaves 10 million English speaking Catholics committed to the Faith and regularly practicing, taking their faith seriously. 20. 1. Of those, how many really accept that the unconscious exists, and that it has a huge impact on our internal experience, that it affects us in major, unseen ways. So many Catholics, especially devout Catholics get really uncomfortable with the power of the unconscious. They don't want to go there. They want to believe that most of their inner life is in their conscious awareness. I'm going to estimate that only 30% of the 10 million English Speaking, practicing, serious Catholics are willing to really embrace the unconscious and its implications. That leaves us with 3 million Catholics worldwide.
    8. Now how many of those 3 million will accept that we have parts, these little personalities within us, how many will accept that we are both a multiplicity and a unity, how many will resonate? I think about one third of those. Parts really make many Catholic uncomfortable -- are you saying, Dr. Peter, that I'm like Sybil, with multiple personalities. Yes I am. That's exactly what I am saying. I'm saying we're all like that, not so disconnected and dissociated as those who have been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, now called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but that multiplicity is within us, we have parts within us. So one third of 3 million leaves us with 1 million Catholics who might resonate with this podcast.
    9. How many listen to podcasts at least on a monthly basis? 37% of US residents, according to podcasthosting.org's compilation of statistics. We're down to 370,000.
    10. How many are really committed to human formation? That are not just looking at the spiritual life, but also at their natural human formation? Those who really consider the natural realm. It's not that many. I figure maybe 10% of those Catholics, and again, that’s being generous.
    11. We're down to 37,000. And how many of those 3700 will find this podcast -- that depends on you, how you spread the word. But let's say that over time, we get to 10%. We're down to 3,700 potential listeners. 3700 potential listeners. This is a niche podcast.
    12. We are really a very small percentage of the Catholic population from 100 million to 3,700. We are getting about 4,000 downloads per month. That's not that many, really. And our most popular episode had just over 700 downloads total, all-time. And a download doesn't mean a person actually listened to the podcast. And some people download the same episode over and over again -- they listen multiple times.
    13. For the last ten episodes that have been up for more than thirty days, we averaged 469 downloads each. That's not that many!
    14. Transistor.fm, my podcast host, estimates that we have 201 Subscribers, those who listen to each new episode within 24 hours of its release on platforms like Apple Podcast or Spotify.
    15. So we are a niche market. I'm looking for 3700 out of 100 million English speaking Catholics. That's .0037 of one percent, or one in 27,000 Catholics. That's how special you are. Now maybe I’m underestimating the numbers here. I hope I am. You can let me know if you think I'm off base. 21. Just five days ago, I got this email from a listener and her words capture what I am looking for in those 3700 potential listeners. Here is what she said:
    16. First, I just want to share with you that your podcasts (and those of Dr Greg Bottaro) have been earth shattering for me, it's been an absolute revelation in the last 3 months and I can't thank you enough for delving into this 'crying need' to understand ourselves, the mysterious struggle to battle our interior world, and where God (or our image of Him) gets caught in the crossfire. I realized while listening to several podcasts, they answer nearly everything I experienced for years without even realizing they have names...Until listening to the podcast I was never really open to psychology - I relied and trusted more on a well developed will power to always pull through. It's rather painful to think I could have saved myself a lot of needless angst had I learned about this earlier. I'm very knowledgeable about the Faith and I frequently help others in their own faith but my own issues are hard to combat...the podcast brought all this to the next level. 22. 1. That is what I want for my listeners. Real impact, the kind of impact that helps you change your lives. That's what I am looking for, for you. 23. So those the qualities of my intended audience -- the who of the six questions
    17. This is for you who are a Faithful, orthodox, practicing Catholic -- you who are hurting, struggling, a lost sheep, in need of help. 24. 1. And you who are invested in your own human formation, willing to accept the unconscious, willing to embrace your inner outcasts, all the parts of you that have been rejected by others, those who may never have been loved by you or your family or any other human being around you. 25. 1. Openness and receptivity to learning and growing
    18. With a willingness to make sacrifices of time, attention, effort.
    19. You who deeply desires an intimate, personal relationship with God and with Mary, even if you struggle with it.
    20. You who want to overcome your natural-level impediments to approaching God our Spiritual Father and Mary our Spiritual Mother with childlike trust and complete confidence
    21. Anything that compromises our capacity to relate and love in the natural realm will compromise our capacity to relate and love God and Mary. Period. Full stop.
    22. Wants to love self in a much more ordered way, overcoming shame, overcoming self-absorption
    23. Wants to love others in a much more ordered way 26. Outer rings -- those who drop in, those who pass by and stay an hour or two with the podcast -- you are welcome.
    24. Seekers -- those who want information on a particular topic for themselves or for a loved one -- bipolar disorder, scrupulosity, shame, sexuality, trauma 27. 1. Take what is helpful to you.
    25. 1. Me -- So we've talked about you, now let's talk about me, just briefly
  4. In this podcast, I will never ask you to do something I won't do myself.
    1. 1. I work on myself. A lot. Both in the natural realm and in the spiritual realm.
    2. 1. I check in with my parts five to seven times per day.
    3. 1. I have a human formation plan of life
  5. I have a spiritual plan of life and a spiritual director
  6. Charisms -- exploring these through the Catherine of Siena Institute -- online program Called and Gifted, siena.org, Sherry Wedell founded it decades ago -- impressed with her work.
  7. Jenna Reimersma -- group work IFS grounded in Christianity.
  8. Why am I telling you all this?
    1. Nemo dat quod non habet You can't give what you don't have. I can't give you what I don't have.
  9. Lots of discernment going on. How to guide the podcast, how to guide Souls and Hearts. I invest in that process of discernment for you. For you.
  10. 1. Us together
  11. Conversation Hours -- every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 to 5:30 PM Eastern time. 317.567.9594. I've taken lots of calls from my committed listeners. Why? Because I want to be with you, to be together with you in a deep way. I want us to actually have a relationship. I want to know what is going on in your lives. That connection only makes this podcast better and more relevant to you.
    1. 1. Let’s talk about me meeting you where you are at:
    2. Will I do that? Depends on where you are at. That brings us back to the target audience. Those are the ones I am called to reach out to. I'll meet them where there are at with this podcast. Those for whom there really are not that many resources. 2. 1. More than that, though I'll meet you where you are at, but I will call you to a higher level of human formation.
      1. Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies: The secret it that God loves us exactly the way we are…and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this.
        
        John the Baptist -- went out to the desert, inhospitable places -- the people came to him.
        
        Jesus in John 6: Discourse on the bread of life -- so many people left
      2. John 6:60 Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 2. 1. John 6:66 After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
      3. He didn't chase them. He didn't water anything down. He let them make a choice. 5. 1. Jesus with the Rich Young Man -- not meeting him where he was at -- calling him to a higher plane, to being one of the original disciples.
      4. Matthew 19:20-22 The young man said to him, “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.
      5. Jesus backpedal, did he reel it in, did he soften his position, did he run ahead of the rich young man and try to smooth out the hard road for him. No he did not. He addressed his disciples instead. Let's pick up the narrative in verse 23.
      6. 23 And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 6. 3.
      7. Ripple effect to others.
      9. Now we are going to address the question of What
        
        What is the IIC Podcast all about"
  12. Your need for human formation grounded in a Catholic Anthropology without Apology
    1. Not giving up any of the Truths of the Catholic Faith, not surrendering on the smallest point of dogma or dogma, even when it's uncomfortable
      1. Utilizing the best of what modern psychology has to offer
    2. Theory 2. 1. Research 3. 1. Clinical Experience 4. 1. Drawing from all of that. 5.
      1. Topics/Themes
    3. All centers around love. That's the point
      1. Receiving love
        
        From yourself 2. 1. From others 3. 1. From God, especially God as your primary Father, your Spiritual Father, to heal father wounds 4. 1. From Mary, especially Mary as your primary Mother, your Spiritual Mother, to heal mother wounds. 5. 2. 1. Books
        
        My Ideal: Jesus Son of Mary, Fr. Emile Neubert 2. 1. Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence by Fr. Jean Baptist Saint Jure and Saint Claude de la Columbiere 2.
        
        Our spiritual parents are more our parents than our earthly parents, our natural parents
        
        God knew that whatever deficits your parents had, whatever wounds they inflicted
    4. He had a plan to make up for that 3. 1. Only allowed the bad things to happen in order to draw greater good from them 4. 1. Listeners' testimonies -- would not trade their histories now. 5. 6. Healing can happen on the natural realm, not just the spiritual realm 7. Model of the Human person
    5. Multiplicity and Unity 8. 1. Parts 9. 1. Loving oneself. 10. 11. where we take on the toughest topics, the most difficult and raw themes that many people want to avoid.
    6. Fulton J. Sheen “The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.”
      1. Means we use
  13. Didactic portion -- a Lecture if you will.
    1. Draws from
      1. Secular Sources 2. 1. Catholic Sources
        
        Scripture 2. 1. Catechism 3. 1. Lives of Saints 3. 1. More than two decades of my clinical experience as a Catholic psychologist -- integrating
        
        Story -- dramatization
        
        Literature
    2. Quotes 2. 1. Poetry
      1. Experiential Exercises
      2. What is the goal? Our Niche: Solidifying and strengthening our human formation so it can serve as a foundation for a deep, intimate, relational intimacy with God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Mary our Mother
  14. Spiritual Parents
    1. God our Spiritual Father 2. 1. Mary our Spiritual Mother
      2. Gaping hole of human formation -- human formation as the natural foundation for the spiritual life
  15. St. Thomas Aquinas -- Grace perfects nature.
    1. 1. Human formation just starting to be addressed in seminaries -- human formation emphasized there -- see IIC 63: Human formation: the critical missing element.
    2. A whole section is devoted to human formation in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops document entitled "Program of Priestly Formation, Fifth Edition" which came out in 2006. pages 29-42
      1. Longest and most complete discussion of human formation I could find in an official church document 2. 1. 14 pages -- but no definition of human formation. 3.
        
        What this podcast is not about
  16. Not about priests, bishops, popes, spouses, friends, politicians, Catholic celebrities, not about anyone other than you and your internal world and your relationship with yourself, with God and with Mary your spiritual mother
    1. 1. Not about world peace -- it's about inner peace
    2. 1. It's not about current events -- it's about the events in your inner life, your interior life.
    3. 1. It's not about righting wrongs in our families and our neighborhoods, our parishes, our nation, our world -- it's about right wrongs within us. That's our starting point, that's what gets neglected in our world.
    4. 1. It's not about social justice -- it's about inner justice, about you being just to you, in all your parts.
    5. 1. It's not about mercy to others -- it's about mercy to your own abandoned, needy, condemned, rejected parts.
    6. 1. It's not about evangelizing others -- it's about evangelizing yourself.
    7. 1. It's not about focusing on the problems of any other human being -- it's about you examining you and you connecting with you -- it's about knowing yourself, as Socrates commanded
    8. It's about removing the beam from your own eye as your Lord commanded, so you can see more clearly
      1. This is not about being hip and fashionable in the Catholic world. I'm not some sort of Catholic star or celebrity or social media influencer. None of these podcast episodes are ever going to go viral on social media.
    9. I'm not good at being hip or fashionable or one of the cool, popular Catholic media kids on the block. Trying to be like that would make me look like I was trying to dance the Macarena while intoxicated at your cousin's wedding, and that is not a pretty picture.
      2. We're maintaining the focus on you, especially on the hidden parts of you, where most people do not want to go. There's a reason why we hide parts of ourselves from ourselves. We want to bring the light.
      3. This is not selfishness. This is not some kind of self-absorbed navel gazing in a psychological day spa where you have cucumber slices over your eyes and white cream on your face and I tell you how wonderful you are and lament with you about how terribly others treated you. Engaging with this podcast is more like a boot camp that demands humility and courage and boldness and perseverance that the vast majority of people are not going to demonstrate. If you really go inside you're going to find things you really don't like. Things that scare you, things that disgust you, things that could upset you.
        
        Freud 1933 the id is a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement
        
        Bessel van der Kolk “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.” The Body Keeps the Score
        
        Emily Dickenson

One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —

One need not be a House —

The Brain has Corridors — surpassing

Material Place —

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting

External Ghost

Than its interior Confronting —

That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,

The Stones a'chase —

Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter —

In lonesome Place —

Ourself behind ourself, concealed —

Should startle most —

Assassin hid in our Apartment

Be Horror's least.

The Body — borrows a Revolver —

He bolts the Door —

O'erlooking a superior spectre —

Or More —

This is a hard road people -- really getting to know yourselves.
1. St. Augustine said: “Humility is a virtue by which a man has a low opinion of himself because he knows himself well.”
And there's nothing so distracting as looking at other people -- attributing our difficulties to other people, pointing the finger at other people.
1. The London Times once sent out an inquiry to famous authors, asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” and Chesterton responded simply, “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”
2. St Augustine “This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.”
Where -- let's tackle the where of this podcast
1. Where is this podcast?
  1. Simple asnwer -- it's on all the major podcast players-- Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Podcast, all of them.
  2. It's also on our website: Soulsandhearts.com/iic.
2. 1. The more important question -- where in you does this podcast intend to reach? Where will we work together?
  2. We work in your heart. Not just head knowledge -- not just intellectual material. But in your heart.
    1. Luke 10:27 Jesus answered “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
      1. Start with the heart -- in the body, in the natural realm. Not with the soul. With the heart. With the seat of emotions, with the seat of relational experience. Before the soul, even. The heart. Leading with the heart. 2. 1. And Our Lord insists on the whole of us --all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind -- all of us. All of our parts. 3. 2. we start in your heart but we also will work with your mind and your soul and your body 1. Feeding your mind with groundbreaking new conceptual material -- integrating IFS concepts with a Catholic worldview.
      2. Another where question -- Where does the podcast fit in the broader Church -- where is our corner of the vineyard?
  3. I'm going to sum it up with this term -- Inner pre-evangelization. This podcast's corner of the vineyard is human formation, specifically Inner pre-evangelization. What do I mean by that?
    1. Let's start with a Definition of Pre-evangelization from Fr. John Hardon's Catholic Dictionary: Preparation of a person or people to receive the Gospel. The need for such preparation in the modern world arises from the massive neglect of God and things spiritual. "In the past," the Second Vatican Council explains, "it was the exception to repudiate God and religion to the point of abandoning them, and then only in individual cases; but nowadays it seems a matter of course to reject them as incompatible with scientific progress and a new kind of humanism" (Gaudium et Spes, 8). Through the media of social communication, this spirit of unbelief has permeated whole segments of society. Hence the need for predisposing people even to listen to the Gospel, especially in the once Christian affluent cultures of Euro-America.
    2. USCCB National Directory on Catechesis reads as follows: Pre-evangelization ordinarily builds on basic human needs, such as security, love, or acceptance, and shows how those basic human needs include a desire for God and his word.
    3. Sherry Widdell: Fruitful Discipleship, p. 63. Direct pre-evangelization of individuals includes praying for others, building genuine friendships, fostering personal and spiritual trust, hospitality, the witness of your life and vocation, having threshold and spiritual conversations with individuals, asking thought-provoking questions to stimulate spiritual curiosity, and sharing the story what you’ve seen God do in your own life.
    4. So pre-evangelization is all about preparing a person or a community to be able to receive the Gospel.
    5. 1. I argue that we need to pre-evangelize ourselves. Even those of us faithful, practicing Catholics -- we need to go inside and work with our parts.
  4. We don't want shifting natural foundations -- leads to rickety spiritual edifices that are likely to fall down.
  5. I make the case that we have many parts who are separated, who are isolated, who have terrible, toxic God images, who may be terrified of God, raging at God, disappointed in God. I make the case that we can't just bring God to them without some preliminary work on the natural realm. This is what I am calling inner pre-evangelization.
  6. Definition time with Dr. Peter. Inner pre-evangelization is preparing your parts on the natural, human level through your love for them through bringing them into relationship with your core self so that they can better tolerate being loved by God and Mary and heal. Then, in a much more integrated way, you can love God, Mary, your neighbor and yourself in a much more intimate, deep, full, and complete way.
    1. I know from clinical experience that a client's exiled part often needs to experience the love from the client's core self before that part can be open to the love of God or love from others.
    2. Love your neighbor as yourself. Luke 10:27. We need to love ourselves. We need to love our parts. As part of that love, we help our parts with human formation.
  7. So where is our corner of the vineyard -- in your heart. In your human heart, in the natural recesses, the hidden pockets of your heart.
  9. When -- let's ask when.
    1. Monthly Episodes, 60-90 minutes, they come out the first Monday of the Month.
    2. Reducing frequency -- each episode takes 12-15 hours to produce. That's a lot of time. But there's another reason, and I'll address it at the end.
  10. Why? So you and I can walk this pilgrimage through this life to heaven
    1. Life and Death seriousness about this. Eternal consequences to how we address these human formation issues.
    2. I want you to have Peace, joy, wellbeing.
    3. I want you to fulfill your destiny, accepting your identity as a beloved child of God and Mary, a cherished son or daughter of the Most High God and our Lady.
  11. Finding freedom in that identity as a beloved child
  12. Responding in love.
  13. How
3. Fulton Sheen 1978: There is a third approach to an electronic audience which will be in the future. It will not always be the direct, nor even the indirect which I used. It is what might be called the ant biological. I do not use this word in the sense of the science of man’s beginning. I merely mean it as the roots of the word imply – a study of man. The presentation of religion had been principally from God to man, but now it will be from man to God. It will not start with the order in the universe alluding to the existence of a Creator of the cosmos; it will start with the disorder inside of man himself. It will take all the findings of our psychological age and use them as a springboard for the presentation of Divine Truths.
4. 1. I often wish that I were younger so that I might use this third approach which I have mentioned namely, starting with the unhappiness inside of the human heart. The audience is always there, the opportunities are ever present. There is need to take hold of tortured souls like Peter, agnostics like Thomas and mystics like John and lead them to tears, to their knees or to resting on His Sacred Heart.
5. How? By working with your heart -- the unhappiness within your heart, the restlessness within your heart, the pain, the wounds, the trauma, the burdens that your parts carry.
6. The Resilient Catholics Community
7. Not long after I started this podcast I started getting dozens of requests every month from listeners asking if I would be their individual therapist. I've turned away hundreds of people, I don't have the bandwidth to take on so many.
  1. But it led to the question -- How can I help? How can I go beyond the podcast. How can I do more? There's a need here, there has got to be more than the one-way communication of the podcast. More than just the occasional phone calls and emails.
  2. And not all at once, not suddenly, but gradually it came to me. We needed a community. I had a deep sense that I was called to pull some of these 3700 potential listeners together and offer you something that went much deeper, much further, and something that brought us all together. A community. And so, last year, the Resilient Catholics Community came into being
8. 1. Who
  2. Who is the Resilient Catholics Community for?
    1. It's for the minority of our potential 3700 adult listeners who really love this podcast who get this podcast. This Podcast is a funnel 2. 1. Who are so invested in their human formation that they are willing to spend time, money, effort on it 3. 1. Who want to be with other like-minded Catholics on the journey 4. 1. Who burn with a desire for a deep, intimate relationship with God and with Mary, a real human, personal connection 5. 1. And who recognize they have some natural-level impediments to that deep relating 6. 1. and who are willing to make sacrifices in time, effort, money, humility and courage to grow in human formation and overcome natural-level impediments to being loved and to loving 7. 1. Who want to become saints. 8. 1. Who are willing to be pioneers at the cutting edge in this adventure of human formation. Really at the tip of the spear, the first explorers of this human formation ground for laymen and laywomen. 9.
      1. Who am I in the RCC
    2. First of all the RCC is My Tribe, my people, bringing together two groups into one
      1. First, faithful, orthodox, serious Catholics who are wounded and suffering and know it 2. 1. And Second, who are psychologically minded (or at least want to be psychologically minded), who believe in the unconscious and who embrace the unity and multiplicity of the human person 3. 1. And who want to see through the lens of a core self and parts. 4. 2. 1. I don't want to do this alone. 3. 1. I've spent a lot of time in these last 84 episode, letting you get to know me, what I think and feel, and who I am as a person. Especially in episode 71 A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others -- I described to you all my parts, all those that I know! 4. 1. I stay in the natural realm -- preparing the way. John the Baptist. Arithmetic before algebra.
      2. Not a spiritual director
      3. Not a priest
      4. I don't claim to understand how grace is moving in your soul 2. I don't see myself as a leader, as a shepherd. I see myself more like an Old English Sheepdog
      5. Loud distinctive bark 3. 1. Independent and Strong willed -- so I need your prayers to be small and humble and childlike and responsive to the touches of our Lord and our Lady.
      6. Adaptable and intelligent, like to learn new things
      7. Faithful
      8. Good family dog
      9. Physically pretty big -- like me.
      10. Sociable
      11. Protective
      12. Love having fun -- clowns, sense of humor. 3.
      13. What of the RCC
  3. The Initial Measures Kit -- which generates the Individual Results Sheet and the Personalized Human Formation Plan -- we've done several of these now, and our members are amazed at the results, how accurately we are in helping them identify their parts and how their parts relate to each other, and the why behind their parts' desires and impulses.
    1. 1. Weekly premium podcast, just for RCC community members -- Inner Connections will be starting soon
    2. 1. A complete course for working on your human formation
    3. 1. Daily check ins with your companion -- accountability and structure
  4. Weekly company meetings
  5. Office hours with me
  6. Conversation hours with me
  7. Special resources -- for example in my email communication with Derek Scott, he provided me with a trove of his extra resources on grief in a password protected section of his website that he said RCC members could have access to. That is so cool.
  8. All this for $99 per month. And we make it financially possible for anyone who is a good fit for the RCC to join through write-offs and scholarships. The fees are not the tail that wags the dog.
  9. And there also is opportunities for some parts-based individual coaching as well.
  10. Essentially, the What of the RCC is a pilgrimage together.
  11. 1. The When of the ITC
  12. We will reopen in December for a limited number of new members. It might 100 new members, we don't want to take on more than we can really be with and effectively work with.
  13. Sign upon the waiting list now -- we already have 58 on the waiting list, go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc and register for the waiting list. Later this week, I will be sending out the first email with extra resources to waiting list members, to give you a sample of some of the resources in the RCC. Soulsandhearts.com/rcc to register.
  14. The main reason I am reducing frequency of this podcast from weekly to monthly is so that I can spend more time with the RCC members. It's that simple. You RCC members are my people. I have a very strong call to really invest in my connection with you, in my relationships with you. I want to be with you on your journey of human formation, on your journey of inner pre-evangelization of your parts. I want to be with you in this part of your work in the natural realm.
  15. The podcast has already met some of its objectives
    1. Evergreen content 5. 1. Giving you a huge sample of my content, my style and who I am to help you discern if you want to take the next step, which is joining the RCC
    2. 1. The Why of the RCC -- It's all about loving with your whole heart -- all of your being. Getting over all the natural level issues that hold you back.
    3. 1. So sign up for the waiting list. We'll go through our list from the earliest to the latest joining members, so your ranking matters if we have to limit enrollment. Soulsandhearts.com/rcc.
    5. Remember, you as a listener can call me on my cell any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. I've set that time aside for you. 317.567.9594. (repeat) or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.
    6. I want to mention another community for any of you listeners who are Catholic therapists or therapists in training -- If you are really interested in Internal Family System and you want to be with me and other Catholic therapists, working on your human formation with your colleagues, The Interior Therapist Community is for you. We are finalizing new groups for the fall, so check out all our offerings at soulsandhearts.com/itc.
    7. So tune in next month, on Monday, October 4, 2021 when we will begin our series on perfectionism and scrupulosity. Several of you have asked me to address those topics, so I will.
    8. Gerry Crete, the cofounder and CEO of Souls and Hearts has a special message for you Catholic men about his community, Catholic Journeymen. Let's hear from Dr.Gerry:
    9. Invocations of our Lady and St. John the Baptist.
    10. Credit for the Lead in music which is titled Misty Meadow by George Sundancer at Pixabay.

View Details

Join me for a deep exploration of the ways our parts process grief in healthy ways, the back-and-forth alternating between focusing on the loss and looking at restoration. Guided by the work of IFS therapist and author Derek Scott and by using a dramatized example of loss with resulting grief, we will explore the internal interactions among our parts that lead to such a multifaceted experience of grief. We also examine the two paths of grief that Catholics can choose.
Lead-In
1. Intro -- activation warning
  1. What you are about to hear is a fictional dramatization of a car accident and Brian Moreland's internal reactions -- the reactions of his parts - to that accident and its effects on him over time.
    1. 1. Listen with care and prudence -- if you have unresolved trauma responses surround a car accident, please be thoughtful about whether or not to continue.
  2. 1. News Story: [Insert News Intro music]:

And now out to James Fieldler, our roving KDTT reporter, coming to us live from the scene of a terrible accident earlier this evening, a really difficult story that we have been following for you. James – what do you have for us?

[background traffic and rain and truck backing] Terry, I am here just off the shoulder of I-94 Westbound, about four miles west of Miles City, near mile marker 142. Earlier this evening, an eastbound Ford pickup crossed the median into oncoming westbound traffic, striking a Honda Odyssey minivan at full speed and sending it careening through the guardrail, and rolling down this shallow embankment.

In that minivan were a 37-year old man, a 33 year old woman, and four children ranging from about 9 to two years old. From this angle, you can see how damaged this minivan was, nearly crushed as they are winching it up onto the wrecker. Montana State police have just confirmed this was a fatal accident, that one of the children, about five years old has died of massive head injuries. The man and two of the children have been airlifted to St. Alexius Trauma Center in Bismarck, no word on their condition right now.

That is tragic, James. What do we know about the others, James?

Terry, we have some good news, too. The woman was able to walk away from the wreck. EMTs used the jaws of life to break open the back of the van and rescue the other two children, who have also been transported by ambulance to Bismarck. The 45-year old driver the pickup was shaken up and was taken to Holy Rosary Hospital in Miles City, apparently with minor injuries. No one else was in the truck.

What do we know about the cause?

The investigation is ongoing. As you can see, driving conditions were also difficult – the rain coming down here. There is some question about driver fatigue in the driver of the truck. No word yet on any charges that might be filed, but it’s likely. A source told me that the pickup driver’s license had been revoked for a second DUI. There is no official word yet on whether alcohol or drugs were involved in this crash.

Thank you, James, and we will continue to follow this story for you. Our hearts and thoughts go out to all those involved in the crash, we wish them a rapid recovery. Now on to Jeff Springer with sports, and the surprising finish to the Griz’s matchup with the Idaho State Bengals. Jeff, tell us what happened at Washington-Grizzly stadium today in the rain? [Cut to Intro Music

Intro
1. We are together in this great adventure, this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am honored to be able to spend this time with you.
2. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
3. 1. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
4. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. Today's episode, number 83 is entitled The Internal Dance of Healthy Grief and it's released on August 30, 2021
6. 1. Heard a reenacted story about Brian Moreland, and I’ll be bringing that story in throughout todays episode to add depth and examples to the concepts
8. Review: I encourage you to review the last episode, number 82 -- the many faces of grief inside us.
9. That episode goes over what happens to our parts when we experience grief?
10. The experiences I'm about to describe are not the parts themselves.
  1. Definition of a part -- Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own understanding of self.
  2. More than just one factor
    1. More than just one emotion, more than just one desire or impulse
    2. Rather -- a whole constellation of these qualities that endure over time, even if the part is not in conscious awareness in the moment.
11. Adapted Dual Process Model of Bereavement
12. Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut originally the DPM in 1999 Death Studies article called The dual process model of coping with bereavement: rationale and description
13. 1. Derek Scott -- IFS Therapist, author and expert on grief adapted this model in his article Grief and IFS: Mapping the Terrain -- check that out at his website ifsca.ca
  2. two clusters of parts, two groups of parts.
    1. one focused the loss -- looking back to the past, looking at what happened.
    2. One cluster of parts focused on -- looking toward restoration -- looking to the future, managing the demands of life now.
    3. 1. Let's expand on these two clusters.
    4. one cluster is oriented towards the loss -- those are the parts that IFS Therapist and Author Derek Scott introduced to us in the last episode.
      1. Focus on experiencing grief
        
        Managers
        
        Disbelief 2. 1. Numbness 3. 1. Sadness 4. 1. Guilt 5. 1. Spiritual Bypassing 2. 1. Exiles
        
        Depression 2. 1. Missing/yearning 3. 1. Protest (anger) 4. 1. Guilt 5. 1. Powerlessness/despair/resignation. 6. 1. Shame 3. 2. the other cluster towards restoration -- These are new parts. 1. dealing with the new complexities in life for the bereaved that are occasioned by the loss 2. Readjusting to the new reality -- conforms to Elisabeth Kubler Ross' stage of acceptance and Colin Parkes' phase of reorganization and recovery 3. Activities
        
        Attending to life changes 4. 1. New roles, new relationships 5. 1. Distraction from grief 6. 1. Avoidance of grief
        
        The dual process model of coping with bereavement (DPM) identifies (from an IFS perspective) contends that these two models (clusters) oscillate as the mourning proceeds. It’s the oscillation, moving back and forth between the morning and grieving on the one hand and the restoration and moving forward on the other hand that allows for reestablishment of a new, healthy normal. 1. the grieving individual at times confronts, at other times avoids, the different tasks of grieving. 2. This model argues the need for dosage of grieving, that is, the need to take respite from dealing with either of these stressors, as an integral part of adaptive coping.
        
        This oscillation is very familiar to the IFS therapist as affect-laden parts may occupy the attention of the client, then pragmatic protectors may hold the floor to afford a break from the intensity of the other parts.
        
        The dance between the loss-oriented cluster of parts and the restoration oriented cluster of parts tends to be initially weighted towards the loss. Over time the restoration cluster of parts will become more prominent as the client lives into what may be considered to be the "new normal".
        
        Parts of Brian
14. So to illustrate, let's pick up the story with Brian Moreland, the father of the family, now at the trauma hospital in Bismarck. Brian has been awake for the last two hours as the effect of his sedatives has worn off… These are his manager parts.
  1. Disbelief -
    1. Hospital Sounds, Doctor giving news Door open, door close
      1. HI Brian, they told me you're awake and asking questions. I'm Dr. Phillip Marzone, neurologist here at St. Alexius Trauma Center, We've transported you back to Bismarck. You've had a cranial fracture, some coup-contrecoup symptoms, some mild brain swelling and you've had a concussion. You been sedated and unconscious for about 24 hours, but neurologically you are stabilizing. Your scans look good for what you've been through and they're getting better. It's still early so there are no guarantees, but there's reason to be hopeful for a full recovery. Minor fracture of your left tibia, a lot of bruising, but you were lucky, given the seriousness of that accident. 2. 3. How is Jessica? How are my kids?
      2. I know you have a lot of questions. I totally get that. there's a lot to catch up on. Your wife is fine, she's been released with only minor injuries. Same thing with Amy, your daughter. Ben had a broken clavicle and his shoulder is going to need reconstructive surgery. A couple of pins and he's going to be fine, we have a great orthopedic team here that are going to see him through. Your toddler Audra had a broken femur and a broken arm and some bruising, but she'll be fine, we'll release he in a few days, she's been asking for you. 4. 5. What about Jeffy -- my four year old, what about him -- Jeffy, my four year old son?
      3. Brian that was a massive wreck. I'm surprised you and your family came out of it as well as you did, that's something to be thankful for. But Jeff -- Mr. Moreland, you som didn't make it. He died instantly of extensive head trauma. There was nothing anyone could do for him. [Phone Ring] I've got to go, I'm called to the spinal cord unit stat. This is a lot to take in, let's not go too fast with it. Let us know if you want a grief counselor or a chaplain. We can send them to you. [cue door closing] 6. From one of Brian's protectors, who is using disbelief as a way to cope with the immediate intensity of the loss -- buying him time, softening the blow so that he is less overwhelmed with the implication. Let's listen to this Disbelieving Protector. No, this can't be true, this can't have happened. Jeffy is not dead. Jeffy did not die. There has to be a mistake. Doctors make mistakes. It happens all the time. It's OK. He's not dead.
        
        Numbness -- This clip give you a sense of how a numbing protector comes in to deaden the intensity of his memory of the accident. We'll be entering into Brian's experience as he flashes back to the accident and then a part of him numbs him out. [flashback sounds -- accident, screaming just a low pitched hum]
        
        Depression/sadness A later, a manager part is dealing with the sadness, starting to experience the sadness of the loss. Let's listen to how that part might sound. Jeffy is dead. My boy, my son. My beautiful boy. Jeffy. I love you.
        
        Spiritual Bypassing; 1. John Welwood 1984 "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." 2. Here is a manager using spiritual bypassing to try to stabilize Brian's system. Let's listen as it takes over and runs his system. OK, OK. God knows what's best here, just accept it, Jeffy is dead, but it's OK, Jeffy is in heaven among the saints. He's little St. Jeffy. It's OK. Everything's OK. And I've still got Jess, Amy Ben, and Tim with me. We'll make it. We are just going to move on from here on out, not looking back, just keeping our eyes on Jesus. 5.
      4. Let's take a look at some of Brian's Exiles in the loss-oriented cluster
  2. Missing/yearning Oh my son. I want to hug you one more time, just one more time. Jeffy. I miss you so much my son, I can hardly go on living without you.
    1. 1. Protest (anger)
    2. O my God, Jeffy's dead, you took him from me, oh my God, why did you do this to me, I'll never see Jeffy again. Why did you do this to me? How am I supposed to live on when he's dead, my boy is dead, he was only four years old, God, Mr. Omniscient Being, do have any idea of what you've done here? How is this just? How is this loving, Mr. Almighty God who supposedly loves us with an infinite love. What a crock of ----.
    3. 1. Guilt
    4. I froze for an instant, just an instant, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I should have hit the brakes immediately and spun hard right, I could have broken through the guardrail and went down the embankment, that would have been so much better than the head-on, I could have avoided the head-on collision. 2. 1. If we would have left a few minutes later, if I hadn't been in such a hurry to get out so that we could catch the end of the game, we would not have been there when the pickup crossed over…
      1. Powerlessness/despair/resignation.
    5. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could have done. The guy was drunk, it happened so fast, there was no way I could have avoided him.
      1. Shame: This happened because I'm not the father I should be. I've never been the father I should be to Jeffy, or the other kids. I'm too broken, too wounded, so inadequate. Just like my father, I turned out just like my old man, in spite of swearing up and down I would never be like him.
    6. 1. the other cluster towards restoration
  3. dealing with the new complexities in life for the bereaved that are occasioned by the loss
    1. 1. Readjusting to the new reality -- conforms to Elisabeth Kubler Ross' stage of acceptance and Colin Parkes' phase of reorganization and recovery
    2. 1. Activities
    3. Attending to life changes -- Manager part that is focused on the future. Let's hear what it has to say. Jess and I really worked well together on replacing the Odyssey. Buying cars has always been a painful process for me, but this time we did it together and it went really smoothly. 2. 1. New roles, new relationships, continuing bonds. It's a beautiful thing. Amy and I are taking run every night together -- she's wants to be distance runner like I was. And we can talk. She's 13 and she wants to spend time with me. And I'm reading to Audra every night, and soon she'll get her casts off. So good to spend time with the kids. And Tim and I play chess. How he laughed when he beat me for the first time, and I wasn't throwing the game, either. And Jess and I are pulling together in a whole new new way. 3. 1. Distraction from grief The Grizzlies are taking on the University of Northern Colorado -- The Griz is going to crush the Bears Saturday at home in Missoula. They will blow them out, the Bears won't have a chance. That will be a good game. Jimmy and Dave can come over, we'll make a night of it. Jess has offered to make us tacos. That will be great. 4. 1. Avoidance of grief -- I'm not ready to go to Jeffy's gravesite yet. It's not time. Not yet. Someday I will go, but not yet. 5. 4.
    4. Compassion Heals: An IFS perspective on Bereavement -- From Derek Scott.
      1. Compassion heals. Bringing compassion to another invites their compassion for their own parts
      2. The more significant the loss, the more profound the disruption to the system
      3. The system responses to the loss may be manager led, firefighter driven or characterized by erupting exiles
      4. The protective system may be in disarray and unable to function normally; resulting in the client feeling particularly vulnerable
      5. The protective system may become entrenched because of the perceived threat from or to the exiles
      6. Present loss experiences may trigger parts connected to former loss events seeking healing
      7. Unburdening parts in the loss cluster will facilitate healing and greater resiliency in terms of subsequent losses
    5. Advantages of IFS-informed understandings of grief
15. Two episodes ago in Episode 81, we looked at the stage and phase models of grief trajectories
  1. Elisabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief DABDA -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
    1. 1. Colin Parkes' model Shock and numbness, yearning and searching, disorganization and despair, reorganization and recovery
  2. How the empirical trajectory of grief didn't support a linear progression through the stages or phases
  3. Still valuable in describing experiences at a moment in time
  4. The myth of the unified, homogenous, monolithic personality really compromises our ability to understand grief.
    1. Identity Issues -- not as often address
      1. Low self-esteem 2. 1. Who am I now, that I am no longer married? I am a widower
      2. And in this episode, we looked at the internal dance of our parts -- how parts weave and move, some more prominent in some moments, other parts more prominent in other moments, alternating between address the loss on the one hand and, on the other hand, moving into the future, into a new normal, the process of restoration and renewal.
      3. And why, again? Why are we doing this? In order to increase our capacity to love. That's why. To be able to understand ourselves and others in grief in more than one dimension, in more than two dimensions, but in five dimensions, as we discussed in the last episode, Episode 82 -- The Many Faces of Grief Inside Us.
      5. Final thought from Derek Scott -- Grief has its own timetable. There is a lot of wisdom in the system regarding when to allow access to affect-laden parts. There are, of course, frustrated, impatient parts that want it to be "over" so that the system can return to normal functioning. There may also be postponing managers (see "complicated grief”). Respecting protective parts saying, "We're not going there now" and asking them about their concerns, as well as when would be a good time to "go there "and what would need to change to allow access provides us with an understanding of how to best work with the system.
16. Being patient
17. 1. Accepting all parts as they are, where they are. That does not mean we endorse all of their impulses or desires. Check out Episode 66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages.
18. 1. Lots of gratitude for Derek Scott's work on IFS and Grief. Check out his work at IFSCA.CA.
19. 1. Dana Arcuri, Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark: “For those struggling with grief, there’s no timetable. It can last months, years, or longer. There is no rush. Give yourself permission to take however long it may be to fully heal from your loss.”
21. Catholic aspects of Grief
22. Two Paths
  1. Grief is the price we pay for loving
    1. 1. One Path -- Away from love -- too much pain, too much vulnerability, too much suffering, self-protection.
    2. Leads to bitterness, anger, coldness, distance.
    3. I will never love again
    4. There is no way I can see this loss as a good thing, as a gift. Unmitigated evil, no good in it.
    5. 1. Second Path
    6. Deeper intimacy - reinvesting even more deeply in relationships 2. 1. We may have to really take on God. Challenge Him wrestle with him.
      1. Challenge our God image issues
      2. Break out of our comfort zones
        
        Realizing that being hurt by loss is not the same as being harmed by loss. We will feel pain. 4. 4.
    7. 1. Positive aspects of grief -- we don't want to be pollyannish about grief, but we don't want to be overly pessimistic either. 1. Melissa Cultraro: The Upside Of Loss: How My Mum’s Death Made Me A Better Person
    8. Quote: But here’s the thing: Losing my mum as a teen helped me discover a drive and joy in myself that I never thought I had. Grieving isn’t solely about pain and suffering, I’ve learned. Sometimes there’s an upside to loss. 2. Quotes:
    9. Shauna L Hoey “Heartache purged layers of baggage I didn’t know I carried. Gifts hide under the layers of grief.”
    10. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
    11. Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. – C.S. Lewis 3. Field of Post-Traumatic Growth -- looking at the upside, the benefits of adverse life events, of traumas
    12. Richard Tedeschi, Lawrence Calhoun 1996 article in the Journal of Traumatic Stress
      1. Introduced the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory 2. 1. Summarized research in the field from the 1980s and 1990s that documented at least some positive impact resulting from negative events -- rape, incest, bereavement, cancer, HIV infection, heart attacks, natural disasters, combat, and the Holocaust. 3. 4. 1. Five Factors
      2. Relating to others Improved personal relationships and increased pleasure derived from being around people we love. 2. 1. New Possibilities Embracing new opportunities – both at the personal and the professional fronts. 3. 1. Personal Strength Increased emotional strength and resilience. 4. 1. Spiritual Change Greater spiritual connection.
        
        A better understanding of spiritual matters 2. 1. Stronger religious faith. 3. 5. 1. Appreciate of Life A heightened sense of gratitude toward life altogether. 5.
        
        Romans 8:28 -- lynchpin.
        
        Separates those who adapt well from those who don't
        
        Meaningless universe vs. meaning, purpose, growth, mission.
        
        But not spiritual bypassing
        
        What is our source or security? In attachment language, what is our secure base
23. Grief and loss may show us what we have overvalued in our lives -- career, health, even some of our relationships, at the expense of the most important things. Love. .
24. 1. All that is human is finite. The reality of death.
25. 1. God sometimes takes away our false bases of security, reveals to us their limitations
  2. CS Lewis: Pain is God's megaphone. Not because God is a sadist, enjoys watching people suffer. 2.
  4. Experiential Exercise on Grief
26. Creating Space Exercise
  1. Invitation
    1. Use these exercises as they are helpful to you. 2. 1. Starting with the basics here.
      1. New for some
      2. Helpful review for others
        
        All of this is invitations, suggestions -- no commands, no orders to do anything
        
        Some of these invitations or suggestions are likely to be helpful. Some might not be.
      3. Take what is useful and helpful to you, and you can leave the rest behind.
      4. It's up to you, you get to decide.
        
        You're free to stop at any time. 6.
      5. Quiet, safe place
    2. all unnecessary electronics silenced if that's ok with you. -- phones, screens, TV, all that off for now, except what you're using to listen to this. 2. 1. Doors closed
      1. Comfortable position
    3. Seated comfortably or lying down 2. 1. Can shift around, can move, whatever seems to suit you. 3.
      1. We begin to just notice what's going on inside
    4. May be new for you -- to really notice what's happening in the body
      1. Body is good -- God created us, body and soul, we are embodied beings, body and soul composites 2. 1. Genesis 1:31 -- just after making Adam's body out of the clay of the earth, and fashioning Eve's body from Adam's rib, breathing live into them, animating their bodies with their immortal souls, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. 3. 2. 1. Can help to close eyes if that seems ok. 3. 1. Noticing what's going on in your body
      2. What is drawing your attention?
        
        Warmer vs. colder 2. 1. Tingling sensation 3. 1. Feeling of clothing touching your skin 4. 1. Your breath -- inhaling and exhaling 5. 1. Contact with the furniture 6. 1. Watch on your wrist, glasses 2. 1. Or maybe the sensations are deeper
        
        Something with your stomach 2. 1. Tension your shoulders or back 3. 1. Might be aches or pains somewhere 3. 4. 1. You might experience distractions -- that's ok, very common.
      3. See if you can just gently allow your attention to go back to your body sensations -- not wanting for foce anything here. 2. 5. 1. Whatever you're sensing in your body, wherever you're sensing it, we're just noticing it.
      4. Accepting that the body sensation is there. Giving it space within you to exist. Because it's going on right now.
      5. We are just being present with that sensation
      6. And maybe you can be curious about it. Get interested in it.
        
        So often we assume so much about our body sensations, we don't really notice them, see them, experience them as they are.
        
        Really getting to know what is happening within our bodies. 6.
        
        Sensations may change. 1. Can follow the changes -- there might be a relaxation of intensity as you're noticing and interested in the body sensation -- maybe there's not a need for so much intensity if you are now paying attention. 2. Noticing a different part of your body. 3. Continuing to be with your body.
        
        Deepening the connection with your body. Might find out fascinating things, just by attending and noticing
    5. Thanksgiving for your body. 2. 1. Gratitude for a time and space to connect more deeply with your body. 3. 1. Psalm 139:14: I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works
      1. And now, keeping the good things we've discovered, I gradually invite you back to regular awareness of your environment outside of you as well, back to regular consciousness.
    6. 1. Grief Exercise
  2. Noticing how accepting you are right now about grief -- open, curious -- maybe even a position of thankfulness for grief?
    1. Or something in the way? Maybe a part of you that is worried about grief, or has concerns about connecting. 2. 1. Contracting for not overwhelming 3. 1. And if this is what your experiencing
      1. Take time to work with those protectors. 2. 1. Grief might be the major thing inside you right now -- the major trailhead -- for some it is, for others not. 3. 4. 1. Never want to force an agenda in this kind of work.
        
        As I say the word "Grief" what happens in your body. Is there a part of your body that seems connected with grief? That has some association with grief -- notice that> Be with that. Witness what that part of your body might want to share with you about the grief that it holds or that it experienced, or that it knows something about.
        
        With calmness, compassion, connection with our parts. Your core self leading you. How recollected are you -- anything taking you out of your window of tolerance?
        
        Noticing
    2. Go as far as seems right and good right now. Permission of protectors 2. 1. Witnessing
      1. Body sensations 2. 1. Emotions 3. 1. Images 4. 1. Memories 5. 1. Beliefs 6. 1. Thought 7. 1. Intentions 8. 1. Desires 9. 1. Attitudes 10. 1. Impulses 3.
        
        Gratitude to parts for what they've shared, what they have allowed you to experience and to learn, for allowing themselves to be better know, even if it's just a little bit.
        
        Can work on this later -- in your check-ins with parts -- morning and evening. Following up on trailheads
        
        Might be good to make a few notes. 8.
      2. Next Episode, Episode 84, we are going to get into who this podcast is really for and what this podcast is all about. I've been reflecting on the mission of this podcast, the purpose of this podcast, and you. Yes, you. I've been thinking about all our listeners, and doing some deep discernment, not only about this podcast but also about the communities that have grown up around it -- the Resilient Catholics Community and the Interior Therapist Community. I do want to let you know now that my discernment has led me to, starting in September, reduce podcast frequency to once per month, the first Monday of the month. Tune in next week to find out all the whys and wherefores for that.
      3. Action Items
27. Catholic Mental Health professionals -- work with me in the Interior Therapist Community at Souls and Hearts -- find out how you can join one of my therapist groups, which are starting in September, we are finalizing groups this week, so if you've been on the fence, get in touch, The ITC is all about working on your human formation, informed by Internal Family Systems and solidly based in our Catholic Faith. Find all the details at soulsandhearts.com/itc. Email me with questions at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or call me on my cell at 317.567.9594 to find out how we can work together!
28. 1. Resilient Catholic Community at Souls and Hearts, grew up around my podcast Integration for Catholics
  2. If you are committed to this podcast, and especially if you resonated with the experiential exercise in today's episode, I want you to learn about the Resilient Catholics community. Come with me, come with us -- be a pioneer together with us on this pilgrimage. Come with us, join us on this adventure on this hard road to life. soulsandhearts.com/rcc-- read about it, check it out,
    1. 1. lots more experiential exercises, office hours, a companion for daily connection, weekly small group work in your company, your own personalized human formation plan, tailored to your individual needs and based on your responses to our initial measures kit.
    2. 1. registration is open each year in June and December soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Registration will open again on December 1, but you can join our waiting list now at soulsandhearts.com/rcc. 51 have already on the waiting list. And I will be writing those on the waiting list from time to time, checking in with updates and special gifts, and being on the waiting list does not obligate you to join in December. 4.
  3. 1. I want to hear from you Conversation hours T, R 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM eastern time 317.567.9594
  4. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
  5. Patroness and Patron

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Through a dramatic representation, quotes, and examples, I walk you through how six dimensions of what it means for you to love yourself and others. By bringing in the pioneering work of IFS therapist Derek Scott, we will explore how different parts within you respond to grief and loss in so many different ways.
Lead in:
1. Lead-in Intro
2. 1. Letter
3. 1. Ron's reactions
4. Intro
5. We are together in this great adventure, this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, we are journeying together, and I am honored to be able to spend this time with you.
6. 1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic and together, we are taking on the tough topics that matter to you.
7. 1. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith.
8. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
9. 1. Today's episode, number 82 is entitled "The Many Faces of Grief Inside Us and it's released on August 23, 2021
10. 1. Heard a reenacted story about Ronald and Vivian Meerkamp, and I’ll be using that clip throughout todays episode to add depth and examples to the concepts
11. 1. In the last episode, Episode 81, we broached There is so much misinformation out there about grief. So many myths, so many misconceptions to clear up. Why is that? We're going to answer that question with the professional research, the best of psychological theory, with Scripture, with poetry, with examples and with quotes to help you understand the experience of grief -- your grief and the grief of others.
12. 1. Why should we learn about grief? Earl Grollman sums it up like this:
  2. Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
    1. 1. If we love, we will grieve. Part of loving well is grieving well.
    2. 1. If we flee from grief, we will also flee from love. You can't love without eventually grieving
  4. Last episode, I mentioned how our understanding of grief can be limited by assuming we have a single, homogenous monolithic personality. Today I'm going to share with you a much deeper and richer way to understand grief.
13. From Episode 72 What Keeps You from Loving? Is it Really Only Your Vices? Discussion of Dimensions of Understanding Others or Ourselves. -- We will get into that more today.
  1. 0 Dimensions -- single point in space -- geometry, no dimensionality. Personalizing it -- you are nothing to me.
    1. No separate identity, not even really human, invisible -- the person doesn't exist for you.
      1. “Love is not cold and what is cold is not love.” ― Marty Rubin
      2. “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”― Helen Keller
      3. “Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time.” ― Peter Kreeft, Prayer For Beginners
    2. Examples:
      1. Emotional detachment: Ron -- fear of loss. 3.
      3. 1 Dimension -- line
        
        Only one quality -- very self-referential, the person in orbit around me and my needs.
        
        Often only a functional dimension, or not meeting a function
  2. “That politicians

who smiled at us and kissed our babies

blue eyes shining with triumph

well knew we were falling

into our graves

kicked by them

as they counted

our votes.”

― Alice Walker, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

“What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.” ― John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in
For Vivian: In her pain and loneliness, part of her takes over reduces Ron to one dimension: cold, distant, ignores me -- reduces Ron to one dimension -- in order to protect herself from him.
For Ron blended with his angry part who is protecting him from agonizing pain from abandonment: Vivian is a Betrayer -- She betrayed me, she is a traitor, a backstabber, she hurts me.
Still very personalized, very self-referential
2 Dimensions -- plane -- starts to be a little Less personal, less self-referential
1. Cardboard Cutout-- person has a shape, not well understood.
2. 1. Ron ignores me and is self absorbed. But it's because of his job. He shuts down emotions because of what he sees as a detective
  2. “It is a well-worn truth that cops grow callous, a cliché so tattered that it is even common on television. All cops face things every day that are so gruesome, brutal, and bizarre that no normal human being could deal with them on a daily basis and stay sane. And so they learn not to feel, to grow and maintain a poker-faced whimsy toward all the surprising things their fellow humans find to do to each other. All cops practice not-feeling, and it may be that Miami cops are better at it than others, since they have so many opportunities to learn.” Jeff Lindsay, Dexter is Delicious
  3. 1. Vivian is a betrayer and a traitor. But she's misguided -- she's reacting out of ignorance and emotion and because she doesn't understand me.
  5. 3 Dimensions -- taking into account much more of the person, providing a more complete snapshot of a moment in time
3. Person has
  1. A whole internal world
    1. 1. Many dimensions
    2. 1. Many competing values at one time.
    3. 1. Needs -- attachment needs and integrity needs
    4. 1. Emotions
    5. 1. Belief.
    6. 1. Thought
    7. 1. Intentions
    8. 1. Desires
    9. 1. Attitudes
    10. 1. Impulses.
    11. 1. relationships
    12. 1. Maybe even multiple points of view inside at the same time.
    13. With conflicts and polarizations inside -- 14.
  2. 1. Vivian is betraying me and harming me and she's misguided, reacting out of ignorance and emotion, but she also really loves our kids. And she's good at her job.
    2. Vivian has mixed reactions to me.
  3. 4 Dimensions -- out of basic geometry now and into physics. The four dimension is physics assesses an object's position in time. Analogy to a person's position in time.
    1. Dynamism of the person in time.
  4. She can be one way in one moment and another way in another moment
    1. 1. Realization of an experiential history -- that informs how she has come to be who she is now
    2. Vivian has been miserable for a long time. This has been building up.
    3. Vivian reacts to me differently at different times.
    4. The future for us might not look like it does right now.
    5. Ron ignores me and he is self-absorbed because of his job. But he has choses his job over me. He's afraid he's too damaged to do any other kind of work. He's locked in.
  5. 5th Dimension -- dimension unseen by humans where the forces of gravity and electromagnetism unite in an elegant and powerful theory of the fundamental forces
4. Like a shift from black and white to color -- like in the Wizard of OZ
5. 1. Understanding the other person in terms of self and parts -- unity and multiplicity
  2. Part of her is miserable -- part of her wants to stay in relationship
  3. 1. If you really love someone, you love all of them, all of their parts. Not just the parts of them that you like, that you find gratifying or useful, that float your boat for one reason or another.\
  4. 1. You don't pick and choose -- oooo, this is an appealing bit of you, I like it that you compliment me and make me feel good, I'll take that in and love that, but parts of you carrying grief, your pain your loss -- no time for that. You just keep that to yourself.
  5. 1. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches “I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.”
  6. 6th Dimension -- no longer in just the natural world.
    1. Seeing him as a beloved Child of God through the eyes of Faith, as God sees him.
    2. Fearfully and wonderfully made, bearing God's image and likeness.
    3. Intrinsically good, ontologically good, good in her essence.
    4. Requires supernatural grace
    5. Three Dimensional Chess
  7. What we covered last time in Episode 81 Grieving is the Price We Pay for Loving
  8. Introduction to Derek Scott
6. Derek Scott is a registered Social Worker with 35 years of experience and certified IFS therapist with an online practice based near Toronto, Canada.
7. 1. He is the founder of Internal Family Systems Counselling Association, IFSCA, an organization dedicated to bringing awareness of the IFS model to counselors and therapists in Canada and internationally.
  2. Stepping Stone: 16 week Comprehensive IFS course -- I recommend that as a great option, especially for those who can't get in to IFS Level 1 training.
8. 1. Number of publications in the area of grief and Internal Family Systems.
9. 1. And he is no stranger to grief in his own life, so he can speak from experience.
10. 1. Relying heavily on his article Grief and IFS: Mapping the Terrain
12. What happens to parts when we experience grief?
13. The experiences I'm about to describe are not the parts themselves.
  1. Definition of a part -- Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own understanding of self.
  2. More than just one factor
    1. More than just one emotion, more than just one desire or impulse
    2. Rather -- a whole constellation of these qualities that endure over time, even if the part is not in conscious awareness in the moment.
  3. Like the characters inside of Riley in the Pixar moving "Inside Out"
    1. The red anger character also had a full personality -- he was not just an angry mood -- he had beliefs, assumptions, intentions, desires, thoughts, impulses and an interpersonal style that were characteristically and uniquely his own. 4.
    2. 1. Managers who present with
  4. disbelief
    1. 1. numbness
    2. 1. Depression
    3. 1. Guilt
    4. 1. Spiritual bypassing
  5. 1. Exiles who present with
  6. Sadness
    1. 1. Missing/yearning
    2. 1. Protest (anger)
    3. 1. guilt
    4. 1. powerlessness/despair/resignation
    5. 1. Shame
  8. Common Exiles and Affect-laden parts
14. Derek Scott: When I am talking about exiles here I am not assuming that there is a part that is “only” sad or

guilty etc, but that the part leads with that feeling.

Remember, parts are like complete personalities --many dimensions
Some dimensions are more prominent than others.
Definition of Exiles
1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
2. 1. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
3. 1. They hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity.
4. 1. They desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved
5. 1. They want rescue, redemption, healing
6. 1. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system
7. 1. And they threaten to harm external relationships
8. 1. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned,
10. Examples of what exiles carry in grief.
11. Sadness -- parts that carry unresolved sadness from childhood.
  1. parents dismiss or minimize the experience of losing a pet, or moving house, or changing

school, divorce etc, parts that experience the distress become exiled

protectors may mimic the parental injunctions to ignore the agitation in the system.
I had sadness for breakfast. Andy Milonakis
Vivian
Ron -- Sadness -- expressed behaviorally, crying, not feeling. Body reactions.
Missing/yearning -- Just want what has been lost to come back
1. Parts under six years of age don't recognize the permanence of loss -- why can't I have it back?
2. 1. Example of blend with a missing/yearning part:
  2. Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse: “To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!
3. 1. Feeling of emptiness, incompleteness -- a void within.
4. 1. Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic -- example of what can happen when an exile floods with a sensation of a void: “At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.”
5. 1. Viviaxxxn -- familiar -- yearning for companionship --
  2. Trying to tell herself that Ron wasn't capable, no capacity, too damaged to fill her yearning.
  3. Replacement for God.
7. Protest (anger)
8. Reaction to perceived injustice. This is not right!
9. 1. May be deemed unacceptable and displaced to a safer person or to a situation.
  2. e.g. anger toward the deceased
    1. 1. Anger toward someone I need and fear
    2. 1. Women may be more likely to be socialized into rejecting their own anger -- good girls, or not wanted to be seen as scolds or shrews or bitches
    3. “The anger welled inside me, with nowhere to go. I could feel it eating away at me. I knew if I didn't find a way to release it, it would destroy me.”

― Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Sublimes creatures

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Ange l“There was something peculiarly gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out. Of course, the aftermath was less pleasant. Once you'd told everyone you hated them and not to come after you, where exactly did you go?”
Guilt
1. Goes back to childhood:
  1. Children’s guilt can be so huge in relation to the crime (“I stole my brother’s candy bar and blamed the dog”)
  2. Peeing outside
2. “I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”

― D.D. Barant, Dying Bites

powerlessness/despair/resignation
1. parts recognise that we are powerless to change the reality of attaching and losing and that

loss is certain and inevitable -- heavy burden, other parts not able to handle that

Fantasies of omnipotence -- service of feeling safe and secure.
Now what?
“I had the feeling deep in my gut that there'd been lines I should have spoken, gestures I should have made, that would have made things better. But looking back, I didn't know what they were. As a friend, I was pretty much useless, apparently.”

― Megan Crewe, Give Up the Ghost

Shame
1. Episodes 37-49 -- long series on shame
2. 1. Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action.
3. 1. Deep sense of fundamental inadequacy, irreparable brokenness, unhealable woundedness, intrinsic badness, fundamental unworthiness.
4. 1. Differs from guilt. Guilt: I did something bad. Shame. I am bad.
6. Managers Present First -- disbelieving and numbing
7. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe.
8. 1. Disbelieving Managers
  2. What they say: "This can't have happened" or "This can't be happening."
    1. Computer crashing -- the blue screen of death -- goes all the way back to Windows 1.0 in 1985.
      1. indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a critical condition where it can no longer operate
        
        hardware failure or a unexpected termination of a crucial process. 2. 1. Hours of work lost 3.
        
        Their Role, their function
    2. Derek Scott: Disbelieving managers may take the lead as the other parts of the system impacted by the loss are afforded time to adjust to the new reality. It is as if the sad, yearning, guilty and protesting parts sit behind the protectors that allow the information to be gradually filtered to them. 2. 1. Example of Ron: He could function that evening, make himself dinner, finish a report on an investigation, carry on at work the next day. 3. 1. Colloquial phrase: It hasn't hit him yet. 4. 1. Replay the clip of Ron's disbelief
      2. Numbing Managers
  3. What they say: They don't say anything, really.
    1. 1. they don’t let you feel anything in conscious awareness.
    2. 1. Survival mechanism. So you can deal with daily tasks.
    3. 1. Can last a long time.
    4. 1. Never a perfect barrier though -- it gets pierced by what Therese Rando calls STUGs Sudden, Temporary Upsurges of grief
    5. Those are the rejected exiles who bear grief breaking through and flooding with the intensity of their suffering. 2.
      2. Depressed Managers
  4. Reactive depressed mood is a part of grief
    1. Attempt to titrate the grief. Fighting fire with fire, fighting the intense depression with more manageable depression. 2. 1. Still holding the exiles that bear the intensity of grief at bay. 3.
      2. Guilt carrying managers
  5. reflect on the “bad” things they said and did in the relationship.
    1. 1. The manager protector’s voice telling us we “should” have done more, “should have been a better 14.

spouse/friend/kid

These are the parts experiencing guilt but also defending against exiles with huge guilt going back to childhood.
Guilty parts stating that they didn't do enough or weren't present enough in the relationship may

be unaware of the demands that other parts make on the system.

Spiritual Bypassing Managers -- common in serious, practicing Catholics
1. Spiritual Bypassing: John Welwood 1984 "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."
  1. Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.
2. 1. Examples
  2. Death of a loved one: External focus: He's in a better place. He's in heaven now. See this all the time at Catholic funerals, a de factor canonizations at the eulogies.
    1. 1. Vivian: God will take care of Ron now, there's nothing more I can do. We'll just focus on the positive, the good times we had. When I feel bad about how it worked out, I'll just pray the sadness away.
    2. 1. Ron. When God closes a door, he opens a window. He likely has a better woman for me in the future. And he'll punish Vivian for what she's done. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. She'll get what she deserves from him. 4.
  3. Manager Actions -- Straight from Derek Scott's article Grief and IFS: Mapping the Terrain
3. Postponing – agreeing that there is griefwork to be done but “later”. When asked to be specific about “when” these parts become evasive or propose a future time that subsequently is not used for doing the work
4. 1. Displacing – as mentioned earlier with regard to anger, the emotional responses connected to parts grieving the loss are displaced onto other targets; being sad about a movie, angry about poor service in a restaurant etc.
5. Replacing – reinvesting too quickly after a significant loss, often a strategy in reproductive loss and loss of an animal companion
6. Minimizing – cognitively diluting the experience of parts with big feelings by framing the relationship as one that “wasn't really that close”
7. Avoiding – not going to the gravesite or talking about the loss. Removing pictures and not going to places that will evoke memories of the deceased and activate the exiled parts
8. Somaticizing – bringing physical distress into the system (migraines, gastrointestinal distress, sleep disturbances) to distract from or channel the emotional responses of exiled parts Particularly, when we're little if the grief is not supported, then it goes into the body.
9. Shaming – particularly present in disenfranchised grief, shaming protectors will reinforce the social belief about the loss being one that the person is not “entitled” to grieve. Miscarriage, loss of a child who is a rapist, death of a spouse to AIDS; these are examples of losses that may carry a stigma or be trivialized by the broader community
10. Firefighters
11. Definition
  1. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, like in Inside Out, remember the parts and the control panel? So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action.
    1. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house.
    2. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that.
    3. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences.
    4. 1. Intense neediness and grief are overwhelming us! Emergency actions -- battle stations! Evasive maneuvers, Arm the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!
    5. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis
    6. 1. Parts can take over the person
  2. 1. Firefighter behaviors
  3. Drinking, using drugs
    1. 1. Raging
    2. 1. Watching TV, videos, binging on Netflix
    3. 1. Food bingeing -- chocolate for me. Losses or grief about relationships -- Grace in the Poor Clare monastery.
    4. 1. Sex bingeing
    5. 1. Overworking
  4. 1. Identity Issues -- the disruption caused by not knowing who I am may open the door to behaviors previously prohibited by managers.
  5. 1. New firefighter activities.
  7. Adapted Dual Process Model of Bereavement
12. Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut originally the DPM in 1999 Death Studies article called The dual process model of coping with bereavement: rationale and description
13. 1. Derek Scott adapted this model
  2. two clusters of parts
    1. one cluster is oriented towards the loss -- those are the parts we've been discussing so far
      1. Focus on experiencing grief
      2. Focus on continuing relationship bonds
      3. Distraction from restoration
      4. Avoidance of restoration
        
        the other cluster towards restoration
      5. dealing with the new complexities in life for the bereaved that are occasioned by the loss 2. 1. Readjusting to the new reality -- conforms to Elisabeth Kubler Ross' stage of acceptance and Colin Parkes' phase of reorganization and recovery 3. 1. Activities
        
        Attending to live changes 2. 1. New roles, new relationships 3. 1. Distraction from grief 4. 1. Avoidance of grief 4. 3. 4. The dual process model of coping with bereavement (DPM) identifies (from an IFS perspective) contends that these two models (clusters) oscillate as the mourning proceeds.
    2. the grieving individual at times confronts, at other times avoids, the different tasks of grieving. 5. 1. This model proposes that adaptive coping is composed of confrontation--avoidance of loss and restoration stressors. It also argues the need for dosage of grieving, that is, the need to take respite from dealing with either of these stressors, as an integral part of adaptive coping. 6. This oscillation is very familiar to the IFS therapist as affect-laden parts may occupy the attention of the client, then pragmatic protectors may hold the floor to afford a break from the intensity of the other parts. 7. The dance between the loss-oriented cluster of parts and the restoration oriented cluster of parts tends to be initially weighted towards the loss. Over time the restoration cluster of parts will become more prominent as the client lives into what may be considered to be the "new normal".
    4. Compassion Heals: An IFS perspective on Bereavement -- From Derek Scott.
      1. Compassion heals. Bringing compassion to another invites their compassion for their own parts
      2. The more significant the loss, the more profound the disruption to the system
      3. The system responses to the loss may be manager led, firefighter driven or characterized by erupting exiles
      4. The protective system may be in disarray and unable to function normally; resulting in the client feeling particularly vulnerable
      5. The protective system may become entrenched because of the perceived threat from or to the exiles
      6. Present loss experiences may trigger parts connected to former loss events seeking healing
      7. Unburdening parts in the loss cluster will facilitate healing and greater resiliency in terms of subsequent losses
    5. Advantages of IFS-informed understandings of grief
14. Last episode, we looked at the stage and phase models of grief trajectories
  1. Elisabeth Kubler Ross' five stages of grief DABDA -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
    1. 1. Colin Parkes' model Shock and numbness, yearning and searching, disorganization and despair, reorganization and recovery
  2. How the empirical trajectory of grief didn't support a linear progression through the stages or phases
  3. Still valuable in describing experiences at a moment in time
  4. The myth of the unified, homogenous, monolithic personality really compromises our ability to understand grief.
    1. Identity Issues -- not as often address
      1. Low self-esteem 2. 1. Who am I now, that I am no longer married? I am a widower
      2. But now, understanding the person in terms of a core self and in parts, both a multiplicity but also a unity.
      3. And why, again? Why are we doing this? In order to increase our capacity to love. That's why.
      5. Final thought from Derek Scott -- Grief has its own timetable. There is a lot of wisdom in the system regarding when to allow access to affect-laden parts. There are, of course, frustrated, impatient parts that want it to be "over" so that the system can return to normal functioning. There may also be postponing managers (see "complicated grief”). Respecting protective parts saying, "We're not going there now" and asking them about their concerns, as well as when would be a good time to "go there "and what would need to change to allow access provides us with an understanding of how to best work with the system.
15. Being patient
16. 1. Accepting all parts as they are, where they are. That does not mean we endorse all of their impulses or desires. Check out Episode 66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages.
17. 1. Lots of gratitude for Derek Scott's work on IFS and Grief.
19. I am going to try something really new in the next episode. In this episode and the last episode, I've brought you a lot of conceptual information, psychoeducation, all the intellectual material. That's great for nourishing our conceptual and analytical parts, for feeding our minds.
20. But next week you will have the possibility to go deeper, not just in the abstract realm, not just in your conceptual zone -- but taking it down deeper inside you.
21. We will do an exploratory, experiential exercise, all about your personal grief.
  1. We've all had losses. We've all had the experience of grief
  2. We all have things to work through.
22. So we're going to put all of this information to work in our own human formation, in our own interior integration. All voluntary -- we'll be working with our parts to make sure we have their buy-in, their consent. So I invite you to that, we will see how it goes!
23. Action Items
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  2. 1. Give me feedback. I want to hear from you Conversation hours T, R 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM 317.567.9594
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  4. Let me know what you need and don't need in this podcast
  5. 1. Catholic Mental Health professionals -- work with me in the Interior Therapist Community at Souls and Hearts -- find out how you can join one of my therapist groups, which are starting in September, They are all about working on your human formation, informed by Internal Family Systems and grounded in the Catholic Faith. Find all the details at soulsandhearts.com/itc. Email me with questions at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or call me on my cell at 317.567.9594 to find out how we can work together!
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  7. Patroness and Patron
  8. IIC 81A Finding the Exiled Grief.
  9. IIC 81T Exercise with Discovering Grieving Parts

View Details

If we love deeply, we're going to grieve deeply. It's inevitable. And it's that simple. So together, let's understand and experience grief better in order to love better. In this episode, I review the popular models of grief with their strengths and limitations, illustrating them through poetry, quotes, and evaluating them with the best of the psychological research.
Lead-in: We are going to start out with a simple truth. We Catholics get close to people. We get close to people
1. We form deep, intimate bonds with our Parents, siblings, spouses, children, our friends -- all those we love.
  1. Last weekend, I was at my grandson's baptism. Tiny little guy, names William Peter.
  2. I'm not super sentimental, not one to just burst into intense emotion at the drop of a hat, but holding him and talking with him. I could feel the bond developing. He's really growing on me. My first grandson. William Peter. I told myself I wasn't going to be one of those fawning grandfathers that shows the pictures around to everyone and prattles on about grandchildren, but here I am, bringing it up in a podcast episode. I love that little guy. I really do, I've been surprised at how quickly that all developed.
  3. We form deep intimate bond with people.
  4. And that's a great privilege, an honor, a sacred thing.
    1. October 29, 2017 before the Angelus Prayer, Pope Francis
      1. Indeed, we were created to love and to be loved. God, who is Love, created us to make us participants in his life, to be loved by him and to love him, and with him, to love all other people. This is God’s “dream” for mankind.
      2. But in this life there's a difficult side to that. The realities that entered the world with original sin.
        
        Inevitably, we lose at least some of these bonds, these connections -- in our fallen world, they are not permanent, they are temporary
  5. Parents die
    1. 1. Some experience a romantic breakup -- or a divorce
    2. 1. Estrangements, ties being cut
    3. And we experience the loss of someone
    4. Jandy Nelson succinctly sums up the mystery when she writes “Grief and love are conjoined—you don’t get one without the other.”
    5. My Constant Companion By Kelly Roper

Grief is my companion,

It takes me by the hand,

And walks along beside me

in a dark and barren land.

How long will this lonesome journey last,

How much more can my weary heart bear?

Since your death, I’ve been lost in the fog,

Too burdened with sorrow and care.

People tell me my sadness will fade,

And my tears will reach their end.

Grief and I must complete our journey,

And then maybe I’ll find happiness again.

Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should trust you.

I should coax you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on,

your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes. You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to warn off intruders,

to consider

my house your own

and me your person

and yourself

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri
And we pay on a sliding fee scale as Orson Scott Card tells us
1. “Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
3. Grief -- after five episodes on suicide, it seemed like the next topic. Stay with me as we investigate grief…
4. Intro:
5. Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, I am so glad you are hear with me for these moments together, thank you for spending the time. As you know, I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist and passionate Catholic you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, where we don't hesitate to take on the tough topics that matter to you. We bring the best of psychology and human formation and harmonize it with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
6. 1. Today's episode, number 81 is entitled "Grieving is the Price We Pay for Loving" and it's released on August 16, 2021
7. 1. We are broaching the big topic of grief. We touched on it briefly way back in episode 15, but now we're getting into much more detail.
8. 1. There is so much misinformation out there about grief. So many myths, so many misconceptions to clear up. Why is that? We're going to answer that question with the professional research, the best of psychological theory, with Scripture, with poetry, with examples and with quotes to help you understand the experience of grief -- your grief and the grief of others.
9. 1. Why should we learn about grief? Earl Grollman sums it up like this:
  2. Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
    1. 1. If we love, we will grieve. Part of loving well is grieving well.
  3. If we flee from grief, we will also flee from love. You can't love without eventually grieving.
  4. Our Lord modeled this for us:
    1. Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4. 1. John 11: 32-36 Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; 34 and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ] 5. Our Lady Modeled this for us. Mary at Calvary looking up at her beloved Son, innocent, yet accused, mocked, reviled, slapped, spit upon, beaten, whipped. crowned with thorns, forced on death march, and then nailed to a cross, bleeding and dying. His disciples save John had abandoned him, the people had turned against him. Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, but yet also Almighty God, the second person of the Trinity, Love Incarnate going through his grief.
    2. What was her experience?
    3. I can hear her asking, in the words of the Good Friday Reproaches, My people, what has he done to you? How has he offended you? Answer me!
    4. Alice Von Hildebrand: We gain a dolorous awareness that being as weak as we are, we cannot guard the loved one, hard as we try. We realize that this precious being is infinitely fragile. This is inevitably a source of profound suffering. The loved being whose beauty has wounded our heart is frailty itself, and we realize that, ardently as we wish to, we are ourselves too weak and too helpless to shelter him in this threatening and treacherous world where dangers are constantly lurking. 6. That's why we need to learn to grieve well. We need to be able to understand something about grief and to grieve well to pick up our crosses, to bear our sufferings well, the suffering that is essential to love in this earthly life, in this fallen world.
    5. We are going to love and we are going to lose our loved one. That is a reality. I'm going to experience it -- you're going to experience it. 7. 1. I'm taking a risk in loving my grandson William Peter -- I could lose him. I've taken a great risk in loving my wife Pam -- we've playfully argued about who gets to die first, so as to avoid the pain of the loss of our relationship.
      1. And yes, there's the Communion of Saints. Yes there is eternal life. But still… One of us is going to have to live on in this life first, without the other one present in the same way. 8.
    7. Many models of grief are based on a single, unified, monolithic, homogenous personality. That's the problem.
      1. That single, unified, monolithic, homogenous personality undergirds the stage and phase theories of grief.
  5. Swiss Psychiatrist -- Elisabeth Kubler Ross -- Death and Dying 1969 -- Discussed this in episode 17, will go into more detail today
    1. Kubler Ross gathered anecdotal evidence from more than 200 terminally ill patients as they were dying -- case studies. Five stages of grief -- DABDA model
      1. Denial: is the first of the five stages of grief. It helps us to survive the loss. Denial and shock help us to cope and make day-to-day survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.
        
        Shock and disbelief: This initial phase, which may last from a mere few seconds up to six weeks, is marked by numbness, disbelief, and, often, alienation from others. The loss may be intellectualized and dealt with on a "rational" level, as opposed to a "feeling" level. This is the stage many people are in at the time of the funeral. 2. 1. Awareness: This next stage is an emotional and suffering phase that resides in the heart. At the same time that the chemicals (for example, adrenaline) released in response to the stress of our loved one's death are beginning to decrease, and the support of friends is lessening, the impact of the person's loss is beginning to be truly realized: the lonely bed, the lack of someone with whom to talk. 3. 2. 1. Anger -- from a deep sense of injustice -- of being wronged, of being violated. Underneath the anger is the pain. The anger can serve to suppress the intensity of the pain of loss. 2. Bargaining -- frantic attempts to control the outcomes 3. Depression -- feeling the loss
        
        “You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel the loss.” — Mandy Hale 4. Acceptance -- accepting the reality of the loss. 2.
        
        Colin Parkes -- 1972 Bereavement: Studies of grief in adult life. 1983 with R.S. Weiss: Recovery from Bereavement
    2. Argued that the bereaved must go through four overlapping phases of grief in order to adequately resolve the grief
      1. Shock and numbness 2. 1. Yearning and Searching 3. 1. Disorganization and Despair 4. 1. Reorganization and Recovery 2. 1. Phases
      2. Shock and numbness
        
        This can't be happening 2. 1. Struggling with comprehension -- numbing out 3. 1. Helps to survive emotionally, initially the shock of loss 4. 1. “There’s a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality–there’s mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.” ― Christopher Moore 5. 1. “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” — Vicki Harrison 2. 1. Yearning and Searching
        
        Let's go back to the way it was 2. 1. Missing the person, seeking that person out, how can we be close again? 3. 1. Wishing the deceased would just come home 4. 1. Weeping, pining, sadness, anger confusion. 5. 1. Come back, fill the emptiness 6. 1. “I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.” — Rachel Joyce 3. 3.

A Call From Heaven

Published: November 2018

I lie awake long into the night,

Hoping that maybe you just might

Give me a call to say you're okay

And let me know you made it through the day.

I would give everything that I have

To make you feel not so sad.

I know the pain is sometimes too great,

But the love was something you can never mistake.

I long for the day when I see you again.

Then we can talk about where all we've been.

We can think about all the times we had,

How we've missed each other ever so bad.

I feel like I've been cheated and robbed so blind.

God took you away when I thought you were mine.

Now I'm stuck here and feel so alone

As I sit and wait right beside the phone.

You gave me a life and everything I have.

I couldn't say no, even when I was mad.

You gave me my children that I hold so dear.

You took away everything that I ever feared.

As the hurt seems to fade but the memories are bright,

Maybe I'll see you in a dream tonight.

That's all I can hope for until the day

When were together in heaven for an eternity.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/a-call-from-heaven-2

Disorganization and despair
1. Easily distracted, difficulty with attention and concentration
2. 1. Initial acceptance. He is not coming back. He is really dead.
3. 1. Depression may set in, anxiety may set in, apathy, anger -- rebellion against the loss.
4. 1. Withdrawal from others, disengaging from activities, isolation.
5. 1. No longer searching -- yearning gives way to apathy, anger, loss of hope, and questions of meaning and purpose
6. Reorganization and recovery
7. Life can go on.
8. 1. Rebuild, renew, begin again.
9. 1. Energy levels lift
10. 1. Concentration and attention improve
11. 1. Ability to enjoy good things.
  2. Positive memories of the person. 2.
  3. 1. New normal achieved.
  5. Criticism of Stage or Phase Models
12. Not empirical studies
13. 1. Models were misused - Kubler Ross' model based on those who were dying, not those with loved ones dying.
  2. Not as relevant to losing a family member to death
  3. Still generalized to all kinds of situations of loss and grief.
14. 1. Clinical observations the these stages necessarily go in order
15. 1. Not a lockstep process
  2. Danger of the stages or phases being taken as a proscriptive model
    1. Proscriptive vs. descriptive. 2. 1. You have got to feel the anger -- or the depression. 3.
      1. The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
    3. Research Studies
16. Carol Barrett and Karen Scheweis 1981 article in OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying
  1. 193 widows and widowers in Wichita, all 62 years of age or older,
    1. 1. did not confirm a stage process of adaptation to grief. 3.
  2. 1. George Bonnano and colleagues in major article in the 2002 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology tracked trajectories of grieving the death of a spouse from before the spouse died and 6 and 18 months after the death. 205 participants. Very low levels of correspondence with the stages of grief described by Kubler Ross.
  3. 1. 2007 Study in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Paul K. Maciejewski and his colleagues
  4. Set out to examine the relative magnitudes and patterns of change over time postloss of 5 grief indicators for consistency with the stage theory of grief.
    1. disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance of the death 2.
      1. community-based sample of 233 bereaved individuals, near Bridgeport and Fairfield Connecticut.
      2. Five rater-administered items assessing disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance of the death from 1 to 24 months postloss.
      3. Did not fit the stage model . Acceptance was always higher than all the others, across all time intervals. Yearning was the highest of all the others across all time stages. 5.
    3. Popularity of these stage models -- why after fifty years are they still with us?
17. Reasons
  1. There was a huge need. The need for something to hang on to, to help us make sense of an overwhelming experience
    1. 1. Kubler Ross's model is simple -- DABDA Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance
  2. They are intuitive, they seem to make sense
  3. The stage models gave us a language, a way to symbolize the experience of grief into words to make sense of it. This is really a gift.
  4. With the language Kubler Ross and Parkes gave us, we could communicate about grief more clearly, more readily, we could share the experience of grief.
  5. Observation of real human experience.
  7. Uniqueness of grief
18. “Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.” ― Roland Barthes
19. 1. “Grief is bizarre territory because there’s no predicting how long it’ll take to get over certain things. You just don’t know how long it’s going to resound in your life.” – Sam Shepard
20. 1. “I wasn’t prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn’t just sadness, and it wasn’t linear. Somehow I’d thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better – like getting over the flu. That’s not how it was.” Meghan O’Rourke
21. So some clinicians have moved away from the Stages or Phases of Grief to discussing Signs or Signals of Grief --
22. Sources
  1. 2017 online article by Crossroads Hospice and Palliative Care
    1. 1. Mayo Clinic
    2. 1. Vitas Healthcare website
    3. 1. Helpguide.com article on coping with grief and loss.
    5. Categories
  2. Emotions
    1. Agitation – inability to relax, shaken up 2. 1. Anger – a strong emotion of displeasure with others or with an event 3. 1. Anhedonia -- inability to enjoy things, to experience pleasure. 4. 1. Anxiety – feeling nervous and worried 5. 1. Apathy – things do not seem important anymore, not caring what happens 6. 1. Betrayal – feeling someone purposely chose to hurt you 7. 1. Bitterness about the loss 8. 1. Despair – to lose hope 9. 1. Disbelief – trouble accepting the loss really happened 10. 1. Emptiness –void inside, nothing to give. Nothing inside.
      1. “Losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill.” ― Jojo Moyes
      2. “Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.” — William Faulkner
        
        Fear – the individual does not feel safe or worries for the safety of loved ones
        
        Guilt – self-blame, feeling regretful about doing or not doing something
        
        Helplessness – feeling like there is nothing one can do to make a difference in a situation
        
        Impatience – want things right away and have trouble waiting
        
        Isolation – removed or away from others
        
        Loneliness – feeling alone
        
        Numbness- can’t feel any emotion
        
        Powerlessness – having no control over what is happening
        
        Relief – to feel free from stress, pain or burden
        
        Sadness, intense sorrow – feeling unhappy and sorrowful
        
        Shame – feeling dishonored or disgraced
        
        Shock – feeling surprised and disturbed by a sudden powerful event
        
        Strength – tough, powerful
        
        Thankfulness – appreciative
        
        Uncertainty – feeling unsure
        
        Uselessness – feeling worthless
        
        Weakness – frail, powerless
        
        Positive Emotions
      3. Opening up, accessing in a way never before. 2. 1. Breaking down old ways of coping. 3. 29.
        
        Cognitive Reactions, the way grief impacts our thinking, our mental processes
    2. “Grief can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds.” ― George R.R. Martin 2. 1. “Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.”― Sophocles 3. 1. Difficulties in concentrating 8.

Trying To Balance Grief

Published: May 25, 2021

Grief stacks

Itself up

As you try and balance

Your daily tasks

Your emotions

Your pain

The tower

Wobbles

As you try

To do everything

You normally do

Everything you

Normally can

But right now

You can’t

And it comes

All

The way

Down

Continuously thinking about the loss -- rumination
Narrow focus -- only thinking about the loss, difficulty thinking about anything else
Difficulty making decisions
Pessimism about the Future
1. My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. Shakespeare, Sonnet 50
2. Memory difficulties
3. Believing you were responsible for the loss
4. Increased or decreased dreams
5. Increased nightmares, odd dreams
6. Thinking everyone is watching you
7. Thinking you are different from everyone else
8. Self-destructive thoughts
9. Physical Reactions
10. Crying -- not mentioned.
  1. J.R.R. Tolkien knew we needed to allow ourselves to feel sadness. In one particularly poignant passage at the end of “The Return of the King,” Frodo is about to sail away, leaving his friends behind. “Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth,” Gandalf says to the gathered companions. “Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
  2. “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” — Washington Irving
  3. "Tears are the silent language of grief." Voltaire
  4. “To weep is to make less the depth of grief.” — William Shakespeare
12. Sleeping changes – too little or too much hypersomnia, insomnia
13. Weight and appetite changes
14. Tiredness
15. Deep sighing
16. Feeling weak
17. Aches and pains
18. Restlessness
19. Lethargy
20. Energized: feeling strong/invincible
21. Muscle tension
22. Pounding heart
23. Headaches and stomach aches
24. Nausea
25. Dizziness
26. Shortness of breath
27. Easily shaken by certain sights and sounds (particularly those that remind you of the loss)
28. Increased number of colds and infections -- weakened immune system
29. Spiritual Reactions
30. Feeling lost and empty
31. 1. Feeling abandoned or punished by God
32. 1. Questioning a reason to go on living
33. 1. Feeling like you don’t belong
34. 1. Feeling angry with God
35. 1. Questioning your religious beliefs
  2. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. – John 14:18
  3. 1. Disruption in the plan of life.
  4. 1. Feeling spiritually connected to the person who died
  5. 1. Feeling spiritually connected to God
  6. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. – Matthew 5:4
  7. 1. Needing to receive forgiveness
  8. 1. Finding hope in prayer/spiritual beliefs
  9. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, there will no longer be any mourning, crying, or pain, for the old order of things have passed away." Revelation 21:4
  11. Finding purpose in life
  12. Finding a deeper sense of compassion, of connection to others
36. Rumi: “Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”
38. Behavioral Reactions -- Social Interactions
39. Trying to stay constantly active
40. 1. Overachieving
41. 1. Underachieving
42. 1. Changes in work performance
43. 1. Being preoccupied and forgetful
44. 1. Being more clumsy
45. 1. Crying a lot, or more easily
46. 1. Blaming others
47. 1. Not caring about things, wanting to drop out
48. 1. Wanting to spend more time alone
49. 1. Dropping out of social activities
  2. “People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.” – Gail Sheehy
  3. 1. Pulling away from other’s attempts to touch and comfort you -- detachment
  4. “To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.” — Erich Fromm
    1. 1. My Mask

Published: June 2011

Every morning I wake up and put on a mask.

The mask makes everything seem all right,

But they don't know I cry at night.

The nightmares just won't go away.

If only I knew it was your last day.

For six years I've felt this pain.

The feeling just won't go away.

Everyone thinks I've dealt with your death the best,

But without this mask I'd be a mess.

Wanting more attention and affection
Seeking approval and reassurance from others
Distrusting others
Detaching from others
Being aggressive, getting more arguments
Showing more creative expression through music, writing, and art
Deepening relationships
1. Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. Alphonse de Lamartine
2. 1. "The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief--but the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love." Hilary Stanton Zunin
3. Weakness of these models
4. So we've done some prep work today to get us ready, getting reacquainted with what the prevailing models of grief can tells us, the descriptive power they have.
5. 1. Not proscriptive -- merely descriptive
  2. They don't really inform us about how to be with the other person, this specific person
    1. 1. Signs of grief are not necessarily specific just to grief.
    3. Identity Issues -- not as often address
  3. Low self-esteem
    1. 1. Who am I now, that I am no longer married? I am a widower
    2. Now we're ready for a much better way to approach grief, both inside ourselves and inside others.
    3. The myth of the unified, homogenous, monolithic personality really compromises our ability to understand grief.
    4. So in the next episode, I'm bringing in a whole new model of grief, one developed by Internal Family Systems therapist Derek Scott, who has done the best conceptual work on understanding grief and responding to it that I have ever encountered in the natural realm.
    5. We are going to get into that deeply, we are going to understand how our different parts experience grief, and we going one step further, and that's to bring in the Catholic foundation.
    6. And why, again? Why are we doing this? In order to increase our capacity to love. That's why.
  4. Action Items
6. I want to hear from you Conversation hours T, R 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM 317.567.9594 -- great response in the last office hours, it was good to hear from so many of you.
7. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
8. 1. Catholic Mental Health professionals -- work with me in the Interior Therapist Community at Souls and Hearts -- find out how you can join one of my therapist groups, which are starting in September, They are all about working on your human formation, informed by Internal Family Systems and grounded in the Catholic Faith. Find all the details at soulsandhearts.com/itc. Emal me with questions at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or call me on my cell at 317.567.9594 to find out how we can work together!

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Through dramatic reenactments, experiential exercises and the best of available resources, Dr. Peter brings you critical information to help you better love those near you who are struggling with suicidal thoughts and impulses. Learn how to be a much better first responder in these situations and to be a bridge to additional resources for your loved ones who are considering suicide.
Lead-in: Imagine a young man, a teenager you care about, one you really love, a family member or friend, or the son of a friend, comes to you, in distress, and he shares this with you -- listen closely as he tells you what's on his heart. [insert script].
1. So now you have this upset, desperate man in front of you, who wants to be dead.
  1. What do you do? How do you handle this situation?
  2. But before we go there, let's start with you. We created a scenario to evoke what might come up in real life when your encounter a loved one who is suicidal.
  3. What do you notice going on inside you right now?
    1. What is happening in your body?
    2. Emotions?
    3. Assumptions or beliefs about yourself?
    4. Memories, desires, impulses.
    5. Replay the last clip
    6. What are parts of you saying to you about you right now?
    7. Really pay attention to those messages
2. 1. I will make a bold claim here -- the number one thing you struggle with in being a first responder to a loved one with suicidal levels distress is [drum roll] your own internal experience.
3. 1. The problem you have is not so much inside the distressed loved one.
4. 1. The problem you have is inside of you, deep within you.
5. 1. You get wrapped up in our own fear, shame, guilt, anger, or your own sense of inadequacy.
6. 1. Did you feel any of that that in this example, confronted with this teenager in such distress, who feels so strongly the desire to die?
  2. Did you feel uncomfortable, on edge, uncertain? Anxious? Ineffective, inadequate? Responsible, but not knowing what to do? Did you experience any self-criticism? Any of those experiences?
    1. 1. If so, you’ve come to the right place. I can help with that. [Insert Intro]
  4. Intro:
7. Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, I like being together with you in this whole adventure, as we learn about suicide and what to do about it, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski,, passionate Catholic first and clinical psychologist as well, and you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. Thank you for being here with me. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
8. 1. This is the fifth in our series on Suicide.
  2. In episode 76, we got into what the secular experts have to say about suicide.
    1. 1. In episode 77, we reviewed the suicides in Sacred Scripture, in the Bible.
    2. 1. In episode 78, we sought to really understand the phenomenological worlds of those who kill themselves -- what happens inside? How can we understand suicidal behaviors more clearly, dispelling myths and gripping on to the sense of desperation and the need for relief that drives so much suicidal behavior.
    3. 1. And in the last episode, number 79, we took a deep dive into the devastating impact of suicide on the parents, spouses, children, siblings, and friends who were left behind.
    4. Today's episode, number 80 is entitled "How to Help a Loved One Who is Suicidal."
    5. We are getting into the nitty-gritty of what do you do when someone you are close to is suicidal?
    6. In short, how do you love someone who is so distressed, so desperate, that they are seriously considering killing themselves?
    7. First a brief caveat -- I can't, in a single podcast episode, train you to be a crisis intervention specialist. That takes dedicated training. But you know what? Most people with these suicidal levels of distress don't seek out crisis intervention specialists or therapists or counselors first. They go to the people they know. They go to the people whom they hope and believe will love them. They go to you. What you'll learn today is for your own information, to help you understand what's going on and how best to act as a first responder and a bridge to long-lasting help that can heal.
  3. Love your neighbor as yourself. Diliges proximum tuum tamquam teipsum. Inflection of dīligō (second-person singular future active indicative) The second great commandment. Love your neighbor as yourself. Diliges proximum tuum. Love is a verb, an action. So what if our neighbor is the teenager from our lead in today? How do we love a suicidal person? How do we love her?
9. Definition of Love -- Charity -- caritas.
  1. Benevolence -- bonae voluntatis in Latin, good will.
  2. Capacity
    1. Understanding the other
      1. Operating in the mode of the receiver 2. 1. Dependent on us understanding ourselves 3. 1. Mistaking what is coming from who 4. 1. Unconsciousx 3. 1. Capacity to choose the good -- Freedom.
      2. Well-governed self
        
        Regulated 2. 1. Organized 3. 1. Calm. Compassionate 4. 1. Good human formation 2. 4. 1. Possessing virtues 5. 1. Possessing the knowledge and expertise in a situation. 6. 7. Constancy. 1. Need peace and interior integration' 2. Being vs. doing. 8. CCC 1829 The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy.
        
        Loving all their parts
  3. Definition of parts
    1. Suicidal distress makes so much more sense if we understand each person not as a uniform, monolithic, homogenous, single personality, but rather as a dynamic system including a core self and parts. That helps to explain so much, including shifts over time. 2. 1. Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. You can also think of them as separate modes of operating if that is helpful.
      1. Not just transient mood states, but whole constellations of all these aspects.
    2. Unintegrated parts are not focused on loving others
    3. Unintegrated parts can be exiled
    4. Parts often have very different attitudes toward suicide. 2.
    5. 1. Blending
  4. What is the key word here? Blending.
    1. 1. Definition of a Blend:
    2. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Ed. -- The act in which a part takes over a person’s seat of consciousness, or self.
    3. "Blending in IFS" March 7, 2010 Blog post: Modes of Blending in IFS In IFS a part is “blended” with someone when they ARE the part as opposed to being in Self. This could mean that they feel the part’s emotions, they hold its beliefs, or their behavior in the world comes from this part.
    4. Jay Earley October 17, 2018 Blog post: A part is blended with you and has taken over your seat of consciousness when any of the following is true:
      1. Flooded with the parts emotions 4. 1. Caught up in the beliefs of the part 5. 1. Dominated by the perspective and worldview of the part. 6.
        
        Blended part is now driving the bus with the self and all the other parts aboard
    5. Part that takes over your internal raft 2. 1. Example of Pixar moving "Inside Out" when Anger takes over the control panel 3. 1. Taken over by the passions --
      1. e.g. irascible passions, such as fear or anger.
        
        everything seen through the very limited perspective of the blended part. 5. 4.
    7. Starting with what to notice. Excellent sources
10. Columbia University Departs of Psychiatry
11. 1. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (afsp.org)
12. 1. National Institute of Mental Health nimh.nih.gov
13. 1. Suicide Prevention Resource Center sprc.org
14. 1. Suicide Prevention Lifeline suicidepreventionlifeline.org
15. 1. Helpguide at helpguide.org
16. Risk Factors, Signs: The behaviors listed below may be signs that someone is thinking about suicide (NIMH):
17. Talking about wanting to die or wanting to kill themselves
  1. “I wish I hadn’t been born,”
    1. 1. “If I see you again…”
    2. 1. “I’d be better off dead.”
  2. 1. Preoccupation with death -- focus on death, dying, violence.
  3. 1. Talking about feeling empty, hopeless, or having no reason to live
  4. Depression
    1. 1. Helplessness
  5. 1. Making a plan or looking for a way to kill themselves, such as searching for lethal methods online, stockpiling pills, or buying a gun
  6. Researching ways to kill oneself on the Internet
  7. 1. Talking about great guilt or shame
  8. 1. Rejecting compliments
  9. 1. Talking about feeling trapped or feeling that there are no solutions
  10. Nothing is ever going to get better. 2.
  11. 1. Feeling unbearable pain (emotional pain or physical pain)
  12. 1. Loss of a sense of purpose or meaning in life
  13. 1. Talking about being a burden to others
  14. 1. Apathy -- not caring about things he used to be passionate about.
  15. Feeling numb, detached
  16. 1. Not caring about the future
  17. 1. Self-neglect -- lack of self-care -- neglect of personal appearance, hygiene
  18. 1. Using alcohol or drugs more often
  19. 1. Acting anxious or agitated -- panicky
  20. 1. Withdrawing from family and friends
  21. 1. Changing eating and/or sleeping habits
  22. 1. Showing rage, lots of anger, irritability, feeling upset more than usual -- or talking about seeking revenge
  23. 1. Taking great risks that could lead to death, such as driving extremely fast -- impulsive or reckless behavior
  24. 1. Talking or thinking about death often
  25. 1. Displaying extreme mood swings, suddenly changing from very sad to very calm or happy
  26. 1. Previous suicide attempts
  27. 1. Giving away important possessions
  28. 1. Saying goodbye to friends and family
  29. 1. Being exposed to others who have taken their own lives, family, friends, acquaintances.
  30. 1. Putting affairs in order, making a will
  31. 1. Signs I will add
  32. Changes in attitudes toward God
    1. 1. Changes in religious practices, e.g. no longer praying, no longer going to Mass
  34. What to do when someone is at risk of suicide from these six sources
18. Take time. Calm down.
  1. Prayer
  2. Monitor how you are doing.
19. 1. Assume you are the only one he has told
20. 1. Have an honest conversation
  2. Talk to them in private
    1. 1. Be yourself.
    2. 1. Understand that the person may be dominated by one or more parts right now, and those parts may seem like they are telling the whole story, but there are often other parts with different beliefs and desires about living and dying.
    3. 1. Be with them. Finding the right words is not as important as your presence, your "being with."
    4. 1. Avoid judgment.
    5. 1. Take a breath if they are really agitated, like the teenager in the introduction.
    6. 1. Tell them you care about them
    7. “I have been feeling concerned about you lately.” 2. 1. “Recently, I’ve noticed some differences in you and wondered how you are doing.” 3. 1. “I wanted to check in with you because you haven’t seemed yourself lately.” 4. 1. You can use parts language
      1. Maybe a part of you is really desperate right now. 2. 5. 6. Listen to their story, take their concerns seriously -- talking about suicide reduces the likelihood of enacting it.
    8. When did you begin feeling like this?” 7. 1. “Did something happen to make you start feeling this way?” 8. 1. “How can I best support you right now?” 9. 1. “Have you thought about getting help?” 10. Let them know they have been heard. Mirror back to them what you are hearing, invite them to help you understand more deeply. 11. Ask directly if they are considering suicide: "Are you thinking about killing yourself?"
    9. Does not increase the risk 2012 Study by Charles Mathias and colleagues in Suicide and Life Threatening Behaviors Change in suicidal ideation was tested using several analytic techniques, each of which pointed to a significant decline in suicidal ideation in the context of repeated assessment. 12. 13. Helpful things to say
    10. You are not alone in this. I’m here for you.” 14. 1. “You may not believe it now, but the way you’re feeling will change.” 15. 1. “I may not be able to understand exactly how you feel, but I care about you and want to help.” 16. 1. “When you want to give up, tell yourself you will hold off for just one more day, hour, minute—whatever you can manage.” 17. Encourage them to seek treatment or contact their doctor or therapist 18. Work with the person to keep him away from lethal means as the situation permits.
    11. Firearms
    12. Drugs
    13. Stay with the person. This can be hard. Parts that want to get away. 19. Suffering is temporary 20. Call the hotlines 24/7
    14. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK)
      1. First, you’ll hear a message telling you that you’ve reached the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 2. 1. We’ll play you a little hold music while we connect you. 3. 1. A skilled, trained crisis worker who works at the Lifeline network crisis center closest to you will answer the phone. 4. 1. This person will listen to you, understand how your problem is affecting you, provide support, and share any resources that may be helpful. 5. 1. Remember, your call is confidential and free. 6. 1. Should I Call The Lifeline?
        
        No matter what problems you’re dealing with, whether or not you’re thinking about suicide, if you need someone to lean on for emotional support, call the Lifeline. 2. 1. People call to talk about lots of things: substance abuse, economic worries, relationships, sexual identity, getting over abuse, depression, mental and physical illness, and loneliness, to name a few. 7. 21. 1. Texting option: Text HELLO to 741741 22. 23. Escort him to mental health services or an ER 24. Stay connected
        
        Avoid:
  3. Argue with the person
    1. 1. Discuss how suicide is wrong
    2. 1. Debate the value of his or her life
    3. 1. Act shocked
    4. 1. Minimize their problems
    5. 1. Give advice or offer ways to fix the problems.
    6. 1. Promise confidentiality or be sworn to secrecy. You may need help
  5. Assessing the immediacy or the urgency
21. Do you have a plan? (PLAN)
22. 1. Do you have what you need to me carry out the plan (firearms, pills, etc.) (MEANS)
23. 1. Do you know when you would do it (TIME SET)
24. 1. Do you intend to take your own life (INTENT)
25. Levels of risk
26. Low – Some suicidal thoughts. No suicide plan. The person says they won’t attempt suicide.
27. 1. Moderate – Suicidal thoughts. Vague plan that isn’t very lethal. Says they won’t attempt suicide.
28. 1. High – Suicidal thoughts. Specific plan that is highly lethal. Says they won’t attempt suicide.
29. 1. Severe – Suicidal thoughts. Specific plan that is highly lethal. The person says they will attempt suicide.
30. Practice sessions -- two more voice actors -- we had a voice actor at the lead-in -- she was imitating a highly distressed teenager. Now we have two teenage voice actors playing out a scenario.
31. Upper Room Crisis Hotline is a faith-based hotline in the Catholic Tradition. We are a non-judgmental listening and referral hotline to clergy, religious and laity in spiritual need 24/7. We bring comfort to those facing spiritual need.
32. Discovered it while researching this series on Suicide.
33. 1. I called them up -- wanted to find out more
34. 1. Spoke with Dr. Terry Smith Executive Directory and Sr. Mary Frances Seely. Who has more than 50 years of experience in creating, maintaining and growing crisis hotlines, and she is now writing the definitive history of crisis hotlines in the United States.
35. 1. Started 2004 priests, brothers, deacons -- dealing with the difficulties of the sex abuse crisis -- grew and grew
  2. 500 calls per month
    1. 1. Cals from 32 different countries
    2. 1. Not only Catholics, but also Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, and Atheists, too. 4.
  3. 1. Major operation 45-50 phone counselors --
  4. Trained by addiction specialists, psychologists, social workers, mental health.
    1. Eight week training session, four hours per week. Substantial.
    2. Next training runs from September 2 to October 21, 2021, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern Time -- all Zoom meetings -- Contact Dr. Terry Smith at catholichotline@gmail.com
    3. 1. Often are retired mental health professionals
    4. 1. Staffed by volunteers
    5. 1. Funded by donations -- worth cause, I will be donating to this group
    6. 1. Brings in the Catholic spirituality -- really important for someone of faith. 6.
  5. 1. I asked Dr. Smith hard questions -- how equipped are your volunteers to handle imminent suicide crisis -- gun-to-the-head type scenarios
  6. Confident in his team -- trained in imminent situations
  7. 1. I asked if there was an imminent situation would a person be better served calling the National Suicide Lifeline or the Upper Room Crisis hotline
  8. Element of Faith -- we have the virtue of hope and can address that specific aspect, which is so important.
  9. 1. I was impressed with the answers and feel very comfortable passing on their contact information as Catholic resources.
  10. Had considered setting up a crisis hotline within Souls and Hearts, but now I don't have to -- I don't have to reinvent the wheel.
  11. 1. Contact information
  12. 1-888-808-8724
    1. 1. Catholichotline.org
  14. Takeaways
36. Caritas or Agape or Charity -- love consists of Benevolence, Capacity, and Constancy
37. 1. Our struggles to love others have more to do with our internal worlds than with the other person
  2. Monitor yourself and care for yourself while working with another person
  3. 1. Suicidal loved ones are often dominated by a suicidal part that blends with their core self and takes over, driving the bus
  4. 1. You can be a first responder and a bridge to other resources.
  5. 1. If you are having suicidal thoughts or know of someone who is, contact
  6. the Upper Room Crisis Hotline at 1-888-808-8724
  7. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance
  8. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
  9. Action Items
38. I want to hear from you Conversation hours T, R 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM 317.567.9594
39. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
40. 1. Catholic Mental Health professionals -- Many of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast listeners are Catholic clinicians -- so all you counselors and therapists, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists -- and also, all you graduate students in mental health fields, stay tune in after the invocation -- special invitation for you, special opportunity for you to work with me
    ITC discussion
  2. Are you seeking:
    1. Greater insight into yourself as a clinician and better self-care? 2. 1. Better human formation on the natural level as both a person and a therapist? 3. 1. Deep, personal connections with a small group of other Catholic therapists who understand the unique demands of our lives? 4. 1. New therapeutic skills to help your clients help themselves, especially those with complex trauma? 5. 1. Do you want this all in a Catholic community of therapists committed to grounding Internal Family System-informed therapy in a Catholic worldview? 6. 1. And would you like to work with me, your dear Dr. Peter, as your consultant and guide?
      1. Here is an answer for you. The Interior Therapist Community within Souls and Hearts. In September, psychologist Peter Martin and I are opening up four new IFS-informed Foundations Experiential Groups for Catholic therapists and graduate students in mental health fields. No previous IFS training is necessary to participate.
      2. Go to soulsandhearts.com/itc and check out our landing page. Soulsandhearts.com/itc. There's a registration link there with lots more information. I will also be hosting an Informational Zoom meeting on Friday, August 13 at 7:00 PM Eastern time -- register for that and have your questions answered. You're also welcome to get in touch with me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or on my cell at 317.567.9594 to find out how we can work together!

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Dr. Peter brings you inside the inner world of so many parents, spouses, children, and siblings of those who died by suicide. Through an imagination exercise, research, quotes from family members, and the Internal Family Systems model of the person, he invites you to a deeper understanding of other others experience a loved one's suicide.
Lead-in
1. The world is full of ‘friends’ of suicide victims thinking ‘if I had only made that drive over there, I could have done something.’ —Darnell Lamont Walker an artist; a writer, photographer, painter, and filmmaker.
2. 1. Ok, so we're continuing to discuss suicide here, we're taking on the tough topics
3. 1. And I want to start with a caution -- if you have lost a loved one to suicide, this episode may be really healing but it also may be really difficult. If you are raw and struggling with a death, be really thoughtful about when and how you listen to this. Pay attention to your window of tolerance and if it's too much right now, know that I respect that and I invite you to approach this topic in a way that is right for you, with help from a counselor, a spiritual director, a trusted friend, somebody you know.
4. 1. Also, this imagination exercise will be hard to really get into if you're driving or engaged in other activities. You can try it, but it's going to be really emotionally evocative for many people. I suggest that you create a good space to engage with
5. 1. Imagine looking through your front window and seeing a police cruiser pull up. One uniformed police officer gets out and a woman in plainclothes and they slowly walk to your door. They ring the doorbell. You open the door. The officer removes his hat and tucks it under his arm. The man seems nervous and clears his throat. The woman introduces herself and tells you she is the victims' assistance coordinator or something like that for your county. She asks your name. You give it. She asks if they can come inside and talk with you. "We have very difficult news for you," she says with sympathy in her brown eyes. Your heart stops beating. The officer looks away, he looks like he'd be anywhere else, rather than here with you. You let them in, now only vaguely aware of your surroundings, the shape your living room is in right now.
6. 1. From the couch, in a gentle, matter-of-fact and very calm manner , the victim service coordinator tells you that the one you so love, you so cherish in the world is dead. She names the name. Yes, it's verified. Yes, there is no mistake. How, how did this happen you ask. The officer explains the details of the citizens' reports called in earlier in the day. He was the first law enforcement officer on the scene, got there just before the EMTs, he had photographed the body, taken notes, conducted the brief investigation. His throat catches. There are tears in his eyes. He hates this part of the job. He tells a few details of the suicide scene. You need to know this, he says, I'm required to tell you. The woman reaches out her professional hand to you, offering her version of compassion.
7. 1. Observe what's going on inside you right now, as you enter into this scene in your imagination. What is happening in your body, your thoughts, you emotions, your impulses, your desires? Let yourself enter into this experience
8. 1. The victims' assistance coordinator is discussing a few details "Things I have to tell you" she says. Standard protocols in situations like this. Something about confirming the identity in the morgue, something else about an autopsy. Something about who you can lean on in your support network family and friends. Something about how hard this all is to take in at once. And there are some government forms to fill out. And a very nicely designed brochure entitled "Surviving the Loss of a Loved One to Suicide" that you get to keep for handy reference. Do you have any questions at this point she asks? Yes, we are sure it's your loved one. The identification was very clear, there is no mistake.
9. 1. Stay with this experience for just a minute if you can without losing your grounding.
10. 1. See if you can just accept what's going on inside -- and acceptance doesn't necessarily mean endorsement -- see if you can accept what's going on inside and really experience it -- the feelings, the impulses, the assumptions, the thoughts, the beliefs, the implications, whatever is coming up.
11. 1. Do you notice different parts within you? Different modes of being, maybe different messages coming to you?
12. 1. You may just have experienced a taste, a sip of the cup that 300,000 parents, siblings, children and spouses of those who die by suicide experience each year in the US, and millions worldwide. Hang on to what you learned about your reactions, keep it in mind as we dive deep into suicides devastating impact on those left behind. [Cue Intro Music]
13. Opening
14. Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, thank you for being here with me, it is good to be here with you, I am glad we are together as we face this difficult topic of suicide. In episode I am clinical psychological Peter Malinoski and you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, where we take on the toughest topics, the most difficult and raw themes that many people want to avoid. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our broader outreach Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com
15. 1. This is the fourth in our series on Suicide.
  2. In episode 76, we got into what the secular experts have to say about suicide.
    1. 1. In episode 77, we reviewed the suicides in Sacred Scripture, in the Bible.
    2. 1. In the last episode, number 78, we sought to really understand the phenomenological worlds of those who kill themselves -- what happens inside? How can we understand suicidal behaviors more clearly, dispelling myths and gripping on to the sense of desperation and the need for relief that drives so much suicidal behavior.
    3. 1. Today, in Episode 79, released on August 2, 2021 we will take a deep dive into the devastating impact of suicide on those left behind. We'll go deep into the internal experience of the parents, spouses, children, siblings, and friends of those who killed themselves to see how they experienced suicide.
    5. Alison Wertheimer: A Special Scar: The Experiences of People Bereaved by Suicide said this: [Suicide] has often far-reaching repercussions for many others. It is rather like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples spread and spread. Now, Alison, with all due respect, I think you're totally wrong about that. It's not just ripples from a stone in a pond. For the spouses, parents, children, siblings and friends who are left behind to deal with the impact of a suicide it's more like a tidal wave resulting from an underwater earthquake than ripples from a stone.
    6. Linda Lee Landon -- Author of Life after Suicide said this, which is much more on the money: Suicide creates a monstrous emotional upsurge of shame and guilt. Everyone participates in feeling responsible and even shamed at knowing the suicidal candidate.
    7. What those who attempt suicide often don't think about is that suicide is not just an ending. It's a beginning. The beginning of many new things for many people, for the ones left behind.
  3. Why religions of the world condemn suicide Article on theconversation.com from June 12, 2018
  4. Mathew Schmalz Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross

Many of the world’s religions have traditionally condemned suicide because, as they believe, human life fundamentally belongs to God.

Many of world’s religions have beliefs that condemn suicide.

In the Jewish tradition, the prohibition against suicide originated in Genesis 9:5, which says, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning.” This means that humans are accountable to God for the choices they make. From this perspective, life belongs to God and is not yours to take. Jewish civil and religious law, the Talmud, withheld from a suicide the rituals and treatment that were given to the body in the case of other deaths, such as burial in a Jewish cemetery, though this is not the case today.

A similar perspective shaped Catholic teachings about suicide. St. Augustine of Hippo, an early Christian bishop and philosopher, wrote that “he who kills himself is a homicide.” In fact, according the Catechism of St. Pius X, an early 20th-century compendium of Catholic beliefs, someone who died by suicide should be denied Christian burial – a prohibition that is no longer observed.

Original Condemnation of Suicide The Catholic view of suicide developed in the Greco-Roman world where suicide was quite common, easily tolerated, seldom condemned or criticized, sometimes applauded, and quite frequently undertaken for the most trivial of reasons. These teachings developed in protest to the abuse of life manifested in this culture. Fr. Robert Barry, The Development of the Roman Catholic Teachings on Suicide. p. 460

The Italian poet Dante Aligheri, in “The Inferno,” extrapolated from traditional Catholic beliefs and placed those who had committed the sin of suicide on the seventh level of hell, where they exist in the form of trees that painfully bleed when cut or pruned.

According to traditional Islamic understandings, the fate of those who die by suicide is similarly dreadful. Hadiths, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad warn Muslims against committing suicide. The hadiths say that those who kill themselves suffer hellfire. And in hell, they will continue to inflict pain on themselves, according to the method of their suicide.

In Hinduism, suicide is referred to by the Sanskrit word “atmahatya,” literally meaning “soul-murder.” “Soul-murder” is said to produce a string of karmic reactions that prevent the soul from obtaining liberation. In fact, Indian folklore has numerous stories about those who commit suicide. According to the Hindu philosophy of birth and rebirth, in not being reincarnated, souls linger on the earth, and at times, trouble the living.

Buddhism also prohibits suicide, or aiding and abetting the act, because such self-harm causes more suffering rather than alleviating it. And most basically, suicide violates a fundamental Buddhist moral precept: to abstain from taking life.

Secular positions
1. “When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.” ― Jeannette Walls
2. 1. “Committing suicide essentially said to friends and loved ones and the world at large that you were the only thing that mattered, that your problems were hopeless that you deserved to escape from them and to hell with everyone else. Suicide was nothing more than a way to look in the eye of the people who loved you and say, "My pain is paramount and I want it to end. The pain you will feel when I am gone, and the guilt you will experience at not having been able to stop me, do not matter to me. I am willing for you to suffer for the rest of your life so that I can take the easy way out of mine.” ― Christine Warren, You're So Vein
3. 1. “When you attempt suicide, the counselors try to talk you out of trying it again by asking you about other people, which is good prevention if you care about other people.”― Albert Borris, Crash Into Me
4. 1. Marsha M. Linehan, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: “The desire to commit suicide, however, has at its base a belief that life cannot or will not improve. Although that may be the case in some instances, it is not true in all instances. Death, however, rules out hope in all instances. We do not have any data indicating that people who are dead lead better lives."
5. Sinead O'Connor -- Irish Singer and Songwriter, history of acts hostile to the Catholic church: Suicide doesn't solve your problems. It only makes them infinitely, un-countably worse.
6. Lack of empathy, hardness, even harshness toward victims of suicide. The pendulum swings. No Sin, no crime
7. Huffington Post article Why You Should Stop Saying ‘Committed Suicide’ Lindsay Holmes
  1. The phrase is stigmatizing in a lot of outdated, insensitive ways.
    1. 1. Simply put, “committed suicide” conveys shame and wrongdoing; it doesn’t capture the pathology of the condition that ultimately led to a death. It implies that the person who died was a perpetrator rather than a victim. 3.
  2. 1. Stop Saying 'Committed Suicide.' Say 'Died by Suicide' instead. by Kevin Caruso

Criminals commit crimes. Suicide is not a crime. So STOP SAYING “Committed Suicide.” That is a term that needs to be expunged completely. It is inaccurate; it is insensitive; and it strongly contributes to the horrible stigma that is still associated with suicide. A much better term is: “Died by Suicide.”

Gabriel's Light, Carol and Brendon Deely. :Words have power. It is important that we stop using the word “committed” when talking about suicide. Think about phrases like “commit murder” or “commit adultery.” The word commit harkens back to beliefs that suicide is a crime or sin.
But suicide is a sin
1. Sin as breaking divine laws
  1. Baltimore Catechism #3 Lesson 6: Q. 278. What is actual sin? A. Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God.
    1. 1. 1849 Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as "an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law."
  2. 1. Sins break relationships.
  3. Jesuit Fr. Andrew Hamilton in a post called "Sin, the Breaking of Relationship" on the ignatianspiritulality.com website: I think that the best images from a Christian point of view describe sin in terms of breaches of relationships between people, between people and themselves, between people and the world of which we are part, and between people and God. All those relationships have a proper form of respect that considers all relationships and not just the ones immediately involved in an engagement. In sin these relationships are breached by greed, arrogance, rage, resentment, contempt, fear, lack of due attention, and so on. Because respect is the natural expression of love, sin is always a failure to love.
    1. Breaking of relationship with self -- Love your neighbor as yourself. -- second great commandment
  4. The person who takes his own life is indeed a victim. He is the victim of a killing, the one who is killed. But he is also a perpetrator -- the one who did the killing.
    1. 1. He has a relationship with himself. A perpetrator - victim relationship.
    3. Breaking of relationship with others -- a lack of love, a lack of giving of himself
  5. Whether they want to or not, those who suicide break relationships with others.
    1. 1. The one who suicides may not be capable
    2. 1. But how did he get there. Concern that considering suicide as not a crime or a sin, and looking at it as a disease for example can make it seem as though it springs up from nowhere.
    4. Case of 17 year old Michelle Carter
  6. Michelle Carter Case: Facts THE PUZZLE OF INCITING SUICIDE 10.

Guyora Binder and Luis Chiesa*

In 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Roy committed suicide, two years after a previous unsuccessful attempt. Police soon discovered that in the preceding week, 17-year-old Michelle Carter, who described Roy as her boyfriend, had sent him many text messages urging him to develop and carry out a plan to kill himself. Moreover, Carter had pressed Roy to proceed in a phone call when he hesitated in the very process of killing himself. And yet Carter had originally tried to talk Roy out of suicide, and only changed her position after he persuaded her that nothing else could relieve his misery. Carter was charged with manslaughter in a Massachusetts juvenile court. The charge was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and, in 2017, Carter was convicted, and sentenced to a fifteen-month term of imprisonment
Most people recognize that Michelle Carter's actions in this case were wrong.
If suicide is not a sin, if it's not wrong, if it's just a choice -- why was Michelle Carter convicted?
Going to look at impact -- impact on parents, spouses, children, and siblings of those who kill themselves.
Definition of parts
1. Suicide makes so much more sense if we understand each person not as a uniform, monolithic, homogenous, single personality, but rather as a dynamic system including a core self and parts. That helps to explain so much, including shifts over time.
2. 1. Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. You can also think of them as separate modes of operating if that is helpful.
  2. Not just transient mood states, but whole constellations of all these aspects.
3. Parts are seeking some good for us, even when the means they use are maladaptive or harmful.
4. Three roles
  1. Exiles --
    1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
    2. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
      1. Suicide is an extreme form of relational trauma, an extreme form of abandonment in relationship. 3. 1. Suicide can also be experienced, rightly or wrongly, as a form of rejection. 4. Exiled parts hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity of the experience of the loss of the loved one. The grief, the pain, the loss, and also the anger and resentment, the shame and the blame. 5. Exiled parts desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved and healed of their wounds, relieved of the burdens that were thrust upon them by the suicide -- and this is true whether or not the person who committed suicide intended harm or not -- even if there was no ill-will, no intention, it's still wounding, it's still harmful. 6. Exiled parts want rescue, redemption, healing 7. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system -- they want to take over the raft to be seen and heard, to be known, to be understood. But they can flood us with the intensity of their experience, with the intensity of the burdens they carry. 8. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned 9. All of those can be created or exacerbated by a loved one's suicide 10. Young parts, not mature ways of thinking 11. Filters, lenses -- Suicide of a loved one can confirm and strengthen the feelings of intrinsic badness or unworthiness that an exile carries.
        
        Managers
    3. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe. 2. 1. "Never again" attitude toward the exiles. 3. 1. Very much about reducing risk of overwhelm. 4. 1. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging, 5. 1. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 6.
      1. Firefighters
    4. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, like in Inside Out, remember the parts and the control panel? So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action. 2. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house. 3. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that. 4. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences. 5. 1. Intense neediness and grief are overwhelming us! Emergency actions -- battle stations! Evasive maneuvers, Arm the torpedoes, Full speed ahead! 6. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis, 7. 1. All kinds of addictions -- alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, excessive working or exercise, suicidal actions, self-harm, violence, dissociation, distractions, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy, and raging. 8. 1. Parts can take over the person 9. 6.
    5. Impact on Parents
5. Amy Evans, Kathleen Abrahamson 2020 review article Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to evaluate the impact of public stigma on bereavement of suicide survivors. A total of 11 qualitative and quantitative studies were reviewed. Suicide survivors reported feeling shamed, blamed, and judged. They perceived a general discomfort and awkwardness surrounding the suicide, which contributed to avoidance and secrecy. Higher perceived stigma levels were associated with global psychological distress, depression, self-harm, and suicidality.
6. 1. Suicide Bearing families report higher levels of rejection, shame, stigma, the need to conceal the loved one’s cause of death, and blaming.
7. 1. Ilanit Tal: Death Studies 2017 those with complicated grief after suicide had the highest rates of lifetime depression, pre-loss passive suicidal ideation, self-blaming thoughts, and impaired work and social adjustment compared to other causes of death.
8. 1. Ultimate failure of parent -- > Shame
9. 1. Desire to disconnect
10. 1. 2018 article Parents’ Experiences of Suicide-Bereavement: A Qualitative Study at 6 and 12 Months after Loss Victoria Ross, Kairi Kõlves,* Lisa Kunde, and Diego De Leo 2018 article International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Research in Queensland, Australia. 7 mothers and 7 fathers (no couples) who had lost a child to suicide.
  2. Death of a child by suicide is a severe trauma, increases risks of psychological and physical symptoms. Increases risk of internal fragmentation, increasing disconnection among parts.
  3. Three major themes
    1. Searching for answers and sense making -- the question of "Why?" Reflective process
      1. Where there had been no previous indications that the suicide would occur, parents described their feelings of shock and bewilderment, and reflected on their many unanswered questions about the motivations for the suicide.
        
        From a mother, six months after her son died by suicide: “There are times when you start to think and you think, why? I mean we had no idea that he’d ever do anything like this, we didn’t think he would. He even said that he would never ever do anything like this, and then to turn around and do it.”
        
        Father, six months after his son committed suicide: “You question so much all the time. Because you’re going to naturally question whether it’s you, whether he’s in trouble at uni, money trouble… Maybe he was depressed. I don’t know. We didn’t see any signs... It would’ve been nice to have someone who would’ve had the answers, to tell you the thought processes that could go on. But no one’s really had any idea. Just the questions behind why—give us some ideas why he would’ve done it.” 2.
        
        Coping Strategies and support
      2. Avoidance, e.g. excessive working
        
        From a father whose child died by suicide 12 months earlier: “But we don’t really talk about it—if you mean the incident or what happened.”
        
        Manager activity -- proactive 2. 1. Excessive drinking to avoid the pain of loss
        
        From a father whose child died by suicide six months earlier: “It’s the weekly, every day drinking in the week that’s definitely increased. Whereas before, we’d try not drink for three days … but now it’s definitely, at least one bottle to myself, every night.” 2. 1. Firefighter activity -- reactive 3. 1. Quote from a mother whose child died by suicide six months earlier: “Like I said, you know, you either collapse under the pile, or you scrabble up with it, dig in your toes, and your fingernails, and even your teeth if you have to, to just rise above it …” 4. 1. Adaptive processes -- come more from the self -- engaging with internal experience
        
        Writing letters to children 2. 1. Celebrating birthdays 3. 1. Visiting gravesites 4. 1. Psychotherapy or marital counseling 5. 1. Support groups 5. 4. 1. Finding meaning and purpose
      3. Learning process 2. 1. Reflecting and re-evaluating their lives 3. 1. Changing priorities 4. 1. Making positive contributions 5. 1. Mother , 12 months “I have good days and bad days. It’s horrible, just horrible. There’s probably not a day goes by that I don’t have a cry ... It just doesn’t get any easier.” 5. 1. Importance of integration. 6.
      4. Impact on the Spouse
11. Reactions
  1. Rejection and betrayal
    1. Broken vows, commitments abandoned 2. 1. Could not look to you for help. 3. 1. How is this not a breaking of relationship? 4.
      1. Unspoken criticism stemming from negative judgment
    2. Proactive manager parts asking questions like this -- What was so wrong with the marriage that he would prefer to kill himself?
      1. Shame -- deeply burdensome.
      2. Guilt -- frantic looking for what I did wrong, in an effort to make sure this never happens to anyone again. 5.
    3. 1. JAMA Psychiatry Article Yeates Conwell, MD et al. Association Between Spousal Suicide and Mental, Physical, and Social Health Outcomes: A Longitudinal and Nationwide Register-Based Study. Denmark. 1. 3.5 million men (4,814 of whom were bereaved by spousal suicide) and more than 3.5 million women (10,793 of whom who were bereaved by spousal suicide). 2. Major Findings
    4. Spouses bereaved by a partner's suicide had higher risk than the general population of developing mental health disorders within five years of the loss. 3. 1. Spouses bereaved by a partner's suicide had elevated risk for developing physical disorders, such as cirrhosis and sleep disorders, which may be attributed to unhealthy coping styles, than the general population.
    5. Spouses bereaved by a partner's suicide were more likely to use more sick leave benefits, disability pension funds and municipal support than the general population.
    6. Compared with spouses bereaved by other manners of death for a partner, those bereaved by suicide had higher risks for developing mental health disorders, suicidal behaviors and death.
    8. Impact on Children
12. Children are existentially vulnerable and they know it. It's obvious to them.
13. 1. Johns Hopkins researchers: 2010 Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Those who lost a parent to suicide as children or teens were three times more likely to commit suicide than children and teenagers with living parents. However there was no difference in suicide risk when the researchers compared those 18 years and older. Young adults who lost a parent to suicide did not have a higher risk when compared to those with living parents. Children under the age of 13 whose parent died suddenly in an accident were twice as likely to die by suicide as those whose parents were alive but the difference disappeared in the older groups
14. 1. Harold S. Koplewicz, MD, Commenting on that article: Even more than an accidental death, a suicide generates horror, anger, shame, confusion, and guilt—all feelings that a child can experience as overwhelming. The biggest risk to a child’s emotional health is not being able, or encouraged, to express these feelings, and get an understanding of what happened that he or she can live with. When a mother who has been depressed commits suicide, for instance, we want that understanding to be that she suffered from a mental illness, a disorder in her brain that caused her death, despite the efforts of those who loved her to save her.
15. 1. Guidance: The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital and one of the world's leading research centres in its field. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/guides-and-publications/when-a-parent-dies-by-suicide
  2. Did I do something to make this happen? Is it my fault
    1. 1. If I'd only done what Mom asked me to do." "If I hadn't fought with my brothers so much." 3.

Manager parts -- seeking to prevent future tragedy

Could I have prevented Mom's suicide
What could I have done differently?
Will I die by suicide too?
Are you going to die, too? Will I be left alone?
If I die by suicide too, will I see mom again?
Why am I so sad? Will I be sad forever?
After the death of a parent, children may also feel:

abandoned

shocked

sad

angry

fearful

guilty

confused

depressed

anxious

lost or empty.

When will it stop hurting? When will I feel better

Suicide is never anyone’s fault. This message needs to be repeated over and over again.

Damaging to self esteem -- I was not worth living for. Loss of protection, caregiver, mentor.
Impact on Siblings
1. Taylor Porco's brother, Jordan, died by suicide National Public Radio August 25, 2017 "I was really depressed and in such extreme pain. Nothing, literally, mattered to me after he died. All I wanted was my brother back. I never loved someone as much as I loved him," she says.
  1. Siblings have deep, protective bonds. Shared experience of sharing parents. 2.
  2. 1. Psychotherapist Leah Royden Psychology Today February 15, 2019 -- Lost her brother to suicide when she was 21.
  3. It’s confusing, painful, and hard—with more challenges than "normal" bereavement.
    1. A marked sense of guilt and responsibility around the death -- often carried by exiles but also by managers 2. 1. Intense anger, stemming from a deep sense of rejection and abandonment -- the exiles, but also the firefighters 3. 1. Feelings of shame and worthlessness -- exiles. 4. 1. Overwhelming anxiety and fear -- this is the exiles breaking through. 5. 6. Siblings suffer intensely—and they also tend to suffer invisibly -- attention tends to go to the parents.
    2. surviving siblings “often find themselves not only neglected, but expected to put their needs aside in order to spare their parents further distress” (1992 dissertation by Ariate S. Rakic, 1992, p. 2).
      1. Rakic: Even though they shared many demographic similarities, the sibling survivor group were operating at well below their potential. While the other bereaved siblings were taking positive, active steps towards a secure future, “all the siblings in the suicide group … envisioned a narrow range of possibilities for success, and blamed themselves for the decisions and choices that proved to be detrimental to their lives.” 2. Royden: presence of anger towards the dead sibling—let alone its expression—is usually viewed as highly inappropriate and unacceptable, even in families that can speak relatively freely about emotions. 7. There’s usually no space to talk within the family—and nowhere to talk outside of it either. I would add not a place to have an internal dialog about it all. 8. The loss can cast a very long shadow, affecting the siblings’ sense of security in the future, in relationships, and in life itself. 9. Many siblings eventually create meaningful, purposeful lives out of this emotional nightmare—with a greater sense of perspective and empathy.
      3. Impact on the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ
2. 1 Corinthians 12 12-14

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

As Catholics, we are all in relationship with each other. If one of us dies by suicide, it's not just some isolated choice but a separate person, with no impact. We are part of the same body. The mystical body of Christ. There's a real loss there.
Action Items
1. If you are having suicidal thoughts or know of someone who is, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
2. 1. Subscribe to this podcast -- like it on social media, leave reviews on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you use.
3. 1. Resilient Catholics Community.
4. 1. Catholic's Guide to Helping a Loved One in Distress
5. 1. Conversation hours T, R 317.567.9594
6. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
7. Patronness and patron

View Details

Lead-in
1. Almost no one understands suicide very well. Almost no one.
2. 1. Some of you might say -- but Dr. Peter, I've been really down and out. I've been really suicidal. I've been there. I lived it.
  2. Not gonna argue with you about having been suicidal. But having intense feelings, almost irresistible impulses toward suicide, constant suicidal thoughts
  3. -- that doesn't mean you understand suicide. Not at all.
3. 1. I don't think most people who have attempted suicide really understand their experience.
4. 1. I don't think most therapists really understand suicide.
5. 1. Why ?
6. 1. Because we're afraid to really enter into what is behind suicide. We don't want to go there. We're terrified of what lurks underneath. We have parts of us that don't want to understand.
  2. Lauren Oliver, Delirium “Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed."
7. 1. And I'll go further than that. And it's not so much because we're afraid of what we'll find in another person, a friend or relative or colleague. It's because we are terrified that finding the darkness inside of others will wake up our own sleeping giants of darkness. The darkness inside us. The terror inside us. That's why we avoid, why we distract, why we skirt the edges of this topic.
8. 1. Benjamin Franklin knew this: Nine men in ten are would-be suicides -Poor Richard's Almanack.
9. 1. Freud popularized it in 1920 -- book the Pleasure Principle. -- he discussed the death drive: the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. Death drive or drives went by the name Thanatos -- the Greek god personified death.
  2. Caught a lot of flak for it, then and now. Not really widely accepted. I think he was on to something. Something we don't want to think about others -- that they have drives toward self-destruction. It's something that we don't want to admit about ourselves. 2.
  3. 1. If we are really honest with ourselves in looking at suicide
  4. we would realize, with John Bradford There but for the grace of God go I. We would give up our false presumptions about our own strength and our own natural resiliency.
    1. 1. We would realize, with Shakespeare's Lord Chancellor in Henry VIII “We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.” ― Lord Chancellor William Shakespeare, Henry VIII
    2. 1. We would understand Mahatma Ghandi when he said: “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
    3. 1. We would have a lot less judgement about the souls and experience of those who killed themselves. Yes, the action of suicide is wrong, gravely wrong, and we'll discuss that in next week's episode. We're not minimizing the gravity of the act -- I'm talking here about the phenomenological experience of those on the brink of self-destruction and why they are there.
    4. 1. And we would understand something about the spiritual dimensions, the dark spiritual powers at work in suicide as well. 6.
  5. 1. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think you really have any accurate idea about suicide. Suicide is one of the most misunderstood of human actions.
  6. Because we want to avoid the churning darkness, the despair, the hopelessness, the alienation, the trauma within us, we don’t want to see it in others. And if someone near is suicidal, we know, we know instinctively that he is tapping into his despair, his hopelessness, his alienation. We know that our suicidal is really in the grip of her trauma and her isolation, and her excruciating pain.
  7. And our natural response -- is to flee. To get out of dodge. To protect ourselves.
    1. We rationalize it -- I'm not a professional, I'm not a counselor, I don't know what to do with all of this intensity
  8. Or we stay in there, we force ourselves to stay in relationship, feeling really inadequate, not wanting to go too deep, not wanting to screw it up -- and in our timidity and fear, we actually aren't very helpful.
  9. OK -- I will grant you that you don't really know what to do.
  10. And I get it that you're afraid -- maybe terrified. OK.
  11. This is a tough issue. Suicide is a tough issue. And tough issues are what we specialize in here. [Cue music]
  13. Intro
10. Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, thank you for being here with me, thank you for making it through the lead in and not fleeing from this episode. I'm glad you and I are in this together. And it's going to be OK. By God's grace, together we can handle, we can work with, we can work through this topic of suicide. We'll do it together.
11. 1. I am clinical psychological Peter Malinoski and you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, where we take on the toughest topics, the ones others don't want to touch, and we go really deep with them. Why? Not out of some kind of idle curiosity. Not out of disorder curiosity, out of some kind of psychological voyeurism. No. We go there in this podcast because we are working on ourselves. On our own human formation, shoring up the natural foundation for our spiritual lives, so that we can enter into loving union with God. That's why. It's about removing the psychological barriers you have to a much deeper intimacy with God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother.
12. 1. In the last episode we looked at specific cases of suicide in Sacred Scripture. This is episode number 78, released on July 26, 2021, entitled The Desperate Inner Experience of Suicidality. We are going to enter into the phenomenological world of the suicidal person.
14. Why? Why do we do that? Why do that?
15. Two answers. The second answer is for going into all of this depth on suicide is so that you and I can love.
  1. So that we can love others who are struggling with this -- and there are so many.
    1. Franklin estimated 90%. Nine men in ten are would-be suicides. I think he's right, even though the vast majority of those don't even know there's a struggle going on inside them. I think Benjamin Franklin knew about the latent potential in most people.
    2. Freud: Thanatos. The Death Drives. Freud knew. For all his faults and follies, Freud knew something about the depth of pain in people's souls. The pain that lives in the unconscious. Locked away, at least for a time. Unnoticed, at least for a time.
16. 1. The first answer: Is so that we can be known and loved. That we can accept others knowing us, and us knowing ourselves.
  2. 1 John 4:19 We love, because he first loved us.
    1. He first loved us. We need to let God love us. We need to let our Lady, our Mother love us
    2. In our woundedness. In our suffering. In our shame, in our pain, in our fear, in our sadness, however our darkness is for us. Whatever our darkness is.
  3. Isaiah 9:2 The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen.
    1. Not just about the external world, but also our internal world. 3.
    3. The Pain
17. Caveats -- Difficult topic.
18. 1. “The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
19. 1. “Nobody has ever killed themselves over a broken arm. But every day, thousands of people kill themselves because of a broken heart. Why? Because emotional pain hurts much worse than physical pain.” ― Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories
20. 1. “When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.”

― Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

““Suicidal pain includes the feeling that one has lost all capacity to effect emotional change. The agony is excruciating and looks as if it will never end. There is the feeling of having been beaten down for a very long time. There are feelings of agitation, emptiness, and incoherence. 'Snap out of it and get on with your life,' sounds like a demand to high jump ten feet.” ― David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain
Suicide is best understood not so much as a movement toward death as it is a movement away from something and that something is always the same: intolerable emotion, unendurable pain, or unacceptable anguish. Maurizio Pompili & Roberto Tatarelli
Parts and Suicide
1. So helpful to think of suicide in terms of parts.
2. 1. A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.”

― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders.
Each part has
1. Personality style
2. 1. Needs -- Episode 62
  2. Attachment needs
    1. 1. Integrity needs
  3. 1. Emotions
  4. 1. Body sensation.
  5. 1. Belief.
  6. 1. Thought
  7. 1. Intentions
  8. 1. Desires
  9. 1. Attitudes
  10. 1. Impulses.
  11. 1. Interpersonal style
  12. 1. World view
  13. 1. Often have burdens
  14. 1. Ways of coping
  15. Review of Parts
3. Exiles --
  1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
  2. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
  3. They hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity.
  4. They desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved
  5. They want rescue, redemption, healing
  6. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system -- they want to take over the raft to be seen and heard, to be known, to be understood. But they can flood us with the intensity of their experience
  7. And that threatens to harm external relationships
  8. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned
  9. Exiles' Role in Suicide
    1. Furnishing the intolerable pain. 10. 1. Exiles bring the intensity. The fuel 11. Description of the pain of suicide -- Quotes
    2. Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to a friend and protégé, encouraging him to make peace with his inner demons. 12. 1. “Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted 1993 memoir of being in a mental hospital for 18 months in the late 1960s.
    3. 1. Managers
  10. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe.
    1. 1. "Never again" attitude toward the exiles.
    2. 1. Very much about reducing risk of overwhelm.
    3. 1. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging,
    4. 1. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 6.
  11. 1. Firefighters
  12. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, this is terrifying. The consequences of exile taking over could be disastrous. So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action.
    1. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house.
    2. 1. Firefighters are focused on rescuing us from a terrible situation.
    3. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that.
    4. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences. They break down the door and spray water over everything, trying to calm the raging flames.
    5. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis,
    6. 1. All kinds of addictions -- alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, excessive working or exercise, suicidal actions, self-harm, violence, dissociation, distractions, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy, and raging.
    7. 1. Parts can take over the person
  14. Firefighters' role in Suicide
    1. Serious suicidal impulses can be driven by firefighters:
  15. Just make the pain of the exiles stop.
    1. 1. Suicidal firefighters are filled with hopelessness -- they don't know of another way to protect you.
    2. 1. They have been beaten down, sometimes literally, always figuratively.
    4. Desperation of firefighters
  16. If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
    1. 1. “In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'

What is it then?'

It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”

― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
“The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.”― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Rapid Shifts among parts
1. The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week. Voltaire
2. 1. When you're young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you're laughing again. Marilyn Monroe who died of an overdose of barbiturates in 1962 at age 36 -- ruled a probable suicide by the county coroner.
3. 1. “The Suicide, as she is falling, Illuminated by the moon, Regrets her act, and finds appalling The thought she will be dead so soon.” ― Edward Gorey
5. Impulse driven suicide
6. 2015 Study in South Korea -- Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience
  1. 87% of suicide attempts were impulsive
    1. Most common trigger was interpersonal conflict
    2. Most common diagnosis was major depression.
  2. Often poorly planned
  3. Replicated a previous 2011 in South Korea study where 85% were impulsive
7. 1. 2016 South Korean Study in Psychiatry Investigation
  2. 48% of 269 suicide attempters brought to ERs were clearly impulsive, very sudden
    1. No Plan 2. 1. No previous suicidal ideation. They weren't thinking about it. 3. 1. Came out of the blue 2.
    2. 1. 1997 Study from Sweden 44% of suicide attempts were radically impulsive.
    4. Approach:
      1. Always reassure dangerous firefighters that you do not aim to get rid of them.
      2. Treat them with respect and appreciation; they have only been trying to help.
      3. They are trying to help, trying to protect you from misery.
      4. If dangerous firefighters think there is an effective alternative, they are often

game to try that new way

They need to experience hope.
1. Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse. Karl A. Menninger
It is critically important to present them other options for safety, that they can be safe without needing suicide.
We will get into how to work with them in the next episode.
Managers' role in suicide
1. Remember, managers are more proactive.
2. 1. Managers still can be very intense, and also in a lot of pain, but they are not so reactive.
3. 1. Planned Suicide
  2. Suicide seriously considered. Suicide as a "comforting" option.
    1. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
    2. 1. prepared a will, decided upon a method in advance, and planned the date of the attempt.
    3. 1. Repeated suicidal impulses from firefighter can be taken up by managers
    4. Or firefighters can take on a more managerial role 2. 1. And use contemplation of suicide as a role. 3. 4.
    5. 1. Quotes
  3. “The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.” Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist, and short-story writer -- attempted suicide several times by several means. Succeeded at age 31, after experiencing major depression for most of her adult life. 1963.
    1. 1. “There are people who fantasize about suicide, and paradoxically, these fantasies can be soothing because they usually involve either fantasizing about others' reactions to one's suicide or imagining how death would be a relief from life's travails. In both cases, an aspect of the fantasy is to exert control, either over others' views or toward life's difficulties. The writer A. Alvarez stated, " There people ... for whom the mere idea of suicide is enough; they can continue to function efficiently and even happily provided they know they have their own, specially chosen means of escape always ready..." In her riveting 2008 memoir of bipolar disorder, Manic, Terri Cheney opened the book by stating, "People... don't understand that when you're seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there's an out--even if it's bloody, even if it's permanent--makes the pain bearable for one more day."

This strategy appears to be effective for some people, but only for a while. Over longer periods, fantasizing about death leaves people more depressed and thus at higher risk for suicide, as Eddie Selby, Mike Amestis, and I recently showed in a study on violent daydreaming. A strategy geared toward increased feelings of self-control (fantasizing about the effects of one's suicide) "works" momentarily, but ultimately backfires by undermining feelings of genuine self-control in the long run.― Thomas Joiner, Myths About Suicide

Like a drug.
Battling among Parts
1. “The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.” ― Susanna Kaysen
2. 1. If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation? Comedian Steven Wright
3. Reasons for Suicide
4. Suicide is complex
  1. Suicide is complex, there's never a single reason why a person contemplates taking their own life, and there are no absolute indicators that a person could be in that state. Steve Crisp
  2. 1. Superficial ones -- see IIC 76 section VII.
  3. 1. Illusory Ones
  4. You didn't love me enough
    1. “A lot of you cared, just not enough.” ― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why -- young adult novel 2. 1. “Some people are just not meant to be in this world. It's just too much for them.” ― Phoebe Stone, The Boy on Cinnamon Street 3. 1. Vincent: Don McLean 1971 Vincent Van Gogh 2.

You took your life as lovers often do

But I could have told you, Vincent

This world was never meant for one

As beautiful as you

Deeper, more primary causes -- unmet needs with despair that those needs will ever be met.
1. Attachment Needs
  1. A felt sense of safety and protection, deep sense of security felt in the bones No parts feel this.
    1. 1. Feeling seen and known heard and understood -- felt attunement Parts Isolated
    2. 1. Felt comfort, reassurance
    3. 1. Feeling valued, delighted in, cherished by the attachment figure
    4. 1. Felt support for the best self
    5. 1. When attachment needs are not met, who comes in? Satan.
    7. Integrity Needs
  2. All of the above. Each one of us needs help to develop our sense of self, our identity
    1. 1. I exist
    2. 1. my existence is separate from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate person. bounded, has boundaries
    3. 1. My identity is stable over time and across different situations -- there is a continuity -- hard when parts are all over the place.
    4. 1. I can regulate myself -- I have some self-control.
    5. 1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion
    6. 1. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world
    7. 1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions.
    8. 1. I can make sense of my experience and the world around me
    9. 1. Mission and Purpose in life
    10. 1. We also need to make good choices -- seek what is good, true and beautiful in lif
  3. Compassionate responses
2. When a famous person dies by suicide, we "remind" people to pick up the phone and call a hotline. "If he'd only reached out for help because help was available," is a frequent refrain, as if people who suffer don't know that and the disease doesn't disable cognitive function. We need to do more than give out phone numbers. Bob Collins
3. 1. We will be doing so much more. Through little things and big things. Next episode.
5. Action Items
6. If you are having suicidal thoughts or know of someone who is, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
7. 1. Resilient Catholics Community.
8. 1. Catholic's Guide to Choosing a Therapist
9. 1. Catholic Journeymen -- Dr. Gerry Crete community of faithful Catholic men seeking to renew their lives through prayer, personal growth, healing, and brotherhood!
10. 1. Conversation hours T, R 317.567.9594 Not July 27 and July 29.
11. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
12. Patronness and patron

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Dr. Peter walks with you through what Sacred Scripture has to teach us about suicide, exploring the major episodes of suicide in the Bible from a historical and psychological perspective, grounded in a Catholic worldview.

View Details

Storytime
1. I want to take you back, back in time to a hot June night in 1980 and tell you a story about that time. [cue sound effect] I’m 11 years old and I'm recovering from a third spinal surgery after two previous cervical fusions failed. I’m feeling terrible. I'm in a dark, cold hospital room in a university hospital, just out of post-op and back on the pediatric unit 104 miles from home, immobilized in a full body cast and halo brace, recovering from puking from the general anesthetic, afraid that this surgery failed like the other two. My confidence in surgeons is at a low ebb. The room smells of antiseptic and isolation.
2. Back in those unenlightened days, visiting hours were really limited, so my parents aren't there. But I'm not alone. My sick toddler roommate is lying face down in his crib, sobbing inconsolably. No one comes for him. “Nothing can be done for him -- this will pass,” the professionals had told me when I pressed the call button for him. So I don’t bother with the call button anymore. I can’t think of anything to do for him either. I feel like he does. We're both miserable. I am in the darkest hour of my life to that point. I'm beginning to wonder if the rest of my life will be a series of horrible, painful, failed surgeries, nighttime isolation and helplessness.
3. So what does little Petey Guy do at the point? My aunt Marlene always used to call me Petey Guy when I was that age. Petey Guy starts to sing. Yes, that's right, I start singing. Do you know what I was singing?
  1. Was the 1959 Julie Andrews version of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music? No it wasn't.
  2. The Beatles" 1969 classic "Here comes the Sun" by George Harrison? It was not.
  3. Was it the 1977 show tune "The Sun will Come out Tomorrow" from the musical Annie? Nope. Guess again.
  4. Gloria Gaynor's smash hit in 1977 "I will survive"? Wrong.
  5. "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac, also in 1977? No.
  6. How about "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey -- that was it, right. Come on, people. "Don't Stop Believin" came out in 1981. We're in 1980. So chronologically, that wouldn't make sense.
4. No, I was singing a different song, a darker song than any of those, a 1970 song with lyrics written by 14 year old Michael Altman, put to music by his father Robert Altman and sung by Johnny Mandel. A song written for the 1970 movie MASH. Some of you may be following this now. I was singing a song called Suicide is Painless.
5. You're probably familiar with the tune. After the surprise success of the movie, Robert Altman chose it to be the instrumental opening for the hugely popular MASH comedy-drama series that ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983. So even though you know the tune, you might not be familiar with the gaunt, haunting, despairing lyrics. Here's the opening stanza:
  1. Through early morning fog I see

Visions of the things to be

The pains that are withheld for me

I realize and I can see

That suicide is painless

It brings on many changes

And I can take or leave it if I please

So a little backstory. My Grandpa Roberts had a magnus chord organ
1. 1960's very popular, lots on the second hand market. Chords press a button with left hand, keyboard with the right. We had one too.
2. Grandpa Roberts had a songbook of popular tune to play on the Magnus Chord Organ --- including Suicide is Painless
3. I recognized the theme from MASH, and it was one of very few songs I learned to play on the Magnus Chord Organ, and I sang the lyrics as I played. But they didn't particularly resonate with me until that post-surgical night in 1980, in the dark, sick, and alone with the crying toddler when my 11 year old heart was so burdened and breaking.
Nobody noticed my singing about suicide in the night -- my toddler roommate didn't seem to care. And it wasn't until almost 40 years later that I ever told anyone about it.
Intro
1. Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, thank you for being here with me.
2. 1. I no longer go by "Petey Guy," I am better known as clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski
3. 1. The reason this Interior Integration for Catholics podcasts exists is to help you toward loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way. -- It's about tolerating being loved, and about loving about living out the two great commandments to the hilt, with all of our being, it's about overcoming the natural obstacles to reaching more of our potential, both in the natural and the spiritual realms.
4. 1. Because we take on the tough topics in this podcast, today we are getting into the difficult and complex topic of suicide/ Suicide. Even the word can send shivers up the spine.
5. 1. This episode is titled IIC 76 The Black of Suicide -- What Do the Secular Experts Say? and it's released on July 12, 2021
7. Today we are looking at the best of current psychological and sociological research --
8. Episode 73. St. Augustine De Doctrina Christiana. Chapter 40 is a theological text on how to interpret and teach the Scriptures.
  1. Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use.
    1. 1. all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which we ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God's providence which are everywhere scattered abroad
    2. In future episode, we will bring in a lot more of the wisdom of the Catholic Church .
    3. And in future episodes, we will bring in more Internal Family Systems thinking about our parts and suicide, fascinating stuff there
    4. And in future episodes we will be discussing the impact of suicide on parents, spouses, siblings, children and friends who experienced suicide through the death of a loved one.
    5. So we are at the beginning of a series of episodes on suicide. This is a critical topic -- A 2017 Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of 1000 American Adults finds that 55% know someone who has committed suicide.
  2. One from my 8th grade graduating class
    1. 1. One for two classes behind me in high school 8.
  3. Let's do an etymological analysis of the word suicide -- you know how much I like to break down words on this podcast, so it's Time for Word Lore [cue sound effect]
    1. Where does the English word Suicide come from?
    2. "deliberate killing of oneself," 1650s, from Modern Latin suicidium "suicide," from Latin sui "of oneself" (genitive of se "self") + -cidium "a killing," from caedere "to slay" or to strike oneself.
  4. How serious is suicide? Lets look the research, let's look at suicide this by the numbers [cue sound effect]
9. Fast Facts
  1. How many suicides worldwide each year? About 800,000.
    1. About 10 in 100,000 people die each year from suicide
    2. Worldwide, suicide accounts for 1.4% of all deaths.
    3. Wide range of suicide rates. 98.3 per 100,000 in Greenland, 1.56 per 100,000 in Jamaica. 63X higher.
    4. 1. How many suicides in the US? Drawing from CDC and NIMH
    5. According to the Center for Disease Control in 2020 -- 44.834 recorded suicides 2. 1. 14.5 deaths per 100,000 population 3. 1. US Men more than 3X as likely as US women to suicide 4. 1. Women 1.4X likely as men to attempt suicide -- use less lethal means 5. 1. Long trend up from 1999 to 2017, leveled off and trending down over last three years. 6.
      1. How do people suicide
    6. Just a hair over 50% use a firearm 2. 1. 29% are by suffocation 3. 1. 13% are by poisoning
      1. Catholics and suicide
    7. Data from over the last century consistently reveal that Catholics have a lower suicide rate than Protestants. Not a huge effect, but a persistent one, going all the way back to early social science measurement efforts in 1897 -- Emile Durkheim's work.. Even when controlling for a lot of variables, the denominational effect persisted. Various factors proposed
      1. Fear of Hell, mortal sin -- Protestants more accepting of suicide 2. 1. More communitarian approach than individualistic approach to religion and faith 2. 5.
      3. Types of Suicide
10. Emile Durkheim -- French philosopher and early sociologist in the late 19 and early 20th Century -- principal architect, along with Max Weber of modern social sciences.
  1. He created a normative theory of suicide focusing on the conditions of group life. Proposing four different types of suicide, which include egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic, Durkheim began his theory by plotting social regulation on the x-axis of his chart, and social integration on the y-axis. Drawing from a blog post on the Management Development Institute of Singapore website by Dr Amir Singh from March 30, 2020
    1. Egoistic suicide corresponds to a low level of social integration. When one is not well integrated into a social group it can lead to a feeling that they have not made a difference in anyone's lives. when a man becomes socially isolated or feels that he has no place in the society he destroys himself. This is the suicide of self-centered person who lacks altruistic feelings and is usually cut off from main stream of the society. It is committed by individuals who are social outcast and see themselves as being alone or an outsider. These individuals are unable to find their own place in society and have problems adjusting to groups. They received little and no social care. Suicide is seen as a solution for them to free themselves from loneliness or excessive individuation. 2. 1. Altruistic suicide corresponds to too much social integration. This occurs when a group dominates the life of an individual to a degree where they feel meaningless to society. Altruistic suicide occurs when social group involvement is too high. Individuals are so well integrated into the group that they are willing to sacrifice their own life in order to fulfil some obligation for the group. Individuals kill themselves for the collective benefit of the group or for the cause that the group believes in. An example is someone who commits suicide for the sake of a religious or political cause, such as the infamous Japanese Kamikaze pilots of World War II, or the hijackers that crashed the airplanes into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania in 2001. During World War II, Japanese Kamikaze pilots were willing to lay down their own lives for their countries in the hope that they will win the war. These pilots believed in their nation’s cause and were willing to sacrifice their lives. Similarly, suicide bombers around the world were willing to give up their lives in order to make a political or religious statement because they firmly believed in their group’s cause. 3. 1. Anomic suicide occurs when one has an insufficient amount of social regulation. This stems from the sociological term anomie, meaning a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises from the inability to reasonably expect life to be predictable. This type of suicide is due to certain breakdown of social equilibrium, such as, suicide after bankruptcy or after winning a lottery. In other words, anomic suicide takes place in a situation which has cropped up suddenly. Anomic suicide is caused by the lack of social regulation and it occurs during high levels of stress and frustration. Anomic suicide stems from sudden and unexpected changes in situations. For example, when individuals suffer extreme financial loss, the disappointment and stress that individuals face may drive them towards committing suicide as a means of escape. 4. 1. Fatalistic suicide results from too much social regulation. An example of this would be when one follows the same routine day after day. This leads to a belief that there is nothing good to look forward to. Durkheim suggested this was the most popular form of suicide for prisoners. This type of suicide is due to overregulation in society. Under the overregulation of a society, when a servant or slave commits suicide, when a barren woman commits suicide, it is the example of fatalistic suicide. Fatalistic suicide occurs when individuals are kept under tight regulation. These individuals are placed under extreme rules or high expectations are set upon them, which removes a person’s sense of self or individuality. Slavery and persecution are examples of fatalistic suicide where individuals may feel that they are destined by fate to be in such conditions and choose suicide as the only means of escaping such conditions. In South Korea, celebrities are being put under strict regulations. There was a case where, a singer committed suicide due to exhaustion to keep up with society’s rules and regulations. In 2017, celebrity Kim Jonghyun ended his life due to severe depression and the pressure of being in the spotlight as he felt that he could not fulfil the society’s expectations of his performance (Lee, 2018). 2.
    2. 1. Inadvertent or accidental Suicide
  2. Example -- the Choking Game
    1. AKA Pass out challenge, flatlining, space monkey -- people strangle themselves to experience a euphoric high -- autoerotic asphyxiation. Discussed this briefly in Episode 69.
      1. Example -- drug overdose, heroine laced with fentanyl.
      2. Example -- Driving while impaired with alcohol
      3. Indirect Suicide -- not taking care of oneself -- poor health habits
  3. Smoking
    1. 1. Poor diabetes management
    2. 1. Risky driving
    3. 1. Excessive alcohol or drug use
    4. Assisted Suicide -- also known as Mercy killing
  4. Risk Factors for Suicide
11. Commonly cited risk factors
  1. VeryWell Mind By Nancy Schimelpfening reviewing recent research findings February 19, 2021
    1. Mental Illness
      1. Most common -- severe depression -- blue deepening into black 2. 1. Bipolar disorder -- the orange 3. 1. Borderline Personality Disorder 4. 1. Eating Disorders 5. 1. Schizophrenia 6. 1. I have a very different understanding of what's going with these conditions. 7. 2. 1. Traumatic Stress 3. 1. Substance Use and Impulsivity 4. 1. Loss or a fear of Loss
      2. Academic failure 2. 1. Being arrested or imprisoned 3. 1. Bullying, shaming, or humiliation, including cyberbullying 4. 1. Financial problems 5. 1. End of a close friendship or romantic relationship 6. 1. Job loss 7. 1. Loss of friends or family acceptance due to revealing your sexual orientation 8. 1. Loss of social status 5. 1. Hopelessness 6. 1. Chronic Pain or Medical Illness 7. 1. Feeling like a burden to others 8. 1. Social Isolation 9. 1. A Cry for Help -- not a cry for attention 10. 1. Accidental Suicide
        
        From Suicide Prevention Resource Center website
    2. Prior suicide attempt(s) 2. 1. Misuse and abuse of alcohol or other drugs 3. 1. Mental disorders, particularly depression and other mood disorders 4. 1. Access to lethal means 5. 1. Knowing someone who died by suicide, particularly a family member 6. 1. Social isolation 7. 1. Chronic disease and disability 8. 1. Lack of access to behavioral health care 9. 1. Precipitating factors are stressful events that can trigger a suicidal crisis in a vulnerable person. Examples include:
      1. End of a relationship or marriage 2. 1. Death of a loved one 3. 1. An arrest 4. 1. Serious financial problems
        
        Robin Hood investor 5. 10. 3.
        
        Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH) Office of Suicide Prevention -- Myths and Facts of Youth Suicide
12. Sources

National Mental Health Association

Youth Suicide Prevention Education Program

The Trevor Project

MYTH: Talking about suicide or asking someone if they feel suicidal will encourage suicide attempts.

FACT: Talking about suicide provides the opportunity for communication. Fears shared are more likely to diminish. The first step in encouraging a person with thoughts of suicide to live comes from talking about those feelings. A simple inquiry about whether or not the person is intending to end their life can start the conversation. However, talking about suicide should be carefully managed.

MYTH: Young people who talk about suicide never attempt or die by suicide.

FACT: Talking about suicide can be a plea for help and it can be a late sign in the progression towards a suicide attempt. Those who are most at risk will show other signs apart from talking about suicide. If you have concerns about a young person who talks about suicide:

Encourage him/her to talk further and help them to find appropriate counseling assistance.

Ask if the person are thinking about making a suicide attempt.

Ask if the person has a plan.

Think about the completeness of the plan and how dangerous it is. Do not trivialise plans that seem less complete or less dangerous. All suicidal intentions are serious and must be acknowledged as such.

Encourage the young person to develop a personal safety plan. This can include time spent with others, check-in points with significant adults/ plans for the future.

MYTH: A promise to keep a note unopened and unread should always be kept.

FACT: Where the potential for harm, or actual harm, is disclosed then confidentiality cannot be maintained. A sealed note with the request for the note not to be opened is a very strong indicator that something is seriously amiss. A sealed note is a late sign in the progression towards suicide.

MYTH: Suicide attempts or deaths happen without warning.

FACT: The survivors of a suicide often say that the intention was hidden from them. It is more likely that the intention was just not recognized. These warning signs include: These are really important

The recent suicide, or death by other means, of a friend or relative.

Previous suicide attempts.

Preoccupation with themes of death or expressing suicidal thoughts.

Depression, conduct disorder and problems with adjustment such as substance abuse, particularly when two or more of these are present.

Giving away prized possessions/ making a will or other final arrangements.

Major changes in sleep patterns - too much or too little.

Sudden and extreme changes in eating habits/ losing or gaining weight.

Withdrawal from friends/ family or other major behavioral changes.

Dropping out of group activities.

Personality changes such as nervousness, outbursts of anger, impulsive or reckless behavior, or apathy about appearance or health.

Frequent irritability or unexplained crying.

Lingering expressions of unworthiness or failure.

Lack of interest in the future.

A sudden lifting of spirits, when there have been other indicators, may point to a decision to end the pain of life through suicide.

MYTH: If a person attempts suicide and survives, they will never make a further attempt.

FACT: A suicide attempt is regarded as an indicator of further attempts. It is likely that the level of danger will increase with each further suicide attempt.

MYTH: Once a person is intent on suicide, there is no way of stopping them.

FACT: Suicides can be prevented. People can be helped. Suicidal crises can be relatively short-lived. Immediate practical help such as staying with the person, encouraging them to talk and helping them build plans for the future, can avert the intention to attempt or die by suicide. Such immediate help is valuable at a time of crisis, but appropriate counseling will then be required.

MYTH: People who threaten suicide are just seeking attention.

FACT: All suicide attempts must be treated as though the person has the intent to die. Do not dismiss a suicide attempt as simply being an attention-gaining device. It is likely the young person has tried to gain attention and, therefore, this attention is needed. The attention they get may well save their lives. -- Thinking of it as calling out for help. Pejorative -- drama queen.

MYTH: Suicide is hereditary.

FACT: Although suicide can be over-represented in families, attempts are not genetically inherited. Members of families share the same emotional environment, and the death by suicide of one family member may well raise the awareness of suicide as an option for other family members.

MYTH: Only certain types of people become suicidal. -- My example

FACT: Everyone has the potential for suicide. The evidence shows disposing conditions may lead to either suicide attempts or deaths. It is unlikely those who do not have the predisposing conditions (for example, depression, conduct disorder, substance abuse, feeling of rejection, rage, emotional pain and anger) will die by suicide.

MYTH: Suicide is painless. -- Remember the Song?

FACT: Many suicide methods are very painful. Fictional portrayals of suicide do not usually include the reality of the pain. Maybe 14 year old Michael Altman wasn't entirely correct.

MYTH: Depression and self-destructive behavior are rare in young people.

FACT: Both forms of behavior are common in adolescents. Depression may manifest itself in ways which are different from its manifestation in adults but it is prevalent in children and adolescents. Self-destructive behavior is most likely to be shown for the first time in adolescence and its incidence is on the rise.

MYTH: All young people with thoughts of suicide are depressed.

FACT: While depression is a contributory factor in most suicides, it need not be present for a person to attempt or die by suicide.

MYTH: Marked and sudden improvement in the mental state of an attempter following a suicidal crisis or depressive period signifies the suicide risk is over.

FACT: The opposite may be true. In the three months following an attempt, a young person is at most risk of dying by suicide. The apparent lifting of the problems could mean the person has made a firm decision to die by suicide and feels better because of this decision.

MYTH: Once a young person thinks about suicide, they will forever think about suicide.

FACT: Most young people who are considering suicide will only be that way for a limited period of their lives. Given proper assistance and support, they will probably recover and continue to lead meaningful and happy lives unhindered by suicidal concerns.

MYTH: Young persons thinking about suicide cannot help themselves.

FACT: While contemplating suicide, young people may have a distorted perception of their actual life situation and what solutions are appropriate for them to take. However, with support and constructive assistance from caring and informed people around them, young people can gain full self-direction and self-management in their lives.

MYTH: The only effective intervention for suicide comes from professional psychotherapists with extensive experience in the area.

FACT: All people who interact with adolescents in crisis can help them by way of emotional support and encouragement. Psychotherapeutic interventions also rely heavily on family, and friends providing a network of support.

MYTH: Most young people thinking about suicide never seek or ask for help with their problems.

FACT: Evidence shows that they often tell their school peers of their thoughts and plans. Most adults with thoughts of suicide visit a medical doctor during the three months prior to killing themselves. Adolescents are more likely to 'ask' for help through non-verbal gestures than to express their situation verbally to others.

MYTH: Young people thinking about suicide are always angry when someone intervenes and they will resent that person afterwards.

FACT: While it is common for young people to be defensive and resist help at first, these behaviors are often barriers imposed to test how much people care and are prepared to help. For most adolescents considering suicide, it is a relief to have someone genuinely care about them and to be able to share the emotional burden of their plight with another person. When questioned some time later, the vast majority express gratitude for the intervention.

MYTH: Break-ups in relationships happen so frequently, they do not cause suicide.

FACT: Suicide can be precipitated by the loss of a relationship.

MYTH: Young people thinking about suicide are insane or mentally ill.

FACT: Although adolescents thinking about suicide are likely to be extremely unhappy and may be classified as having a mood disorder, such as depression, most are not legally insane. However, there are small numbers of individuals whose mental state meets psychiatric criteria for mental illness and who need psychiatric help.

MYTH: Most suicides occur in winter months when the weather is poor.

FACT: Seasonal variation data are essentially based on adult suicides, with limited adolescent data available. However, it seems adolescent suicidal behavior is most common during the spring and early summer months.

MYTH: Suicide is much more common in young people from higher (or lower) socioeconomic status (SES) areas.

FACT: The causes of suicidal behavior cut across SES boundaries. While the literature in the area is incomplete, there is no definitive link between SES and suicide. This does not preclude localized tendencies nor trends in a population during a certain period of time.

MYTH: Some people are always suicidal.

FACT: Nobody is suicidal at all times. The risk of suicide for any individual varies across time, as circumstances change. This is why it is important for regular assessments of the level of risk in individuals who are 'at risk'.

MYTH: Every death is preventable.

FACT: No matter how well intentioned, alert and diligent people's efforts may be, there is no way of preventing all suicides from occurring.

MYTH: The main problem with preventive efforts is trying to implement strategies in an extremely grey area.

FACT: The problem is that we lack a complete understanding of youth suicide and know more about what is not known than what is fact.

Going deeper: The reaction trio -- these do not just spring up spontaneously-- in the middle of a causal chain.
1. Recognize their impact -- but also see what causes them.
2. Despair -- failure of hope
  1. This is an effect and a cause -- what caused the despair
    1. Desperation --
    2. Rage -- rage is a reaction -- can lead to
  2. Seeking to Punish God
  3. Seeking to punish others
  4. Other Reason -- these are the core reasons.
    1. Attachment needs not met -- Episode 62
  5. A felt sense of safety and protection, deep sense of security felt in the bones
    1. 1. Feeling seen and known heard and understood -- felt attunement
    2. 1. Felt comfort, reassurance
    3. 1. Feeling valued, delighted in, cherished by the attachment figure
    4. 1. Felt support for the best self
    5. Integrity Needs not met
  6. All of the above. Each one of us needs help to develop our sense of self, our identity
    1. 1. I exist
    2. 1. my existence is separate from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate personIs bounded, has boundaries
    3. 1. My identity is stable over time and across different situations -- there is a continuity
    4. 1. I can regulate myself -- I have some self-control.
    5. 1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion
    6. 1. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world
    7. 1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions.
    8. 1. I can make sense of my experience and the world around me
    9. 1. Mission and Purpose in life
    10. 1. We also need to make good choices -- seek what is good, true and beautiful in life
  7. Suicide Prevention
3. Current secular "wisdom" and teaching on the topic
4. 1. Protective factors are personal or environmental characteristics that help protect people from suicide VeryWell mind article By Nancy Schimelpfening reviewing recent research findings February 19, 2021
  2. Effective behavioral health care
    1. 1. Connectedness to individuals, family, community, and social institutions
    2. 1. Life skills (including problem solving skills and coping skills, ability to adapt to change)
    3. 1. Self-esteem and a sense of purpose or meaning in life
    4. 1. Cultural, religious, or personal beliefs that discourage suicide
  3. 1. Here's what I think: Let's start way back in the causal chain.
  4. Attachment needs met -- see episode 62 Unmet Attachment Needs and Unmet Integrity Need
  5. Integrity Needs Met
  7. Future focus We really looked at the secular literature in this episode
5. In the next episode -- looking at the juncture of the psychological and the spiritual
  1. What does the wisdom of the Catholic Church say about suicide. How does that fit with what the secular experts are saying
  2. 1. And what's really exciting we will get into suicide from a parts perspective.
  3. The role of exiled parts in suicide, the role of firefighter parts, the role of manager parts.
  4. Seeing in more dimension.
  5. Most of the conceptualizations we discussed today assume a homogenous personality. One personality.
  6. 1. We will also get into Others' Experience of Suicide -- parents, spouses, friends. Intense reactions
  7. Came from the blue
    1. Very understandable -- especially with the impulsive kind.
      1. Pain, shame guilt
    2. It was my fault
      1. Really natural -- we have parts that want to hold on to the fantasy that we can make everything ok if we just always do the right thing
        
        Jesus could not prevent Judas' suicide without violating his free will. 2. 2. 2. 3.
        
        Action Items
6. If you are having suicidal thoughts or know of someone who is, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
7. 1. Catholic's Guide to Choosing a Therapist
8. 1. Let people know about this episode -- many of you know other Catholics who have experienced loss of loved ones through suicide -- may benefit. Take the chance, reach out. Episodes 76, 77 and 78.
  2. Interior Integration for Catholics
  3. All the major platforms
  4. Soulandhearts.com/iic -- initials for Interior Integration for Catholics
  5. This episode can help equip you to have those conversations, to be able to reach out.
9. 1. Waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rcc -- benefits -- email once per month, free gifts
10. 1. Conversation hours T, R
11. 1. Pray for me and for the other listeners
12. Patronness and patron
13. Blurb for Transistor: Through stories and examples, Dr. Peter reviews the best of secular approaches to understanding suicide. He discusses suicide statistics, the different kinds of suicide, the risk factors for suicide, the warning signs for suicide and myths about suicide. He covers the "reaction trio" and then the deep roots of suicide, the first causes.

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And depression manifests itself in different ways depending on roles or functions that different parts
1. Three major roles
  1. Exiles --
    1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
    2. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
    3. They hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity.
    4. They desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved
    5. They want rescue, redemption, healing
    6. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system -- they want to take over the raft to be seen and heard, to be known, to be understood. But they can flood us with the intensity of their experience
    7. And that threatens to harm external relationships
    8. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned,
      1. Depression. Exiles are parts that step in to carry the burden of depression so that depression doesn't overwhelm our system and incapacitate us.
      2. Protector parts exile the part burdened with depression -- toxic
      3. But these exiles want to be heard, seen, known, understood.
      4. So they attempt to jailbreak, they want to get on the raft, they want to stop being submerged in the unconscious, under the water, they want to get on the raft, and the only way they know how to be accepted on the raft is to become king of the raft and overpower all the other parts. Then, they hope to be seen and known and heard and accepted and loved
      5. But because they blended, because they dominated, because they took over, there's no possibility to be in relationship inside with the self. They are now able to scream their pain and distress, but it doesn't get them what they want.
      6. When depressed exiles take over, they wind up shutting the system down
        
        Depressed mood 7. 1. Loss of interest/pleasure 8. 1. Weight loss or gain 9. 1. Insomnia or hypersomnia 10. 1. Psychomotor agitation or retardation 11. 1. Fatigue 12. 1. Feeling worthless or excessive/inappropriate guilt N 13. 1. Decreased concentration 14. 1. Thoughts of death/suicide: 15. 16. So exiles can bring the depression to the fore. But that is not the only way we become depressed.
        
        Managers
    9. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe. 2. 1. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging, 3. 1. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 4. 1. Managers can use symptoms of depression to try to keep us safe
      1. Depressed mood -- pessimism keep us from trying new thing and risking failure 2. 1. Loss of interest/pleasure -- keep us from enjoying a romantic relationship that might challenge us
      2. Weight loss or gain -- keeping us obese, in the hope that we don't attract others' attention so that we won't be raped again.
      3. Insomnia or hypersomnia -- protecting us from nightmares that exiles share when we sleep.
      4. Psychomotor agitation or retardation -- letting others know not to expect too much from us
      5. Fatigue -- keeping us from lashing out or being aggressive with those that our exiles hate.
      6. Decreased concentration -- keeping us from being promoted to management, so we don't have to handle the difficulties of having subordinates at work.
        
        Firefighters
    10. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, like in Inside Out, remember the parts and the control panel? So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action. 2. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house. 3. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that. 4. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences. 5. 1. Intense neediness and grief are overwhelming us! Emergency actions -- battle stations! Evasive maneuvers, Arm the torpedoes, Full speed ahead! 6. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis, 7. 1. All kinds of addictions -- alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, excessive working or exercise, suicidal actions, self-harm, violence, dissociation, distractions, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy, and raging. 8. 1. Depression as a tool for firefighters
      1. Remember firefighters are always reacting to an exile breaking out. 2. 1. Depressed mood -- intense depression, feeling really really sad so that we don't feel the crushing emptiness inside than an exile carries. Better to feel sadness than to feel a void of nothingness and to question whether or not I exist -- so there the firefighter is pursuing an integrity need of knowing that I exist, protecting against being swept away by the soul crushing nihilism of an exile burdened with a void, with the feeling of being nothing. 3. 1. Fatigue -- betting to spend 20 hours a day sleeping rather than cope with the overwhelming grief and loss of the death of a spouse. 4. 1. Suicide -- seen as the only viable release from the pain of an exile. 5. 9. 4.
      3. Parts are not their roles, they are not their functions, they are not their burdens. All of these can change. If parts are unburdened, they no longer have the whatever burden they originally carried. Parts are not their burdens. They can give those burdens up through unburdening. Parts are not their roles or their functions either. As the person's internal system becomes more integrated, parts begin to trust in the leadership of the core self more, parts become more collaborative and cooperative, parts find new, constructive, healthy roles in the system.
      4. Parts can hold their intensity.
      5. Poetry

“Depression” by Cara Delevingne

“Who am I? Who am I trying to be?

Not myself, anyone but myself.

Living in a fantasy to bury the reality,

Making myself the mystery,

A strong facade disguising the misery.

Empty, but beyond the point of emptiness,

I am lost.

I don’t need to be saved,

I need to be found.”

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Intro: It is good to be together, thank you for joining me today in this podcast episode
I want to take you back 40 years with me, more than 40 years, to 1981, and share with you an experience I had as a lad, share with you a story and images of that story that will help us understand the topic of today's podcast. So, without any further delays, its Story Time with Dr. Peter
1. Its early July 1981, I'm 12 years old, really skinny, about 5 foot 5, 110 lbs, very nearsighted without my glasses swimming to the green raft with my swim buddy at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca Chain of Lakes, in central Wisconsin
2. Taking on the challenge. I'm the lowest form of life at Boys Brigade Camp 3, A first-year boy. I'm a FLIC-- A FLIC is an acronym that stand for "Fat Little Ignorant Camper" the term of affection, a sweet, ironic endearment bestowed on us by our fearless camp leaders.
3. And I’m swimming out to the raft to test my mettle with the bigger boys. The high schoolers.
4. The raft -- floating platform, 12 X 12, buoyed up by sealed 55 gallon drum, anchored in 12 feet of clear water and covered with green indoor-outdoor carpeting.
5. That is the place where the game "King of the Raft" was played by the camp 3 FLICs of all ages and body shapes.
6. The objective of King of the Raft was simple. To be the only boy left standing on the raft, with all challengers in the water.
7. To do that, you want to push, pull, toss, hurl, lure or otherwise maneuver all the other boys off the raft. A sparse game would have six boys, a real showdown might have 24, ranging in age from the youngest at 12 to highly muscled 17 year old incoming high school seniors with mustaches.
8. Very few rules and all of them were unwritten. The primary one was no dragging another boy along on the raft, because that indoor/outdoor carpeting can tear the skin right off your back or chest very quickly, especially if the victim is struggling with all his might, as he should be, and as was the norm, And no choking and no hitting or kicking anyone in the groin. That was about it. Otherwise it was a free for all, with shoving and pushing and lunging and clinging and teams of boys working together and alliances broken by Machiavellian tricks all for the great prize of being able to stand, alone, on the raft, with all your companions in the water and to beat your chest and yell with all your might at the top of your lungs, "I am the King of the Raft!"
9. Now occasionally, a gargantuan 16 or 17 year old would dominate the raft and be obnoxious as king, and then two of the 20 or 30 something year old camp leaders would swim out to administer a form of camp justice and dethrone the obnoxious king by heaving him in a remarkable high trajectory to a watery landing many feet from the 144 square feet of green carpeted real estate.
10. Then the game changed. Then it was get the leaders time and the game moved into another phase when all the fat little ignorant campers had a chance to take on the two leaders, and a battle royale ensued with the campers on one side and the leaders on the other.
11. I did this for seven summers. From 1981 to 1987, five years as a camper and two years as a leader. And I learned a lot of life lessons on the raft, both as a skinny, vanquished, frequently airborne FLIC and as king.
12. So I hope I was able to create a word picture for you, some images of what it was like on the raft at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca chain of lakes in the 1980s. We going to come back to the images of king of the raft later in the episode.
Intro -- Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics
1. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and the reason this Interior Integration for Catholics podcasts exists is to help you toward loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way. -- It's about tolerating being loved, and about loving. This podcast and especially the Resilient Catholics Community is a training ground for overcoming your natural level impediments, your psychological obstacles to accepting love from God and others and loving God, neighbor and ourselves in the best ways possible. It all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about training and equipping you to follow the two great commandments -- to love God with all your being, with every part of you, and to love your neighbor.
2. 1. This is Episode 74,
3. 1. Released on June 28, 2021 and titled Internal Chaos and Blending vs. Internal Peace and Integration
4. Internal Chaos vs. Internal Peace
5. Psychotherapist Peter Michealson describes how quote the unconscious mind of adults is buffeted by gale-force winds of emotional chaos that originated as an infantile effect decades earlier. Emotional associations from our distant past now buffet our life in incredible, mysterious, spectacular, and frequently painful and self-defeating ways.

Emotions percolate and circulate in our unconscious mind with some degree of chaos. We all know what it’s like to be happy one moment, sad the next, with no conscious input from us. We also know how hard it can be to regulate our desires, impulses, and emotional reactions. Both neuroscience and psychology have established that our brain struggles mightily and often unsuccessfully to limit the effects of irrationality. Often we try to apply common sense and reason to moderate unpleasant emotions or to curb self-defeating impulses. Yet our emotional side, with a life of its own, can often be impervious to rational entreaties. End quote

Reimagine the raft battle
1. But instead of generally good-hearted boys working on their developmental tasks of becoming men through struggling and wrestling with each other
2. 1. You have players that believe that they are locked in a life and death struggle, a deadly battle for supremacy.
3. 1. Think of the raft battle now as a gladiatorial contest to the death -- or following the plots of the Death Race movie series -- Jason Statham, Frederick Koehler, Ian McShane. Five movies.
4. 1. That my dear listeners, is how it is inside of us for most of us, whether we realize it or not.
  2. The players are our parts, remember -- those Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. May seem to use like modes of operating
  3. Our systems may seem quiet in the moment -- maybe one of our manager parts has a really strong hold on the raft and is able to keep the others in the water, some of the submerged, drowning, in an attempt to hold on to some pseudo stability, and function in day to day life. But the other parts are waiting and watching for an opportunity to leap on the raft, into conscious awareness and forcibly de-throne the blended part who was king of the raft.
  4. But underneath, the other parts are waiting, watching. Looking for an opportunity to become the king of the raft, to drive the bus, to govern the system.
6. Because of original sin, the sins of others, and our own personal sins, that's what it's like inside for almost everyone.
7. Blending
8. What is the key word here? Blending.
9. 1. Most important psychological state is to be unblended. Let me say that again. This is absolutely crucial. The most important psychological state of being for us is to be unblended -- what do I mean by that?
10. 1. Definition of a Blend:
  2. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Ed. -- The act in which a part takes over a person’s seat of consciousness, or self.
  3. "Blending in IFS" March 7, 2010 Blog post: Modes of Blending in IFS In IFS a part is “blended” with someone when they ARE the part as opposed to being in Self. This could mean that they feel the part’s emotions, they hold its beliefs, or their behavior in the world comes from this part.
  4. Jay Earley October 17, 2018 Blog post: A part is blended with you and has taken over your seat of consciousness when any of the following is true:
    1. Flooded with the parts emotions 4. 1. Caught up in the beliefs of the part 5. 1. Dominated by the perspective and worldview of the part. 6. 1. More in depth:
      1. You are flooded with the part’s emotions to such a degree that you aren’t grounded. You are lost in those feelings. For example, if the part feels resentment, you are fully caught up in its anger without having any reflective distance
        
        Example -- Guy dating a woman 3 months -- she offers a gentle rebuke, a little correction -- uncomfortable with certain ways he looks at her -- seems too sexually tinged, like she's a sexual object. Activates her, she has had bad experiences in the past. You are feeling the part’s emotions so strongly that there is no room for other emotions. For example
        
        Overwhelmed with shame 2. 1. Overwhelmed with anger -- rebuttals, desire to break off the relationship, 3. 2. 3. You are caught up in the beliefs of the part so that you lose perspective on the situation. You see the world through the distorted perception of the part. In addition, you aren’t able to recognize that this is one of many perspectives—you simply see it as the truth. If the part believes that the world is dangerous, that is the way you see the world, without any thought that you might be projecting your own beliefs onto the world. A person is identified with the part, in that they hold its beliefs and see the world from its perspective. 1. inadequacy -- I'm a bad, lustful man -- see the overgeneralization, lack of perspective, the global attribution. Shrunk himself down to one dimension -- lustful man. 2. This relationship needs to end -- I'll not be so condemned and rejected. You're hurting me., you're mean to me. You don't get me. 4. You don’t feel enough of your Self. You don’t have enough access to a place in you that is separate from the part from which to witness it and understand it. You have no center or ground.
        
        Caught up in being just one part 5. 1. Jay Earley: For example, because a woman is blended with a judgmental part, she makes contemptuous comments to people. 7.
        
        Blended part is now driving the bus with the self and all the other parts aboard
  5. Part that takes over your internal raft
    1. 1. Example of Pixar moving "Inside Out" when Anger takes over the control panel
    2. 1. Taken over by the passions --
    3. e.g. irascible passions, such as fear or anger.
    4. 1. everything seen through the very limited perspective of the blended part.
    5. If you're a hammer everything looks like a nail
    6. THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT.
      1. The earliest versions of the parable of blind men and elephant is found in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain texts, going back about 2500 years -- they discuss the limits of perception and the importance of a more complete context
      2. The rollicking American Poet John Godfrey Saxe 1872 -- The Blind Men and the Elephant Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs Fame Leave Your Supper – 2010. 5.

IT was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

"God bless me!—but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried: "Ho!—what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me 't is mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,

And felt about the knee.

"What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain," quoth he;

"'Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Than, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

Each blind man is experiencing something real about the elephant.
1. But vision is so limited
2. Generalizations to the whole elephant are not warranted.
3. Devaluing each other, critical of each other
4. Locked in conflict with each other, each trying to be pre-eminent.
Three roles
1. Exiles --
  1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
  2. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
  3. They hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity.
  4. They desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved
  5. They want rescue, redemption, healing
  6. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system -- they want to take over the raft to be seen and heard, to be known, to be understood. But they can flood us with the intensity of their experience
  7. And that threatens to harm external relationships
  8. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned,
2. 1. Managers
  2. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe.
    1. 1. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging,
    2. 1. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 4.
  3. 1. Firefighters
  4. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, like in Inside Out, remember the parts and the control panel? So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action.
    1. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house.
    2. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that.
    3. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences.
    4. 1. Intense neediness and grief are overwhelming us! Emergency actions -- battle stations! Evasive maneuvers, Arm the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!
    5. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis,
    6. 1. All kinds of addictions -- alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, excessive working or exercise, suicidal actions, self-harm, violence, dissociation, distractions, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy, and raging.
    7. 1. Parts can take over the person
  6. Signs of blending
3. Opposite of 8 C's
  1. Calm -agitation, frustration, anxious, stressed, angry
    1. 1. Curiosity -- indifferent, disinterested, seeing other parts and seeing other people in two dimensions, one dimension, or no dimensions -- Episode 72 -- nuanced vs. reductionistic understandings of ourselves and others.
    2. 1. Compassion -- cold, uncaring, unfriendly, hard, reserved, unsympathetic
    3. 1. Confidence -- timid, pessimistic, doubtful and insecure
    4. 1. Courage -- fearful, shy, faint-hearted, irresolute
    5. 1. Clarity -- confused, muddled inside, things are obscured, dark inside, foggy, seems vague forms moving in a shadow world.
    6. 1. Connectedness -- internal fragmentation, disjointed, distant, aloof
    7. 1. Creativity -- uninspired, inept, very conventional, repetitive futility, doing the same thing over and over again, with no different results
    8. 1. Kindness -- coolness, nastiness, roughness, internal violence to another part or external violence toward someone else even brutality. 10.
  2. 1. Somatic signs
  3. Exiles use hte body to signal their need for help
    1. Exiles hide out in the heart or the gut and back 2. 1. Exiles often know of no other way to get the attention of the person
      1. Managers use the body to exert control
    2. Because managers contain, suppress, hold and freeze 2. 1. They tend to show up in the muscles and the fascia
      1. Joints 2. 1. Pelvic and respiratory diaphragms 3. 1. Throat and jaw 4. 1. Shoulders 5. 1. Lower back 3.
        
        Firefighters use the body to distract from emotional pain or from overinhibition (constriction) from managers 1. Firefighters activate the central nervous system and the endocrine system. 2. Release stress hormones and are involved in hyperarousal and hypoarousal. 4.
      2. Agenda
  4. Seeking a good end
    1. 1. Need to control, manage outcomes
    2. Lack of respect for others' God-given freedom, their sovereignty over their choices. 2. 1. Ends justify the means.
      1. Means are problematic
    3. Blended part may not know this -- unaware of its impact on other parts or other people 2. 1. Blended part may know that it's means are problematic, but still feels it's worth it
      1. To avoid a worse situation 2. 1. Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. 3. 3. 4.
      3. Frequency of blending
4. You might be saying to yourself -- but I am like that most of the time -- Am I blended with a part or parts most of the time
5. 1. Most people blended most of the time
6. 1. Many people blended continually for decades
  2. That's the norm. 2.
  4. Blending on a continuum -- more or less blended
  5. Multiple parts can unblend
7. Sometimes one at a time
8. 1. Sometimes other parts leap in
9. Unblending
10. Defining unblending
11. 1. Unblended person is "in self"
  2. Being Self-Led: Schwartz & Sweezy: Describes individuals who have access to their self, and therefore have the capacity to hear, understand, and be present with her parts, acknowledging and appreciating the importance of their roles in the internal family system and with other people.
    1. 1. Self is governing, leading the system, trusted by the parts.
    2. Amazing thing that parts can hold on to the intensity of their experience, they can suffer with their wounds without overwhelming.
      1. Sometimes other parts don't know this -- highly polarized systems. 2.
      2. Natural recollection
    3. 1. What being unblended feels like
  3. 8 C's
    1. Calm 2. 1. Curiosity 3. 1. Compassion 4. 1. Confidence 5. 1. Courage 6. 1. Clarity 7. 1. Connectedness 8. 1. Creativity 9. 1. Kindness
      1. Importance -- this is the start. Then we can work on loving the parts, work toward the parts healing.
    2. 1. Imagine the raft. Leader on deck, governing and directing, trusted by the parts. Listening to them. Loving xthem, not calling them fat little ignorant campers and hurling them into the void, but really listening
  4. Parts sharing in the love and the acceptance that the self has for all the parts
    1. 1. All parts really being welcome, accepted, no part left behind.
    2. 1. Meeting the attachment needs of the parts -- Episode 62, unmet attachment needs and unmet integrity needs. Conditions for Secure Attachment -- Daniel Brown and David Elliott -- 2016 Book Attachment Disturbances in Adults -- emphasizes the subjective experience
    3. A felt sense of safety and protection, deep sense of security felt in the bones 2. 1. Feeling seen and known heard and understood -- felt attunement 3. 1. Felt comfort, reassurance 4. 1. Feeling valued, delighted in, cherished by the attachment figure 5. 1. Felt support for the best self
      1. Meeting the integrity needs parts
    4. All of the above. Each one of us needs help to develop our sense of self, our identity 2. 1. I exist 3. 1. my existence is separate from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate personIs bounded, has boundaries 4. 1. My identity is stable over time and across different situations -- there is a continuity 5. 1. I can regulate myself -- I have some self-control. 6. 1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion 7. 1. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world 8. 1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions. 9. 1. I can make sense of my experience and the world around me 10. 1. Mission and Purpose in life 11. 1. We also need to make good choices -- seek what is good, true and beautiful in life 5.
    5. 1. Unblending doesn't resolve all the burdens -- but it's a necessary prerequisite. It doesn't heal the effects of trauma all by itself, but it creates a frame when that work can be done.
    6. 1. Advantages
  5. Peace and calm inside
    1. 1. Ability to relate inside -- parts understanding other parts. Like the blind men and the elephant, sharing in the vision, the perspective of the self.
    2. 1. Ability to relate much better with others -- understanding them, seeing them in five dimensions like we discussed in episode 72
    3. 1. Opens to the door to loving self, neighbor and God is a much more focused and deliberate way. 5.
  7. Experiential exercise
12. All right you've been listening to me tell stories and lecture and yabber away here in the podcast and that's all well and good, but now
13. 1. We're going to take it up a notch, up to an experiential learning. Experiential exercise around unblending. We're going to learn by doing and learn by being. All the conceptual learning in the world will do you little good if you don't experience these things. That would be like a psychologist who studied love in the books and research articles and thought about love, and theorized about it, and wrote abstract articles about it but never had a loving relationship with anyone. What does that psychology really know about love? So I want you to have much more than just the concept of unblending.
14. 1. I want you to experience something of being unblended. Major part of IFS work.
17. Closing:
18. Does this podcast really make sense to you, do you really grip on to what we're working on here? Do these experiential exercises really resonate with you? Do you want more?
19. 1. Do you want to be with likeminded Catholic who are serious about not only our Catholic Faith but also human formation -- who want to learn more about loving God, loving neighbor and loving self is a psychologically-minded way, drawing from the best of our understandings of the human person from both the spiritual and the natural worlds?
20. 1. Resilient Catholic Community at Souls and Hearts, grew up around my podcast Integration for Catholics -- a place to do that -- registration is open each year in June and December soulsandhearts.com/rcc. You have until June 30 at midnight to register -- $99 to register, and $99 per month to really engage in a deep dive in an IFS-informed approach to human formation -- lots more experiential exercises, office hours, a companion for daily connection, weekly small group work in your company, your own personalized human formation plan, tailored to your individual needs and based on your responses to our initial measures kit.
  2. IIC 74A Experiential Exercise on Protector Parts' Resistance to Unblending
  3. Check it all out at soulsandhearts.com/rcc.
21. 1. If you are committed to this podcast, I want you to learn about the Resilient Catholics community. Come with me, come with us -- be a pioneer together with us on this pilgrimage. Come with us, join us on this adventure on this hard road to life. soulsandhearts.com/rcc-- read about it. 37 have already applied to join the dozen of us already in the community. More listeners are considering it. Registration is closing on June 30, and won't reopen until December 1 for the next cohort.
22. 1. Questions: Conversation hours -- 317.567.9594 -- email crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Our community is small and personal. I am looking forward to meeting you. People are surprised when I answer the phone in conversation hours.
23. 1. Go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc -- check out the community.
24. 1. If you are a Catholic Therapist, check out the Interior Therapist community where 55 Catholic Therapist are learning all about IFS grounded in a Catholic anthropology -- check that out at www.soulsandhearts.com/itc.
  2. So many benefits
    1. 1. Premium episode IIC 74T The importance of unblending within the Catholic Therapist
  3. 1. Tune in next week -- Episode 75 when we get into how unblending is so important for the spiritual life, for a life of prayer and connection to God and to our Mother Mary. All the spiritual dimensions around unblending.
  5. Blurb for Transistor: Through stories, poetry, many examples, and an experiential exercise, Dr. Peter invites you inside yourself to much more deeply understand what it means to be blended vs. integrated, and the implications of blending vs. integration in loving yourself and others all in the service of having a much deeper sense of peace and well-being.

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Introduction
The Goals: We Catholics are to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.
1. With every fiber of our being, every last little bit of ourselves.
2. To love God in every internal experience -- every thought, emotion, body sensation, intention, impulse attitude, belief, assumption, every desire -- every internal experience oriented toward loving God.
3. Nothing within us oriented any other way. That's the challenge, that's what that commandment means.
Fr. Jacques Phillipe:
1. Searching for and Maintaining Peace -- may be my most favorite book
2. In order that abandonment might be authentic and engender peace, it must be total. Must put everything, without exception, into the hands of God, not seeking any longer to manage or” to save” ourselves by her own means: not in the material domain, nor the emotional, nor the spiritual. We cannot divide human existence and the various sectors: certain sectors where it would be legitimate to surrender ourselves to God with confidence in others where, on the contrary, we feel we must manage exclusively on her own. And one thing we know well: all reality that we have not surrendered to God, that we choose to manage by ourselves without giving carte blanche to God, will continue to make us more or less uneasy. The measure of our interior piece will be that of our abandonment, consequently of our detachment. Page 37
  1. No-go Zones. Wikipedia A "no-go area" or "no-go zone" is a neighborhood or other geographic area where some or all outsiders either are physically prevented from entering or can enter only at risk.
    1. 1. God doesn't come in here. Compartmentalization, lack of integration.
    2. Recreational time -- not when I'm watching football, not when I'm playing poker, not when I'm gossiping with my friends.
    3. Work life -- dog eat dog world, highly competitive business, sometimes we have to do things we're not proud of…
    4. Sex life -- caught between my partner and my beliefs
    5. My private attachments -- drinking, flirting, shopping -- whatever we are attached to.
    6. Deep shame. Deep rage. Deep Sadness, Deep fear. Inner darkness.
    7. Trauma Zones -- betrayal, abandonment, terror, --attempts to seal that all off, from everything and everyone in order to keep functioning, to keep on with daily activities. 4.
  2. Intro -- Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics
3. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here to help guide you toward loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way.
  1. And how do I do that?
    1. By focusing on your natural level impediments, your psychological obstacles to tolerated being loved and to loving God, neighbor and ourselves in the best ways possible
      1. it's all about your human formation 2. 1. It's all about shoring up your natural foundation for the spiritual life 3. 1. So many of our spiritual problems are really rooted in our human formation, our natural foundation for the spiritual life 2. 2.
      2. This is Episode 73, 1. Released on June 21, 2021 and titled Is Internal Family Systems Really Catholic? 2. I get this question a lot -- Internal Family Systems or IFS has exploded on the therapy scene, especially in the last 10 years and especially as a modality for working with trauma. 1. It makes sense -- we don't want anything to keep us from God. 2. Great contribution -- 3. Synthesis of two paradigms
      3. Plural mind -- we all contain many different parts
        
        A mind in conversation with itself denotes a non-unitary, relational mind 2. 1. Internal dilemmas 4. 1. Systems thinking -- Dick was a therapist trained in family systems
        
        Bringing systems thinking inside is a tremendous advance for therapy 2. 1. On a par with Freud's popularization of the unconscious. 3. 1. God can reveal the glory of creation to people from all kinds of backgrounds
        
        Watson and Crick Discoverers of DNA -- very hostile toward Catholicism. 2. 4. 5. 1. A core self, protected from harm rich in all kinds of naturally endowed resources. 6. 3. But Richard Schwartz -- raised in an atheistic home, culturally Jewish -- he writes in the forward of Jenna Riemersma's Book "Altogether You." 1. My father was a scientist who taught us that religion was at the root of many of the world's conflicts and slaughters . I maintained a skepticism about anything spiritual until I began exploring my clients' inner terrains and encountered their self 2. Phenomenological approach
      4. Definition Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view .-- an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience. 3. 1. Setting aside preconceived notions -- "privileging data over pride"
        
        p. 19 IFS Therapy 2nd ed. We can enter the unconscious and interact with it directly, asking questions about the desires, distortions, and agendas of the inner system. In response, our parts will answer clearly, take the client directly to crucial scenes from the past, and explain what is most important about their experience, removing the need for us to speculate, reframe, interpret, or instruct. 2. 4. 4. This podcast -- authentically Catholic
        
        Necessity for grounding our understanding of psychology and the human person in a Catholic anthropology
4. Define Catholic anthropology Wikipedia In the context of Christian theology, Christian anthropology is the study of the human ("anthropology") as it relates to God. It differs from the social science of anthropology, which primarily deals with the comparative study of the physical and social characteristics of humanity across times and places.
5. 1. I am responsible for my words and my teaching.
  2. Scripture verse about teaching
    1. Woe to anyone who leads little ones astray 2. My day of particular judgement 3. What I teach and what I don't teach. Omissions. 4. Catholic with a small c: The word is from the Greek katholikos, universal, literally in respect of (kata) the whole (holos); 5. St. Augustine De Doctrina Christiana. Cjapter 40 is a theological text on how to interpret and teach the Scriptures.
    2. Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use. 6. 1. all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which we ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God's providence which are everywhere scattered abroad. 7. What is the cost of not exploring this?
    3. Omissions vs. Comissions. 8. 1. Confidence in God -- we can try things
      1. Like little children 2. 1. Can we trust we will be redirected -- or do we have parts that believe there are only offramps on the road to heaven, no onramps. 9.
      2. Harmonizing IFS with Catholicism, not the other way around
  3. Catholicism is a revealed religion.
    1. Catherine Beyer learnreligions.com: A revealed religion is one based on information communicated from the spiritual world to humanity through some sort of medium, most commonly through prophets. Thus, spiritual truth is revealed to believers because it is not something inherently obvious or something one could naturally conclude. The Judeo-Christian religions are all strongly revealed religions. The Old Testament includes many stories of those whom God used to transmit knowledge of himself and his expectations. Their appearance comes at times when the Jewish people have significantly strayed from God's teachings, and the prophets remind them of his commandments and warn them of impending disaster as punishment. For Christian, Jesus arrived as God incarnate to directly minister to the community.
    2. Church as the guardian of the deposit of faith 2.

CCC 889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith."417

890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.

Issues
1. Spiral learning. Definition of Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders.
  1. Gave examples of my ten parts in episode 71. Examples also in episode 61.
  2. Parts govern these nogo zones. They defend these territories in an effort to help us -- actions can be really misguided
2. 1. Definition of Self The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader.
3. 1. Issues --Bill Richardson's article Internal Family Systems Therapy Meets Evangelical Christianity: Integration of Diverse Communities and Theories 2007
  2. Multiplicity
    1. Trinitarian God. God is one unity in three distinct Persons. -- Unity and multiplicity
      1. And we are made in the image and likeness of God. 2. 2. 1. Self-relationship
      2. We can self-witness 2. 1. We can communicate within ourselves 3. 1. We are to love ourselves
      3. We have consciousness of self.
      4. Example James 4:1: Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?
      5. Example: Romans 7:15-23 3. 2.

15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is go0 od. 17 So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.

In IFS, the self is "Seat of consciousness" Self=soul Really unclear how to compare the "self" with the soul. This is a thorny question
1. Self is perfect, undamaged, in no need of development
  1. My read is that in IFS, the self is the redeemer of the parts
    1. 1. only the parts are in need of redemption -- the self needs no redemption
    2. Self as an internal attachment figure. Attachment taken inside. 2.
      1. Peace, harmony and love reign internally when the self is leading the system
      2. Originally straight out of the Enlightenment -- central focus on man.
    3. Secular Humanism 5.
    4. 1. Self is occluded and overwhelmed by parts with burdens and extreme roles
    5. 1. And so the self is essentially rendered helpless -- IFS does not emphasize this, but it seems to be a correct inference.
    6. 1. Agency seems to be located in the parts, not in the self
  2. Parts need to willingly unblend to allow the self to be free
    1. 1. "We can't…command ourselves to be curious rather than contemptuous of our vulnerable parts. We can't force ourselves to feel compassion, no matter how much we believe its benefits. 3.
  4. Self as Redeemer -- Self is capitalized
  5. Agency:
    1. The self is the one who is to govern our whole systems, an active inner leader
    2. But the self often lacks agency, sometimes almost completely in IFS
  6. parts get to decide when and how to unblend
    1. 1. Negotiating with the parts
    2. 1. What happens when a part just won't cooperate
    3. Like a child not wanting to go to take necessary medicine or not wanting to go to bed. 2.
      2. So to Catholic ears, the self can sound like it's dominated by the passions.
    4. Self as the agents
    5. Each part has a subparts and a self.
      1. Infinite regress.
      2. Self=soul, so this means that each person has multiple souls, one soul -- the self, and a soul for each of his parts. And because parts have subparts, there might even be subsouls.
        
        Parts can be conflicted -- that is common
        
        Because I've been trained for decades in the study of personality, I can locate those conflicts within the personality of a part -- no need to invoke other parts.
    6. Openness to Spiritual World
2. IFS as a spirituality -- Frank Rogers -- IFS as a Compassionate Spiritual Path
3. 1. Richard Schwartz: 2010 in Introduction to "The Spirit-Led Life" by Mary Steege
  2. I gradually shifted my view of what I called the Self from being an innate human capacity for self-healing to a being a spiritual essence comparable to Buddha Nature, Atman, the Tao, or the Ground of Being.
    1. 1. Correspondingly, my view of IFS evolved from being a form of psychotherapy to being an integration of spirituality and psychology, or even to being a form of spiritual practice. (p. xi)
    2. 1. Shift from secular humanism to spirituality. 4.
  3. Lack of an understanding of sin
4. Evil is acknowledged in IFS, origins are not explained.
5. 1. Harm exists, Committed by parts that blend with us. They don't know better, they are seeking the good as they understand it but there is a lack of vision
  2. Acting out of self-protection
    1. 1. No possibility of malevolence, of freely saying no to the good. 3.
  4. Although Augustine's Christian forbears believed that we are born blessed, Augustine chose to focus on a Biblical allegory of minor importance at the time, which his contemporaries considered embarrassing.
    1. Poorly researched and written 11 page book chapter -- Richard Schwartz and Robert Falconer 2017 -- rife with errors.
    2. Pearls such as
  5. "Jesus wasn't a highly discipline ascetic" How could he have suffered the Passion.
  6. The Eastern Christian Church never accepted original sin
  7. In general, Christianity has misidentified parts as sinful urges or tempting thoughts and has encouraged followers to develop managerial parts to fight them.
  8. Confidence. Confidence in who?
    1. Confidence in Self vs. confidence in God.
    2. Self has many gifts. Natural level
  9. Clarity -- vision is clear when we see through the eyes of Self and it is distorted when we see through the eyes of extreme parts.
    1. Role for revelation? Wisdom?
  10. Lots of Buddhism.
  11. Parts having varying levels of access to the faculties of the intellect and the will
  12. Parts having varying access to other faculties and Passions.
  13. Social and Political Positions.
    1. Bill Richardson: The IFS trainers were definitely neither religiously nor politically conservative, nor evangelical believers. Their world view was farther left than most of us knew existed.
  14. Very LGBTQ+ friendly
  15. Political positions -- very progressive politically
    1. Patriarchy
  16. Driving with the headlights on - we see what we need to
6. My experience -- desiring to have a philosophy and theology background. God's response
7. 1. Confidence in God.
  2. If we are seeking in earnest -- Seek and ye shall find.
  3. I could be wrong about a lot of these things. In humility I have to admit that.
  4. Talents
9. So is IFS Catholic
10. Two answers -- if you're looking for a model of therapy or human formation that you as a Catholic can embrace unthinkingly, without reservation, without any scrutiny or critical thinking -- just swallowing it whole. Lock, stock and barrell, IFS is not for you.
11. 1. If you are willing to really make distinctions, parse out what is consistent -- absolute gold mine.
12. 1. Implications for therapy
13. Aids
14. Two dissertations
  1. One from DMU, I am on the dissertation commuttee as a reader for that one. DMU 2.
  2. 1. Philosophers Cafe
  3. Recommended reading
15. Bill Richardson's article
  1. Internal Family Systems Therapy Meets Evangelical Christianity:Integration of Diverse Communities and Theories 2007
  2. Reformed Presbyterian tradition, heavily influenced by Calvin -- total depravity
16. 1. Two Books
  2. Boundaries for Your Soul -- Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
    1. 1. Altogether You Jenna Riermersma
    2. 1. Molly LaCroix Restoring Relationship: Transforming Fear into Love Through Connection
  4. Possible Exercise.
  5. Communities
  6. Blurb Join Dr. Peter as in a deep look at how Internal Family Systems approaches to therapy and to human formation are consistent and inconsistent with the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church. We explore the multiplicity and unity of the human psyche, the role of the core self, the nature of "parts" and the question of sin in this episode.

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The Pitch -- Opening
1. Set the Scene Two Great Commandments
  1. What is the whole point of your life? What is your mission and purpose? What is the most important thing for you to do? Really think about that for a minute. What is your ultimate goal on this planet as a Catholic man or woman?
    1. 1. All of us serious Catholics want to love God and neighbor.
  2. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40
    1. Mitch and Sri CCSS "Together, the two love Commandments sum up the Ten Commandments, three of which delineate our responsibilities toward God and seven of which concern our duties toward others." 3. 4. Luke 10:25-28 25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul [being], and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.” 5. Highest obligation of every person. 6. Romans 13:8-10 8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
    3. The Hurdle -- a problem we're all facing.
2. Simple, right? But it's not that simple.
  1. My Catholic Life

With this statement, Jesus gives a complete summary of the moral law found in the Ten Commandments. The first three Commandments reveal that we must love God above all and with all our might. The last six Commandments reveal that we must love our neighbor. The moral law of God is as simple as fulfilling these two more general commandments.

But is it all that simple? Well, the answer is both “Yes” and “No.” It’s simple in the sense that God’s will is not typically complex and difficult to comprehend. Love is spelled out clearly in the Gospels and we are called to embrace a radical life of true love and charity.

However, it can be considered difficult in that we are not only called to love, we are called to love with all our being. We must give of ourselves completely and without reserve. This is radical and requires that we hold nothing back.

And that's the kicker -- to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. With all of us.
1. Think about what that means.
  1. Pablo Gadenz CCSS Luke "The idea is that the commandment to love God embraces every aspect of one's being."
2. 1. Every fiber of our being, every last little bit of ourselves.
3. 1. If we really think about this commandment -- what are the implications
  2. To love God in every internal experience -- every thought, emotion, body sensation, intention, impulse attitude, belief, assumption, every desire -- every internal phenomenological experience oriented toward loving God.
    1. 1. That requires harmony inside.
    2. 1. That requires interior integration for Catholics
    3. And Interior Integration for Catholics just happens to be the name of this podcast. 2. 1. And this whole podcast is all about helping to you to get so much closer to loving God and neighbor and yourself with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole strength and your whole mind, with all of you -- and that is the whole mission of our online outreach Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com 4.
    5. Intro -- Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics
4. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here to help guide you toward loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way.
  1. And how do I do that?
    1. By focusing on your natural level impediments, your psychological obstacles to tolerated being loved and to loving God, neighbor and ourselves in the best ways possible 2. 1. That is the mission of this podcast -- it's all about your human formation and what you need on the natural level going forward in your life. 3. 1. John the Baptist is the patron saint of this podcast because he prepared the way for the Lord. 4. 1. I'm here to help you get ready by shoring up your natural foundation for the spiritual life 5. 2.
    2. 1. This is Episode 72, entitled What Keeps You from Loving? Is it Really Only Your Vices? (Spoiler Alert: No!)
      2. Chess analogy -- so the two great Commandments are both simple and complex -- like chess.
        
        One Level -- Chess is a simple game -- the rules are really clear and can be learned in five minutes, and the trickiest part of the rules is castling -- rook/king switcheroo thing. Or maybe the en passant pawn capture.
        
        On another level, chess is complex -- people spend their professional lives learning to play. Grandmasters learning into old age.
    3. Love Your Neighbor as yourself
5. We are supposed to love ourselves
6. 1. Command is not to love our neighbor more than ourselves
  2. Not because Jesus is lax: Mt. 5:48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
  3. 1. No one can love you in lieu of you.
  4. 1. Doesn't make sense if you think of a person has having monolithic, homogeneous personality -- no space for relationship there.
  5. 1. In order to love ourselves other and God, we need interior peace.
  6. Fr. Jacques Phillipe: Searching For and Maintaining Peace
    1. It is of the greatest importance that we strive to acquire an interior peace, the peace of our hearts. p. 5 2. 1. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us. p. 5 3. 1. Quoting St. Seraphim of Sarov "Acquire interior peace and a multitude will find its salvation through you. p. 8 4. 1. p.11 Very frequently, spiritual combat consists precisely in this: defending one's peace of heart against the enemy who attempts to steal it from us. 5. 1. p. 12. The first goal of spiritual combat, that toward which our efforts must above all else be directed, is not to always obtain a victory (over our temptations, our weaknesses, etc.), rather it is to learn to maintain peace of heart under all circumstances, even in the case of defeat. 6. 1. p. 13 The reasons why we lose our peace are always bad reasons. 7. 8. The reason for Catholic interested in mindfulness -- Greg Bottaro's books 9. Recollection
    2. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Recollection, as understood in respect to the spiritual life, means attention to the presence of God in the soul. It includes the withdrawal of the mind from external and earthly affairs in order to attend to God and Divine things. 10. Consequence of a lack of interior peace -- self-absorption
    3. Starving waiter syndrome 11. 1. Burning castle analogy. 12. 13. Spiritual approaches to peace -- Fr. Jacques Phillipe -- master of this. 14. Natural approaches to peace
    5. You can keep going on the way you are. But what about adding the dimension of interior integration on a natural level -- wouldn't that be fascinating.
    6. Interior Integration
7. Dimensions of Understanding Others or Ourselves.
  1. 0 Dimensions -- single point in space, -- geometry, no dimensionality. Personalizing it -- you are nothing to me.
    1. He who cut me off on the freeway. Bad to me. Totally in orbit around me, no separate identity, not even really human.
  2. 1 Dimension -- line -- "Loser" to the person who cut you off on the freeway -- no depth, no dimensionality. Only one quality -- loserliness.
    1. Still very personalized.
  3. 2 Dimensions -- plane -- "Loser" or maybe a person who is having a bad day.
    1. Less personal
    2. Cardboard Cutout-- person has a shape, not well understood.
  4. 3 Dimensions -- taking into account the emotions, thoughts, body sensations, spiritual aspects, impulses, desires -- person on the way to the hospital
    1. More complete snapshot of a moment in time 5. 1. Person has
      1. Personality style 2. 1. Needs -- attachment needs and integrity needs 3. 1. Emotions 4. 1. Body sensation. 5. 1. Belief. 6. 1. Thought 7. 1. Intentions 8. 1. Desires 9. 1. Attitudes 10. 1. Impulses. 11. 1. Interpersonal style 12. 1. World view 6. 7. 4 Dimensions -- out of basic geometry now and into physics. The four dimension is physics assesses an object's position in time. Analogy to a person's position in time. Dynamism of the person. Can be one way in one moment and another way in another moment 8. 5th Dimension -- Not the champagne souls band from the late 60s and early 70s with Marylin McCoo -- big Album Age of Aquarias. No new agey stuff here. 1. dimension unseen by humans where the forces of gravity and electromagnetism unite to create a simple but graceful theory of the fundamental forces -- where electromagnetism and gravity unify --- understanding the other person in terms of self and parts -- unity and multiplicity 2. Part of him in a real hurry -- fears his wife will be angry at him if he is late again. Self absorbed. 3. Part of him is fiddling with the radio to distract himself from the fear. 4. Not really about me at all. 9. 6th Dimension -- no longer in just the natural world. 1. Seeing him as a Child of God through the eyes of Faith, as God sees him. 2. Requires supernatural grace 3. Three Dimensional Chess 10. Loving Others Wholly -- all their parts in their complexity. 11. Understanding others
    2. Fr. Corapi 12. 1. Jean Vanier of the L'Arche community. 13. 1. Acceptance of reality. Not endorsement. Episode 66
    4. Elements of love -- Benevolence, Capacity, and Constancy
8. Benevolence -- bonae voluntatis in Latin, good will.
9. 1. Capacity
  2. Understanding the other
    1. Operating in the mode of the receiver 2. 1. Dependent on us understanding ourselves 3. 1. Mistaking what is coming from who 4. 1. Unconscious
      1. Capacity to choose the good -- Freedom.
    2. Well-governed self
      1. Regulated 2. 1. Organized 3. 1. Calm. compassionate 2.
        
        Possessing virtues
      2. Constancy. Need peace and interior integration.
      4. Review of the IFS model of a person - real strength of IFS
10. IFS person = self+parts+body
11. 1. Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader.
  2. We want to be recollected, we want the self-governing all of our parts
  3. Like the conductor -- leading the musicians in an orchestra
  4. Like the captain -- leading and governing all the sailors on a ship.
  5. When we are recollected, in self, 8 C's
    1. Calm 5. 1. Curiosity 6. 1. Compassion 7. 1. Confidence 8. 1. Courage 9. 1. Clarity 10. 1. Connectedness 11. 1. Creativity 12. 1. Kindness
    2. 1. Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. 1. Each part has
    3. Personality style 2. 1. Needs -- Episode 62
      1. Attachment needs 2. 1. Integrity needs 3. 1. Emotions 4. 1. Body sensation. 5. 1. Belief. 6. 1. Thought 7. 1. Intentions 8. 1. Desires 9. 1. Attitudes 10. 1. Impulses. 11. 1. Interpersonal style 12. 1. World view 13. 1. Often have burdens 14. Parts have different attachment styles, different ways of connecting. 15. Parts have a different love languages -- Five different Love Languages -- Gary Chapman. 1. Words of affirmation 2. Quality Time 3. Acts of Service 4. Gifts 5. Physical Touch 16. So many parts are hidden. Consider themselves or are considered by other parts to be unacceptable, unlovable, unworthy, dangerous, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever. 17. I don't know myself when I don't know my parts. 18. I don't know my neighbor when I don't know his or her parts. 19. I don't love myself when I don't love my parts 20. I don't love my neighbor when I don't love his parts.
      3. IFS turbocharging our understanding of parts, thus enabling us to love all our parts -- dark regions within us, unknown regions within us.
        
        This frees us to love others much more completely, in all their parts.
      4. Experiential Exercise --Increasing recollection, self energy,
        
        Caveats. Quiet place.
        
        8 Cs
  6. Calm
    1. 1. Curiosity
    2. 1. Compassion
    3. 1. Confidence
    4. 1. Courage
    5. 1. Clarity
    6. 1. Connectedness
    7. 1. Creativity
    8. 1. Kindness
  7. Closing:
12. Does this podcast really resonate with you? Does it really make sense? Do these experiential exercises
13. 1. Do you want to be with likeminded Catholic who are serious about not only our Catholic Faith but also human formation -- who want to learn more about loving God, loving neighbor and loving self is a psychologically-minded way, drawing from the best of our understandings of the human person from both the spiritual and the natural worlds?
14. 1. Resilient Catholic Community at Souls and Hearts, grew up around my podcast Integration for Catholics -- a place to do that -- registration is open each year in June and December soulsandhearts.com/rcc
15. 1. If you are committed to this podcast, I want you to learn about the Resilient Catholics community. Come with me, come with us -- we are pioneers together on this pilgrimage. Come with us, join us on this adventure on this hard road to life.
16. 1. Questions: Conversation hours -- 317.567.9594 -- email crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Our community is small and personal. I am looking forward to meeting you. People are surprised when I answer the phone in conversation hours.
17. 1. Go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc -- check out the community. We are open for the month of June or until our 80 spaces are filled -- discerning.
18. 1. Tune in next week -- Is Internal Family System Really Catholic?
20. Blurb for Transistor: Dr. Peter goes right to the core of the Catholic life, our mission to love God and love neighbor and how those depend on us loving ourselves in an ordered way. He discusses seven levels with six dimensions of understanding others, ranging along a continuum of developmental maturity and closes with an experiential exercise to help you discover why you lack interior peace.

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Introduction
1. Very autobiographical today, I'm going to tell you a lot about me and the mistakes I've made and how those mistakes have brought me to do this episode.
  1. I don't really like talking about myself -- not a lot of autobiographical material in previous episodes
  2. I especially don't like talking about myself all by myself in my little studio -- not being interviewed by a host -- the really Competent part of me thinks it's a little weird to be sharing details of my life and my struggles and my mistakes, not knowing who is listening because I haven't met most of you, those of you who are my listeners. I've checked in with the different parts of me and they are all good with it, I have at least grudging acceptance of the idea.
2. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
3. This podcast is called Interior Integration for Catholics, and it is part of Souls and Hearts
  1. our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com
    1. 1. which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor and ourselves. We're getting into that much more deeply now.
    3. This is episode 71, released on June 7, 2021, entitled A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others. -- Beginning a brief series of episodes that takes the great insights of Internal Family Systems approaches to understanding the human person on a natural level, and reconciles them with the eternal truths of the Catholic faith.
  2. The Great Journey
4. I could be considered "Highly successful" as a child and adolescent -- 4.0 GPA in High School, Valedictorian, Varsity letters in Track and Cross Country, I acted in high school musicals and plays, excelled in competitive solo-acting, was on the chess team, active in student government and I was a pretty good shot on the local pistol team -- I had a lot going for me. I continued that success from Northwestern University, graduating with honors, traveling the world, living in Seville, Spain for a year, romping around Mexico one summer.
5. 1. 1991 -- brought to my knees -- 22 years old, just left a high-demand group Catholic group -- strong sense of having been manipulated and used, exploited.
  2. Trying to figure out my own experience -- what just happened? Why so many contradictory thoughts and feelings? What was going on.
    1. Either I made a mistake in joining that group or I made a mistake in leaving it.
    2. Existential crisis -- A leader of the group told me that the founder once said that "he wouldn't give a nickel for the soul of any son who abandons his vocation the group." For the true believer, there was no viable way out.
    3. Common reason for getting into psychology - there's something to the meme.
    4. My models were not sufficient. I was not satisfied with superficial reasons
      1. For why I felt the ways I did 5. 1. For why I thought the ways I thought 6. 1. For why I acted the ways I did. 7.
      2. In 1993, Began a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology -- the best that psychology had to offer.
        
        The Hunt for a Unitary Personality
        
        We all want to understand ourselves
  3. 4 temperaments -- Encyclopedia Britannica: Humoral theories: 2500 years ago. Perhaps the oldest personality theory known is contained in the cosmological writings of the Greek philosopher and physiologist Empedocles and in related speculations of the physician Hippocrates. Empedocles’ cosmic elements—air (with its associated qualities, warm and moist), earth (cold and dry), fire (warm and dry), and water (cold and moist)—were related to health and corresponded (in the above order) to Hippocrates’ physical humours, which were associated with variations in temperament: blood (sanguine temperament), black bile (melancholic), yellow bile (choleric), and phlegm (phlegmatic). This theory, with its view that body chemistry determines temperament, has survived in some form for more than 2,500 years. According to these early theorists, emotional stability as well as general health depend on an appropriate balance among the four bodily humours; an excess of one may produce a particular bodily illness or an exaggerated personality trait. Thus, a person with an excess of blood would be expected to have a sanguine temperament—that is, to be optimistic, enthusiastic, and excitable. Too much black bile (dark blood perhaps mixed with other secretions) was believed to produce a melancholic temperament. An oversupply of yellow bile (secreted by the liver) would result in anger, irritability, and a “jaundiced” view of life. An abundance of phlegm (secreted in the respiratory passages) was alleged to make people stolid, apathetic, and undemonstrative.

Art and Laraine Bennett. The Temperament God Gave you.

Freud
Desire for unity
Testing expert
1. Layered Personalities, overlays -- trying to accommodate
2. 1. Personality is supposed to be stable
  2. Definition of personality
    1. Encyclopedia Britannica: the study of personality focuses on classifying and explaining relatively stable human psychological characteristics. 2. 1. VeryWellMind.com; At its most basic, personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique. It is believed that personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life. 3. 1. But DSM-5, PDM -- Borderline Personality Disorder -- not stable
      1. We want predictability
    3. In 2000 I was at a crossroad in life, about to finish my Ph.D. in clinical psychology and very much struggling to find a way to ground psychology in a Catholic worldview. Very few resources were available and most of those were very limited. I was considering leaving the field of psychology altogether, unconvinced that it had anything like the power it promised to bring about healing. I could fall back on being an applied statistician, or I could retreat into behavioral medicine, but a voice kept saying, “There is a way. Seek it.” I trusted that voice, went deeper into my prayer life, and by God’s grace, found a path. Dietrich von Hildebrand (a 20th century Austrian phenomenologist), St. Teresa of Avila, and a protestant psychoanalyst came to help. By bringing phenomenology, Carmelite writings on prayer, and psychoanalytic approaches to psychotherapy together, I was able to carve out the rudiments of a way of practicing that was both effective and conformable to the Catholic Faith.

In 2020, twenty years later, I found myself at another crossroads, and this time the challenge was to bring psychology and Catholicism together in the online universe in a way that could transform lives without psychotherapy by harnessing the power of a Catholic community. Zoom, a networking platform and Internal Family Systems came together to make the seemingly impossible possible. Because of COVID-19, my Catholic interpersonal process group had been meeting online quite effectively. People were adapting to remote communication technology at a much faster rate. As stress levels increased with the pandemic there was a huge need to shore up the natural foundation for the spiritual life. The CCCD podcast I was doing to help Catholics through the pandemic was gaining a following – and the idea came to launch the RCCD community. Internal Family Systems provides ways for non-therapists to be able to reach out powerfully and effectively to others in community in an attuned way. IFS also provides an abundance of non-therapy ways of going inside and connecting inwardly. And the path became clear – let’s bring those helpful ways of connecting inwardly and outwardly to committed Catholics who want to be integrated, and who want to be loved and to love others. Let’s make a place where people can practice carrying out the Two Great Commandments, a living training ground to learn to be loved by ourselves and other and to love ourselves and others.

Review of the IFS model of a person
1. Self: The core of the person, the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, and when our self is free, and unblended with any of our parts, it governs our whole being as an active, compassionate leader.
  1. We want to be recollected, we want the self governing all of our parts
  2. Like the conductor -- leading the musicians in an orchestra
  3. Like the captain -- leading and governing all the sailors on a ship.
  4. When we are recollected, in self, 8 C's
    1. Calm 5. 1. Curiousity 6. 1. Compassion 7. 1. Confidence 8. 1. Courage 9. 1. Clarity 10. 1. Connectedness 11. 1. Creativity 12. 1. Kindness
    2. 1. Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Robert Falconer calls them insiders. 1. Parts have different attachment styles, different ways of connecting. 2. Parts have a different love languages -- Five different Love Languages -- Gary Chapman.
    3. Words of affirmation
    4. Quality Time
    5. Acts of Service
    6. Gifts
    7. Physical Touch 3. So many parts are hidden. Consider themselves or are considered by other parts to be unacceptable, unlovable, unworthy, dangerous, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever. 4. I don't know ourselves when I don't know my parts. 5. I don't know my neighbor when I don't know his or her parts. 6. Parts can shift abruptly. They can shift abruptly during sexual intimacy between spouses. 7. Three roles
    8. Exiles --
      1. most sensitive -- these exiles have been exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
      2. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries
      3. They hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness to protect the person from being overwhelmed with the intensity.
      4. They desperately want to be seen and known, to be safe and secure, to be comforted and soothed, to be cared for and loved
      5. They want rescue, redemption, healing
      6. And in the intensity of their needs and emotions, they threaten to take over and destabilize the person's whole being, the person's whole system
      7. And they threaten to harm external relationships
      8. Burdens they carry: Shame, dependency, worthlessness, Fear/Terror, Grief/Loss, Loneliness, Neediness, Pain, lack of meaning or purpose, a sense of being unloved and unlovable, inadequate, abandoned,
        
        Managers
      9. These are the proactive protector parts. They work strategically, with forethought and planning to keep in control of situations and relationships to minimize the likelihood of you being hurt. They work really hard to keep you safe. 2. 1. controlling, striving, planning, caretaking, judging, 3. 1. Can be pessimistic, self-critical, very demanding. 4. 9. 1. Firefighters
      10. When exiles break through and threaten to take over the system, like in Inside Out, remember the parts and the control panel? So when these exiles are about the break out, the firefighters leap into action. 2. 1. It's an emergency situation, a crisis, like a fire raging in a house. 3. 1. No concern for niceties, for propriety, for etiquette, for little details like that. 4. 1. Firefighter take bold, drastic actions to stifle, numb or distract from the intensity of the exile's experiences. 5. 1. Intense neediness and grief are overwhelming us! Emergency actions -- battle stations! Evasive maneuvers, Arm the torpedoes, Full speed ahead! 6. 1. No concern for consequences -- don't you get it, we are in a crisis, 7. 1. All kinds of addictions -- alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, excessive working or exercise, suicidal actions, self-harm, violence, dissociation, distractions, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy, and raging. 8. 1. Parts can take over the person 10. 1. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 11. 1. We call it blending. 12.
      12. Introduction to my Parts
2. Former Exiles
  1. Feisty One (formerly my "angry part")
    1. 1. Adventurer (formerly my "part who holds fear")
    2. 1. Lover Part
    3. 1. Melancholio
  2. 1. Managers
  3. Competent Part
    1. 1. Good Boy
    2. 1. Evaluator (formerly "the Critic"
  4. 1. Firefighters
  5. Challenger (formerly "the Rebel"
    1. 1. Guardian (formerly "the Intimidator")
    2. 1. Creative Part
  7. Parts in greater detail
3. Feisty One (formerly my "angry part")
4. 1. Adventurer (formerly my "part who holds fear")
5. 1. Lover Part
6. 1. Melancholio
7. 1. Competent Part
8. 1. Good Boy
9. 1. Evaluator (formerly "the Critic"
10. 1. Challenger (formerly "the Rebel"
11. 1. Guardian (formerly "the Intimidator")
12. 1. Creative Part
13. Elements
14. Personality style
15. 1. Emotions
16. 1. Body sensation.
17. 1. Belief.
18. 1. Thought
19. 1. Intentions
20. 1. Desires
21. 1. Attitudes
22. 1. Impulses.
23. 1. Interpersonal style
24. 1. World view
25. My Parts' attitudes about this podcast episode
26. Experiential Exercise -- discovering a part of you.
27. Caveats. Quiet place.
28. Closing:
29. Resources:
  1. Website ifs-institute.com
  2. Book: Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz 2001, Trailheads publications.
  3. Podcast: The One Inside -- Tammy Sollenberger
30. 1. Next episode all about Looking at IFS through Christian Lens.
  2. Because IFS is open to spirituality, all kinds of variations exist.
  3. Every practice of psychology and every program of human formation depends on Theology, Philosophy, Epistemology and metaphysics -- those compose the underlying anthropology
    1. What is anthropology Mgsr Charles Pope: Anthropology is, most simply, the science or study of human beings through time and space. Different specialties focus on the analysis of biological/physiological characteristics and the examination of societies/cultures. In the religious sense, anthropology deals with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings.
    2. 1. Human formation is the lifelong process of natural development, aided by grace, by which a person integrates all aspects of his interior emotional, cognitive, relational, and bodily life, all of his natural faculties in an ordered way, conformed with right reason and natural law so that he is freed from natural impediments to trust God as His beloved child and to embrace God's love. Then, in return, because he possesses himself, he can love God, neighbor and himself with all of his natural being in an ordered, intimate, personal, and mature way.
    3. 1. Pitch
  4. Do your human formation work.
    1. 1. The Fall in the Garden of Eden was devastating to our bodies -- death, pain, physical labor, pain in childbirth
    2. 1. In the same way, it was devasting to our psyches.
    3. 1. Examine your own human formation. Do your human formation work. Build that solid natural foundation. Don't leave that to chance.
    4. Serious Catholics have spiritual plan of life 2. 1. Also a human formation plan -- your emotional life, your relational life, your thinking, your body issues. 3. 1. And get some support doing that 4. 1. Resilient Catholic Community at Souls and Hearts, grew up around my podcast Integration for Catholics -- a place to do that -- registration is open each year in June and December soulsandhearts.com/rcc 5.
    6. The best of psychology, the best of human formation all grounded in what we know to be true by divine revelation.
    7. Parts Description Worksheet 3.0
    8. Go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc -- check out the community. We are open for the month of June or until our 80 spaces are filled -- discerning.
    9. Members -- Second Wednesday Zoom Meeting -- June 9, 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM -- discussing companions and companies in the relaunched RCC
    10. Conversation hours -- 317.567.9594 -- email crisis@soulsandhearts.com

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Intro:
1. This is it, this is the last episode in our 21 episode series on sexuality , our last episode of 14 in our subseries on sexuality in Catholic marriages, it has been a long run, thank you for being here
2. We are finishing up with our metaphor of the canopied Catholic Marriage Bed
  1. And today we'll be discussing the four bedposts, the canopy, and the bedskirt, bedspread and the shams with more examples.
3. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
4. This podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor.
5. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
6. This is episode 70, released on May 31, 2021, entitled Catholic Sex and the Four Pillars -- and the Dos and Don'ts of Sharing about your Sexual Life.
Review of the bed
1. Review the bed -- remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.
  1. The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence -- everything begins here. This is the most fundamental piece of the whole metaphor. We need to be in contact with "I AM" with God who is the source of all reality. We can't forget that
  2. The four legs
    1. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation 3. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation 4. 1. Leg 3. Understanding Attachment needs and integrity needs. 5. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems -- Episode 60 -- How well do you really know your spouse? 6. The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently 7. The mattress Empathetic attunement -- covered that in episode 65, last episode 8. Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance -- this is what we are focusing on today.
    2. Pillows support us, comfort us.
    3. Great security with pillows
      1. Pam travels with her pillow -- learned this from her friend Cabrina -- comfort in having your own pillow 3. 1. Comfort in being accepted by someone who knows you. 4. 9. Bottom Sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion 10. Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses 11. The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection 12. Covering today Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA -- these are the four pillars of Catholic resilience, going all the way back to episode 4 of this podcast 1. Mindset 2. Heartset 3. Bodyset 4. Soulset 13. Covering today: The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse. 14. Covering today: The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.
      3. Bedposts Four Sets
2. Bodyset, Mindset, Heartset and Soulset
3. 1. Double helix structure -- the husband's strand and the wife's strand interwoven, entwined together like the double-helix structure of DNA rising up overhead, looking down on the bed
4. 1. Dynamism of Sets -- not static -- our sets shift, they vary as a function of our parts and what is activated and not activated within us in a given moment.
5. 1. Descriptions review from way back in Episode 4
  2. Bodyset is how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations.
  3. Mindset is essentially a frame of mind. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we apply reason to our situation and our experiences.
  4. Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart.
  5. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul. It is the disposition of our spirit, or how our souls is oriented. It can operate independently of mindset and heartset. Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us. Our soulset very much depends on the virtues we have acquired, especially the virtues of faith, hope and charity. Our soulset is also very dynamic, it can change rapidly
6. 1. A lot of your human formation is being aware of your own sets -- Bodyset, Mindset, Heartset and Soulset
7. 1. So much of your empathy for your spouse will involve reading your spouse's sets -- Bodyset, Mindset, Heartset and Soulset
  2. Will this legitimate sexual experience be good for your spouse's mind, heart, soul and body, right now, in these circumstances?
    1. Where is she emotionally, relationally with you? How is she doing physically right now, how is her soul? 2.
  3. 1. Paying attention to common, repeated relational patterns or cycles that happen between you and your spouse.
  4. 1. Our parts have very different experiences of sexual intimacy
  5. Definition of parts: Discussed this at length in episodes 60 and 61. Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. IFS therapist Robert Falconer calls parts "insiders." Each part also has its own approach to sexuality.
    1. 1. One part may be blended within you
    2. 1. Your spouse may be blended in a part
    3. 1. Parts can switch -- episode 61 Fractured, Fragmented Sex in Catholic Marriages described how parts in a sexual encounter can switch rapidly. 5.
  6. 1. Bodyset is how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations. We are embodied beings, body and soul composites. Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us. So our bodyset is the impact of our bodily states on us. For example, if we are exhausted from a lack of sleep – that has an impact on us. Obviously our bodyset is dynamic and can change as well.
  7. Understanding bodyset is so important in marriage because the bodies of the husband and wife are so united.
    1. 1. Body has a huge impact on our relating.
    2. 1. The bodies of the husband and wife
    3. Genesis 2:21-25 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man[e] this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. 2. 1. Mark 10:6-9 -- these are the words of Jesus But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 3. 1. 1 Corinthians 7:4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
      1. What do I mean by understanding bodyset
    4. Example of a wife Carol feeling "tired" -- what might that mean?
      1. Hard day -- physical labor 2. 1. Illness -- coming down with a cold. Medical condition. 3. 1. Psychosomatic expression of distress
        
        I am not feeling well emotionally 2. 1. Firefighting part of the wife that is covering up anger at the husband? 4. 2. 1. Example of headache -- parts generating a headache. But not all of the spouse. 3. 1. Example of the wife's cycles
      2. For some wives, sexual desire is so mediated by hormonal levels -- so body based
        
        Parts of the husband can interpret a lack of sexual desire this day as rejection, as evidence of being unloved or unlovable, undesirable -- all that could change in a few days. 2. 2. 4. 1. Example of Bill from the last episode "I really get turned on when my wife bites me, it helps me to have sex with her, I find I don't have to use Viagra then -- is that ok, or is it better for me to use the Viagra? I don't want to not be able to have the fullness of sexual intimacy with her…" 1. Bill's difficulties achieving and maintaining an erection are not purely a medical/physical issue -- he doesn't need the Viagra when his wife bites him. Something is going on with his bodyset -- what is attractive and arousing about the biting? It has a meaning to it. 5. 5.
        
        Mindset is essentially a frame of mind. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we apply reason to our situation and our experiences, including our sexual experiences. Our mindset is dynamic and changes – we can have a very positive outlook at one point in time and a very negative one at another point in time and look at the same set of circumstances. Our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking but also our behavior. 1. Example of the tired wife Carol-- difficult day at work, difficult time with the children before her husband Ben comes home from working late. Ben kisses the kids good night, he's ready for a late supper and maybe some romance, but the wife's mindset is one of
    5. Ben, You've left me alone with the kids repeatedly 2. 1. You don't understanding how much that demands from me 3. 1. It's not fair that you just get to come home, eat a fine supper that I prepared, kiss the kids and expect that I'm just going to be all into you and your wonderfulness, Ben.
      1. At this point, Carol's firefighting part that carries fatigue may lift and the anger in an exiled part may come through, an example of her heartset affecting her mindset 2. 1. Speaking from her anger, Carol says. You don't really understand me, or you wouldn't be inviting me to bed like this. 3. 1. You need to help our more around here or I won't want any more kids, not if I have to raise them and care for them by myself. No sex for you, Ben 4. 1. Ben's mindset -- shifting from how wonderful his wife is to his protector parts planning how to defend against her criticisms of him.
        
        Carol, you're being unreasonable. What did I do wrong? I came home from a long day at work, busting my hump to provide for this family and you lay into me as though it's a bad thing for a husband to be attracted to his wife. 5. 4.
      2. Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart. Heartset is essential our emotional state and the positions we take because of our feelings.

Heartset is even more dynamic and changeable for many people than mindset. And it very much influences our mindset

Example of the heartset of the husband Ben in our example
1. Ben's anger flaring up -- not fair that you say I don't help -- that's not what Carol said, but in a defensive mindset, Ben hears it that way. Mindset and heartset working together.
2. 1. Carol's heart is closed, sees Ben as intrusive, protectors have impulses to attack and withdraw from him into the kitchen out of anger and fear.
4. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul. It is the disposition of our spirit, or how our souls is oriented. It can operate independently of mindset and heartset. Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us. Our soulset very much depends on the virtues we have acquired, especially the virtues of faith, hope and charity. Our soulset is also very dynamic, it can change rapidly
5. Carol and Ben not seeing each other as children of God. Not seeing themselves as one flesh. Not motivated by charity. Invoking justice and fairness, not authentic agape love.
6. 1. What would happen if they stopped and prayed their family rosary together, late, just the two of them, after the kids went down. What if instead of making romantic overtures toward his wife, he volunteered to clean up with her in the kitchen?
8. Bedspread, Bedskirt, shams
9. these cover up the bed, give a favorable and even a false impression to the world of what the bed is like, keep the real bed under wraps, as it were.
  1. Can also give a false impression to us. 2.
  2. 1. Very natural to us to curate our social image, keeping up appearances
  3. 1. We don't want detraction
  4. 1. But we need to be real. We need to see what is real about ourselves sexually, about our spouses sexually, and about our sexual intimacy.
  6. Canopy
10. Privacy of the marriage bed and what happens on it
11. 1. Openness to God
12. 1. Openness to our own parts
  2. Parts have very different attitudes toward our sexual expression
    1. e.g. latent anger -- if not given voice within ourselves, increases likelihood of enactment 2.
    2. 1. Openness to God
  3. In prayer
    1. Individually 2. 1. Together 3. 1. Sharing with each other what comes of the prayer. Mutual discernment. 4.
      1. Through others
    2. 1. Openness to trusted, competent others who love us
  4. May as well
    1. Luke 8:17 For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light. 2. 1. Psalm 90:8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
      1. Major impediment to this openness and relating within yourself, with your spouse and with God [Drum roll]
    2. Shame
    3. Check out episodes 37-49, which are a whole course on shame and overcoming shame.
      1. Diagnostic -- what am I reluctant to reveal? And why
    4. Again, asking our parts inside. Fear, shame, guilt, -- If so, of what 2. 1. If you seek you'll find. Many people never seek 3. 1. May be very surprising. 4. 1. What happens in secret will be proclaimed from the rooftops. 5.
      1. Ways to share sexual aspects with others
    5. Respect for spouse
      1. Your husband is a beloved son of God; your wife is a beloved daughter of God. 2. 1. Asking permission to discuss with a particular person
        
        Resistance is often within our own parts -- externalized to the spouse. But have you asked your spouse? 2. 1. Bringing in parts language for your spouse.
        
        She never wants to have sexual intimacy with me vs. a part of her seems to really avoid having sexual intimacy with me.
        
        Not all of my spouse.
        
        How we speak, think influences our attitudes. 2. 3. 3.
        
        Positive frame -- wanting to make things better
        
        Owning your own part of any of the challenges -- beams and specks
        
        Can share frustration, but it should be more than just venting, a spouse bashing session. 1. But I might take that if it's the only way a person can start sharing anything about a dysfunctional sexual pattern in relationship -- depends on maturity.
        
        No gossiping
        
        Clarity of language -- self-abuse instead of masturbation. Euphemisms or ways to skirt the reality of an action. 1. Whatever facilitates communication -- street terms in the formal terms are not understood. 2. Victorian age -- sense of propriety. 7.
        
        Choosing a professional
    6. Marital therapy can be extremely helpful. 2. 1. Therapist or a life coach or a spiritual director or some other professional role
      1. Professionals often have their own sexual issues that impact how they relate with their clients. 2. 1. Many Catholic professionals may not really hold to what the Church teaches
        
        Ignorance 2. 1. Professional formation 3. 1. Personal sexual issues that are getting stirred up
        
        You can ask. You can challenge your therapist -- he or she doesn't have to reveal everything to you, not entitled to know all about your therapist's sexual life, but the question can spur your therapist to think.
        
        I am into clients challenging their therapists
        
        And therapists rising to the challenges. 2. 4. 3. 1. Use your judgement, powers of discernment. Seek and ye shall find. 4. 3.
        
        What about when a husband doesn’t want his wife to discuss her experience of sexuality with him with anyone else. Or if a wife doesn’t want her husband to discuss their sex life with any other person? Then what?
    7. Consider the reasons why
      1. Safety, Security 2. 1. Emotions
        
        Fear 2. 1. Shame 3. 1. Guilt 3. 1. Consider what parts of the spouse might be activated by the idea of the sharing 4. 1. See if the spouse could discuss the reasons for the resistance to sharing.
        
        Spouse may not know
        
        Gentleness and kindness here, if you are capable of them 5. 2. 1. Float the possibility of discussing together – marital therapy, for example. 3. 1. If continued refusal
      2. If your situation is not urgent or abusive, consider waiting
        
        Prayer, sacrifice 2. 1. Revisiting 3. 1. Consider a hypothetical 2. 1. If situation is urgent or abusive
        
        Examples
        
        domestic violence 2. 1. harm to children 3. 1. Gaslighting – psychological manipulation around sex 2. 1. Talk about it with someone you trust anyway 3. 1. Spouse has no right to your absolute silence.
        
        Example of confession
        
        No right to violate your dignity as a child of God. 4. 3. 4. 7.
        
        The process of problem solving
13. Review of the three parts of the moral act from last episode, Episode 69 -- example of Edward and Vera -- Very has some difficulty with sexual arousal, finds when Edward stimulates her with his fingers, she loosens up, becomes much more responsive, it's easier for her to have vaginal intercourse -- really common situation. But Edward has noticed that he tends to come to orgasm when his wife does -- that is so exciting for him, and he has had a history of premature ejaculation in the past. Fumbling around, not able to get inside of Vera in time.
  1. Three Parts of the Moral Act
    1. Object = the action or inaction chosen -- the what -- 2. 1. Intention/Motive -- the reason for doing the action or not doing an action 3. 1. Circumstances - -- situational factors which may affect the morality of an action -- who, what, where, how. 4. 1. All three of these, the object, the intention, and the circumstances must be evaluated to determine if a moral act is good or evil.
      1. All three must be good for an act to be moral.
        
        Analyze the object first, then the intention, then the circumstances
        
        Object -- Vaginal intercourse-- would be nice for both to experience orgasm, maybe even at the same time.
        
        Intention/Motive/End Edward and Vera are open to life, intending to have vaginal intercourse. Very open to the enhancing the marital bond, connected with each other
        
        Circumstances
    2. Bodyset
      1. Being really aware of body responses, especially around ejaculation. 2. 1. Solution may be for him to go a lot slower
        
        Or to be already inside her 2. 1. And to stimulate her while inside her or afterward. 3. 1. Practicing -- later, not long after the Edward's refractory period ends
        
        Refractory period = the recovery phase after orgasm during which it is physiologically impossible for a man to have additional orgasms.[ 4. 3. 10. 1. Mindset
      2. Openness to ideas, receptivity, solution finding focus vs. an intellectual rigidity, fixed ideas of how things should be and how to get there. 2. 11. 1. Heartset
      3. Can they be playful about this -- have a sense of lightness of humor? - or does there need to be a dark seriousness about it, a deep sense of gravity. 2. 12. 1. Soulset -- sense of Divine Providence being operative in the sexual intimacy challenges. 13.
      4. Importance of the hierarchy of priorities
  2. 1942 essay by C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things.”
    1. Lewis wrote: “To sacrifice the greater good for the less and then not to get the lesser good after all—that is the surprising folly . . . Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got his pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception. You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.” Don't want to sacrifice a greater good for a lesser good.
    2. Sexual pleasure -- the lesser good -- procreation and the emotional bond of the spouses are the greater goods.
    3. Matthew 6:33 Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.
    4. If parts are acting autonomously, disconnected from the core self, they always get what they don't want.
      1. Neglect of the two great goods -- seeking pleasure, gratification through more intense orgasms is not the way to sustain relationships. Sometimes that won't happen.
    5. 1. Having sexual intimacy this way is so countercultural, so opposite of the what the world tells us.
    6. WebMD -- 14 reasons you should have sex now
      1. It's exercise 2. 1. Good for a woman's heart -- decreases risk of heart disease 3. 1. Sex can help with pain 4. 1. Lowers stress -- e.g. public speaking (masturbation doesn't count) 5. 1. Longer life expectancy for women 6. 1. Slightly greater cognitive capacity for 50+ crowd -- number recall, basic math 7. 1. Better mood 8. 1. Bonding to your partner two guys snuggling
      2. More sex, lower weight
      3. Better mental health
      4. More common-cold fighting antibodies
      5. Helps with sleep
      6. Greater likelihood of a baby -- more sex primes women for conception and improves sperm quality in men.
      7. Better quality of life in old age, health and happiness 2. 3.
      9. Edward and Vera are moving toward vaginal intercourse as the focus and center of the sexual intimacy of the spouse
14. Openness to procreation -- this is the procreative act.
15. 1. Bond of the spouses
  2. In the missionary position, spouses seeing each other, experiencing with each other
    1. Vs. being caught up in a self-absorbed experience of orgasm, for example 2.
    3. Jesus very understanding and forgiving of sexual sins
16. Examples
  1. Woman caught in the act of adultery Jn 8-1-11 Pharisees asking whether or not to stone her, trying to trap Jesus.
    1. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
    2. 1. Woman at the well -- John 4, 5 husbands, cohabiting with a man not her husband.
    3. 1. Eating with Sinners, professional mistresses or prostitutes at Matthew the tax collector's house.
    4. MT 9:10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 4.
  2. 1. Reaching out to sexual outcasts
  3. He saw what goods their parts were seeking in their sexual behaviors
    1. Love, care, attention, protection, 2.
      1. Parts separate from the core self always get what they don't want. 3.
    2. 1. He will help you and your spouse, too, if he's invited into this realm.
    4. Loving each other in the sexual intimacy
    5. Charity is possible.
      1. 1 Cor 13: 4-7 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
      2. Pilgrimage
  4. Human formation
    1. We all need help 2. 1. We all need structure 3. 1. We all need support. 4.
      1. Relaunch discussion.
    2. Excited that our landing page at soulsandhearts.com/rcc is updated and it has the video presentation on the relaunch we did on May 25 now posted. Check that out, consider prayerfully about joining us, and if your discernment says "yes" Get on the waiting list --
    3. We have more than 120 on the waiting list so far. Not all of them will join. We are taking about 80 new members in, we're keeping it manageable -- we don't want to lose the Catholic touch.
    4. Waiting list, first chance, you'll get an email on June 1 with a link to register for the RCC.
    5. By June 4, landing page.
    6. Join with your spouse
      1. Conversation hours Tuesday and Thursday starting on June 3, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, and 29 -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time -- 317.567.9594. 5.
    7. IIC 70A Latent Emotions Around Sexuality
17. Shame
18. 1. Guilt
19. 1. Grief
20. 1. Fear
21. 1. Sadness

View Details

Opening Questions (connect to vignettes)
1. Cindy wants to know, "Is oral sex okay in marriage? -- My husband every now and then likes it if I give him a blowjob, just for some variety in our sex life and he says there's no moral problem with that and it turns him on, but I'm not sure what I think and feel about that."
2. 1. Barbara asks "In episode 61, in the story of Jeff and Joanne, you seemed to say that the husband's kissing of breasts was wrong, that it was disordered. But I like it when my husband kisses my breasts during foreplay, and it really helps me to be sexually stimulated -- so is that off-limits in a Catholic marriage?"
3. 1. Bill raises the question "I really get turned on when my wife bites me, it helps me to have sex with her, I find I don't have to use Viagra then -- is that ok, or is it better for me to use the Viagra? I don't want to not be able to have the fullness of sexual intimacy with her…"
4. 1. The last two episodes brought up questions.
  2. These were not the actual questions, but questions like them came up.
  3. Today we're going get into this more deeply -- and into how to think about the moral quality of sexual acts in Catholic marriage.
5. Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
6. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
7. 1. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
8. 1. 'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
9. 1. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
10. 1. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
11. 1. This is episode 69, released on May 24, 2021
12. 1. And it is titled: Good and Bad Sex in Catholic Marriages: What are the Moral Limits?
13. 1. How far is too far? That all depends on the direction you are going!
  2. Augustine -- evil as a privation of the good. Evil is what happens when there is a vacuum because there isn't any good around.
    1. 1. So if you are attempting to just avoid evil -- makes sure there's no evil in your sex life, you're trying to make a privation of the privation of good.
    2. 1. It's much better to reorient and seek what is good, what is best, whatever that may mean for your sex life. Even if you may have to give up some things from which you derive pleasure.
    3. 1. Not to condemn the physical pleasure of sexual intimacy -- Not at all
    4. Bring that into an ordered hierarchy
      1. Lot of confusion about the morality of different sexual expressions
  3. Lack of clear guidance on this, almost like a conspiracy of silence when it comes to really getting into specifics.
    1. 1. Lot of terrible advice from all kinds of Catholic sources as well. It may be well intentioned, but it causes harm.
    2. 1. I could be making mistakes here too -- a lot of this is new territory and not well defined. -- And to that end, I invite feedback, especially if I teach anything that is in error. Please get in touch with me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594 on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 4:30 PM and 5:30 PM Eastern time in conversations hours.
    3. Citations -- Catechism, Church documents, Canon Law, Denzinger's Compendium, Ludwig Ott Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma 8.

Don't email me and tell me that a confessor you went to ten years ago said that anything goes sexually in your marriage and God doesn't mind at all as long as it all leads to vaginal intercourse in the end. That's not helpful.

Learning to reflect and consider thoughtfully our sexual intimacy.
Ways of approaching sexual morality
1. Some people want a list List of Dos and Don’ts
  1. List of approved sexual activities and a list of activities that are not approved.
    1. Simple, easy to understand, doesn't require much reflection -- is the activity on the good list or the bad list?
    2. And there is a bad list -- actually, a pretty long one
      1. Acts that can never be ordered, never be oriented to procreation by their very nature
        
        Examples
        
        Anal sex -- anatomically, anal sex cannot lead to procreation. 2. 1. Oral sex performed by a wife on a husband in which he ejaculates 3. 1. Fetishes in which some body part becomes the focus of sexual interest, like feet or ears or navel or an external object like shoes or underwear 2. 3. 1. Acts that cannot ever be oriented to the bond of marriage because they are degrading to the human person
        
        Emphasis on "consenting adults"
        
        Issue of mutual hedonism. -- very worldly
        
        Using the spouse for mutual masturbation 2. 1. Using the spouse as a sex toy 2. 2. 1. Examples
        
        Impact Play -- spanking, flogging, paddling -- power and domination 2. 1. Bondage -- restraints, dominance and submission -- use of leather belts or handcuffs. 3. 1. Voyeurism -- watching porn together 4. 1. Roleplaying -- power dynamics -- teacher /student 5. 1. Erotic asphyxiation (EA) is the official term for breath play. From healthline.com This type of sexual activity involves intentionally cutting off the air supply for you or your partner with choking, suffocating, and other acts. People who are into breath play say it can heighten sexual arousal and make orgasms more intense. But it isn’t without its risks — and lots of them. It can turn deadly if you don’t take the proper precautions. 3. 4. 5. Does not capture anything like the complexity 2.
        
        Catholic Understanding of the morality of human acts
  2. Check out with the catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1749 to 1761 for an excellent discussion of how to evaluate the morality of any given act, including sexual acts. Very much worth reading
    1. 1. We are going to do a brief review of how to evaluate the morality of acts, specifically sexual acts
    2. 1. And I promise we won't get to technical or philosophical, will keep this clear
    3. 1. CCC 1750 The morality of human acts depends on: - the object chosen; - the end in view or the intention; - the circumstances of the action. The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the "sources," or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.
    4. 1. Catholic Diocese of Lincoln put out a nice summary on the Three Parts of the Moral Act for their Catholic highschoolers
    5. Object = the action or inaction chosen -- the what -- for example, using Viagra or kissing breasts, or the husband stimulating the wife's genitals with his toungue in oral sex. 2. 1. Intention/Motive -- the reason for doing the action or not doing an action 3. 1. Circumstances - -- stituational factors which may affect the morality of an action -- who, what, where, how. 4.
      1. All three of these, the object, the intention, and the circumstances must be evaluated to determine if a moral act is good or evil.
    6. All three must be good for an act to be moral.
      1. Analyze the object first, then the intention, then the circumstances
      2. Object can be good, bad, or neutral
    7. Not just the physical action -- putting handcuffs on -- Prostitution. 2. 1. A bad object can never be justified even with the most laudable intentions or exceptional circumstances 3. 1. Intrinsic evil is determined by the object -- suicide. Asphyxiation
      1. The act itself is immoral -- no circumstances or intentions can change that 4.
        
        The reason or intention
    8. A good or neutral action can become bad because of a bad intention
      1. E.g. almsgiving is a good action, but it can be done with the wrong intentions or in the wrong circumstances 2. 1. Objectively evil acts are often done for good reasons --in 2007, young Chilean prostitute who auctioned off 27 hours of sex so that she could give the money to help disabled children. 3. 1. The goodness of an act can be diminished or totally lost because of bad motives 4. 1. Can be mixed motives
        
        Parts 5. 1. The end does not justify the means
        
        End is the goal, my reason for doing it 2. 1. Means = the object, the way I get to that goal. 3. 6. 2.
        
        The circumstances == everything else that is morally relevant
    9. Who is doing it 2. 1. Where, when and how is it done 3. 1. Doing something in the wrong way, in the wrong place, at the wrong time
      1. Husband and wife sharing sexual intimacy where their kids can witness them. 2. 4. 1. Circumstances can make
      2. a good action bad 2. 1. A good action better 3. 1. A bad action worse 4. 1. A bad action not as bad 5. 1. But circumstances can never make a bad action good.
      3. Every intrinsically evil action will stay evil, regardless of the circumstances
      4. Remember, for an act to be good, all three elements must be good
        
        The act itself 3. 1. The intention behind the act 4. 1. The circumstances surrounding it 5. 1. All must be good for the act to be good. 6. 6. 11.
        
        Impact of parts and blending
2. Starting in Episode 71, much more about parts
3. 1. Parts trying to get needs met
4. Ways that sex can be un-Catholic -- from episode 67 Catholic and UnCatholic Sex in Catholic Marriages
5. 1. Why does this thing bring me to orgasm -- why am I attracted to it.
    1. If we can't symbolize it in works, we're likely to enact
    2. 1. The intention / motivation / orientation
  2. To get my needs met
    1. 1. Sex will not resolve deep unmet attachment needs or deep unmet integrity needs (Episode 62)
    2. Just like food won't or drugs won't 2. 1. That's not what sex is for. 3.
    4. Examples
6. Open to procreation
7. 1. Oriented toward the marital bond -- the authentic union of the spouses.
8. 1. Culminating in vaginal intercourse or does it get derailed?
  2. Situational factors -- e.g. premature ejaculation. 2.
  3. 1. Example of Viagra -- Bill -- no problem

By Father Rocky Hoffman

Jun 14, 2011

Is the use of viagra morally acceptable by the Catholic Church?

The morality of the use of any medicine depends on the object, the intention, and the circumstances.

Assuming that the Viagra medicine has only one purpose, to facilitate the marital act, then it can be taken licitly only by married people who are open to life.

If people are not married, and/or are not open to life, then it would be morally impermissible to take Viagra. If the married couple is beyond child-bearing age, but otherwise are open to life, then it could be morally licit to use Viagra if it helps keep the love and affection alive between husband and spouse.

But what we must reject is the instrumentilization of sex for pleasure. That’s a dead end and leads to isolation. The marital act always needs to be understood from the perspective of gift of self, and not a gift for self.

Example of manual stimulation -- rubbing the genitals
Example of kissing breasts
1. Can be a very legitimate part of foreplay, very pleasurable and
2. 1. Jeff from Episode 61 -- This needy exile is now very regressed and begins to suck vigorously on her nipples. This part has just reduced Joanne to her breasts, Jeff's needy exile part doesn't see Joanne as a whole person at all. Remember, this needy exiled part of Jeff is starved from maternal affection. Jeff never nursed as a baby, was fed by a bottle, and he is now getting carried away by the illusion that his need can be met by this kind of sexualized pseudo nursing. This is thrilling to this part.
3. Example of sensual biting otherwise known as odaxelagnia, can be roughly defined as this: The act of creating or enhancing sexual arousal through biting.
4. Dominance
5. Example of sex toys
6. Definition: an object used to provide or increase sexual pleasure, as a dildo or vibrator.
7. 1. Vibrators. Suction toys. Dildos
8. 1. Marketing hype is all about maximizing pleasurable sensations -- not about
10. Example of the husband performing oral sex on his wife
11. Cindy's example of performing oral sex on her husband.
12. Diagnostics -- looking at the fruit.
13. Direction moving toward, direction moving away -- what is the trajectory over time?
  1. Is more order coming in?
    1. 1. Do the sexual acts support the whole canopied marriage bed -- not just the eros, the sexual excitement.
    3. Can God be present?
  2. Or does what happens on the marriage bed need to be furtive, secret, hidden from God
    1. Sunlight -- the best disinfectant 2. 1. Bring this into the sun
      1. Issue of shame.
    2. Let's deal with the shame then
    3. If sex, even good, ordered sex, brings up shame, this is an opportunity.
      1. Prayer
    4. Latitude -- space for making mistakes
14. If there is good will, good intentions, willingness to make sacrifices for our spouse's good and our own good.
16. Pilgrimage
17. Human formation
  1. We all need help
    1. 1. We all need structure
    2. 1. We all need support. 4.
  2. 1. Relaunch discussion.
  3. Get on the waiting list -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc more than 100 on the waiting list so far. Not all of them will join. We are taking about 80 new members in, we're keeping it manageable -- we don't want to lose the Catholic touch.
  4. Waiting list, first chance. By June 4, landing page.
  5. Join with your spouse
  6. Mark your calendars Tuesday, May 25 from 7:30 to 8:45 PM meeting about the RCC reopening, Q&A. -- that meeting will be on our landing page -- register for it. We will be getting that link out to our waiting list members -- with a lot more information by May 18. Landing Page -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc
    1. Initial Measure Kit -- gathering several different questionnaires that will be in the IMK so that each person will be able to make their own individualized plan for human formation. After we receive the IMK there will be a 15min phone or zoom conversation about your personal plan.
    2. Individualized Human Formation Plan
    3. Companions: are pairs (men with other men and women with other women) who briefly check in daily with each other to offer encouragement and accountability in their daily human formation practices.
    4. Companies are a group of eight RCC members who will meet weekly to support each other on this journey.
  7. 1. Conversation hours Tuesday and Thursday May 25, 27, not June 1, but June 3, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, and 29 -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time -- 317.567.9594.
  9. IIC 69A Basic Check In Experiential Exercise
  10. IIC 69T Questioning IFS
  11. Patroness and Patron
  12. Blurb for Transistor: Dr. Peter discusses how to evaluate the moral qualities of different sexual expressions within Catholic marriage, including oral sex, anal sex, the use of sex toys, fetishes, the use of Viagra, sensual biting, breath play, and a host of other sexual activities, along with recommendations for determining if certain sexual practices are good for your marriage.

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Dr. Peter tells a story of a Catholic couple to show how they were able to recognize, take ownership of and work toward resolution of their sexual issues. The audience is encouraged to engage in active listening and be interested in what the story brings up inside, as a way of identifying potential issues in one's own life.

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IIC 67: Catholic and UnCatholic Sex in Catholic Marriages

Saturday, May 8, 2021

10:27 AM

The Windup – our common ground, a quick summary of where we are today
1. Let's get down to it.
2. 1. Most of us Catholic married folk have deep desires within us for authentic, loving, joyful, intimate sexual sharing with our spouses
3. 1. We want to be loving our spouses, we want to make love to our spouses in ways that are healthy, ordered, and holy.
4. 1. We want to know our spouses and be known, to accept our spouses and be accepted, to be loved and to love.
5. 1. And at least intellectually, we know that God wants that for us too.
7. The Hurdle: The shared problem
8. Or at least, we all had those desires in the past. Maybe we've given up on them. Maybe we're discouraged, disheartened. So many Catholic spouses are. It's common and it's tragic. But it makes sense to me. Why?
9. 1. Because Sexuality is usually the trickiest and most difficult part of the marriage relationship. Let me say that again.
10. We want deep, loving, joyful, intimate sexual sharing with our spouses
11. But often there's pressure, shame, guilt, anger, conflict, tension, frustration, disagreement, disharmony, sullenness, withdrawal, disconnection, feelings of helplessness, avoidance, resignation and dozens of other painful experiences.
12. We are wounded in a lot of different ways, and those attachment wound, those integrity wounds impact how Catholic spouses related to each other sexually.
13. Sex is the most sensitive barometer
14. God wants Catholic couples not to just have sex -- animals can and do copulate
  1. but ordered, healthy sexual intimacy.
    2. Stakes are high. Our Lady of Fatima on Sexual Sins Jacinta later revealed that according to Our Lady, “The sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh,” or sins against chastity.
    3. For many Catholic spouses, the sexual situation can seem impossible
  2. 28% of Catholic marriages end in divorce, and it's probably safe to say that the sexual intimacy isn't great in those relationships
    1. 1. Many, many others suffer from significant problems and issues in the sexual relationship.
    2. 1. There is no other area of Catholic life so fraught with complexity, nuance, so sensitive to disorder and dysfunction in the married life. Why?
    3. 1. Because sex is so often wrenched out of context
    4. Procreation 2. 1. Union, the bond of the spouses 3. 1. Catholic spouses often look to their sexual relationship to solve problems that do not originate there.
      1. Misuse of sexuality in the service of trying to get deeper needs met -- attachment needs and integrity needs. Episode 62 4.
      2. But you know what? There are solutions. There are ways out, even for spouses who are really jaded, really disheartened and discouraged. And we are going to talk about those ways out, the promise of solutions. We're going to talk about the Good News of Catholic sexual married life today.
  3. All things, all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Romans 8:28. All things. No exceptions. All things, St. Paul tells us, there is no asterisk or footnote that excludes your particular sexual situation. All things.
    1. The caveat -- for those who love the Lord. That means childlike trust, great confidence.
    2. 1. So many Catholic couples could have such a better life of sexual intimacy. That is so possible, even though it may not seem believable, because of a history of disappointment, false starts, and discouragement.
    3. If you feel like you're Charlie Brown and I'm Lucy, holding a football for you, about to yank it away when you try one more time… I get that. Stay with me, listen a while longer, and see if you find some new ideas, new ways of looking at things. I know it may be that you've been married 20, 30 years or more -- but some and see what I have to say. 2.
      2. I am clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, your host and guide
  4. This is episode 67 of the weekly podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
    1. 1. And it is titled: Catholic and UnCatholic Sex in Catholic Marriages
    2. 1. Thank you for being here with me
    3. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics is part of our online outreach Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com
    4. Which is all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for a solid Catholic spiritual life 2. 1. We are doing a whole series of episodes on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages
      1. We are using the image of a Catholic canopied marriage bed.
      2. And today, we are focusing on the the Fitted Sheet, the top sheet and the blankets
    5. Fitted Sheet -- Eros, the sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion, the actual physical, sexual contact 2. 1. Top Sheet -- Communication between the Catholic spouses 3. 1. Blankets -- Heartfelt warmth and affection, the emotional connection. 4. 22.
    6. The Vision -- The inspiring option, the way over the problem
15. Four Major point -- Four central concepts.
  1. The human and spiritual formation of the spouse influence the quality of their sexual experience.
  2. Sex always happens in a relational context
  3. The relational context influences the quality of the sexual experience between the spouses
  4. Sexual intimacy is a great good, but there are time when it may not be best.
  5. Repeat the four points.
16. 1. The human and spiritual formation of the spouse influence the quality of their sexual experience.
  2. Human formation of the husband and wife are two of the four legs of the bed.
  3. Focusing in here again on interior integration -- how integrated are we in the sexual sphere
    1. That sexual integration is going to depend on our human formation -- and on all the aspect represented in the Catholic canopied marriage bed check out Episode 58. 3. 1. Another leg of the bed is understanding ourselves and our spouse from an Internal Family Systems perspective, which I think is so helpful. 4. 5. As living human being, we have a unity -- each human person is one
    2. But also each human person has parts. 6. 1. within each person are separate collections thoughts, emotions, attitudes, impulses, desires, abilities, interests, relational styles, body sensations, and worldviews that are not just transient emotional states, but rather constitute discrete “parts,” subpersonalities or distinct modes of operating within the person’s larger internal system -- they seem like selves within us. 7. 1. Each part within us can phenomenologically seem like its own little person, with its own particular range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world.
      1. Modes of operating
      2. Subpersonalities
      3. Orchestra model
      4. Focus is on integration.
        
        Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
        
        And each part has a different position or attitude about sexuality and sexual intimacy.
    3. When they are disconnected from the core self, each part has an agenda, each part is trying to pursue some perceived good for the whole self. 10. Parts -- embody the voices.
    4. Unintegrated parts always get what they don't want. 11. Deep assumptions held by different parts of a somewhat scrupulous young married Catholic woman
    5. High Moralizing Critical Part --
      1. God doesn't really want us to have sex.
      2. Sex is dirty, bad --
      3. So I shouldn't enjoy it.
      4. Plus, we should be punished for the fooling around we did before we were married.
        
        Dependent Part
      5. I need have sexual relations with my husband so that he won't abandon me emotionally because I can't bear it when he is cold and distant.
        
        Intellectual Part:
      6. Christopher West in his TOB books discusses how beautiful Catholic Sexuality is, so there has to be beauty and goodness in it somewhere and so we can't just refuse to have sexual intimacy.
        
        Approval seeking part
      7. I should be enjoying sex more than I do 2. 1. To make my husband happier with me so that he is kinder to me and more likely to meet my needs. 3. 15. 16. In the next episode, episode 68, I will get into stories of Catholic married couples and how their parts interact to illustrate how complex all this can be.
      8. Sexual acts always happens in a relational context
17. Wait a minute, Dr. Peter. Example of masturbation
  1. "Solosexuals"
    1. 1. Command to "Love your neighbor as yourself."
    2. 1. Parts have very different attitudes about masturbation.
    3. 1. Also, as a baptized Catholic, you are a member of the body of Christ, and all your actions impact the rest of the body, the rest of the members of the Church
  2. 1. Example of pornography
  3. Clicks being counted, demand being noted, ads being sold
    1. 1. Your time being used up. 3.
  4. 1. Alienation from God and others.
  6. The relational context influences the quality of the sexual experience
18. That relational context strips away superficial ways of coping, exposes deeper vulnerabilities, issues.
19. 1. We need to be working on the relational context
  2. The rest of the bed. (Review)
    1. 1. The sheet alone will not support us. So many people hope that the sheet will support their weight, suspended in midair
    2. It's easier to hope that you can just find quick solutions
      1. We need the rest of the bed
    3. This is a harder and longer road, but it is much more sure 2. 1. The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence 3. 1. Four legs -- now more in the natural realm
      1. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation, his psychological health, his emotional wellbeing -- removing the beam from his own eye 2. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation, her own psychological health, her own emotional wellbeing -- her taking on her own personal responsibility for her natural life 3. 1. Leg 3. Attachment theory -- Attachment theory is really important because it addresses ways to really address the unmet psychological, relational, and emotional needs that we discussed in the last episode, episode 57 as The One Main Psychological Reason Why Catholic Marriages Fail. 4. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems approaches -- really understanding how the human person is both a unity and a multiplicity -- like we have One God in Three Persons, each of us is also one, but with many parts. 5. 4. 1. The Frame and the Box Spring -- this holds the whole bed together and it represents the firm commitment between the husband and the wife, the upholding of the marriage vows, I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
      2. It's the charity. Willing the highest good for one another 5. 1. The Mattress -- Empathetic attunement -- really knowing the spouse, really being able to enter into the phenomenological world of the spouse 6. 1. The pillows empathy for the Spouse -- Five kinds -- Episode 65 4.
      3. Many sexual problems have their roots in childhood. 1. Not really sexual problems per se -- relational problems, attachment problems, integrity issues
    4. That manifest themselves through sexual symptoms. 2. 3. Main Psychological Reason Why Catholic Marriages Fail -- Episode 57,
    5. Parts with unmet attachment needs. Deep relational needs, often unconscious
    6. Old stuff gets activated by sex.
    7. 1. Some sexual problems have their roots in the relationship
  3. Unresolved tension about premarital sexual activity
    1. 1. Issues around expectations
    2. 1. Issues around boundaries
    3. Disagreements about what should happen and how in the marriage bed. 2.
      1. Issues around dignity
    4. 1. Abstaining before marriage -> Now it's legal! a deep sense of entitlement, setting up false expectations
  4. You are not entitled to great sex
    1. Where is that in Catholic teaching? 2. 1. According to the world, you are entitled to great sex. 3. 1. That is a gift, not a right - 1998
      1. You're not entitled to "Sex your way." Have it your way, Burger Kind 1974
      2. Expectation of everyone knowing the choreography
    2. In reality, this takes time to learn, there's a learning curve quick transfer 4.
    3. 1. Communication -- top sheet
  5. Five love languages Gary Chapman.
    1. Words of affirmation
    2. Quality Time
    3. Acts of Service
    4. Gifts
    5. Physical Touch
    6. 1. I can't breathe when you are on top of me. 3.
  6. 1. Blankets -- the warmth, the relational affection.
  7. We need this to be complete
  8. 1. Sex is so embodied
  9. The Body Keeps the Score -- Bessel van der Kolk
    1. 1. Deep unmet relational needs, deep unmet integrity needs held in our bodies.
    2. 1. Things we are holding in our bodies, outside of awareness, can be activated by sex
    3. Marlboro men -- tough guys -- can regress -- don't need anything, anyone, but they need sex!
      1. Body changes
    4. Endocrinology -- so extreme 2. 1. Neurophysiology 3. 1. Huge impact of body processes 4. 1. All in relationship with another person. 5. 5.
    5. 1. So much self-absorption
  10. Idolization of sex
    1. Traumatized via sex -- seek to be redeemed by sex.
      1. But sex does not heal trauma wounds. That is not it's role.
        
        Sex as a symbol -- a parts wants to believe that we are solidly grounded
        
        Physical closeness implies real relational intimacy, connection.
      2. Similar to tattoos PB 4.
      3. Husbands essentially masturbating in sex with their wives
    2. So caught up in their own needs, their own parts taking over. 2. 1. Animals have sex. They don't "make love."
      1. And when human merely have sex, we're acting worse than animals, because we could know better. 3.
      2. Idea of the "marital debt."
    3. Vows -- the gift of the body to each other. By virtue of the marriage, wives and husbands possess each other's bodies. In other words, you owe yourself to your spouse. 2. 1. Sex as a gift of self 3. 1. Primary responsibility to your own well-being. Sexual relations should never degrade or harm either of the spouses.
      1. If that happens, both spouses are harmed. One flesh.
        
        Husbands as debt collectors --guys, is that how you want to be seen by your wives -- as Hector the marital debt collector?
      2. Boom, boom, boom
        
        Creepy and weird -- where's the gift, where's the love? 2. 1. Wife is God's beloved daughter
        
        Knew a man who demanded sex twice per day from his wife.
        
        Didn't matter where she was. No excuses.
        
        Threat of masturbation
        
        The debt is a lot more than just sex -- it is our whole selves.
        
        Eve -- from Adam's rib, not his skull, not his foot -- equally yoked. 7.
        
        Think of the anatomy -- woman allowing not just part of man, but all of the man inside her. 1. Symbolism 2. Intrusion
      3. Rape 3. 1. “Rape is about power, not sex.”
        
        Understand the intention behind the statement -- more than sex. 2. 1. Rape is always about sex
        
        Because it is expressed, manifested sexually. 3. 4. 5.
        
        Is God present? -- He is, whether you want him to be or not. 1. The sacredness of sex 2. Sacramental aspects of sex 3. Furtive sex in a hidden zone
        
        Ways that sex can be un-Catholic
  11. The matter -- the act itself -- ordered, oriented to the bond of marriage, oriented to procreation?
    1. Is it really? The foreplay card. 2. 1. Why does this thing bring me to orgasm -- why am I attracted to it.
      1. If we can't symbolize it in works, we're likely to enact 3. 1. Oral sex 4. 1. Anal sex
        
        The intention / motivation / orientation
    2. To get my needs met 2. 1. Sex will not resolve deep unmet attachment needs or deep unmet integrity needs (Episode 62)
      1. Just like food won't or drugs won't 2. 1. That's not what sex is for. 3.
        
        Heartset, Mindset, Soulset
    3. Fantasies about another sexual partner -- Christ's words: MT 5:28 But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 2. 1. Violations of dignity 3. 1. What a husband saw in a pornographic movie. 4. 4.
    4. Sexual intimacy is a great good, but there are time when it may not be best.
      1. Sometimes it's impossible
  12. Injuries, medical conditions
    1. 1. 9 months pregnant, immediately post-partum.
    3. Sometimes it's inadvisable
  13. Health reasons
    1. 1. Trauma
    2. 1. Body image issues
    3. 1. Shame, grief, rage, abandonment issues, guilt.
    4. 1. Near occasion of sin -- Fr. Tadeusz Dacjzer
    5. on dispositions to receive sacraments
    6. On receiving sacraments unworthily
    7. 1. Sexual compulsion, addictions
    8. Fasting from sexual intimacy
  14. Sometimes I recommend it
    1. Takes pressure off 2. 1. What intimacy remains without intercourse 3. 1. Gift of self
      1. Sex on a schedule
    2. Pros
      1. Predictable, expected 2. 1. Cons
      2. "servicing the spouse" 2. 3.
        
        We need to learn continence. Sex as a replacement for masturbation, preventative.
        
        Integration
        
        Luke 20:34-36, there is no marriage and no sex in heaven.
  15. And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
    2. Sexual problems as a gift.
    3. Frigidity
  16. Can be the freeze response
    1. 1. Fear
    2. The reasons for the fear.
    4. We should make the effort for the sexual intimacy.
    5. Sex does not have to be perfect to be good
  17. Perfectionism can get in the way
    1. 1. There is some skill in this.
    3. Men withdrawing
  18. Extremely painful for wives.
    1. Especially if there is porn, masturbation or affairs. 26.
  19. Mistakes in getting over sexual issues
20. Avoiding, ignoring
21. 1. Not communicating
22. 1. Not working on your own human formation
23. 1. Not working on your own spiritual formation
24. 1. Not setting appropriate boundaries to protect self and spouse from harm
25. 1. Giving up
26. 1. Spiritual Bypassing -- this is my cross
  2. Spiritual Bypassing "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." John Welwood
    1. 1. Allowing your spouse to exploit you is not your cross.
  3. Near occasion of sin
  5. What helps
27. Tailored solutions -- specific guidance for your situation
  1. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1878 All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Great diversity in how marriages can be miserable sexually.
    1. 1. We listened to the podcast and read a Greg Popcak book and it didn't get better!
  2. 1. Safety
  3. 1. Security
  4. Vulnerability
    1. 1. Heavy Armor is often evident
    2. Makes sense, with how spouse are uniquely positioned to hurt each other. 2. 3.
    3. 1. Humor
    4. 1. Communication -- first
    5. 1. Relational Warmth -- first
    6. 1. Bringing another person in.
    7. 1. Look at each other. Look at each other.
    8. 1. Listen to each other.
    9. 1. Books. I don't like any books on this topic for general recommendations -- one size fits all. 1. Manager parts really like books -- figure it out on my own, in the realm of ideas, concepts, abstractions. Doesn't work. 2. Many are heavy on the spirituality, the theology, the philosophy 3. Light on actual real-world, in the trenches experience 4. None of them are Catholic and really get how we have parts -- the model of the human person.
    11. Bottom line: Better sexual intimacy depends on better everything else in the relationship.
    12. Pilgrimage
28. Human formation
  1. We all need help
    1. 1. We all need structure
    2. 1. We all need support. 4.
  2. 1. Relaunch discussion.
  3. Get on the waiting list -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc more than 100 on the waiting list so far.
  4. Join with your spouse
  5. Mark your calendars Tuesday, May 25 from 7:30 to 8:45 PM meeting about the RCC reopening, Q&A. -- that meeting will be on our landing page -- register for it. We will be getting that link out to our waiting list members -- with a lot more information by May 18. Landing Page -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc
    1. Initial Measure Kit -- gathering several different questionnaires that will be in the IMK so that each person will be able to make their own individualized plan for human formation. After we receive the IMK there will be a 15min phone or zoom conversation about your personal plan.
    2. Individualized Human Formation Plan
    3. Companions: are pairs (men with other men and women with other women) who briefly check in daily with each other to offer encouragement and accountability in their daily human formation practices.
    4. Companies are a group of eight RCC members who will meet weekly to support each other on this journey.
  6. 1. Second Wednesday Zoom Meeting Wednesday May 12 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM -Time - that one is all about the changes in the community, real updates.
  7. 1. Conversation hours Tuesday and Thursday May 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27 -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time -- 317.567.9594.

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Intro
1. It is good to have you with us,
2. 1. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist
3. 1. Weekly Podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
4. 1. Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. Which is all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for a solid Catholic spiritual life.
6. 1. Episode 66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages.
7. 1. we are in the middle of a series on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages, but there is so much in here that is relevant about all kinds of close relationships.
9. Where have we been? Review the bed -- remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.
10. The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence -- everything begins here. This is the most fundamental piece of the whole metaphor. We need to be in contact with "I AM" with God who is the source of all reality. We can't forget that
11. The four legs
  1. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation
    1. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation
    2. 1. Leg 3. Understanding Attachment needs and integrity needs.
    3. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems -- Episode 60 -- How well do you really know your spouse?
    4. In that episode, I made five bold assertions:
      1. You don't really know your spouse. 2. 1. Your spouse doesn't really know you. 3. 1. Your Father doesn't or didn't really know your mother 4. 1. Your mother doesn't or didn't really know your father 5. 1. And you don't really know you. 6. 2. 1. Gave evidence for those bold claims are likely, not going to repeat all that evidence here, you can go to Episode 60 and listen to them again.
      2. For those of you listeners who are married:
        
        Can seem like spouse have such widely varying modes of operating 2. 1. like they can be even different people when they are in these different modes of being. 3. 1. Remember what your spouse or someone close to you is like when they are different states -- like when they are really angry, or really sad, or really anxious or really happy. How different they think, how their worldview changes in these different states. 4. 1. what we call parts: Parts are constellations of emotions, body sensations, thoughts, feelings, impulses, assumptions about the world and so many other things. 5. 1. Internal Family Systems thinking help us to make sense of our own internal experience and others' internal experience, breaking us out of the model that we have just one monolithic, homogenous personality. 6. 1. That's what episodes 60 and 61 are all about 7. Surprising how not integrated the husband's internal object representations of his wife are -- surprising how unintegrated a wife's internal object representation of her husband can be. How confused.
        
        Definition time with Dr. Pete, Definition of internal object -- Roots in Freud, really developed my Melanie Klein: Internal object refers to the mental representation that results from how we have taken others inside of us and viewed them. Not necessarily similar to who the person actually is, it's how we construe the person to be, which depends heavily on our subjective experiences, including how we experience ourselves.
        
        Two dimensional -- sometimes even one dimensional
        
        You are the person who is supposed to make me feel better about myself, help me avoid shame 3. Fragmented 4. How much husbands and wives don't see in and about each other. 3. 6.
        
        Three of these four legs are really helpful in accepting what the actual realities are inside your spouse.
        
        The fourth one is great to have, but it's not as essential. It's the one that we sometimes require first, though
12. Just tell me what's going on -- assumption that she knows what's going on. 90% unconscious.
13. 1. Sometimes she just cant.
15. The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently
16. The mattress Empathetic attunement -- covered that in episode 65, last episode
17. Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance -- this is what we are focusing on today.
18. Pillows support us, comfort us.
19. Great security with pillows
  1. Pam travels with her pillow -- learned this from her friend Cabrina -- comfort in having your own pillow
    1. 1. Comfort in being accepted by someone who knows you. 4.
  2. Bottom Sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion
  3. Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses
  4. The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection
  5. Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA
20. Mindset
21. 1. Heartset
22. 1. Bodyset
23. 1. Soulset
24. The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse.
25. The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.
26. Lay of the land:
27. Loving -- three elements: Benevolence, Capacity, Commitment/Consistency
28. Not only do we not understand our spouses very well
29. We also don't accept the realities about our spouses that we do understand
30. or the realities that we could understand if we allowed ourselves to see. But so often we parts that don't want us to see who our spouses really are. Some of that is due to confusion between acceptance and endorsement.
31. Acceptance vs. endorsement -- Definitions
32. Acceptance -- acknowledging the reality of who I am in my entirety, all my parts with their burdens, all the roughness, the wounds, the disorder, the imperfections, all the baggage, all the "stuff." It means admitting, conceding all the things that are really true about myself.
33. 1. acknowledging the reality who my spouse Pam is, in her entirety, in her complete being, with her parts, with her perspectives, with her virtues her vices. Right at this moment
34. 1. Endorsement on the other hand. means essentially approving or embracing as good some feature within myself or my spouse.
  2. So husband can accept the idea that his wife is abusing painkillers without endorsing her misuse of pain medication.
36. Why we struggle with accepting something about our spouse, even when we know we don't have to endorse it
37. Strong motivation to not see our spouses as they really are
  1. To not see the injuries, the deficiencies, the disorder, the areas of stunted development -- how wounded they really are.
    1. 1. If we saw all those things, how would I get me needs met from my spouse?
    2. Needs for mommy, daddy 2. 1. Needs for God? Broken idols 3. 1. Not gonna happen
      1. Can be very difficult our parts to give up their illusions about the meaning and function of our spouse in our lives
    3. Parts want to be redeemed 2. 1. Parts want to be loved 3. 1. Parts want to have hope that things will be better in the future, that there is light at the end of the tunnel 4. 1. We want to outsource the messy business of learning to accept and love ourselves.
      1. But no one can do that for us, no one can take our place in loving ourselves in an ordered way.
        
        So there is this tendency toward idealization of our spouses
      2. But when parts are disappointed, devaluation. Pendulum swings the other way. 2. 6.
        
        So much this is outside our awareness
    4. We could say it's unconscious 2. 1. Parts are impelling us to try to get our needs met, parts are acting with good intentions, in ways we don't realize
      1. Often very maladaptive 2. 1. When they do that, they tend to bring about the exact opposite of what they hope for
        
        e.g. make spouse God -- the intention is to find safety and security 2. 1. But that breaks down. 3. 1. God loves us, and he is jealous for us, takes our idols away 3. 1. Often no outside perspective 3. 5.
        
        Sometimes we are motivated by our own parts to stick our heads in the sand and not see. Like an ostrich. 1. OK, so I looked up the ostrich thing. I suspected maybe that ostriches were getting a bad rap. In reality, Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand when they feel threatened. That's a myth. The make their nests in holes they dig in the earth and the ostrich hen puts her head in the hole and turns the eggs. So it can look like the birds are burying their heads in the sand. -- little zoological fact for today 2. Where were we? Yes, so often we have parts that don't want us to see who our spouses really are. 3. The ostrich metaphor didn't work out, so let's talk about monkey, instead. Three monkeys 1. Three monkeys named Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru who are about 400 years old. We're talking about some old monkeys here. 1. Mizaru -- hands over his eyes 2. Kikazaru -- hands over his ears 3. Iwazaru -- hands over his mouth. 2. See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no Evil: 3. From wikipedia: The source that popularized this pictorial maxim is a 17th-century carving over a door of the famous Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan. The carvings at Tōshō-gū Shrine were carved by Hidari Jingoro, and believed to have incorporated Confucius’s Code of Conduct, using the monkey as a way to depict man’s life cycle. There are a total of eight panels, and the iconic three wise monkeys picture comes from panel 2. The philosophy, however, probably originally came to Japan with a Tendai-Buddhist legend, from China in the 8th century (Nara Period). It has been suggested that the figures represent the three dogmas of the so-called middle school of the sect. 4. We can be like those monkeys, but not motivated by social harmony like in Confucianism. 1. Motivated by defensive self-protection. 2. If I don't see it, if I don't hear it, I don't have to deal with it. I don't have to acknowledge it, I don't have to address it. 1. Denial 2. Avoidance 3. Withdrawal 3. James 4:11-12 11 Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor? 4. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
        
        Acceptance without judging the soul of another
38. Not judging self -- soul
  1. St. Paul -- I don't judge myself. 1 Cor. 4:3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.
    1. 1. Not judging others' souls -- our spouse's souls
    2. We don't really know them 2. 1. Cautions to new therapists
      1. Often tempted to align with the client's parts against a spouse. 2. 3. 1. We can and often should judge behavior. Catholic Theologian Edward Sri - Who Am I to Judge?: Responding to Relativism with Logic and Love -- excellent book. 4. We can and often need to judge actions
    3. Some are obviously wrong and easily identifiable as bad.
      1. Affairs
      2. Drinking and drug use
      3. Sexual abuse of children
      4. Violence
      5. Financial irresponsibility -- gambling, compulsive shopping
        
        Some are not so obvious
      6. Gaslighting 2. 1. Psychological Manipulation 3. 1. My experience with cults 4. 1. Subtle abandonment, undermining 5. 1. Subtle shaming 6. 1. Need for limits and boundaries
      7. Near occasion of sin 7.
      8. Complicated when we've been punished for having emotions or desires -- no distance.
      9. Lots of misunderstanding -- bad spiritual advice
  2. e.g. Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer -- p. 130 "The Gift of Faith" -- imprimatur
    1. "Anxiety and sadness are always bad and always flow from self-love." Nonsense 2. 1. 1769 In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion.
      1. Jesus was anxious -- he was like us in all things but sin. St. Paul.
        
        Garden of Gethsemane
        
        Mark 14:32-34 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”[d] 35
        
        Luke 22: And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer. 44 And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground. 2.
    2. WebMD Hematidrosis, or hematohidrosis, is a very rare medical condition that causes you to ooze or sweat blood from your skin when you're not cut or injured.
    3. Doctors don't know exactly what triggers hematidrosis, in part because it's so rare. They think it could be related to your body's "fight or flight" response.
    4. Tiny blood vessels in the skin break open. The blood inside them may get squeezed out through sweat glands, or there might be unusual little pockets within the structure of your skin. These could collect the blood and let it leak into follicles (where the hair grows) or on to the skin's surface.
    5. Research suggests that tiny blood vessels that cause bloody sweat are more likely to rupture under intense stress. The stress can be physical, psychological, or both.
    6. Jesus was sad
39. Lazarus -- John 11:33-36 Jesus wept over Lazarus 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved[e] in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
40. 1. Wept over Jerusalem -- Luke 19:41
41. Mary, conceived without original sin was anxious -- searching for the 12 year old Jesus.
42. Reflects a failure to understand the human person and a failure to understand human formation.
43. CCC on emotions.
44. 1763 The term "passions" belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.
45. 1764 The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the passions spring.40
46. Anxiety and Sadness are emotions. Emotions don't carry a moral weight in and of themselves.
47. 1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will.
48. We may have parts of us that hate other parts of us
49. Catholics often have parts that hate their spouses. I mean hate.
50. Can be really threatening to think that my spouse hates me. Easier and more accurate to accept that a part of my spouse hates me.
51. What carries the moral weight is what we do with our emotions
52. Hatred as an emotion
53. 1. Hatred as a position.
54. 1. Bad idea not to accept that they exist -- if we see them as "bad." parts of us are tempted to suppress them
  2. Revenge of the repressed. 2.
  3. 1. Same thing with desires, impulses, attitudes, intentions, thoughts
  4. Case of scrupulosity
    1. 1. How it leads to self-absorption, difficult loving each other
    2. Battle royale inside among parts 2. 1. Sympathy 3.
    4. Limits
    5. Catechism on Marriage 1643: "Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul;
      1. CCC 1770 Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."46
    6. But we are wounded.
      1. You are gravely wounded
      2. Your spouse is gravely wounded.
      3. Two gravely wounded people together
  5. Apollo 13 scene -- describe it. Kevin Bacon and Tom Hanks release the service module form the command module. damage to the service module as it was jettisoned from the Command module.
    1. 1. In the desert. -- Bring in some Fr. Dajczer here. 5.
  6. Signs of non-acceptance of another person.
    1. Too much focus on the spouse -- the spouses actions, the spouses thoughts, emotions, almost exclusively external perspective so that there is not a balance between a focus on the other and a focus on me.
    2. Too much of a focus on systems -- the back and forth.
  7. Systemic problems -- problems between spouse rather than within spouses -- e.g. communication
    1. He just doesn't know how to put his love into words 2. 1. Communication issues 3. 1. We just don't match up very well, we're not in synch. 4.
      1. Time
  8. Dwelling in the past
    1. She never used to be this way 2. 1. Living in the golden years, pining for the 3.
      1. Flying to the future
    2. If I change this thing about myself, or if we do marital therapy, my husband will be so much better in the future 2. 1. It will be better when
      1. We move to a real house from this little apartment 2. 1. When we have our first child 3. 1. When he gets a promotion and there's not so much financial stress 4. 1. When the last kid gets into school and we're not always changing diapers 5. 1. When the last one graduates and we are through the tumultuous teenagers at home phase 6. 1. When we retire. 7. 3.
        
        How much am I in the present when thinking about my spouse
        
        Harboring bitterness, nurturing it, feeding grievances.
        
        Resignation vs. acceptance
  9. Resignation -- downheartedness and lack of hope for change.
    2. Certainty in the descriptions of the other spouse
    3. Broad generalizations of the other spouse -- untempered, not nuanced, not appreciating the different dimensions and parts of the spouse.
    4. Lack of openness to new or deeper perspectives -- clinging to current assumptions
  10. Spouse is fearfully and wonderfully made.
    1. 1. Two-dimensional representations
    2. He's withdrawn and silent, he doesn't talk, we're just like roomates, he has no emotions. 2.
      1. One-dimensional representations
    3. He's a narcissist. 2. 1. Pendulum swings upon discovery. 3.
      2. Loss of a sense of Providence.
  11. This is the floor -- the rock solid foundation is your childlike trust in God's Providence
    1. And like other little children, you be imperfect, not do thing well, and make mistakes and still be cherished and loved by God. 2.
      1. Some with an intellectual understanding of Providence
    2. But it's just head knowledge
      1. We have parts that feels safer if they are driving our bus, if they are in control. 18.
    3. Acceptance in the sex life.
      1. Is among the trickiest if not the most tricky area in the marriage.
      2. We will discuss this more next week.
    4. Recommendations
55. Let's go a lot deeper. Have the courage. Have the trust that your needs will be met, not necessarily by your spouse, but by others, including God and Mary.
56. 1. Letting go of assumptions -- some of them very handy, seem helpful, seem like they explain things -- but they may not be true.
  2. Filtered thr ough our lenses, through our parts' perspectives.
57. 1. Prayer:
  2. My Lord, My Lady, I accept whatever is in my spouse as reality.
  3. Lord, what would you have me to see, understand, and accept in my spouse.
  4. Why, Lord, are you showing me this new thing about my spouse now, at this point in my life?
58. 1. Time each day to consider your spouse -- think of her, think of him
  2. Write about her, about him -- putting experiences into words. 2.
  3. 1. Break up patterns - mix it up, try new things -- new behaviors
  4. 1. Being a sounding board -- putting experience into words with another person. A fresh set of eyes.
  6. Pilgrimage
59. Human formation
  1. We all need help
    1. 1. We all need structure
    2. 1. We all need support. 4.
  2. 1. Relaunch discussion.
  3. Get on the waiting list -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc more than 100 on the waiting list so far.
  4. Mark your calendars Tuesday, May 25 from 7:30 to 8:45 PM meeting about the RCC reopening, Q&A. -- that meeting will be on our landing page -- register for it. Also the link will go out in our next email to our waitlist which will be sent on Tuesday, May 4
  5. 1. Ad for a researcher, dissertation -- student
  6. 1. Second Wednesday Zoom Meeting Wednesday May 12 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM -Time - that one is all about the changes in the community.
  7. 1. Conversation hours Tuesday and Thursday May 4 and 6 -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time

View Details

Intro
1. It is good to have you with us,
2. 1. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist
3. 1. Weekly Podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
4. 1. Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. Episode 65 Why Catholic Spouses Find it Hard to Empathize with Each Other, Especially About Sex -- with Solutions. -- we are in the middle of a series on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages, but don't worry if you are not married, there is so much for you in today's episode that applies to any close relationship.
7. Definitions of Empathy:
8. Daniel Siegel: Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. Interpersonal Neurobiology.
  1. Interpersonal Neurobiology
    1. Wikipedia: Interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) or relational neurobiology is an interdisciplinary framework associated with human development and functioning. It was developed in the 1990s by Daniel J. Siegel who sought to bring together a wide range of scientific disciplines in demonstrating how the mind, brain, and relationships integrate to alter one another. 2. Dan Siegel's work is very accessible -- easier for non-professionals to understand, very available. 3. Five types of Empathy -- Short YouTube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdhMY_DNb1M 5 Levels. There's an order to them.
    2. Emotional Resonance or attunement
    3. Perspective Taking
    4. Cognitive Empathy
    5. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern
    6. Empathetic Joy 4. I am going to expand on his basic presentation. 5. Expanded definitions of empathy
    7. Emotional Resonance, attunement, empathic resonance -- receiver begins to feel what the sender is feeling. You feel the feelings of the other person.
      1. Attunement ‘is a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin, and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal affect and/or resonating response’. (Clinical psychologist Richard Erksine 1998).
      2. When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships. Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected." Dan Siegel
      3. Moderation
        
        Emotional contagion. This really can be overwhelming
        
        Experience of being sucked into the other's experience -- blending or fusing with the other with a loss of boundaries 4. 6. 1. Perspective Taking: Let me put myself in the other's skin -- in the other shoes. Not a fusion
      4. Capacity to enter into your spouse's internal world with your own mind to consider the other's experience 2. 1. You remain separate from the other person. 3. 7. 1. Cognitive Empathy: -- a bit further -- what does the experience mean for the person. Memory, emotion, history influences the other. Empathetic understanding.
      5. So much of our suffering comes not from the facts of our situation, but from the meaning we make from those facts. 8. 1. Compassion: Empathic Concern -- synonym for compassion. I feel your pain, I want to reduce your suffering.
      6. You feel the suffering 2. 1. Take the suffering in 3. 1. Use of the imagination -- what could I do now to help you feel better. 4. 1. Be with the person -- doing flows from that being 9. 1. Empathic joy -- I get so excited about your success -- delighting in and with the other.
      7. Joy in who the spouse is, not what the child does -- "delighting in the spouses very being
      8. Wife believes in the husband's goodness -- the husband is precious, worth sacrificing for and vice versa.
      9. Song of Songs -- Joy 1:4 We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine 10. 11. Review
    8. Emotional Resonance or attunement 12. 1. Perspective Taking 13. 1. Cognitive Empathy 14. 1. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern 15. 1. Empathetic Joy
    10. Empathy is the mattress on our Catholic Canopied Marriage bed, which I introduced in episode 58 -- working with that metaphor. The mattress on a bed -- we want the mattress to be consistent and solid, firm and not lumpy.
      1. The frame and box spring -- firm commitment between the husband and the wife, the upholding of the marriage vows Episode 64
  2. It's the charity. Willing the highest good for one another -- sacrificial love
    1. four legs of the bed.
  3. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation, his psychological health, his emotional wellbeing -- removing the beam from his own eye -- last episode. Episode 63
    1. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation, her own psychological health, her own emotional wellbeing -- her taking on her own personal responsibility for her natural life last episode. Episode 63
  4. Leg 3. Attachment Needs and Integrity Needs -- Episode 62,
  5. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems approaches -- understanding deeply how the human person is both a unity and a multiplicity -- like an orchestra is a unity -- one orchestra, but also has within it multiplicity, multiple musicians -- check out Episodes 60 and 61
    1. The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence
  6. This is the foundation
    1. 1. Childlike trust, absolute confidence
    2. 1. Reflects the reality of our existential dependence and God's paternal care, Mary's maternal care for us.
    3. 1. So many Catholic try to solve their marriage issues without bringing in anything spiritual
    4. 1. Or they avoid any meeting between faith and sex. 9.
  7. Why we lack different kinds of empathy
9. In General
  1. Lack of interior integration
    1. 1. Lack of benevolence -- good will. Lack of seeking the good for our spouse and being willing to suffer for it
    2. Conditionality
      1. I'll work on it if my wife does X and Y 2. 1. I'll start trying again if my husband stops behavior Z. 3. 1. Not what your vows say. 4. 2. 1. Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile from them, and you'll have their shoes. Jack Handey. 3.
        
        Lack of consistency
    3. Giving up -- Spouse is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma -- Winston Churchill
      1. We are not good at it.
    4. This is really complex and demanding at times -- it's hard.
      1. We don't like to be faced with our limitations
      2. We want to feel competent, we like to know we did a good job
        
        FreeCell online solitaire. Very good at it. Clear when I did a good job.
        
        Levels in a video game
        
        Pam likes Soduku puzzles -- clear when she solves it. 3. 1. Often deepening connections with others it's not so clear if we're doing well or not 2. So we don't practice.
      3. It takes deliberate practice 3. 1. It takes time that is set aside
        
        Won't happen just by chance. 2. 4.
        
        I have parts that don't want to give up illusions about my spouse -- idealizations, I have her on a pedestal, she was supposed to complete me, care for me, met my needs, rescue me, redeem me, prove that I am lovable, whatever the underlying needs and hopes and dreams were -- all that can come crashing down. Not a Hallmark Movie here. Real, gritty, difficult, human, messy relationships
        
        Reasons we lack Emotional Resonance or attunement -- receiver begins to feel what the sender is feeling. You feel the feelings of your spouse. -- We want to be able to do this in a regulated way. A sip, not necessarily the whole barrel. 1. Two Categories
    5. I can't -- And can't
      1. Functional or organic limitations
        
        Brain injury 2. 1. Also possibly some conditions on the autistic spectrum can interfere with recognizing others' needs. Biological. Not psychological -- like having a narcissistic part in command. 3. Dynamism of ability I can't in this moment -- I am dysregulated, I am in fight or flight mode, I'm in freeze mode. I'm too angry, I'm blended with a part.
        
        We need to recognize that dynamism. 2. 1. I won't
      2. Also Dynamic. I won't right now. I will later. 2. 3. 4. Beam in our own eye, reflected as the speck in our spouse's eye. 1. Misattribution
      3. What is mine and what is my spouse's issue 2. 1. Pointing: 1 finger forward, three fingers back at me 3. 1. St. Francis of Assisi -- I am the problem. 4. 1. Externalization
        
        Degree of externalization is diagnostic -- all the spouse -- likely a lot is also me. 5.
        
        Distractions
        
        Busyness
        
        Activation of my own experience in parts -- My manager parts won't accept or embrace in my spouse what I reject in my own self -- because I'm afraid of those unacceptable things in me.
        
        Emotions
        
        Desires
        
        Attitudes
        
        Intentions
        
        Impulses
        
        Self-absorption
        
        Fear
    6. Fear of what is there
      1. Disappointment in me
        
        Part of my spouse may have had high hopes that I will meet needs -- daddy needs, mommy needs, God needs, security needs, mission and purpose and meaning needs, all kinds of attachment needs, all kinds of integrity needs-- we discussed those needs in episode 62 - understanding those needs is one of the legs of the bed.
        
        Unrealistic, impossible
        
        Can still activate parts of me that want to please, make everything all right
        
        Failure, failure --> shame or helplessness or disappointment -- my spouse is not going to meet my needs. 3. 2. 2. 1. Despair
        
        Part of my self may be despairing 2. 1. What do I do? 3. 1. I don't want to be married to someone who is despairing
        
        Not aware that it's only a part -- this is really critical. It often doesn't seem like a part, spouse doesn't seem conflicted.
        
        That's because the parts has blended and is not allowing any other parts or the core self to come through. 2. 4. 3. 1. Rage and hatred toward me
        
        Many, many Catholic spouses have parts that hate the other spouse. Disappointed, disillusioned
        
        These parts are often buried by protector parts
        
        Act out in passive-aggressive ways 2. 1. Or explode intermittently 2. 2. 1. Divorcing spouses often really do hate each other
        
        Enmeshment, co-dependency can really increase the hatred parts of spouses have for each other. 2. 3. 1. We don't want to be hated. Don't touch the ticking bomb. 4. 1. We want to protect the children. 4. 9. 1. fear of overwhelm. Fear of the intensity of the spouse's part's experience. 1. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy call this emotional contagion 2. I do not want to be sucked in, that's dangerous. 3. I don't want to be overwhelmed by whatever my spouse's intensity activates in me 10. 1. Fear of my overreaction, being taken over by one of my parts. And if I get all blended with an activated part, will I do or say something I regret. Self-protective but also protective of the marriage. 11. 1. So there can be an unspoken, unthought agreement "not to go there." 1. Can be wise in the short run 2. Will we ever go there? 12.
        
        Perspective Taking Capacity to enter into your spouse's internal world with your own mind to consider the other's experience
  2. We have our own needs. Parts want are needs to be taken care of first, before recognizing anyone else's
    1. Starving waiter syndrome 2. 1. This is the leg of the bed attachment and integrity needs -- if that is missing or short or otherwise compromised, leads to instability. 3. 1. Also the leg on human formation 4.
      1. Defenses -- coping strategies
    2. Your spouse may not understand this. Needs another person to help. 2.
      1. Transferences --
      2. Revivification of old issues -- childhood or earlier in the marriage. 5.
    3. 1. Cognitive Empathy what does the experience mean for the person. Memory, emotion, history influences the other. Empathetic understanding. 1. Our capacity is not well developed . We don't try. 2. We don't know because we don't ask, we don't engage.
    4. 1. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern I feel your pain, I want to reduce your suffering
  3. Meaning of suffering -- natural pull in our fallen condition to avoid suffering, our own suffering and the suffering of others
    1. Can suffering become redemptive -- can you willingly share your spouse's cross if he or she lets you. 2.
      1. I can't bear suffering or I won't bear suffering.
    2. Fr. Justin Huang Our capacity to suffer = our capacity to love = our capacity for joy. 3.
    3. 1. Empathetic Joy
  4. I can't be joyful in anyone else if I feel so disadvantaged.
    1. Eeyore's attempts to be joyful for others -- they fall flat. 2.
  6. Unempathetic Sex
10. Emotional Resonance or attunement -- not caring, not resonating. No idea what I am experiencing.
  1. Not talking about it
  2. 1. Perspective Taking -- putting myself in her shoes. Concupiscence -- sex can be very selfish. I want an experience for me. I want my needs met. Gets away from our vow to love and cherish and honor and care for our spouse.
  3. 1. Cognitive Empathy
  4. 1. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern -- willing to make sacrifices in some way? Won't happen if I am blended with a part that needs something from the sex my way. Tolerating a lot of imperfections.
  5. Sex is really approximate.
  6. Precise sex. Our sexuality is really exact. It's measured, it's so well regulated, well executed.
  7. 1. Empathetic Joy -- our needs are met -- joy in the giving. Mutual giving.
  9. Solutions
11. Five types of empathy for our own parts first --
  1. Flight attendants: In the unlikely event of cabin depressurization, oxygen mask will drop from overhead. Secure your own first before attempting to assist others.
    1. Can I accept all of what is within me
    2. Am I doing my own work in human formation?
      1. Checking in with parts
        
        What percentage of my reaction to my spouse is my spouse's behavior 2. 1. What percentage of it is my old stuff. 2. My parts' attitudes about sex. Where did they come from? What sexual experiences have I not adequately dealt with? 3. Action item 1. Time with your parts, time for human formation every day. 4. Removing the beam from your own eye. 5. Reliance on God to meet our needs. Our spouses will always fail us in important ways. God allows that so that we rely on Him. 6. Amazing what prayer can do if we really focus in on what our real issues are in human and spiritual formation, if we can get specific. 7. We will get answers.
        
        Where are the real gaps in my empathy for my spouse -- which of the five areas of empathy do I struggle with and why?
  2. Making time each day. 5 minutes to think and consider and make notes about your spouse and about your spouse's parts, the common modes of operating. Just five minute to live out your marriage vows
    1. Or three minutes 2. 1. Or a minute? 3. 1. Be regular. 4. 1. Netflix video games, TV, shopping, social media. 5.
      1. Write down your findings.
      2. Consider how your spouse is a beloved child of God and of Mary. Cherished by them. Made in God's image and likeness.
      3. Make a spouse resolution -- what you are going to do for your spouse. Ask not what your spouse can do for you, but what you can do for your spouse.
      4. Even if you're not in contact with your spouse. If you are sacramentally married pray for that spouse, offer up a little sacrifice. 6.
    2. 1. Talk with your spouse.
  3. Look at her. Look at him. If that's hard, be curious -- why is it hard
    1. 1. Don't start with sex if that is a fraught issue. Start with something easier
    2. 1. Regular time. Daily.
    3. 1. If you are having a really hard time, bring in another person to help.
    4. Individual therapy
    5. Marital therapy -- Catholic's Guide to Choosing a Therapist
    6. 1. Eventually talk with your spouse about sex. For many that will be awkward, difficult. But it can be done. Rarely does one spouse figure out all the answers to sexual issues in the marriage without any communication from the other spouse. 6.
  4. 1. Human formation issue -- Get on the waiting list Resilient Catholics Community, soulsandhearts.com/rcc join with so many others from around the world like you that also love this podcast. The RCC is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a pilgrimage, on a mission to be transformed on a human level, to shore up our natural foundations so we can really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. And so we can love others, especially our spouses.
  5. Reopening on June 1
  6. Initial Measures Kit -- personalized attention from our staff to create your human formation plan
    1. Workbook with exercises 3. Lots of personal human connection. Companion on the journey -- checking in daily 4. Weekly small group meeting with your company 5. So get on the waiting list at soulsandhearts.com/rcc or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and I'll help you out. 6. Not therapy or counseling, but a great addition. 7. About 20-25 minutes per day for your human formation 8. $99 per month 9. Many more details at soulsandhearts.com/rcc 10. Open in June and only in June. Twice per year we take on new members. June and December.
    2. 1. For current RCC member Second Wednesday Zoom meeting on May 12, 2021
    3. 1. I want to be in touch with you, my listeners. Conversation hours 317.567.9594 -- by my cell phone -- waiting for calls. Wednesday, April 29 5:15 PM to 6:15 PM eastern time
  7. On all Tuesdays and Thursday -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern. Call me. I will call you back if I'm on another call. Wanting to make myself available to you. 2.

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Intro
1. It is good to have you with us,
2. 1. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist
3. 1. Interior Integration for Catholics
4. 1. Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com
5. 1. Episode 64 released April 19, 2021
6. 1. Subtle Ways Catholics Cheat on their Spouses: How and Why.
7. 1. Getting into natural level issues around our commitment, the covenant a husband and a wife make in a Catholic sacramental marriage.
9. Brief Review -- Canopied Marriage Bed
10. Description of each part of the bed -- symbolism of each part, what each part represents.
  1. The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence
    1. This is the foundation 2. 1. Childlike trust, absolute confidence 3. 1. Reflects the reality of our existential dependence and God's paternal care, Mary's maternal care for us. 4. 5. Four legs -- now more in the natural realm
    2. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation, his psychological health, his emotional wellbeing -- removing the beam from his own eye -- last episode. Episode 63 6. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation, her own psychological health, her own emotional wellbeing -- her taking on her own personal responsibility for her natural life last episode. Episode 63
      1. Definition of Human Formation Human formation is the lifelong process of natural development, aided by grace, by which a person integrates all aspects of his interior emotional, cognitive, relational, and bodily life, all of his natural faculties in an ordered way, conformed with right reason and natural law so that he is freed from natural impediments to trust God as His beloved child and to embrace God's love. Then, in return, because he possesses himself, he can love God, neighbor and himself with all of his natural being in an ordered, intimate, personal, and mature way. 2. 1. That is what we are focused on in this podcast. Human formation:
        
        This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God. 2. 1. Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation, a radical conversion at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God. 3. 7. 1. Leg 3. Attachment Needs and Integrity Needs -- Episode 62, 8. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems approaches -- understanding deeply how the human person is both a unity and a multiplicity -- like an orchestra is a unity -- one orchestra, but also has within it multiplicity, multiple musicians -- check out Episodes 60 and 61 9. The Frame and the Box Spring -- this holds the whole bed together and it represents the firm commitment between the husband and the wife, the upholding of the marriage vows, 1. We are focusing on this today. The commitment, the vows of Catholic married life 2. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. 3. It's the charity. Willing the highest good for one another 10. The Mattress -- Empathetic attunement -- really knowing the spouse, really being able to enter into the phenomenological world of the spouse 11. Bottom sheet fitted sheet -- sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion -- hinges on all that is underneath it. Can't you just help us get the fire, the passion back into our love life. 12. Top Sheet -- communication between the Catholic spouses. 13. Two Pillows -- Acceptance of who the husband is right now -- Acceptance of who the wife is right now. Self-acceptance and Spouse acceptance 14. The blankets -- human warmth, emotional connection 15. Four bedposts -- intertwined spirals, like a double helix -- Mindset, Heartset, Bodyset, Soulset 16. The Canopy and the curtains, which cover the bed and provide privacy -- for good or for ill. 17. The Shams, the bedspread and the bed skirts -- these cover up the bed, give a favorable and even a false impression to the world of what the bed is like, keep the real bed under wraps, as it were
        
        Definition Marriage Commitment
11. Commitment is essential
12. 1. Frame and box spring of the bed -- holds the whole structure of the bed together. The commitment to loving the other person in the sacramental marriage covenant is vitally important
  2. No one else can do it for you. Not even God. 2.
  3. 1. Definition of Marriage -- Fr. John Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary

MARRIAGE. As a natural institution, the lasting union of a man and a woman who agree to give and receive rights over each other for the performance of the act of generation and for the fostering of their mutual love.

The state of marriage implies four chief conditions:

there must be a union of opposite sexes; -- one man and one woman
it is a permanent union until the death of either spouse;
1. CCC 2382: Between the baptized spouses, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death" 1983 CCL 1141
2. 1. Until Death I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
3. it is an exclusive union, so that extramarital acts are a violation of justice;
4. its permanence and exclusiveness are guaranteed by contract; mere living together, without mutually binding themselves to do so, is concubinage and not marriage.

Christ elevated marriage to a sacrament of the New Law. Christian spouses signify and partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and his Church, helping each other attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and education of their children.

Solemnified by Formal Vows
1. Usually the only vow a Christian Layman or Laywoman will ever make
2. 1. CCC 2364: Both spouses give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh. The covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble.
4. Originates in the will
5. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life Love is an act of the will.
6. 1. Not just a one-time event I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
7. 1. Ongoing willing, year to year, week to week, day to day, moment to moment
8. 1. But impacted by human formation and spiritual formation
9. 1. Supported in the natural realm by human formation, an awareness of attachment needs and integrity needs, an awareness of how complex we are in our parts, and most of all our reliance on God's grace.
11. Vocation VOCATION. A call from God to a distinctive state of life, in which the person can reach holiness. (Etym. Latin vocatio, a calling, summoning; from vocare, to call.)
12. We dedicate our whole life to it.
13. Deterioration of commitment -- happens subtly
14. Earnest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
15. 1. Subtle ways of undermining your commitment to your spouse without realizing it
  2. Not praying for your spouse
  3. Not praying with your spouse
    1. Unless your spouse is absolutely not open to it. 3. 1. MT 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them 4. Taking your spouse for granted 5. Not thinking about your spouse -- setting aside time to understand your spouse
    2. Not just in conversation 6. 1. But later -- on your own time. Filling up time with distractions. Not applying your intellect. 7. 1. Going with assumptions and emotional reaction, many of which have their origins way in the past, in your childhood. Yep. 8. 9. Not helping your spouse, pitching in, in the ways that you can
    3. Husband-- Never changed a diaper in my life -- proud of it 10. Giving your spouse low-quality time, when you are exhausted. Other priorities, attachments -- distance, lack of investment
    4. Issue in my marriage -- long clinical day, learning the profession, spent, didn't want to hear about the difficulties with the kids. Sunday mornings. 11. Being wedded to professional work. Ministry stuff -- neglect of the spouse. Primary vocation. 12. Secret Relationships -- would I act the same way if my spouse was watching -- getting a little flirty, justified as being friendly or social -- emotional affairs -- affairs of the heart 13. Complaining about spouse to other people, comparing your spouse unfavorably to other spouses. 14. Hanging out with your friends or associates more than your spouse. 15. Undermining your spouse in front of others. Once in a while it may be necessary, but a lot of this stems from taking the spouse for grantin g and trying to score points with observers. 16. Object affair Lachlan Brown -- porn, hobby, idea, 17. Emotional dishonesty -- especially to justify actions -- keeping secrets, white lies -- hiding emails or text messages or voicemails -- Lachlan Brown calls it micro cheating 18. Befriending and associating with those who undermine your marriage -- taking in that negativity -- happens in families. 19. Debating the commitment., the vows -- one of the most corrosive things that can happen.
    5. Maybe I'll stay, maybe I'll go. 20. 1. Was I ever really married? Not presuming the bond exists. 21. 22. Stonewalling -- withholding yourself, emotions, affection 23. Fantasies of sleeping with other women -- advised by some sex therapists as a way to "spice up" sex.
    6. 1. Half-hearted commitment. Mean it literally. Loving with only half your heart. Lukewarm attempts
  4. Therapy too late - divorce is decided, fait accompli
    1. Window dressing 2. 1. Optics -- Aunt Maureen 3. 1. Aftermath, dealing with the kids 2.
    2. 1. Conditional commitments will fail.
    4. As Catholic married men and women, we are swimming upstream, very countercultural
16. Catholic view of marriage is not supported by current cultural norms
17. 1. No fault divorce Definition from Law.com:

no fault divorce n. divorces (dissolutions) in which neither spouse is required to prove "fault" or marital misconduct on the part of the other. To obtain a divorce a spouse must merely assert incompatibility or irreconcilable differences, meaning the marriage has irretrievably broken down. This means there is no defense to a divorce petition (so a spouse cannot threaten to "fight" a divorce), there is no derogatory testimony, and marital misconduct cannot be used to achieve a division of property favorable to the "innocent" spouse. History of no-fault divorce

Russia, December 1917 after the Bolsevik Revolution two month earlier, marriage is a bourgeois institution, take it from the Orthodox church, grant it to the state.
1969 -- California -- first state under Governor Ronald Reagan.
Last state -- New York in 2010
Renders the vow essentially meaningless.
Protestant denominations redefined marriage. 16th Century, Henry VIII wanting to put away Catherine of Aragon, no male heir.
1. St. Thomas More martyred for his defense of marriage, not yielding to the king's demands for an oath of loyalty to the 1534 Act of Supremacy passed by the English parliament that declared Henry VIII the head of the Church of England.
Marriage is just a contract. A civil agreement. A legal agreement. There are no "vows." There is nothing permanent about it. No commitment. No obligations that can't be abandoned if one wants out of the marriage
1. Compromises an environment of safety and security, for the spouses and for the children.
3. Other end of the continuum: The vows are unconditional.
4. Malachi 2: 15-16 So look to yourselves, and do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth. 16 For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel
5. Mark 10: 1-12

He left that place and went to the region of Judea and[a] beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.

2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,[b] 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

Luke 16:18 18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
Matthew 19:9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.” 10 His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
1. Exception clause "porneia" -- Greek word. Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture -- Gospel of Matthew p. 241 -- go-to resource for Catholic commentary.
2. 1. Fr. Daniel Harrington Berit Olam
3. CCC 2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, wo which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death.
4. CCC 2385 Divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. The disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect, which makes it truly a plague on society.
5. Impact of divorce on children.
  1. Attachment Needs
    1. 1. Integrity Needs
  2. Wedding at Cana
  3. Obligations first, then rights.
    1. Our culture -- focused on rights.
  4. Going beyond obligations.
    1. JFK: John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. Riff.
  5. Living the vows when separated, civilly divorced, no contact.
    1. Still a great source of grace.
    2. What does it mean to love him or to love her in this moment, in this situation.
  6. But it is really helpful to understand why parts of you might want a separation or divorce. Reasons:
6. Most efforts toward breaking or violating the marriage commitment are driven by parts, parts heavily influenced by passions.
7. 1. Not all of the person may be undermining the marriage commitment
  2. Parts have partial vision, not a complete picture'
    1. 1. Seeking some good -- e.g. companionship
    2. But using poor means 3.
    3. 1. Happiness to be found elsewhere.
    4. 1. Self-protection
  3. Against hurt
    1. 1. Against being activated 3.
  5. List of given reasons for divorce
8. Incompatibility
9. 1. Irreconcilable differences
10. 1. Emotional reasons
  2. Falling out of love -- no longer soul mates
    1. 1. no longer sexually or romantically attracted to each other
    2. 1. It's not fun anymore, I'm not feeling it. 4.
  3. 1. Disagreements about money/finances/debt
  4. 1. "Growing apart" -- each making our own way, different values, different priorities in life.
  5. 1. Affairs/Adultery
  6. 1. Poor conflict resolution
  7. 1. He is not nice to me. She is cold and distant
  8. 1. Problems with larger families -- in-laws not approving
  9. 1. I thought marriage would cure everything
  10. the sacrament will take care of it --
  11. 1. God wants me to.
  12. A good God wouldn't want me to be this unhappy.
    1. 1. It came to me in prayer
  14. Necessity to be fueled by grace.
  15. Acknowledging the need for separation at times
11. CCC 2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by Canon Law 1151-1155
12. 1. And even civil divorce (no Catholic divorce possible)
  2. CCC 2383 If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.
14. Issues around nullity
15. Wikipedia: In the Catholic Church, a declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment and less commonly a decree of nullity is a judgment on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly contracted or, less frequently, a judgment determining that ordination was invalidly conferred.
  1. There was no marriage in the first place
  2. It's not a Catholic divorce
16. 1. Canon 1095 The following are incapable of contracting marriage:
  2. those who lack the sufficient use of reason;
    1. 1. those who suffer from a grave defect of discretion of judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties mutually to be handed over and accepted;
    2. 1. those who are not able to assume the essential obligations of marriage for causes of a psychic nature
  4. Marriage is a sacrament
17. Source of Grace from God
  1. Grace doesn't come from the spouse -- very limited vision. 2.
  3. Parts see the marriage commitment differently
18. Definition of a part: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent emotions, body sensations, intentions, typical thoughts and beliefs, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view.
  1. Parts influenced by passions
  2. Parts have very different experiences of the spouse.
  3. Parts have very different attitudes toward commitment to the spouse
    1. Example. Protector part of husband who primarily experiences a critical part of the wife
      1. I am so tired of you, so tired of how you nag me all the time 4. 1. Example -- wife's part seeking affection who experiences a husband's part who avoids intimacy
      2. I don't know why you don’t love me. I need someone who will love me. 2. 5.
      3. Blending
  4. Parts driving the bus.
    1. Reference Inside Out 2.
  5. 1. Positions of parts toward the marriage.
  6. Vary wildly from part to part
  7. Some parts don't consider the marriage commitment much at all
  8. Other parts may be heavily invested in the marriage in the hope that the spouse will meet needs
    1. Through sex. 4. 5. Parts debating commitment. 6. Parts not being heard. Enacting. 7. Parts looking for outs. 8. Positions of parts
    2. Spouse makes me miserable
      1. Life's little instruction book: H Jackson Brown, Jr. 1991. 30 years ago.
        
        Choose your spouse wisely because 90% of your happiness will come from your spouse.
        
        Actual quote: “Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.” 2. 1. Spouse has the power to deprive me of peace, wellbeing, joy. 3.
        
        Spouse doesn't deserve my love.
      2. Worthiness not the issue 10. 11. But it is really helpful to understand why parts of you might want a separation or divorce. Reasons:
    3. Most efforts toward breaking or violating the marriage commitment are driven by parts, parts heavily influenced by passions. 12. 1. Not all of the person may be undermining the marriage commitment
      1. Parts have partial vision, not a complete picture' 2. 1. Seeking some good -- e.g. companionship
        
        But using poor means 3. 13. 1. Happiness to be found elsewhere. 14. 1. Self-protection
      2. Against hurt 2. 1. Against being activated 15.
      3. If we blend with our parts, we will lose perspective, be blinded by passions
  9. Does not require emotional intensity in conscious awareness 2.
  10. 1. Importance of being recollected.
  11. 1. Importance of integration.
  12. 1. Importance of human formation
  13. Often a very limited vision
  15. Importance of a Providential World View
19. Ultimately all spouses will fail us in one way or another
  1. Group project -- not a group grade
20. 1. Failures of the spouse are a gift
21. 1. God provides for our attachment needs -- not the spouse
22. 1. God provides for our integrity needs -- not the spouse
23. 1. What would it be like if we relied on God's strength in our marriages, rather than our own.
  2. All things are possible with God.
  3. Childlike trust, complete abandonment -- with God, one can overcome so many natural deficits.
    1. So little trust between spouses, often. 3.
    3. Closing -- description of the RCC relaunch
24. Time commitments 2.5 to 3 hours per week
25. 1. Emphasis on community
  2. Companions checking in daily
    1. 1. Circles -- meeting weekly
  3. 1. Elizabeth Hofmeister working with me. Finalizing the measures for that and the details. Focus on increasing resilience on the natural realm and the supernatural realm. Personalized human formation plan.
  4. 1. Reopening the community in June --Registrations all during the month of June, will close it again on June 30. Programming ramping up in June, getting all the preliminaries Opening every six months.
  5. 1. 3 Calls from the conversation hour -- thanks! Next conversation hour -- Wednesday, April 28, 5:15 PM to 6:15 PM Eastern Time -- 317.567.9594. Just call. It's a conversation hour, so no texts, actual real, personal conversation.
  6. 1. Souls and Hearts -- much more than this podcast. Soulsandhearts.com/toc
  7. IIC 64A Parts' Concerns about Marriage.
  8. IIC 64T Working with Clients' Parts Around Commitment. Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Just Parts.
  9. Blurb for Transistor: Dr. Peter walks you through the self-deceptive slippery slope of Catholic marital infidelity and discusses the remedies to nip it in the bud.
  10. Patronness and Patron

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Intro: I am clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, and you are listening to the weekly podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Today in episode 63, we are discussing human formation -- what is it? What do you mine it's missing for many people?
2. 1. Windup: I am going to start with a bold claim and a controversial claim.
  2. For many, many Catholic adults in our day and age, in our culture, there is a much greater need to focus on human formation than on spiritual formation.
  3. Let me repeat that: Many, many Catholic adults at this point in their lives need solid human formation more than they need spiritual formation.
    1. Serious Catholic adults. 3. Commitment to human formation is so important in the Catholic married sexual life that it composes two of the four legs of my model of a Catholic marriage bed.
    2. The husband's commitment to human formation -- one leg
    3. The wife's commitment to human formation -- the other leg
    4. Another leg is really understanding attachment and integrity needs (episode 62)
    5. Another leg is a model the Internal family systems-informed model of the person with a self and with parts -- we are a unity and a multiplicity -- episodes 60 and 61.
    6. The floor is the a deep, abiding, childlike trust in Mary our Spiritual Mother and God our Spiritual Father.
    7. Building a whole bed here, starting in episode 58. No need to review all of it now. 4. So many Catholics with lots of spiritual formation who have built their spiritual lives on a very, very unsound natural foundation, with mediocre or poor human formation.
    8. So their spiritual lives are unstable.
    9. Example of early client -- extreme example
      1. Mid 30's, very earnest Catholic, very sincere, distressed -- I have to help his wife understand the Faith. Wife was Catholic, but a lot of tension between them about his spiritual practices. 3. 1. Danger of divorce -- wife: get to counseling or I'll divorce you 4. 1. Wife concerns?
        
        Spending three hours per day in Eucharistic Adoration
        
        Bringing their young children 2. 1. Our Lady of Lourdes 2. 1. No gainful employment 3. 1. Wife feeling constantly criticized by his fraternal corrections, his attempts to help her become more holy. 4. 5. 1. Spiritual Problems? No -- problems in the natural realm. 1. Blended with a part that is so driven by fear. 2. Part desperately trying to please an extremely demanding God and Mary -- trying to become holy, Pelagian efforts 3. Lack of attunement to children -- alienated from them, they were becoming alienated from the faith 4. Wedge in the marriage, wife thinks he's a religious nutcase. 5. He recognizes there are problems, wife needs to change
        
        Praying the Rosary 6. 1. Fatima Visionary Sr. Lucia: There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. 6. 7. Problems come from his distorted human formation. 8. Priest sex abuse scandal. 1. Can frame it all spiritually. 1. The priest who sexually abused children gave in to lust, it was a violation of the virtue of chastity, among other virtues. Ok. Hmmm. So it was a spiritual problem, a failure, he gave into temptation. No doubt there are spiritual dimensions to this, including a most grave and serious sin. 2. Or is a primary issue with his disordered sexual attraction to children and a real lack of impulse control --problems in the natural realm, a problem with his human formation. That makes so much more sense to me as being primary. 9. Scrupulosity -- so often seen as a spiritual problem, but is one of the most frustrating issues for confessors and spiritual directors encounter -- so often it doesn't resolve with traditional spiritual means.
      2. Primarily in the natural realm. Did a whole episode with Adam Cross The Catholic Therapist on human formation issues, the real issues in the natural realm that underlie scrupulosity. 10. 5. Serious Devastation -- original sin. 1. Effect on the human body -- death, illness, pain -- and now intensity of pain in childbirth, physical labor and toil to survive scratching out an existence from cursed ground. 2. Effect on the rest of our human formation
      3. Distrust of God 3. 1. Fear 4. 1. Anger 5. 1. Loss of harmony 6. 1. Really a kind of dis-integration -- in the world and inside of us. 7. 6. Grace perfects nature; it does not destroy it. St. Thomas Aquinas
    10. We need to work with our human natures. We need our human natures to be formed. 7. 8. Jesus discussed foundations
    11. Discussion of foundations in Scripture -- Matthew 7:24-27
      1. 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” 9. 1. Jesus as the cornerstone. 10. Algebra and arithmetic. 11. Hold up, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. What is human formation?
      3. Definitions
3. Those who follow this Interior Integration for Catholic Podcast know that I am all about defining our terms.
  1. So much rests on a clear understanding of what we are discussing.
    1. 1. Human Formation, to be honest is a nebulous term.
    2. Used a lot in Catholic contexts -- primarily in seminary contexts. 2. 1. A whole section is devoted to human formation in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops document entitled "Program of Priestly Formation, Fifth Edition" which came out in 2006. pages 29-42
      1. Longest and most complete discussion of human formation I could find in an official church document 2. 1. 14 pages -- but no definition of human formation.
        
        The foundation and center of all human formation is Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, paragraph 75
        
        Also in paragraph 75, we learn that "human formation is the 'necessary foundation' of priestly formation.
        
        We learn that the goals of human formation is to foster growth so that a man can become
        
        A free person
        
        Of solid moral character
        
        Prudent and discerning
        
        Invested in and capable of communion, of relating deeply with others
        
        With Good communication skills
        
        Affective maturity - integration of feelings, thoughts and values
        
        Who cares for his body
        
        Who relates well with others
        
        A good steward of material possessions
        
        And who can function well in public.
        
        But in all the 143 pages of this document, we get no definition of what human formation is. 3.
        
        Revisions -- sixth edition has been approved by the Bishops in November 2019, reportedly doubling in size to nearly 300 pages, -- As of April 2021, still awaiting recognitio from the Holy See, a formal recognition. 4.
        
        Pope St. John Paul II's 1992 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis I Give You Shepherds 3 pages on the importance of Human Formation, but again no definition of it. Nothing even close to a definition. 99 pages on the formation of priests in the circumstances of the present day. 1. Perhaps there's an assumption that we all know what it is. But we don't. 2. I will tell you that many US bishops don't have a very clear idea of what human formation is.
      2. Many of their responses to the sex abuse crisis reveal that they are really lost with regard to human formation
        
        Unable to find much else. The most relevant passage in the CCC is paragraph 2461 which says that "True development concerns the whole man. It is concerned with increasing each person's ability to respond to his vocation and hence to God's call.
        
        Seminaries
    3. Pontifical North American College -- August 2019 30-page description of their Formation Program.
      1. Interesting read, lots of good information
        
        7 elements of their human formation program 2. 1. Very detailed breakdown
        
        31 overall goals, personal, relational, 2. 1. year by year of the specific milestones in human formation each seminarian should reach average of 7 goals per year. 3. 3. 4. No definition of Human formation 2. 1. St. Charles Borromeo Seminary Philadelphia 3. 1. St. Mary's Seminary and University Baltimore MD. 4. 1. St. John's Seminary in Boston, MA 5. 1. Corpus Christi College and Seminary in Carlton, Victoria, Australia. 6.
        
        I could go on and on. I spent hours searching. If you can find a solid definition of human formation in any official church document, I will send you a prize. Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or text me on my cell at 317.567.9594, and provide me your mailing address and I will mail you a prize, which is my absolute favorite image of our patroness Our Lady Undoer of Knots
        
        Consult with religious communities. Expert in cults. International Cultic Studies Association refers a lot to me when a convent or monastery goes off the rails in some way -- problems in human formation. 8.
        
        The bottom line is that at present there is a void in institutional Catholic Church around human formation. 1. Maybe human formation is defined in the upcoming Program of Priestly Formation, sixth edition. I would love to see that. Somewhere in the additional 150 pages, they will define it. 2. Possibility of the Catholic Christian Meta Model of the Human Person 1. came out last year in 2020 -- Vitz Nordling and Titus -- faculty at DMU. 2. No index entry for human formation -- focus on psychotherapy or counseling. 3. Understandable in some ways. Colossal Failures when poor human formation has been brought in
    4. Immaculate Heart of Mary Community Story -- California -- Bill Coulson, Carl Rogers

Story of a repentant Psychologist.

'66 and '67. what we called "sensitivity" or "encounter." In a chapter of "Lesbian Nuns", one former Immaculate Heart nun describes the summer of 1966, when we did the pilot study in her order -

"We" being you and Rogers?

Rogers and I and eventually 58 others: we had 60 facilitators. We inundated that system with humanistic psychology. We called it Therapy for Normals, TFN. The IHMs had some 60 schools when we started; at the end, they had one. There were some 560 nuns when we began. Within a year after our first interventions, 300 of them were petitioning Rome to get out of their vows. They did not want to be under anyone's authority, except the authority of their imperial inner selves.

Psychological Seduction 1983 book William Kirkpatrick.
Temptation to throw out the baby with the bath water.
So one of you might say -- So, Dr. Peter, it's easy to be a critic, why don't you define human formation. Put your big boy Catholic psychologist pants and stop complaining and light a candle in the darkness, why don't you, hmmm?
All right, since you threw down the gauntlet like that, I will define Human Formation.
1. Reference to Vatican II -- Decree on the Apostolate of the laity paragraph 32
  1. Lumen Gentium 37. The laity are, by reason of the knowledge, competence or outstanding ability which they may enjoy, permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinion on those things which concern the good of the Church. When occasions arise, let this be done through the organs erected by the Church for this purpose. Let it always be done in truth, in courage and in prudence, with reverence and charity toward those who by reason of their sacred office represent the person of Christ.
  2. 1. Correct me if I'm wrong. Being small and childlike here.
  4. Definition time with Dr. Peter [Insert Sound Effect]
2. Human formation is the lifelong process of natural development, aided by grace, by which a person integrates all aspects of his interior emotional, cognitive, relational, and bodily life, all of his natural faculties in an ordered way, conformed with right reason and natural law so that he is freed from natural impediments to trust God as His beloved child and to embrace God's love. Then, in return, because he possesses himself, he can love God, neighbor and himself with all of his natural being in an ordered, intimate, personal, and mature way.
3. 1. Insert parts of the souls in addition to passions and faculties.
4. Breaking down the process
5. Lifelong -- there is no graduation. Conception to death
  1. Our Lord -- human formation, in his humanity.
    1. Raised by a family
    2. St. Joseph and Our Mother Mary formed him
    3. Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. 2.
  2. 1. Process of natural development -- focus on the natural realm here
  3. 1. Aided by grace. Because all good comes from God, even in unbaptized people and those who are not in a state of grace.
  4. 1. Integration -- key word.
  5. All aspects of inner experiential and bodily life.
    1. Awareness of experience -- making the unconscious conscious -- awareness of our parts in the multiplicity of self. Bringing those parts into a harmonious unity with the core self. Emotions
    2. Needs
    3. Emotions
    4. Guiding Beliefs/Assumptions
    5. Cognitions or Thought
    6. Intentions
    7. Desires
    8. Attitudes
    9. Impulses
    10. Interpersonal style
    11. Body sensations
    12. Sexual aspects
  6. Nothing split off, repressed in the long run
    1. Revenge of the repressed 3. 1. Freakouts in the post office -- Floyd. 4. 1. So we can be calm, recollected and then able to enter into the phenomenological world of others
      1. Not just self-absorbed navel gazing 2. 1. Starving waiter syndrome -- No one gives what he does not have. Nemo dat quod non habet 5. 6. Conformed with right reason and natural law -- this process is ordered. It's not subjective, it's not whatever I make myself out to be -- we conform ourselves. 7. Trust God as a His beloved child and embrace his love. 1. Fr, Tadeusz Dajczer -- pp 67-68 of his book "The Gift of Faith"
      2. p.59 The foundation of evil lies in a lack of simplicity and a lack of childlike trust in God. 2. 1. p.67 The lack of trust, the sowing of seeds distrust toward God is, in large measure, the source of all your sins and of all you existential and psychological anguish, and indirectly, also the source of your physical problems. 3. 1. 68 Distrust of God is worse than sin because it is the root and the source of sin 4. Lots of natural impediments to being able to love God
      3. Attachment injuries and relational traumas (discussed in the last podcast) 5. 1. Integrity needs not met by parents and others infolved in our human formation 6. 1. Prevent us from being small, with wonder and awe. 7. 8. Then, in return, he can love God, neighbor and himself with all of his natural being in an ordered, intimate, personal, and mature way
    2. God -- overcoming negative God images 9. 1. Neighbor 10. 1. Self -- PPF 5th Edition
      1. self-knowledge 2. 1. self-acceptance 3. 1. self-gift -- the seminarian needs integrity and self-possession in order to make such a gift. 11. 12. So much more than psychotherapy -- psychotherapy or counseling is only one means of human formation. 13. Human formation is relational
      3. Human Deformation
6. Trauma
7. 1. Attachment Injuries
8. 1. Sins
  2. Original Sin
    1. 1. Personal Sins
    2. Of other 2. 1. Of me. 3. 3.
    3. 1. Getting stuck in old patterns -- automatic. Trauma responses.
    5. Vision -- Fostering Human Formation deliberately
      1. Who?
        
        Parents -- starting from conception
    6. Congenital impact -- hormone levels 2. 1. Epigenetics -- effect on the body 3. 1. CCC 2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. 4. 1. CCC 2225 A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it throughout one's life. 5. 6. Extended family -- grandparents, aunts uncles 7. Brothers and sisters 8. Pastors 9. Priests -- Confessors -- Spiritual Directors 10. Coaches 11. Youth Group Leaders 12. Remember, human formation is life long -- for adults
    7. Spouses 13. 1. Supervisors 14. 1. Friends 15. 1. Life Coaches 16. 1. Exodus 90 anchors 17. 1. Therapists -- experts in working through de-formation. 18.
      1. What
        
        This podcast helps you focus inward on your human formation -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God in the natural realm.
        
        a deliberate program
        
        Guided reflection.
      2. How
  3. Set aside time -- many of you set aside regular time for spiritual work. Prayer, Mass, spiritual reading, all kinds of spiritual formation.
    1. 1. Set aside time for your human formation as well.
    2. 5 minutes a day -- checking in with your parts -- meditation at the end of this podcast.
    3. Know thyself -- Socrates
      1. Not just the spiritual focus, but a focus on your human formation
        
        Commitment to taking human formation seriously.
    4. Hard to do on our own 2. 1. Harness your own network of people to help with formation 3. 1. Resilient Catholics Community -- guidance on it. Specialize in it.
      1. Walking with each other -- companions, checking in 2. 1. Supporting each other on the journey. 3. 1. Get on the waiting list for the RCC -- go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc to sign up -- there's no obligation to join, but you will get all kinds of cool free stuff.
        
        Not just for you, but for those you are called to love. To help them with their formation. 4. 4.
        
        When -- now.
        
        Why
      2. Meditation -- parts and human formation.
      3. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
9. Trying out a new idea -- an individual conversation hour -- I promise you I will be on my cell phone from 4:30 to 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 13 to talk with any Interior Integration for Catholics podcast listener about our podcast episodes. Let's have a conversation. I want to be accessible. There is no need to email me beforehand or text me or anything like that, just drop in and meet with me by phone. I'm available. My cell is 317.567.9594. I like the phone or Zoom a lot better for relating than email or texts. Not therapy, but really a chance to get into a good conversation about the podcast. Your reactions, your feedback, whatever you want to talk about with regard to this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. And these conversations are private, I won't use anything from them in the podcast without your permission.
10. 1. Premium Podcasts each week for our Resilient Catholic community members and our Interior Therapist Community members where we go deeper.

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Intro: This is Interior Integration for Catholics, it's great that you can join us, and today we are wrestling with the deep attachment needs and the deep integrity needs that Catholic spouses have.
1. In this life, we all have deep attachment needs and deep integrity needs
2. We all struggle with deep attachment needs and deep integrity needs -- whether we realize it or not.
3. And some of those needs are unmet. They cause us difficulties and suffering and tension in our important relationships
4. Those unmet needs are part of being human in our fallen world.
5. How we choose to handle those attachment needs and integrity needs really determines how well our close relationships, especially our marriages go.
  1. How the husband chooses to address his attachment needs and integrity needs will have a huge impact on his relationship with his wife
  2. How the wife chooses to address her attachment needs and her integrity needs will have a huge impact on her relationship with her husband.
6. Meeting these attachment needs and integrity needs well is foundational, essential for you to have a psychologically sound, a solid marriage relationship.
7. Today, in episode 62 of Interior Integration for Catholics, released on April 5, 2021, the sixth in our subseries on sexuality in Catholic marriages
  1. And it is titled: Unmet Attachment Needs, Unmet Integrity Needs
    1. 1. we won't just lay out all the definitions of our terms
    2. what are attachment needs, Dr. Peter? 2. 1. What are integrity needs? 3.
      1. We're not just going to discuss how these needs impact the rest of the marriage relationship
      2. We're not just going to explore how sex in the Catholic marriage bed is impacted by these needs and our responses to them
      3. No, wait, there's much more
      4. We're going to also dive into how do you engage with these needs constructively -- how do we start on a course of action to really meet these needs. So stay with me until the end and you will get really specific recommendations for setting up a personalized program to have your personal set of attachment needs and integrity needs met.
      5. This is such an important area that we are going to spend some time on it, more than just this one podcast.
      6. I am Catholic psychologist Peter Malinoski, and I am bringing my 20 years of experience in the clinical trenches with real Catholics with real problems to bear on this question of attachment needs and integrity needs in this episode for you.
      7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach -- check us out at soulsandhearts.com
  2. Souls and Hearts is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor.
  3. Brief Review
    1. Each episode stand on its own, no need to review if you don't want to, if you're just jumping in here that's great
    2. I do review from time to time because reviewing helps with spiral learning, with retaining things
    3. And because this podcast is programmatic, episodes build on each other, we're not just doing little isolated soundbites of information, odd, assorted nuggets.
    4. This is meant to be a program in your Catholic human formation to help you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony in the natural realm
    5. So let's do a quick rewind here, just to catch you all up to date:
    6. [Insert review/rewind sound effect]
    7. I introduced the model of a Catholic Canopied Marriage Bed to represent the sexual life of a married Catholic couple in Episode 58.
    8. The Catholic Canopied Married Bed has these interrelated parts
  4. The floor -- A deep abiding trust in the Presence of God and His Providence -- we started here in episode 59
    1. 1. The four legs -- these four supports hold up the Catholic marriage bed.
    2. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems Approaches to understanding myself and my spouse
      1. Covered this conceptually in episodes 60 and again with a story of a Catholic couples' problems in a sexual relationship in episode 61. 2. Leg 3. Understanding my own and my spouse's attachment needs and integrity needs -- this is what we are focus on today.
      2. In Episode 57 we discussed how the one main psychological reason why Catholic marriages fail is our response and reactions to deep unmet needs 3. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation 4. Leg 1. the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation
        
        The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently
        
        The mattress Empathetic attunement
        
        Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance
        
        Bottom Sheet, the fitted sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion -- the eros
        
        Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses
        
        The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection
        
        Four Bedposts 1. Mindset 2. Heartset 3. Bodyset 4. Soulset
        
        The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse.
        
        The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.
        
        All of these elements work together. Dynamic model, which can change over time. 20.
      3. The Windup / the Hurdle -- What is our situation here?
8. [Definition time sound effect]: Definitions: We all have attachment needs and we all have integrity needs
  1. Hard to find good summaries of these needs, hard to find good definitions, so here are my definitions.
    1. 1. Attachment needs = The needs that a child has for a deep and enduring emotional and relational bond with a caregiver, usually a parent, who provides a felt sense of closeness, security, understanding, reassurance in times of trouble, for affection and warmth, and a sense that someone really is looking out for my best interests.
    2. 1. Integrity needs -- drawing from self-psychology here, Heinz Kohut = The needs a child has for a sense of identity has the following features:
    3. A separate existence from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate person 2. 1. Is bounded, has boundaries 3. 1. is stable over time and across different situations 4. 1. Self is regulated 5. 1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion 6. 1. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world 7. 1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions. 8. 4.
    4. 1. Conditions for Secure Attachment -- Daniel Brown and David Elliott -- 2016 Book Attachment Disturbances in Adults -- emphasizes the subjective experience
  2. A felt sense of safety and protection, deep sense of security felt in the bones
    1. Not just being safe, but feeling safe 2. 1. Failure of protection is harder to integrate into the life narrative, harder to make sense of that abuse. 3. 1. Need for protection is absolutely fundamental. 4. 1. Parents who are protective, but not overprotective -- overprotecting children actually leaves them vulnerable to all kinds of problems because of not being able to handle the experience of struggle, trials, and failures. 5.
      1. Feeling seen and known heard and understood -- felt attunement
    2. Not just being seen and known, heard or understood -- feeling it, experiencing it 2. 1. Parents having the not just the awareness, but the capacity to respond to the child in helpful ways, conveying that understanding. 3. 1. Example of Dad loves you, but he just doesn't know how to show it. Well, that's not enough. It's not enough that Dad has good intentions and understand his son, that understand and those intention have be manifested in real behaviors that are attuned to his son. 4. 1. Recognizing the child's immediate behavior, the child's state of mind, inner experience and the child's developmental capacities
      1. e.g. forcing two year olds to share. 2. 5.
        
        Felt comfort, reassurance
    3. Not just the actions, but it actually being soothing and helpful with emotional regulations, for example by calming fears 2. 1. As this is repeatedly provided by the parent, the child gradually develops the inner capacity to self-soothe. 3.
      1. Feeling valued, delighted in, cherished by the attachment figure
    4. Joy in who the child is, not what the child does -- "delighting in the child's very being." 2. 1. Parent believes in the child's goodness -- the child is precious, worth sacrificing for. 3.
      1. Felt support for the best self
    5. Felt sense that the parent wills and works toward the highest good for the child. 2. 1. Parent believes in the child, believes in the chi 3. 1. Frees the child to explore, experiment, discover, and experience both successes and failures. 4. 1. Donald Winnicott 1971 play is the medium for self-development -- the parent not needing the child to fit a particular mold or agenda to meet the parent's need or expectations. 5. 1. Bringing out the uniqueness, the individuality of the child, the child's interests, gifts and talents, 6. 1. Parent handles the self-assertion of the child, navigates that well so the two can be separate but near. 7. 6.
    6. 1. Conditions for Integrity
  3. All of the above. Each one of us needs help to develop our sense of self, our identity
    1. 1. I exist
    2. I am not dead. Extreme cases Cotard's syndrome -- walking corpse syndrome.
    3. Cutting behaviors -- seeing the blood flow proves I am alive.
    4. Feeling the pain proves I am alive.
    5. Sexual behaviors -- e.g. orgasm from masturbation
    6. Suicide as a way of seeking a pseudo integrity -- If I feel that I don't really exist, then perhaps I shouldn't exist. Fraud to go on living physically when I am psychological dead, emotionally dead, spiritually dead.
    7. Mass shootings -- a way of being noticed as existing. I am alive, I matter.
    8. Some people who don't struggle with existence issues often don't understand how these can be such a major problem for those who do struggle with them.
    9. 1. my existence is separate from others -- I exist in my own right, a separate personIs bounded, has boundaries
    10. Running away gestures or behaviors by children -- physical distancing -- hiding -- divorcing
      1. My identity is stable over time and across different situations -- there is a continuity
      2. I can regulate myself -- I have some self-control.
    11. We need help from others to learn to manage ourselves -- to internalize the control
      1. Is integrated -- coherent interconnections inside between aspects of experience -- self-cohesion
    12. Awareness of our parts 2. 1. Understanding of our parts -- we have been understood.
      1. Not enough to be understood by others
      2. I need to understand myself. 3.
      3. Is active, with agency, can effectively function in the world
    13. we've learned social norms and social graces 2. 1. We've developed talents, capabilities. 3.
      1. Is morally good -- ontologically or essentially good and thus has intrinsic value and worth, apart from others' opinions.
    14. Parts that are lepers, outcasts, unredeemable sinners, tax collectors.
      1. We also need to make good choices -- seek what is good, true and beautiful in life
    15. Seek and ye shall find 2. 1. We need to tolerate the suffering that goes with changing and growing.
      1. The Rose: November 1979 written by Amanda McBroom and sung by Bette Midler 3. 10.

It's the heart, afraid of breaking

That never learns to dance

It's the dream, afraid of waking

That never takes the chance

It's the one who won't be taken

Who cannot seem to give

And the soul, afraid of dying

That never learns to live

We need to change and grow, try new ways of being and acting.
The Vision -- here's where we start to bring everything together. We have attachment needs, we have integrity needs. We also have parts. Now we can lump along as we have been, same old limited understanding, same old patterns, same old results. But what if there were a way to bring these insights about needs and parts together, to understand ourselves and our parts in new ways?
1. Definition of parts: Discussed this at length in episodes 60 and 61. Parts: Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Each part also has an image of God and also its own approach to sexuality. Parts experience them differently
2. 1. Attachment needs and integrity needs are carried by our parts. Our parts carry our needs. This helps us to make so much sense out of our experience. For us to be able to recognize the parts within us and with others helps so much to bring clarity out of confusion, direction out of being lost.
  2. Because parts may be in awareness or out of awareness in any given moment, we may or may not be conscious of our attachment needs and integrity needs.
  3. Parts with their attachment needs and integrity needs may be activated as well, by external or internal factors.
  4. Parts are on a mission to have attachment needs and integrity needs met. It's the most important thing for them, often a life and death issue.
  5. So that means they will also try to get them met in our sexual relating -- you heard all about that in episode 61 with Jeff and Joanne and how their parts were working to get their needs met in their sexual encounter.
  6. And that can be a real problem, if those needs really are for a father and a mother.
  7. Idealized Parent Figure Protocol Brown and Elliott
  8. As Catholics, we don't just have our earthly father and mother. As Catholics, our earthly father and our earthly mother are secondary parents.
  9. Our primary parents are our spiritual parents -- God our Father and Mary our Mother.
3. 1. Only God can ultimately meet our attachment needs and our integrity needs
  2. St. Augustine in his Confessions, 398 AD, early 40s You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
  4. So how do we begin to address these deep unmet needs in a deliberate, reflective way.
    1. Make time. This is going to take time. Many people allocate exactly no time to their human formation. Some will make time for prayer and for the spiritual life, but they don't think about the psychological lives, their natural foundation.
  5. Can you find 15 minutes or even 10 or 5 minutes per day, at a consistent time to focus on your parts and on your attachment and integrity needs?
    1. If not, then you will need some personalized guidance -- therapist or close friend -- some type of individual personal relationship. 2. 1. Write down when that will be. 3. 1. Often before prayer 4. 1. I do it 7 times per day. 7 minutes. 5.
      2. Second, listen to the following reflection. Only about 6 minutes long 8 minutes long only about 10 minutes long, only about 12 minutes long. To help you get in touch with your needs. Take an inventory.
        
        We want to know what your needs are. Part-focus -- part by part
        
        Seek and ye shall find
        
        If that seems like too much, get support. Therapy.
    2. IFS therapist. IFS-Institute.com
    3. Free course on Souls and Hearts -- A Catholics guide to choosing a therapist.
      1. Share what you found with someone you trust. Make a list of who you might trust with such things reach out.
        
        No one to trust? Get a therapist.
      2. Reflect on your spouse's needs, or another loved one.
    4. Reflection
    5. Closing
4. Next episode will be all about human formation of the wife and the husband in marriage, with a focus on these attachment needs and integrity needs and how they are held by parts. We will have another example of how these play out in the sexual relationship. And we will start working toward understanding your spouse's parts and the attachment and integrity needs those parts hold.
5. 1. Trying out a new idea -- an individual conversation hour -- I promise you I will be on my cell phone from 4:30 to 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 13 to talk with any Interior Integration for Catholics podcast listener about our podcast episodes. Let's have a conversation. I want to be accessible. There is no need to email me beforehand or text me or anything like that, just drop in and meet with me by phone. I'm available. My cell is 317.567.9594. I like the phone or Zoom a lot better for relating than email or texts. Not phone therapy, but really a chance to get into a good conversation about the podcast. Your reactions, your feedback, whatever you want to talk about with regard to this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. And these conversations are private, I won't use anything from them in the podcast without your permission.
6. 1. It's hard to work on your parts without help -- cue the Resilient Catholic Community.
  2. If this discussion of parts resonates with you -- what would it be like to be working on your human formation, your human development as a Catholic with other Catholics who have the same goals? What would be like to form real relationships with other on the same path, to journey together?
  3. Get on the waiting list for the RCC -- go to soulsandheart.com/rcc to sign up -- there's no obligation to join, but you will get all kinds of cool free stuff.
  4. I have a special event just for people who are on the RCC waiting list
    1. Our people on the waiting list have been so patient, I am so appreciative, so for those of you on the waiting list, you are all invited to a Zoom meeting
    2. On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time
7. 1. Premium Podcasts each week for our Resilient Catholic community members and our Interior Therapist Community members where we go deeper.
9. Patronness and Patron

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Dr. Peter walks you through an example of how the parts of a Catholic husband and wife blend and take over, leading to fractured, fragmented sex that is ultimately disordered and unsatisfying.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God in the natural realm.
3. In this podcast, we confront the tough internal questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head-on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way and living out our vocations, including our vocation to Catholic marriage which necessarily brings in both sexuality and religion.
4. And we're dealing with sexuality and religion in this episode for two primary reasons: first to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time and
5. Second, to love you neighbor as yourself -- And who is your neighbor? If you are married, your first neighbor, your closest neighbor, the neighbor toward whom you have the most responsibilities is your spouse. Because of your marriage vows.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor.
8. We are celebrating our one year anniversary. First podcast launched March 20, 2020
  1. Success
    1. The majority of podcasts don't make it to 14 episodes 2. 1. Because of you
      1. Very niche audience 2. 1. This one has risen to top 10% based on downloads 3. 1. Tells me there is a hunger out there. 4. 3.
        
        Gratitude
        
        Appreciation
        
        Your support increases my motivation.
        
        This is episode 60, released on March 22, 2021
        
        And it is titled: How Well Do You Really Know Your Spouse?
        
        This is the 12th episode in our series on sexuality, the fourth in our subseries on sexuality in Catholic marriages
        
        Continuing with the model of a Catholic Canopied Marriage Bed to illuminate what happens sexually in Catholic marriages.
        
        Episode 58 -- I provided you with the model of a Catholic canopied marriage bed.
        
        Remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.
        
        The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence -- we started here in the last episode, episode 59
        
        The four legs
      2. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation 3. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation 4. 1. Leg 3. Understanding my own and my spouse's attachment needs and integrity needs 5. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems Approaches to understanding myself and my spouse
        
        We are really exploring this leg first, in this podcast episode. 2. 6. 7. The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently 8. The mattress Empathetic attunement 9. Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance 10. Bottom Sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion 11. Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses 12. The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection 13. Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA
      3. Mindset 14. 1. Heartset 15. 1. Bodyset 16. 1. Soulset 17. The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse. 18. The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world. 2. Review: So we've only just begun with this metaphor. Now starting in the next episode, we are going to walk step by step through all the elements of the Catholic marriage bed, through all the components of married Catholic sexual life. We're going to cover all the bases slowly and thoroughly so that all components, all the pieces become clear. 1. We will look at what each part of the Catholic marriage bed looks like when it is healthy as well as what can go wrong with each part of the bed. 2. Just as important, how all the pieces of the marriage bed, healthy or unhealthy are related to each other, how they interconnect and how those elements of Catholic Married sexual life can change over time.
        
        Over and over and over again, I have had Catholic couples in my office discussing their marital problems, their sexual problems.
        
        And over and over and over again, I come to the same conclusion -- Catholic couples who are married, 5, 15, 25, 40 years or more do not really know their spouses.
        
        They know a lot about their spouses
    2. biographical details 2. 1. They know a lot about behaviors their spouses do 3. But their internalized image of the spouse, their working model of the spouse is way off
    3. Very two dimensional 4. 1. Very simplistic 5. 1. Interpreted through our own filters and lenses 6. Lots of reasons for this and we'll get into them today.
      1. So this episode is titled What You Don't Know About Your Spouse Can Hurt Both of You.
      2. So get ready, prepare yourself for light bulbs to switch on and shine brightly as we explore new and much clearer ways of thinking about sexual life in Catholic marriages, grounded in the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church and informed by the best of psychology.
    4. The Windup / the Hurdle -- What is our situation here.
9. Five Bold claims:
  1. You don't really know your spouse.
    1. 1. Your spouse doesn't really know you.
    2. 1. Your Father doesn't or didn't really know your mother
    3. 1. Your mother doesn't or didn't really know your father
    4. 1. And you don't really know you. 6.
  2. 1. Not just talking about troubled marriages here. Not just talking about Catholic marriages in general. I'm also talking about those Catholic marriages that you admire.
  3. 1. In these days, very few people really deeply enter into the phenomenological world of anyone -- anyone else or even oneself.
  4. 1. Bold claims. Explain yourself, Dr. Peter. I don't know my wife?
  5. Not a nice thing to say
    1. 1. Not a comfortable thing to hear'
    2. 1. Maybe even a little insulting
    3. 1. Psalm 139:13-15 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
    4. 1. The Unconscious -- so much about ourselves that we don't understand
    5. 1. Old days of doing assessments -- 15 years, Taught it.
    6. Expert in psychological testing
    7. Fitness for duty assessments -- Air traffic controllers
    8. Some people coming in to really understand themselves better
    9. 1. Not understanding ourselves leads us to confusion and distortion in understanding others.
    10. 1. We don't understand ourselves because so much of us in unconscious, mysterious. 9.
  6. 1. Prove it, Dr. Peter
  7. One question:
    1. Used to ask it while having people looking at themselves in a full length mirror in my office.
    2. Instead of Dr. Malinoski, the seminarians of one diocese nicknamed me Dr. Malinoscopy.
    3. 1. Who is your Spouse?
    4. 1. Beloved child of God, cherished by God, your Heavenly Father, tenderly loved by your Mother Mary, part of Christ Himself in his Mystical Body, a partaker in God's divine nature?
    5. 1. We see these realities as through a veil -- I Corinthians 13:12 -- For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known.
    6. 1. I do not make the claim that I really know myself or my wife. I thought I did. I and I think I do better than most husbands know their wives, but that's not saying much. Just a relative measure, not an absolute measure. 6.
  8. 1. And this is a real problem
  9. Not knowing your spouse compromises your ability to love your spouse
    1. 1. Not knowing yourself compromises your ability to love yourself
    2. 1. Three elements of loving
    3. Benevolence -- willing the highest good for the other and being ready to sacrifice and suffer to bring about the other person's good 2. 1. Capacity to Love -- your ability to love
      1. Spiritual formation -- virtues 2. 1. Human formation
        
        Self-awareness 2. 1. Empathetic attunement 3. 1. Personal Development on the natural realm. 4. 1. This is what I focus on in this podcast. All about human formation. Shoring up the natural foundation for loving God and loving neighbors. 5. 3. 3. 1. Constancy -- not just one-off acts of charity, but holding a more and more consistent position of charity. Possessing the virtue of charity toward the spouse. 4.
        
        And where does this ignorance of your spouse most clearly make itself known? Where is the place where the lack of understanding between Catholic spouses most clearly revealed? Where does the lack of self-awareness of each spouse and the lack of empathetic attunement between spouse most clearly broadcast itself? Drumroll In the Catholic marriage bed. In the sexual relating of the spouses. That's where you see it most clearly revealed. 1. Quiet desperation -- often wives 2. Don't ask, don’t tell
      2. Unspoken bitterness, resentment 3. 1. Unmet needs, illusions 4. 1. Shame
        
        Body Shame 2. 1. Sense of unworthiness 5. 6. No frame of reference 7. Others miserable too. 8. Confusion 9. Settling -- as good as it gets. 5.
        
        The Vision
10. Old option, the old way -- keep on the way you are going.
  1. Keep understanding yourself and your spouse in the same way, keep acting in the same way, keep the same pattern and dynamics, it's not likely that things are going to change for the better
    1. 1. Pray about it -- God can work miracles, right? "O God, please help my sexual intimacy with my spouse improve…" That’s good.
    2. 1. But what if it's not enough -- what if God needs you to work on your sexual intimacy issues in the natural realm? He won't intrude and work magic or miracles if parts of you want to keep the status quo, if there are parts of you that are resisting changing. 4.
  2. 1. What if there were a new way to really understand both yourself and you better
  3. As a psychologist looked for ways to help married couples for the last two decades
    1. 1. Not just about relieving distress, but also about deepening the intimacy, deepening the relationship, including in the sexual realm
    2. 1. Not just as a psychologist, not just as a clinician, but also in my own marriage with Pam.
  4. 1. Introduction to Internal Family Systems
  5. Developed by Richard Schwartz
    1. 1. Discussion of Parts -- introduced parts in episode 49
    2. Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent emotions, body sensations, intentions, typical thoughts and beliefs, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view.
      1. How can we separate personalities within us. Dr. Peter, it sounds like you're saying that each of us has multiple personalities. You're not saying I have multiple personalities, are you? ]
        
        That's exactly what I'm saying. 2. 3. Parts are like the different characters inside Riley, the star of the animated Pixar film "Inside Out" -- remember that -- Anger (red), Sadness (blue), Joy (yellow), Disgust (green), Fear (purple)
        
        Remember how of those internal actors would take over the control panel within her and then she would act as if she were just that part of her? So when anger took over, she would get into conflict with her father? 4. So we can see a part as a distinct mode of operating -- prominent emotions, body sensations, intentions, typical thoughts and beliefs, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view.
        
        example husband comes home from demanding management job in human resources at the end of the day, all day dealing with employee problems, and he tired, worn out, no patience, feeling put upon by the children. Just wants peace and quiet and something to eat and to veg out.
        
        Wife says to herself "My husband is in his 6:00 funk again."
        
        That "funk" is a mode of operating.
        
        The husband has been taken over by part, we would say he is blended a part.
        
        That parts has a particular set emotions, body sensations, intentions, typical thoughts and beliefs, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view. Let's break it down.
        
        Emotions: Irritation, frustration, annoyance 5. 1. Body sensations: Tense shoulders, slight headache 6. 1. Belief: Relating with people is all about their problems and all about pressure from the executives about minimizing risk and liability. Relationships are draining, costly. 7. 1. Thought -- Wife wants to tell me about her day, which means telling me about all the problems with the kids and expecting me to help solve them. 8. 1. Intentions -- wanting to get away from people, rest, recover, try to recharge batteries. 9. 1. Desires: To eat and to have the house quiet 10. 1. Attitudes: Somebody owes me something for all that I do 11. 1. Impulses: To yell, to shut everybody up 12. 1. Interpersonal style: Grouchy, cold, non-communicative, avoidant 13. 1. World view: Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Bony fingers. Bony fingers. 14. 15. Husband is not always in that funk. Often, after supper, after vegging a while, he can reemerge and be much more pleasant and relational, in an entirely different mode of operating with the kids. 2. Let's say the wife, in a very human way blends with a part of her in reaction to her husband's 6:00 funk. 1. Emotions: She gets sad, sense of despair 2. Body sensations: Sinking feeling in her stomach, desire to curl up. 3. Belief: He doesn't really care about me. 4. Thought -- He's treating the kids too sternly, he's too inflexible. It's one thing for him to be unkind to me, but doesn't he see how hard he is on the kids? 5. Intentions: I want us to be a happy family together. 6. Desires: I want him to care for me and the kids. 7. Attitudes: Helplessness 8. Impulses: To give up, throw in the towel. 9. Interpersonal style: Very cautious, walking on eggshells, tightly controlling emotional expression toward the husband. 10. World view: It sucks to be married to him. He brings us all down. We just have to take it. 5. Goal in Internal Family Systems: Internal Integration. Parts coming to together under the leadership of the core self
        
        Orchestra model 2. 1. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas 3. 1. Three roles
      2. Exiles --
        
        most sensitive -- become injured or outraged. Threatens the system, external relationships
        
        Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
        
        Want care and love, rescue, redemption
        
        shame. Need for redemption 2. 1. Managers
        
        Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 2. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigiliance. 3. 1. Firefighters
        
        Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 4. 4. 1. Parts can take over the person
      3. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 2. 1. We call it blending. 3. 5. 1. Parts can have a different love languages -- Five different Love Languages -- Gary Chapman.
      4. Words of affirmation
      5. Quality Time
      6. Acts of Service
      7. Gifts
      8. Physical Touch 6. 1. Parts have different attachment styles, different ways of connecting. 7. 1. Parts have different histories of sexual experiences 8. 1. Parts have different reactions to sex and relationship issues 9. 1. Parts can shift abruptly. They can shift abruptly during sexual intimacy between spouses. 10. 1. I don't know ourselves when I don't know my parts.
      9. St. Paul in Romans 7:15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 11. 1. I don't know my spouse when I don't know his or her parts. 12. 1. So many parts are hidden. Consider themselves or are considered by other parts to be unacceptable, unlovable, unworthy, dangerous, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever. 13.
        
        IFS on the Self -- (recorded)
    3. Self defined as the seat of consciousness 2. 1. Self can be occluded or overwhelmed by parts 3. 1. When self accepts and loves parts, those parts transform back into who they were meant to be 4. 1. Self-led mind is self-righting. 5. 1. self -- Active inner leader -- more than mindfulness 6. 1. Parts find the relationship with the self very reassuring
      1. But to reap the benefits they have to unblend from and notice the self 2. 1. This is frightening can challenging to parts 3. 1. Agency in the parts -- parts are making decisions about unblending in IFS model 7. 1. Intrinsic qualities of the self
      2. Curiosity 2. 1. Compassion 3. 1. Calm 4. 1. Confidence 5. 1. Courage 6. 1. Clarity 7. 1. Creativity 8. 1. Connectedness 9. 1. Kindness 8. 1. The self can be easily occluded, obscured, hidden by protective parts who take over in response to fear, anger or shame
      3. General state for most people is to be quite blended 2. 1. Leads to self-absorption 9. 1. Goal is to have the core self be governing our parts during our relational and sexual intimacy, to have that recollection in the natural realm. 10. 4.
      5. The Fine Print / Action Plan
11. We will continue to work through sexual intimacy topics in this podcast -- see if your spouse will join you. If your spouse has joined you, let me know! I want to hear it -- crisis@soulsandhearts.com, text me at 317.567.9594.
12. 1. Continue to identify your parts -- do you have a part that's like the 6:00 funk part from our example today? What are your typical, identifiable modes of operating? Write them down. The next step is to start identifying the ones that are active when you are sexually intimate. Keep drawing your bed and labeling it or use a picture of a canopied marriage bed. You don't have to be a great artist -- but start drawing your own marriage bed, with your own insights, you own realizations.
13. 1. Next episode will be all about illustrating how parts become active in sexual intimacy between partners -- we're going to go through examples of how that plays out to help you really grip on to the concepts.
14. 1. More help: Alison Cook, Kimberly Miller "Boundaries for Your Soul"
  2. Known Alison and Kimberly for years now in Christian IFS circles, beloved colleagues
    1. 1. First and only book I've ever reviewed on Amazon
  3. 1. Jenna Riemersma "Altogether You" IFS grounded in a Christian Anthropology, wants that integration of IFS with Christianity.
  4. Met Jenna earlier this month, in a meeting together
    1. Really wants to promote IFS 2. After meeting her, more excited to read her new book, came out late last year 3. Resource page https://jennariemersma.com/
    2. 1. Tammy Sollenberger: The One Inside: An Internal Family Systems (IFS) podcas‪t -- comes out weekly on Fridays. Got to meet Tammy earlier this month as well. 1. Really committed to getting the basics of IFS across, making IFS more accessible to the general public, breaking down the concepts to make them easier to understand.
    3. 1. Jay Earley's books -- more than a dozen books. https://personal-growth-programs.com/
    4. 1. But it's hard to work on your parts without help -- cue the Resilient Catholic Community. 1. If this discussion of parts resonates with you -- what would it be like to be working on your human formation, your human development as a Catholic with other Catholics who have the same goals? What would be like to form real relationships with other on the same path, to journey together? 2. Get on the waiting list for the RCC -- go to soulsandheart.com/rcc to sign up -- there's no obligation to join, but you will get all kinds of cool free stuff. 3. I have a special event just for people who are on the RCC waiting list
    5. Our people on the waiting list have been so patient, I am so appreciative, so for those of you on the waiting list, you are all invited to a Zoom meeting
    6. On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time
      1. I will make a brief presentation about Catholicism, Sexuality and Parts 3. 1. Then We will have an "Ask me anything" section to field your questions or comments and have a great discussion 4. 1. Then I will discuss the Resilient Catholics Community -- the RCC focus on human formation, the monthly themes for the RCC, the membership benefits, our office hours, the weekly premium podcast exclusively for RCC members, our private app with discussion boards, subscription rates 5. 1. Then we'll discuss what you are looking for in an online community and answer questions about the RCC community 6. 1. You can also send me questions via email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or via my cell at 317.567.9594 4. For current RCC members -- we have a premium episode coming out on Tuesday, March 23, 2021 IIC 60A Getting to Know the Parts Who Take Over During Sex
      2. Catholic therapists who listen -- a community just for you. reopening the Interior Therapist Community. Landing page soulsandhearts.com/itc 1. Unique opportunities to work on your formation as a therapist, and your formation as a human being. As therapists, we often have parts that focus so much on other people, caring for others that there can be significant neglect of our own parts, our own systems, our own integration. The Interior Therapist Community helps with that. 2. Two slots open for Catholic Therapists in our Foundations Experiential Groups. Go to soulsandhearts.com/itc to find out more. 3. IIC 60T What is Holding Me Back From More Deeply Understanding My Clients' Sexual Lives?
      3. Subscribing to this podcast -- Spotify, Apple Podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
      4. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
      5. IIC 60A Getting to Know the Parts Who Take Over During Sex
      6. IIC 60T What is Holding Me Back From More Deeply Understanding My Clients' Sexual Lives?
      7. Blurb for Transistor: Dr. Peter ask you how well you know yourself and how well you know your spouse. He offers an Internal Family Systems approach to understanding both the multiplicity and the unity within us as we continue this series on sexuality and Catholic marriage.
      8. Patronness and Patron

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God in the natural realm.
3. In this podcast, we confront the tough internal questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head-on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way and living out our vocations, including our vocation to Catholic marriage which necessarily brings in both sexuality and religion.
4. And we're dealing with sexuality and religion in this episode for two primary reasons: first to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time and
5. Second, to love you neighbor as yourself -- And who is your neighbor? If you are married, your first neighbor, your closest neighbor, the neighbor toward whom you have the most responsibilities is your spouse. Because of your marriage vows.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 59, released on March 15, 2021
9. This is the 11th episode in our series on sexuality the second in our subseries on Catholic marriages
10. Now we are zeroing in on sexuality within Catholic marriages and we're going diagnose some extremely common relational problems between Catholic spouses that get expressed through how they relate sexually.
11. So this episode is titled Mystery, Covenant, Vocation, and Being "Submissive" in the Marriage Bed. So get ready, prepare yourself for light bulbs to switch on and shine brightly as we explore new and much clearer ways of thinking about sexual life in Catholic marriages, grounded in the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church and informed by the best of psychology.
12. I'm doing this subseries on sexuality within Catholic marriage because I want you to have ways out of the sexual traps that so many Catholic married couple find themselves in, the negative cycles, the problematic repeating patterns that are so frustrating, that cause so much conflict and that harm people, even Catholic spouses who want to do the right thing.
13. And even if you're not trapped, your marriage is sound, love is growing -- there is going to be so much in these episodes to deepen the understanding, the awareness, the empathy, the commitment, and the love.
The lay of the land
1. Podcast oriented toward Catholic serious about the faith
2. 1. But we are imperfect. We forget who we are -- we forget that we are beloved children of God when we get blended with parts of us that are overcome with the intensity of emotions, passions
3. 1. And Marriage is a huge challenge. Catholic Scripture Scholar Peter Williamson: Catholic Commentary on the Sacred Scriptures Ephesians Baker Academic p. 154 "Probably no element of human life arouses more longing and hope for happiness, yet yields as much pain and disappointment as marriage."
4. 1. Conscious or unconscious assumptions:
  2. Sex is dirty. God doesn't want us to have sex.
    1. 1. But sex is also necessary
    2. I'm married 2. 1. Procreation: Be fruitful and multiply 3.
    3. 1. Shame. Episode 49
  3. Shame is at the center -- hard to talk about this because it is so personal and so intimate, and often so bound up with shame.
    1. Sexuality not talked about, not discussed
    2. Sexuality part and parcel of our bodies, all about our bodies
    3. Catholics who are serious about their faith often have a propensity to start with self-judgement and self-condemnation, like at the end of a trial, without really understanding themselves well.
      1. Internal self-shaming 4. And all of this makes sense, makes sense, because almost all of us Catholic adults have sinned sexually. 5. So many unmet needs and coded messages being expressed through sexuality -- can seem like a minefield 6. Often leads to avoiding God 7. Model of suppression and condemnation. Out of conscious awareness, then it doesn't exist any more 8. Lots of bad advice out there.
        
        So we try to go it alone and often that means without God
      3. Anthropological basis
5. All practices of psychology are grounded in an anthropology
  1. Philosophy
    1. 1. Theology
    2. 1. Epistemology
    3. 1. Metaphysics
    4. 1. Logic
  2. 1. Feminist Psychology
  3. 1. This episode -- more spiritual foundation. I want you to understand where I am coming from.
  4. 1. Fundamental Need to Grip on to Romans 8:28
  5. High stakes table
    1. 1. Pain and disappointment
    2. Wanting spouse to be God -- Unmet needs, episode 57 2. 1. The Vision -- Considering Parts in Marriage
      1. The real reasons why Catholic Sacramental Marriages Fail
        
        Parts with unmet attachment needs. Deep relational needs, often unconscious 2. 1. Attachment needs -- held by parts
        
        Seen, Heard, Known, Understood 2. 1. Safety, Security 3. 1. Comforted, Soothed Reassured 4. 1. Cherished, Rejoiced in, Delighted in 5. 1. Willing the highest good 3. 1. Leads to self-absorption
        
        Definition of self-absorption -- preoccupied with oneself or one’s own affairs, sometimes to the point of excluding others or the outside world.” 2. 1. Needs for God not being met 3. 1. Makes sense that people look for these needs to be met in marriage
        
        Marriage as the "last great hope" 2. 1. Puts tremendous pressure on the marriage 3. 1. Leads to utterly unrealistic expectations for the marriage -- spouse can't do anything right 4. 1. Wanting the Spouse to be God. 5. 4. 1. Parts taking over
        
        It's parts of us that are angry, disappointed, disillusioned that want to give up on marriages and give up on God. 2. 1. It's parts of us that 3. 5. 2. 3. 3.
        
        Last episode The Catholic marriage bed -- an image, a metaphor to represent the shared sexual life in a sacramental Catholic marriage
6. This is for you visual learners out there -- podcasts are great for auditory learners. If you are more of a visual learner, using your imagination to visualize this Catholic bed metaphor may be really helpful to you.
7. 1. Not going to review all the parts of the bed.
8. 1. The floor -- Starting from the floor up -- The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence -- really focusing on this today.
  2. Most spiritually focused episode in this series.
10. Let's really understand the Catholic Sacramental Marriage Context, the relational context between husband, wife and God in which married sexual love is expressed. What is that foundation?
11. Three words -- three strands woven in one rope: Covenant, Mystery and Vocation -- 1601, 1602, 1603 drawn from Catholic Theologian Ina Siviglia in her 2019 commentary on the CCC CCC with Theological Commentary, Abp Rino Fisichella, OSV ISBN 978-1-68192-274-4
12. Marriage as a theme from Genesis to Revelation (Marriage supper of the Lamb -- Rev. 19:7-9)
  1. Ina Siviglia: There is nothing more expressive, mothing more joyful or gratifying in human experience, than passional love between a man and a woman. 2.
  3. The Matrimonial Covenant CCC 1601
13. CCC 1601: The Matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.
14. 1. Not just a social or civic contract -- a partnership of the whole of life. Not just some of life, not just most of life, not just almost all of life -- but the whole of life
  2. Faith journey of two people -- united by the sacrament, by the covenant. It's more of a beginning than an achievement.
    1. 1. Unconditional offer of self -- the whole of my life.
    2. Vows: No requirement of reciprocity or mutuality. 2. 1. I, Peter, take you, Pamela, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. 3. 1. No caveats 3.
    3. 1. Marriage as covenant evokes the mutual commitment between God and the people of Israel. 1. Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch -- Ignatius Study Bible: Marriage is an earthly image of the heavenly union between Christ and the Church. 2. Abraham: You will be my people and I will be your God.
    4. 1. Mutual Subordination:
  3. We confront the difficult stuff. Ephesians 5:21-33
    1. NASB: 2. 2.

and subject yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ. 22 Wives, subject yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church [q]in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are parts of His body. 31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, as for you individually, each husband is to love his own wife the same as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

RSVCE: 21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church; 33 however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Reliance on Peter Williamson: Catholic Commentary on the Sacred Scriptures Ephesians Baker Academic
Emphasis on vs. 21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
The Greek word hypotasso =
1. "to place or arrange under."
2. Submit oneself to
3. Defer to
4. Subordination is free and voluntary -- not under compulsion. Charity can never be. Not passive, but actively willed.
5. Each Christian is to subordinate himself or herself to others. Everybody seeking to serve each other, give of self to each other.
  1. Galatians 5:13 serve one another through love.
  2. Deferring to others, with humility and love, not seek one's own self-interest or pleasure.
  3. Mutual submission in marriage was a radical new idea.
  4. Subordinate yourselves -- not obey (as in children). Preserves the autonomy and freedom of conscience of the spouses.
Wives be subject to your husbands
1. Vs. 24 As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
2. In Everything is understood as a statement of principle. Not some universal absolute norm that allows no exception when husbands are asking for something that violates faith, morals, or the dignity of the wife.
3. Casti Connubii On Human Marriage:
  1. 1. This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.
Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and everywhere be maintained intact.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.
1. How did he give himself up -- crucifixion.
2. Agape: the great love -- this is a willed love -- and it does not require that the other person be worthy of the love, it doesn't require that the love be mutual or reciprocal, I'll love you if you love me, none of that.
  1. Doesn't require that the other person love me back
  2. Demands the entirety of the person -- not loving just with the will, disconnected from the rest of me.
  3. Williamson's paraphrase: Husbands, set your hearts on your wives; prize them, cherish them, care for them. Be affectionate toward them and seek their good.
    1. All of the husband -- mindset and soulset, heartset and bodyset.
  4. Christ, out of love, out of agape, voluntarily surrendered himself to die on the cross. That kind of love. That kind of sacrifice.
    1. Seek the good of your wives regardless of the cost to you.
    2. Symphony of good -- not violating.
Saint John Paul II TOB from August 11, 1982: The essence of a love of a husband is to lay down his life for his bride. This kind of love excludes every kind of submission by which the wife would become a servant or slave of the husband, an object of one-sided submission. Love makes the husband simultaneously subject to the wife and subject in this to the Lord himself, as the wife is to the husband.
Mt 20:25-27 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave;
Mystery
1. CCC 1602: Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.
  1. From Siviglia
    1. Something hidden and obscure 2. 1. A visible reality that points to an invisible reality, as in the case of sacraments 3. 1. Pauline sense: The plan of God, the economy of salvation, hidden in time but revealed in history. 4.
    2. 1. Deemphasis on Mystery in our culture. If I don't understand it, it's not real.
    3. 1. Mystery in Marriage is what is partly veiled and partly seen by the Eyes of Faith
    4. 1. Perspective of Eternity
    5. 1. Importance of Humility, Awe, Wonder -- let the little children come to me
  2. Humility -- we don't see all things in a mystery
    1. Isaiah 55:8-9 2. 2.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Opposite -- reaching for omniscience -- I know what he's about.
Awe and Wonder
St. Thomas Aquinas: By sharing in God's life, we start to see and evaluate everything as if through His eyes.
1. Faith is a sharing in God's perspective, his vision for us.
2. We need to conform our ways to His ways, because they are best for us and that's not obvious to us, as long as we are unenlightened by faith.
Romans 8:28 All is grace. All is linked to Grace
Vision of eternity -- this life just as preamble
Vocation
1. CCC 1603: The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution…
2. 1. Singly and Together
  2. Singly
    1. No loss of identity 2. 1. Sometimes it has to be singly -- abandonment 3. 1. Even in good moments it has to be singly. Spouse not participating 2.
    2. 1. Efficacy of the Sacrament of Matrimony depends on the dispositions of the spouses in the marriage. We need to be open to those graces. 1. Waterfall in a thimble, teacup. Pitcher, bucket, swimming pool, ocean 2. We need faith 3. We need obedience 4. We need to live in a state of grace
    3. 1. Mgsr. Vernon Johnson: Though we would strenuously deny it if charged with it, we do in fact behave as if God himself had been taken off his guard by the Fall, as if he had not quite got the situation in hand. To be more than resigned, to embrace the Cross with joy, we must see it not as an emergency measure, but as part of the eternal rhythm of the invincible will of the Father, who ordains all things, even the most minute and insignificant, with fatherly love. p. 148. Spiritual Childhood: The Spirituality of St. Therese of Lisieux 1961. Ignatius Press.
    4. 1. Husband symbolizes Christ, and wife symbolizes the Church
    6. Needs:
3. Forgiveness
4. 1. Reconciliation
5. 1. Starting over
6. 1. Humility
7. 1. Being Small and Childlike -- Episode 30
8. 1. Trusting in God's Providence, not necessarily the spouse
9. 1. Denying self -- meeting spouses needs meets our needs. No conflict.
  2. Catholic marriage has been found difficult and not tried.
    1. 1. Attitudes 3.
  4. When it's bad
10. Separation, Divorce, Domestic Abuse, Addictions, sexual compulsions. Affairs, etc.
12. Action Plan
13. How present is God
  1. Prayer -- Listening for responses.
    1. 1. Inviting God into the Bedroom
    2. The challenge of a Sexual Problem is a gift from God. Not necessarily the problem itself, especially if its sinful. But the challenge.
  2. How is this a gift.
  3. Makes no sense from a purely human point of view DSM-5 16 Sexual Dysfunction and Paraphilic Disorders.
    1. Attitudes toward suffering in your marriage.
  4. Brief Exercise
  5. Action Plan --
    1. See if your spouse would be willing to listen to this episode and the upcoming ones with you. These episodes can be a real conversation starter -- don't just assume your spouse won't be interested -- pray about it and let grace work as well. If you don't have a spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancée -- all of those would work as well. W
    2. Keep drawing your bed and labeling it or use a picture of a canopied marriage bed. You don't have to be a great artist -- but start drawing your own marriage bed, with your own insights, you own realizations.
  6. Start it in pencil and over the next several episodes gradually fill it in as we work our way through all the parts of the Catholic Marriage Bed.
    2. If you are not in the Resilient Catholics Community, Get on the waiting list for the RCC -- go to soulsandheart.com/rcc to sign up -- there's no obligation to join, but you will get all kinds of cool free stuff. For example, -- I will email you the line drawing of the canopy bed on Friday, March 12 along with another free gift. Really want people to start signing up for the waitlist, I am so excited about the reopening of our Resilient Catholic community, which we are planning in June.
    3. Speaking of the RCC waiting list, I have a special event just for people who are on the waiting list
  7. Our people on the waiting list have been so patient, I am so appreciative, so for those of you on the waiting list, you are all invited to a Zoom meeting
  8. On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time
    1. I will make a brief presentation about Catholicism, Sexuality and Parts 3. 1. Then We will have an "Ask me anything" section to field your questions or comments and have a great discussion 4. 1. Then I will discuss the Resilient Catholics Community -- the RCC focus on human formation, the monthly themes for the RCC, the membership benefits, our office hours, the weekly premium podcast exclusively for RCC members, our private app with discussion boards, subscription rates 5. 1. Then we'll discuss what you are looking for in an online community and answer questions about the RCC community 6. 1. You can also send me questions via email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or via my cell at 317.567.9594, 7. So if you love this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast and you're not yet part of the Resilient Catholics Community, join with so many others from around the world like you that also love this podcast. The RCC is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission. So get on the waiting list at soulsandhearts.com/rcc or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and I'll help you out.
      1. For current RCC members -- we have a premium podcast coming out on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 on Inviting God to my Bedroom -- how my parts react bringing God in to my sexual life.
      2. Catholic therapists who listen -- a community just for you. reopening the ITC. Landing page soulsandhearts.com/itc Reopened. Really excited. Human formation of therapist.
        
        IIC 59T Working with client's parts around sexuality and God images 6 Fs -- March 16.
      3. Subscribing to this podcast -- Spotify, Apple Podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
      4. Next week, in Episode 60, we are going to start with the legs -- attachment theory and IFS --
      5. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
      6. Marketing Plan -- designing and executing. Want a listener
      7. Rachel's Practice
      8. Listing the top 10 countries US (Indiana, California, Washington State, Texas and Florida) , Canada (Ontario and BC), Australia (New South Wales, Victoria), UK, Ireland, Lithuania, Croatia, Mexico, Spain, and the Ivory Coast
      9. Patroness and Patron.
    2. IIC 59A Inviting God in the Bedroom.
    3. IIC 59T Working with client's parts around sexuality and God images 6 Fs
14. Sex and God issues are often very prominent in Fears.
15. 1. Parts of me uncomfortable about knowing what clients' parts feel about sex and God.
17. Blurb for Transistor: Join Dr. Peter as he describes the how Covenant, Mystery, and Vocation are to undergird our sexual lives as Catholics, and how these three are strands in one continuity of Catholic marriage. We also take on St. Paul's admonitions, "Wives, be subject to your husbands" and "Husbands, love your wives" and begin to look at what those mean for sexuality in Catholic marriage.
18. Patronness and Patron

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. Often said that if you want to start an argument, bring up sex, politics or religion. Those are the tried and true, sure-fire ways to stoke disagreement among people.
3. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God -- so we're going to leave the politics and social justice questions and societal reform efforts and climate change and all those big-picture, macro-level, externally-focused topics out of our conversation, so that leaves us with sex and religion. And we're going to take on both of them together because
4. In this podcast, we confront the tough internal questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head-on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way and living out our vocations, including our vocation to Catholic marriage which necessarily brings in both sexuality and religion.
5. And we're dealing with sexuality and religion in this episode for two primary reasons: first to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time and
6. Second, to love you neighbor as yourself -- And who is your neighbor? If you are married, your first neighbor, your closest neighbor, the neighbor toward whom you have the most responsibilities is your spouse. Because of your marriage vows.

I, Roger, take you, Sarah, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
This is episode 58, released on March 8, 2021
This is the tenth episode in our series on sexuality the second in our subseries on Catholic marriages
Way back in episode 50, the second one in this series on sexuality, we explored what a healthy, ordered, fully Catholic sexuality looks like.
Now we are zeroing in on sexuality within Catholic marriages and we're going diagnose some extremely common relational problems between Catholic spouses that get expressed through how they relate sexually.
So this episode is titled The Catholic Marriage Bed. The Catholic Marriage Bed.
So get ready, prepare yourself for light bulbs to switch on and shine brightly as we explore new and much clearer ways of thinking about sexual life in Catholic marriages, grounded in the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church and informed by the best of psychology.
I'm doing this subseries on sexuality within Catholic marriage because I want you to have ways out of the sexual traps that so many Catholic married couple find themselves in, the negative cycles, the problematic repeating patterns that are so frustrating, that cause so much conflict and that harm people, even Catholic spouses who want to do the right thing.
And even if you're not trapped, your marriage is sound, love is growing -- there is going to be so much in these episodes to deepen the understanding, the awareness, the empathy, the commitment, and the love.
So we are discussing the marriage bed. I'm using the image of a canopy bed to illustrate all the psychological and relational aspects in the natural realm that go into a vibrant, life-giving Catholic married sexuality. We're going to be painting a word picture, a conceptual diagram of a canopy bed, with all the pieces of that bed named, labels and defined, and show how all the parts of the bed are essential to a grounded, peaceful, harmonious shared sexual life in Catholic marriage.
But first let's review the Lay of the Land, the Current Situation
1. We are going to start with a broad overview here. Key Words: Confusion. Lot of confusion about sexuality in our culture today
  1. Wider array of generally socially accepted sexual practices in our land than has ever existed before.
    1. Internet has provided a forum to bring together people who practice all kinds of
    2. 1. Greater amount of disagreement about what healthy sexual life looks like
    3. 1. Moving away from natural law
    4. 1. Things that were obvious even 20 years ago, even 10 years are not being questioned
    5. Can a man become a woman? -- now an open question being debated in our society 2. 1. Can two men and a woman all be in the same marriage? Can a woman marry a dolphin? In 2006, British millionaire Sharon Tendler married a dolphin named Cinderella, at the Eilat Reef. 5.
    6. 1. Lot of Confusion about what a healthy, ordered Catholic Sexuality should look like -- reviewed this in episode 50
  2. Opinions: Survey data -- wide variety of opinions on sexual morality
    1. Pew 2014 Survey of more than 7200 Catholics, 57% Favor or Strongly Favor Same-sex Marriages 2. 1. Pew 2016 survey of 817 Catholics only 8% of Catholics believe using contraception is morally wrong. 41% believe its morally acceptable and 48% believe it's not a moral issue. 3. 1. Pew 2019 Survey of 675 adult Catholics -- 62% of Catholic said that casual sex between consenting adults who are not in a committed relationship is always or sometimes acceptable. Only 22% of Catholics said consensual casual sex never acceptable. 4.
      1. Wide Diversity of Sexual practices among Catholics
    2. Hard to find solid, recent data on this. Talking to people you find out things. 2. 1. What about oral sex, role-play sex, mutual masturbation, viewing pornography together, using sex toys together, and going beyond into anal sex, fetishes of various kinds, bondage and the list goes on and on. 3. 1. Global sex toy market -- $34 billion $4.50 for every man woman and child. Tens of billions, estimates ranging up to $100 billion per year for porn. 4.
      1. But much more personally, for many Catholic spouses their sexual experiences in marriage are a great source of distress, pain, confusion
    3. Internal conflicts about what is morally right and wrong
    4. Disagreements about sexual practices between Catholic spouses -- limited conflict resolutions'
    5. Inability for Catholic spouses to communicate about intimate sexual matters
    6. Feeling devalued in the sexual aspects of the marital relationship
    7. Feeling used sexually, exploited, neglected.
    8. High levels of dissatisfaction in the sexual relationship and intimacy more generally
    9. Not feeling seen, known, heard, understood, accepted as a person
    10. Not feeling safe and secure, not feeling protected in the sexual relationship
    11. Lacking anyone that can provide reassurance or a comforting word -- isolation and alienation
    12. Not feeling cherished, treasured,
    13. Lots of silent grief -- loss -- women
    14. Lots of anger, bitterness, resentment -- men -- often anger is a way to protect against the same kinds of grief and loss that women feel more directly.
    15. Shame -- episodes 37-49
    16. Unmet needs driving behaviors, sometimes in a desperate way 4.
    17. 1. We are going to cut through this confusion. We're bringing light into the marital bedroom.
    19. The marriage bed -- an image, a metaphor to represent the shared sexual life in a sacramental Catholic marriage
2. This is for you visual learners out there -- podcasts are great for auditory learners. If you are more of a visual learner, using your imagination to visualize this Catholic bed metaphor may be really helpful to you.
3. 1. Overview of the parts -- This is just an overview, we will be going into much greater depth about all of these elements in the next few episode.
  2. So what do we have in a marriage bed, a canopy bed? We have:
    1. The floor 2. 1. The four legs 3. 1. The frame and the box spring 4. 1. The mattress 5. 1. Bottom Sheet 6. 1. Top Sheet 7. 1. Two pillows 8. 1. The blankets 9. 1. Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA 10. 1. The canopy and the curtains -- this is a very fancy bed. 11. 1. The sham, the bedspread, and the bed skirt
    2. 1. Description of each part of the bed -- symbolism of each part, what each part represents. 1. Starting from the floor up -- The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence 2. Four legs -- now more in the natural realm
    3. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation, his psychological health, his emotional wellbeing -- removing the beam from his own eye 3. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation, her own psychological health, her own emotional wellbeing -- her taking on her own personal responsibility for her natural life 4. 1. Leg 3. Attachment theory -- Attachment theory is really important because it addresses ways to really address the unmet psychological, relational, and emotional needs that we discussed in the last episode, episode 57 as The One Main Psychological Reason Why Catholic Marriages Fail. 5. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems approaches -- really understanding how the human person is both a unity and a multiplicity -- like we have One God in Three Persons, each of us is also one, but with many parts. 6. 7. The Frame and the Box Spring -- this holds the whole bed together and it represents the firm commitment between the husband and the wife, the upholding of the marriage vows, I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
    4. It's the charity. Willing the highest good for one another 8. The Mattress -- Empathetic attunement -- really knowing the spouse, really being able to enter into the phenomenological world of the spouse 9. Bottom sheet -- sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion 10. Top Sheet -- communication between the Catholic spouses. 11. Two Pillows -- Acceptance of who the husband is right now -- Acceptance of who the wife is right now. Self-acceptance and Spouse acceptance 12. The blankets -- human warmth, emotional connection 13. Four bedposts -- intertwined spirals, like a double helix -- The four sets, the four pillars of resilience , that I introduced to you in this podcast almost a year ago, in March of 2020 in Episode 4.
    5. Mindset is essentially a frame of mind. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we apply reason to our situation and our experiences.
    6. Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart. Heartset is essential our emotional state and the positions we take because of our feelings.
    7. Bodyset how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations. We are embodied beings, body and soul composites. Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us. So our bodyset is the impact of our bodily states on us. For example, if we are exhausted from a lack of sleep – that has an impact on us.
    8. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul. It is the disposition of our spirit, or how our souls is oriented. Our attitude of soul. It can operate independently of mindset and heartset. Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us. 14. The Canopy and the curtains, which cover the bed
    9. this can be out of privacy and modesty, protecting the intimacy of the married sexual love 15. 1. Or it can also be a way for one spouse to imprison the other in silence, hiddenness and unhealthy secrecy -- we will discuss the difference 16. 17. The Shams, the bedspread and the bed skirts -- these cover up the bed, give a favorable and even a false impression to the world of what the bed is like, keep the real bed under wraps, as it were.
    11. Review the bed -- remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.
      1. The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence
      2. The four legs
  3. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation
    1. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation
    2. 1. Leg 3. Attachment theory
    3. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems
    5. The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently
    6. The mattress Empathetic attunement
    7. Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance
    8. Bottom Sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion
    9. Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses
    10. The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection
    11. Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA
  4. Mindset
    1. 1. Heartset
    2. 1. Bodyset
    3. 1. Soulset
    4. The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse.
    5. The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.
  5. Review: So we've only just begun with this metaphor. Now starting in the next episode, we are going to walk step by step through all the elements of the Catholic marriage bed, through all the components of married Catholic sexual life. We're going to cover all the bases slowly and thoroughly so that all components, all the pieces become clear.
    1. We will look at what each part of the Catholic marriage bed looks like when it is healthy as well as what can go wrong with each part of the bed.
    2. Just as important, how all the pieces of the marriage bed, healthy or unhealthy are related to each other, how they interconnect and how those elements of Catholic Married sexual life can change over time.
    3. Let me give you an example.
    4. Remember the Bedframe and Box spring? Let's say that in our hypothetical situation, both spouses remain committed to the marriage -- neither spouse has significant intentions to divorce the other and there is desire for the relationship to work out. But…
    5. Remember, Legs 1 -- the Husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation -- and Leg 2 -- the Wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation?
    6. What if one of the spouses, let's just say the wife -- doesn't seem willing to work on her interior integration, she seems to be ignoring her "stuff" not putting the effort into healing and growing on the natural level? Then what?
  6. First off, there's a critical words here -- "seems" She seems to be unwilling. That could just be appearances.
  7. But let's say for the sake of argument that it's true -- the wife is really dominated by parts that are entrenched in a defensive protective positions and they are not letting anyone in at this time. OK.
  8. You then have for the moment a three-legged bed. Not as stable as a four-legged bed, but still workable, there is a lot of hope for this situation over time. And we will discuss how.
    1. So we are not just discussing each of the parts of the Catholic marriage bed in detail, each of the components of Catholic married sexual life, we're not just discussing the function of each part of the bed, we're also discussing how all the parts of the bed work together -- this is what's called a dynamic model.
  9. Dynamic models are models that include an element of time, especially allowing for how interactions between the different parts of the model change over time. 8.
  10. Action Plan -- start drawing your bed. You don't have to be a great artist -- but start drawing your own marriage bed, with your own insights, you own realizations.
4. Start it in pencil and over the next several episodes gradually fill it in as we work our way through all the parts of the Catholic Marriage Bed.
5. 1. See if your spouse would be willing to listen to this episode and the upcoming ones with you. These episodes can be a real conversation starter -- don't just assume your spouse won't be interested -- pray about it and let grace work as well. If you don't have a spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancée -- all of those would work as well. Widows and widowers, this also works as a retrospective. You can also use it to evaluate your parents' marriage.
6. 1. If you are in the Resilient Catholics Community, I will post a line drawing of a canopy bed in our app that you can download and print off
7. 1. If you are not in the Resilient Catholics Community, Get on the waiting list for the RCC -- go to soulsandheart.com/rcc to sign up -- there's no obligation to join, but you will get all kinds of cool free stuff. For example, -- I will email you the line drawing of the canopy bed on Friday, March 12 along with another free gift. Really want people to start signing up for the waitlist, I am so excited about the reopening of our Resilient Catholic community, which we are planning in June.
8. 1. Speaking of the RCC waiting list, I have a special event just for people who are on the waiting list
  2. Our people on the waiting list have been so patient, I am so appreciative, so for those of you on the waiting list, you are all invited to a Zoom meeting
  3. On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time
    1. I will make a brief presentation about Catholicism, Sexuality and Parts 3. 1. Then We will have an "Ask me anything" section to field your questions or comments and have a great discussion 4. 1. Then I will discuss the Resilient Catholics Community -- the RCC focus on human formation, the monthly themes for the RCC, the membership benefits, our office hours, the weekly premium podcast exclusively for RCC members, our private app with discussion boards, subscription rates 5. 1. Then we'll discuss what you are looking for in an online community and answer questions about the RCC community 6. 1. You can also send me questions via email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or via my cell at 317.567.9594, 7. So if you love this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast and you're not yet part of the Resilient Catholics Community, join with so many others from around the world like you that also love this podcast. The RCC is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission. So get on the waiting list at soulsandhearts.com/rcc or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and I'll help you out.
    2. 1. For current RCC members -- we have a premium podcast coming out on Tuesday, March 9, 2021 on how Marriage, Beds and Parts -- how parts react to beds, it's a way to learn about our system.
    3. 1. Also for current RCC members we have our Second Wednesday Zoom meeting coming up from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 for Resilient Catholic Community members, and it's all about Parts, Sex and Marriage
    4. 1. Catholic therapists who listen -- reopening the ITC. Landing page soulsandhearts.com/itc Reopened. Really excited. Human formation of therapist. 1. IIC 58TWork-Life Balance -- Relationships, especially marriages
    5. 1. Subscribing to this podcast -- Spotify, Apple Podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
    6. 1. Next week, in Episode 59, we are going to start with the floor, the spiritual foundation of confidence in God's Providence and we might also get to the legs -- attachment theory and IFS -- we are also going to start bringing in the Greek words for seven different kinds of love -- The Greeks had great ways of making nuanced distinctions in internal experiences, including love. So look for that coming up!
    7. 1. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
    8. 1. Patroness and Patron.

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The One Main Psychological Reason Why Catholic Marriages Fail

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way and living out our vocations.
3. And we deal with these difficult, demanding issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
5. Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation, a radical conversion at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 57, released on March 1, 2021
9. This is the ninth episode in our series on sexuality and in this episode, we are turning our attention to Catholic marriages -- such an important, essential topic for our day and age, Catholic marriages
10. And we are going to start with the real, deeper, often hidden reasons why Catholic marriages fall apart
11. So this episode is titled The One Main Psychological Reason Why Catholic Marriages Fail
12. Get ready for the deep dive into new ways of thinking about Catholic marriages, from an informed psychological perspective.
13. Focusing on the psychological aspects here -- not the spiritual ones.
  1. Not qualified to judge souls, make statements about their virtues or vices
  2. Not criticizing or condemning, but rather focusing on understanding with gentleness and compassion
  3. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar
  4. Focus on the natural level.
14. What about you, Dr. Peter -- what do you know about marriage? Fair question. 25th year of marriage, one marriage, 7 children.
Windup: The Current State of Catholic Marriages
1. Definitions
  1. What is Catholic Marriage
    1. Catholic Dictionary: 2.

As a natural institution, the lasting union of a man and a woman who agree to give and receive rights over each other for the performance of the act of generation and for the fostering of their mutual love.

The state of marriage implies four chief conditions: 1. there must be a union of opposite sexes; it is therefore opposed to all forms of unnatural, homosexual behavior; 2. it is a permanent union until the death of either spouse; 3. it is an exclusive union, so that extramarital acts are a violation of justice; and 4. its permanence and exclusiveness are guaranteed by contract; mere living together, without mutually binding themselves to do so, is concubinage and not marriage.

Emphasis on the Sacramental Aspect -- discussing sacramental marriages here.
Covenant, goes far beyond a Contract - no fault divorce, temporary contract.
What is fail?
1. Broad Definition:
  1. To prove deficient or lacking
  2. to perform ineffectively or inadequately
  3. to fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved
  4. to leave something undone
2. 1. One way that we could consider a marriage to fail is by divorce
  2. Stats
    1. 2014 Pew Research Survey of 885 Catholics 19% of those Catholic adults 18 years old were divorced or separated 2. 1. Consistent with Georgetown's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate
      1. About 20% or one in five Catholic adults have experienced divorce in their lifetimes 2. 1. About 36% of Americans who marry divorce at some point. 3. 1. 28% of Catholics who marry ever divorce -- lower than the general average 3. 1. Old canard that half of all Catholic marriage end in divorce -- not true. More like a quarter. 4. 1. Still that's a lot -- 28%. 5. 1. And I don't think success in marriage is defined by not getting divorced 6. 1. Not getting divorced by itself is not sufficient to call a marriage successful. 7. 2.
      2. Abusive marriages held together by
      3. Distant Roommates -- coolness, tolerating each other's existence
      4. Contrast with a life-giving marriage
      5. Ways marriages fail
3. Unilateral -- one spouse abandons the other
4. 1. Mutual -- each spouse abandons the other
5. 1. Distancing -- roommate model -- could be cordial or not
6. God's view of marriage
7. Marriage as a covenant, not a contract
  1. CCC 1603 God himself is the author of marriage. The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.
  2. Wedding at Cana -- Beginning of Jesus public life
  3. Life of Mary as Seen by the Mystics -- Jesus playing
9. Hurdle
10. Marriage is Tough
  1. Reasons
    1. No one can hurt us, disappoint us, or get under our skin quite like a spouse. 2. 1. Hard to anticipate the difficulties. The crosses. 3. 2.
    2. 1. Marriage Difficulties affect us all
    3. 1. Even if we aren't married
  2. Considering our parents' marriage
    1. 1. Friends' marriages
  3. 1. Marriage as bedrock of society -- USCCB
  4. Aristotle wrote that the family is nature’s established association for the supply of mankind’s everyday wants.
    1. 1. USCCB: Marriage is the bedrock of society. 3.

Marriages benefit society by building and strengthening human relationships within the home

(among spouses and children) and beyond (involving relatives, neighbors, and communities). For

this reason, the family has long been understood as the fundamental unit of society, the

foundation from which religious, civic, and legal organizations naturally develop and flourish.

Why Marriages Fail
1. Surface reasons given for why marriages fail -- Lots of simple, pat answers
  1. Disagreements about money/finances/debt
    1. 1. "Growing apart" -- each making our own way, different values, different priorities in life.
    2. 1. Affairs/Adultery
    3. 1. Poor conflict resolution
    4. 1. Domestic abuse
    5. 1. Problems with larger families -- in-laws not approving
    6. 1. I thought marriage would cure everything
    7. the sacrament will take care of it -- Sherry Weddell, Forming Intentional Disciples
      1. Passively receiving a sacrament is not enough. The grace we receive is directly related to the personal faith, spiritual expectancy, and hunger with which we approach the sacrament. 2.
        
        Emotional reasons
    8. Falling out of love -- no longer soul mates 2. 1. It's not fun anymore, I'm not feeling it. 3. 9.
    9. 1. Systemic reasons -- systemic issues vs. personal issues
  2. Advantages of systemic thinking
    1. 1. Systemic thinking is popular today -- systemic racism, structural issues in society
    2. It's not him, it's not me, it's just us together. We're not a good match. 2. 1. "Incompatibility" -- not meant for each other 3. 1. "Irreconcilable differences" 4. 1. Poor communication 5. 1. Not attracted to each other any more
      1. Catechism on systemic sin
      2. Problems of systemic thinking
    3. Abdication of personal responsibility 2. 1. Needing the other person to change, the whole system to change before I can be at peace, have joy. 5.
    4. 1. Deeper reasons
  3. Omissions
    1. Not showing up for your spouse 2. 1. Not asking what they need
      1. Lack of Forgiveness
      2. Loss of identity in the relationship -- codependency
      3. Not having a shared mission, a shared vision, shared goals
      4. Losing the friendship
      5. Lack of flexibility
    2. 1. From the outside -- selfishness -- not willing to sacrifice
    3. The Vision -- Considering Parts in Marriage
2. The real reasons why Catholic Sacramental Marriages Fail
  1. Parts with unmet attachment needs. Deep relational needs, often unconscious
    1. 1. Attachment needs -- held by parts
    2. Seen, Heard, Known, Understood 2. 1. Safety, Security 3. 1. Comforted, Soothed Reassured 4. 1. Cherished, Rejoiced in, Delighted in 5. 1. Willing the highest good
      1. Leads to self-absorption
    3. Definition of self absorption -- preoccupied with oneself or one’s own affairs, sometimes to the point of excluding others or the outside world.” 2.
      1. Selfishness vs. Self-absorption
    4. Definition of selfishness
      1. concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others 2. 1. Too much concerned with one's own welfare or interests and having little or no concern for others; self-centered.
        
        Conflicts are generally part to part
    5. Core self to core self -- no conflicts
      1. Needs for God not being met
    6. Makes sense that people look for these needs to be met in marriage
      1. Marriage as the "last great hope" 2. 1. Puts tremendous pressure on the marriage 3. 1. Leads to utterly unrealistic expectations for the marriage -- spouse can't do anything right 2.
        
        Parts taking over
    7. I can't live with or without you. U2 With our Without You 1987 2. 1. It's parts of us that are angry, disappointed, disillusioned that want to give up on marriages. 3. 1. It's parts of us that 4. 8.
    9. The Options
3. Your old way -- focusing on the other person deficits, how they don't measure up to your needs.
  1. All the ways I am dissatisfied.
4. 1. Getting in touch with your own parts
  2. Removing the beam from your own eye.
    1. 1. Physician, heal thyself. Medice, cura te ipsum
  3. 1. Bringing your parts to God -- God images Episodes 23-29.
  4. Becoming free to need a lot less from our spouses. Freer then to love them unreservedly. 2.
  5. 1. Bringing Parts in to Marriage -- possibilities
  6. Parts that don’t like the spouse
    1. 1. What if spouse doesn't resonate with parts work?
  8. The Close
5. Parts language so helpful in dealing with
  1. Shame
  2. Anger
  3. Disappointment
  4. Insecurity
6. 1. One person can make the marriage so much better unilaterally
  2. May not mean that there is a reunion, but the one spouse continues to live out the vows. 2.
  4. Fine Print -- Options
7. Reading
  1. Casti Connubii -- On Christian Marriage -- Pope Pius XI 1930
    1. 1. Catechism -- paragraphs 1601-1658
  2. 1. Resilient Catholics Community soulsandhearts.com/rcc
  3. starting with programming for those on the waiting list
  5. The Hook
8. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
9. 1. We have the Resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
  2. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Stay tuned later this week, I will be emailing everyone on the waiting list about a special event for just you -- reward for your patience. 2.
  3. 1. Will do a premium podcast -- RCC members -- all around your parts that have issues with marriage -- Polarizations of Parts around Marriages -- your own, your parents' marriage or some other marriage. Those premium podcasts come out one day later on Tuesdays, so this one will release on March 2, 2021.
  4. 1. RCC members we have our Second Wednesday Zoom meeting coming up from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 for Resilient Catholic Community members, and it's all about Parts, Sex and Marriage
  5. 1. Catholic therapists who listen -- reopening the ITC. Landing page soulsandhearts.com/itc Reopened. Really excited. Human formation of therapist. If you have a catholic therapist, let that therapist know.
  6. Premium podcast Client Parts, Therapist Parts and Marital Therapy
  7. 1. Subscribing to this podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
  8. 1. Next week, in Episode 58, get much more into how sexual relating in the marriage is such a sensitive barometer for how the marriage is doing relationally.
  9. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. And we deal with these difficult, demanding issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
5. 'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 56, released on February 22, 2021
9. This is the eighth episode in our series on sexuality and the second one on Pornography.
10. And it is titled: What is Essential for Catholics to Recover from Porn?
11. And I am really happy to have Dr. Gerry Crete, past president of the Catholic Psychological Association and the CEO and co-founder of Souls and Hearts with me for this episode
Recognize that the fantasy involved in the pornography choices represent a dynamic that seeks to meet the unmet need
1. Safety
2. 1. Attachment injuries
3. 1. Being seen
4. 1. Seeing others
5. 1. Connection
6. 1. Sense of “power” or agency
7. 1. Traumatic re-enactment
8. 1. The fantasy may provide a temporary answer to those needs while avoiding the pain
9. 1. Allow him to experience having his needs met in a healthy way
10. 1. What new information can you share with him
11. 1. What new role or position can the protector have now
12. 1. Recognize the courage it takes for the protector to seek a new role and embrace change
13. 1. Allow time to grieve the losses that pornography use has brought
  2. Recognize negative effects of pornography or other sexual acting out behavior in one’s life
  3. 1. Prepare to make reparations
  4. Wife/Family
    1. 1. Self
    2. 1. Others
    3. 1. God
  5. 1. Invite protector to grow and embrace freedom – recognize there will be a period of growth – it will need time and patience. Commit to being by his side
  6. 1. What does it mean for the parts to be “in recovery”
  7. The self is present – better connections with others
    1. 1. Completing tasks with a sense of completion rather than trying to escape pain (life)
    2. 1. Ability to set goals and focus on them rather than obsession with momentary perceived needs
    3. 1. Willingness to receive feedback
    4. 1. Ability to recognize time rather than entering into a blackhole of time
    5. 1. Finds meaning in activities and relationships

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. And we deal with these difficult, demanding issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
5. 'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 55, released on February 15, 2021
9. This is the seventh episode in our series on sexuality and the fourth one on masturbation.
10. And it is titled: Why Catholics Use Pornography
Practical steps you can take to overcome a pornography problem. These are good but only go so far:
1. Device management
2. 1. Accountability
3. 1. Support Group
4. 1. Therapy
5. Inner Work: Here we get to the root of the problem and find lasting solutions
6. Recognize that the pornography use has a negative effect on one’s life
  1. Marriage and family
    1. 1. Career
    2. 1. Downtime
    3. 1. Relationships
    4. 1. Spiritual life
  2. 1. Awareness that something must be done and that one needs to commit to change
  3. 1. What part of me doesn’t want to change? It’s a “protector”
  4. 1. Recognize that the part of you turning to pornography is a protector
  5. 1. The protector doesn’t want the system to feel pain
  6. 1. At some point the protector learned that pornography is an escape from pain
  7. 1. The protector also learned that pornography can meet unmet needs
  8. 1. Identify the positive intention of the “pornography” protector
  9. 1. Identify what this protector really believes about why pornography is the only answer
  10. 1. See this protector (unblend) and recognize his misguided but sincere intention
  11. 1. If the protector is protecting an exile (the pain) then promise to attend to the exile
  12. 1. Allow him to share with you his real unmet needs
  13. 1. Recognize that the fantasy involved in the pornography choices represent a dynamic that seeks to meet the unmet need
  14. Safety
    1. 1. Attachment injuries
    2. 1. Being seen
    3. 1. Seeing others
    4. 1. Connection
    5. 1. Sense of “power” or agency
    6. 1. Traumatic re-enactment

View Details

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. And we deal with these difficult, demanding issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
5. 'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 54, released on February 8, 2021
9. This is the sixth episode in our series on sexuality and the fourth one on masturbation.
10. And it is titled: Masturbation Recovery Stories
11. We're following up on our last three episodes, number 51, 52 and 53, which have all been about masturbation, the Top 10 reasons why Catholic men masturbate, the 10 common mistakes they make as they try to recover from masturbation and live chaste lives, and the 20 remedies for those 10 common mistakes.
12. we're getting into answers for Catholics who experience masturbation as a dead-end, as a failed promise, as an inadequate answer for their deeper needs and desires.
13. So today, we're pulling all the conceptual information together and we are going to do three things.
14. First, We will briefly review the 10 common mistakes and the 20 remedies for those mistakes
15. Second, will discuss how to make an individualized recovery plan for masturbation
16. Third, we will pull all the information together into the stories of Richard and Luis, who we introduced in episode 51 -- we will review their histories, look at the mistakes they made is trying to free themselves from masturbation, discuss how they made their individualized plans for recovery, and how they broke free from masturbation.
Review:
1. 10 Common Mistakes that Catholics make in breaking free from masturbation:
  1. Considering masturbation as the primary problem. -- Gotta go deeper
    1. 1. Pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration
    2. 1. Going it alone
    3. 1. Using only the spiritual means
    4. 1. Having a Power spirituality or a macho spirituality
    5. 1. Passive Spirituality
    6. 1. The why for the change
    7. 1. Shaming the self for failures
    8. 1. The All or Nothing Trap
    9. 1. Failing to see the struggle with masturbation as a gift
    10. 20 Remedies for those mistakes
  2. Commit to finding the real reason, with God's help.
    1. 1. Bring God or Mary or a saint or your angel into the search for the underlying causes
    2. 1. Committing to interior integration: Interior acceptance of all parts, all desires, all impulses, all thoughts, all memories as real -- as part of reality.
    3. 1. Find a confidant with whom you can check in daily. Daily. Not just regularly. Daily
    4. 1. Get to confession and address the spiritual dimensions. Talk about it. Spiritual Director, Confessor
    5. 1. Working toward Intimate relationship with God
    6. 1. Time with Friends -- being deliberate out it.
    7. 1. Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed therapist
    8. 1. Sexaholics Anonymous or other groups
    9. 1. Online groups -- like the Resilient Catholic Community
    10. 1. Embracing the parts that carry our powerlessness, smallness, neediness -- we need those things, they are essential for us to be small enough to approach God. Those parts are precious
    11. 1. Focus on Humility. Litany of humility. Litany of Trust
    12. 1. Entering into relationship with God as a little child. Let the little children come to me. St. Therese of Lisieux.
    13. 1. Serenity Prayer: Pray it every day. And listen.
    14. 1. Commit to doing what you can, even it seems like very little. Remembering that as little children we can offer very little.
    15. 1. Exploring and discussing our motives with our trusted person. Ask that person how he or she sees our motives.
    16. 1. Bringing those motives to prayer. Lord that I may see. Prayer of blind Bartimeus. Domine ut vidiam.
    17. 1. really working with our internal critic. Understanding the reasons for the shaming, the good that the critic seeks in that -- and helping that critic integrate with the rest of your system, under the leadership of your core self.
    18. 1. Perseverance. It's normal to fall. We are fallen human beings in a fallen world. We need to get up. Every time.
    19. 1. Seeking for how the struggle with masturbation is a gift. 31.
  3. Making a Plan
2. All the above can be overwhelming-- Do I have to do it all?
  1. First Overarching principle -- Work your plan out with someone else, someone you trust, someone that you sense is competent to help you.
    1. This is vitally important, so you are not repeating mistake number 3, which is going it alone.
    2. Talk it out with that person at length. The whys and wherefores of each component of the plan.
  2. Second Overarching principle Write out your plan. It all becomes so much when you write it out.
  3. Third Overarching principle -- take what is helpful for you in your plan and discard what is not. Be flexible in your plan over time.
  4. Fourth overarching principle -- build up your plan. It make take time, build it up over time.
    1. General trend over time -- general trajectory
    2. Week by week -- once you consolidate a part of your plan, add another part
  5. Fifth overarching principle -- adherence to the plan is your target. Stay with the plan. Much more certain than just having periods of abstinence from masturbation
4. Review of Parts
5. IFS by Richard Schwartz
6. 1. IFS on the Self
  2. Self defined as the seat of consciousness
    1. 1. Self can be occluded or overwhelmed by parts
    2. 1. When self accepts and loves parts, those parts transform back into who they were meant to be
    3. 1. Self-led mind is self-righting.
    4. 1. self -- Active inner leader -- more than mindfulness
    5. 1. Parts find the relationship with the self very reassuring
  3. 1. Discussion of Parts
  4. Separate, seemingly independent little personalities each with its range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires, views of the world.
    1. Modes of operating
    2. Orchestra model
    3. Focus is on integration.
    4. 1. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
    5. 1. Three roles
    6. Exiles --
      1. most sensitive -- become injured or outraged. Threatens the system, external relationships
      2. Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
      3. Want care and love, rescue, redemption
      4. shame. Need for redemption
        
        Managers
      5. Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 2. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigiliance. 3. 1. Firefighters
      6. Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 4.
        
        Parts can take over the person
    7. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 2. 1. We call it blending. 3. 5.
    9. Stories
7. Fictional, composites.
8. 1. These are simplified. We will discuss three parts. Usually there are 10-20 parts, sometimes up to 30.
9. 1. Richard:
  2. Richard's History
    1. 1. Parts mapping -- this is the real story.
    2. Church Man -- manager part, strong moral compass, who evaluates Richards' behavior. Take off from the SNL Church Lady from the late 80s.
      1. God Image: Demanding Drill Sergeant God, who never satisfied with Richard. This demanding drill sergeant God demands perfection from Richard, and so Church Man is pushing Richard really hard to be good enough to earn God's love.
        
        Prayer -- mostly rote, duty-based, not much of a relational connection with God. Assumption is that once he does enough, God might heal him from his sinful ways out of justice. God will owe it to him.
        
        Church Man really just wants God to not harm Richard, and be satisfied with the efforts. 2. 1. Self-image -- Church Man sees Richard's other parts as undermining his self-improvement efforts, and placing Richard at risk of God's permanent rejection and disgust. 3. 1. Fear: Church Man fears that if Richard doesn't keep trying and growing, God will reject him permanently. 4. 1. Good intention: To motivate Richard to follow the rules of the Catholic Faith and become worthy of God's acceptance.
        
        Absolutely no affairs. No connections to other women. Not repeating what Mom did. 5. 1. Benefits: Excellent quality control at work. Very few mistakes. Generally a lot of self-control 6. 1. Means Used: Badgers Richard, cajoles him. Carrot and stick. Can be really hard on him, shames him, cuts him down
        
        Suppresses all other parts. Doesn't trust them. Wants to be the only part operating. 2. 7. 1. Harm done; Unaware of how demoralizing he can be.
        
        To Richard's other parts -- crushing burden of shame he creates.
        
        And to others -- could be really critical to subordinates and his wife.
        
        Seen as cold and rude to women at work -- Talk in the break room among the women was that he was chauvinistic.
        
        Distant from daughters. 8. 9. Needy Boy -- exiled part that is very insecure, burdened with unmet needs for maternal care
      2. Developmental history
        
        Mom stressed with first child, not able to engage consistently -- some post-partum depression. Mom not real regulated to begin with. Unprepared for the demands of motherhood, and Mom had parts that resented both her husband and her son and the loss of her career. 2. 1. Dad was a high-power attorney, dominated by a part that needed to win, needed to overpower and outmaneuver others and never be seen as weak. 3. 10. 1. God image: Elitist Aristocrat God -- God doesn't need him, God doesn't know him, God is too good for him, too remote
        
        Not felt seen and known 2. 1. Not felt safe and secure 11. 1. Self Image -- I'm not good enough, lovable enough to gain God's attention. I'm abandoned, alone in the world. I'm not acceptable, he doesn't need me and he doesn't want me. Yearning for redemption, someone, anyone to pay attention to him. 12. 1. Need Boy's Fear -- I am starving, emotionally, relationally. I need to connect and be cared for or I will die. 13. 1. Not able to regulate affect. 14. 15. Distractor -- firefighter part -- 1. Great Fear: Being utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of Needy Boy's pain. 2. When Church Man isn't able to contain Needy Boy, Distractor leaps in to protect Richard's system from the intensity of Needy Boy's intense emotional pain 3. Uses pornography as a primary way of distracting, diverting Needy Boy to a mom-like image. Hope for redemption. Calms things down. 4. Masturbates to distract from Needy Boy's pain. 5. Polarized with Church Man. 6. Doesn't think much about God, A Statue God image,
        
        Of the top 10 reasons Catholic men Masturbate
    3. 1 Loneliness -- needing maternal and paternal care
```
    2. 1. #2 Insecurity
    3. 1. #6 Anger at wife
```
      1. Richard's Plan
    4. Of the 10 common mistakes
      1. 3 -- Going it alone
        
        2. 1. #4 Using only the spiritual means 3. 1. #5 Power spirituality, building virtue 4. 1. #8 Shaming the self 5. 1. #10 Not seeing his struggle with masturbation as a gift 2.
        
        5.
      3. Richard's Recovery
      4. Luis
10. Luis' history
  1. Seminarian -- 2nd Theology
    1. 1. Deep devotion to God
    2. 1. Parents married, Dad distant, mom thinks he's a little autistic, not emotionally attuned
    3. 1. Very close enmeshed relationship with Mom
    4. Part of the reason for going to seminary -- no other men, can be mom's one and only 2. 1. Experiences close relationships as fusion -- blending together. 5.
    5. 1. Parts Mapping
  2. The Moral Theologian -- intellectual part, very much concerned with right and wrong and appropriate behavior.
    1. Deep admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, his hero
    2. Unknowingly departs from the angelic doctor in his devaluing of the Passions
    3. Very distrustful of emotions, impulses, desires -- seeks a high-degree of self control
    4. Makes careful distinctions first and second moral acts inside him.
    5. Strives for objectivity, rationality, intellectual understanding, finds safety and protection in that.
    6. God image -- not one of Bill and Kristi Gaultiere's types. God is very fair, very just. Transactional, highly intellectualized view of relating with God. Very suspicious of the Charismatic movement and dislikes most contemporary liturgical music and praise and worship songs.
    7. Prays via lectio divina, appreciates the aesthetics of good liturgy, and loves to reflect on the beauty and order of Catholic teaching
    8. Uninterested in romantic relationships, finds safety in his friendships with other orthodox seminarians and faculty but hates all the heretical or perceived heretical elements he hears in class or reads about in pastoral theology classes.
    9. Relates through a meeting of the minds and is cordial with others, but scans relationships to see if they might negatively impact his search for truth.
    10. Very preoccupied with masturbation -- this is the one area that is disordered in Luis' life, the one thing that needs to be straightened out. Only area of grave matter. Self control is shattered.
    11. Masturbation is very confusing for the Moral Theologian -- almost like altered states of consciousness, he hates the sense of losing control, and has come to hate aspects of his sexuality, with some desires to be asexual in order to simplify matters. The Moral Theologian could understand it if Origin, as Eusebius claimed, castrated himself, but hoped that he didn't as many other historians arugued because self-mutilation is grave matter
    12. 1. Little Husband -- exile.
    13. Deep unmet needs for love and care from Mom.
      1. Enmeshed with Mom -- emotional incest. Mom's unhappy marriage, seeking to get her relational needs met by Luis. Little Husband was the part of Luis that Mom's protector parts exploited in an attempt to feel better about herself and to get her own needs met. 2. 1. When Luis was a little boy, his Little husband part learned that if he listened to Mom's problems, if he reassured her, if he affirmed her, if he joined her in criticizing Dad as a poor husband and father, he would then get her attention and she would show him affection. If he felt the way she did, if he mirrored her, if he fused with her, Mom would reward him with affirmation, and sometime she went over the top, covering his face with kisses and hugging him close and weeping, and telling him how much he meant to her, how important he was to her, how much she needed him, which was frightening to him, to see her so regressed. But he couldn't break away from Mom or risk losing almost all his emotional connection, given that his father was distant and there were no other major relationships in his life. 3. 1. Self-image: Little husband saw himself as his mother's support, her emotional refuge, her caregiver, her protector in a sense, her little husband. He existed to serve her needs. 4. 1. God-Image: So Little Husband saw God as needy and kind of emotionally unbalanced, prone to rages and also to overwhelmingly intense displays of affection. Little Husband had a Magic Genie God image. He had to give God whatever He wanted for that affection, even if meant violations of boundaries, violations of dignity. 5. 6. Doesn't want to displease Mom. Doesn't want to be unfaithful to her, and to meeting her needs. Recognizes the sacrifices she is making by allowing him to go to seminary.
        
        Gladiator -- Exile
    14. Rebellious toward authority, feels he is enslaved by others parts who are subservient to Mom 2. 1. Hates Mom's invasions and intrusions. This part hates Mom, feels like identity is being stolen, hates being used. 3. 1. Suppressed by the Moral Theologian from an early age -- Polarization -- because of the danger he represents in acting out 4. 1. Willing to take huge risks because life as an oppressed slave is hardly worth living. 5. 1. Robber God image -- God takes good things away from me
      1. Anger at God -- assumed God is like Mom. 2. 1. Fear of God fusing with him. 3. 6. 1. Self-image: I've got to grab on to any goods I can get.
      2. This part masturbates. 2. 7. 4.
      3. Of the Top 10 reasons why Catholic men masturbate
  3. 1 Loneliness, lack of relational connection
    1. 1. 3 Cry for help (single symptom presentation)
    2. 1. 4 Anger at God
    3. 1. 5 Regulating distance from God -- preventing enmeshment
  4. 1. Luis' Plan
  5. The Common Mistakes
    1. 1 Masturbation as the primary problem
```
2. 1. #2 Compartmentalization --> fragmentation
3. 1. #7 The Why for the Change
4. 1. #8 Shaming the Self
5. 1. #9 The All or Nothing Trap
6. 1. #10 Not Seeing the Struggle as a Gift.
```
      1. Dr. Glafoderwalladan -- recommendations
      2. Therapy with Dr. McMartete
    2. 1. Luis' Recovery.
    4. Wrap up
11. If you are interested in more about how parts have God images and how that all works -- mark your calendars. February 19, 2021 -- 10 AM to 1:15 PM Eastern time. I have been invited to do a live webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association entitled "Why Do I Avoid God? An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts' Negative God Images" Here we get into how different parts see God. Lots of experiential work. For information and registration go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events
12. 1. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- we're still small enough in January 2021 that I can respond to everybody.
13. 1. We have the Resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
  2. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in April. 2.
  3. 1. Will do a premium podcast -- RCC members and ITC members -- Those premium podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on February 9, 2021. Listening with Parts for Parts
  4. 1. We have our Second Wednesday Zoom meeting coming up from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 for Resilient Catholic Community members, and it's all about We will be discussing seeing our sufferings, trials, problems -- our crosses -- as gifts, and why our parts so often reject the whole idea and that will be in the context of sexuality and how parts are sexualized.
  5. 1. Can start by subscribing to this podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
  6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- don’t forget about feedback, ideas, suggestions.
  7. 1. Next week, in Episode 55, I am excited to have Dr. Gerry join us as we discuss pornography in the first of a two-part subseries within this broader series on sexuality.
  8. 1. Patronness and Patron.

View Details

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. And we deal with these difficult, demanding issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God.
5. 'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 53, released on February 1, 2021
9. This is the fifth episode in our series on sexuality and the third one on masturbation.
10. And it is titled: Breaking Free from Masturbation, Part 2
11. We're following up on our last episode, episode 52 -- Breaking free from masturbation Part 1. Part 2 is following Part 1.
12. So today, we're continuing with finding answers for Catholics who deeply desire to have their sexuality ordered toward relationship, toward God, and toward their spouses or future spouses in a way that is life-giving.
13. we're getting into answers for Catholics who experience masturbation as a dead-end, as a failed promise, as an inadequate answer for their deeper needs and desires.
14. We address 6 more mistakes that Catholics make in their attempts to overcome masturbation
15. And we will get into 10 more remedies for those additional six mistakes, and the last remedy is the most important one -- so important that I think of it as the secret solution, the one so few people who struggle with masturbation really consider, so we're saving the best for last there.
16. Not just about masturbation -- you can take out masturbation and substitute in any other sexual problem -- fetishes, porn, sexting, sexual obsessions, sexual compulsions, excessive sexual fantasies, whatever
17. People are also finding that these episodes are helpful for getting to the root any symptomatic behavior -- binge eating, excessive shopping or video games, too much vegging out on Netflix, and so on.
18. Just to review, in the last episode, I promised you a map, not a ride in a limousine or on a flying carpet to your destination. It's a map, not an individualized treatment plan. This is not therapy. It's not magic. You still have to make your own journey. But this map lays out the terrain and the compass will provide direction for you on that journey.
19. Some of you have been suffering for a long time. I get that. God sees your efforts, he sees your good intentions.
Focus of this podcast is on interior integration -- overarching goal in the natural realm. Not talking about spiritual goals here, we are talking about the natural realm.
1. So we need a way of understanding and modeling interior integration and also its nemesis -- interior fragmentation.
2. I borrow heavily from Internal Family Systems approach, aka IFS approach, originated by Richard Schwartz.
3. I reviewed it in the last episode, number 52.
4. Parts are like personalities within us. Imagine a kid who is considering taking a cookie from the cookie jar. One part of him wants to have the cookie and another part wants him to be good and not have to struggle with a guilty conscience, and another part doesn't want to face Mom's anger if he gets caught.
Mistakes
1. List of mistakes
  1. Review of the first four
    1. Considering masturbation as the primary problem. -- Gotta go deeper 2. 1. Pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration 3. 1. Going it alone 4. 1. Using only the spiritual means
      1. Here are the next six
    2. Having a Power spirituality or a macho spirituality 2. 1. Passive Spirituality 3. 1. The why for the change 4. 1. Shaming the self for failures 5. 1. The All or Nothing Trap 6. 1. The biggest Mistake, the one almost everybody makes with this. Stay tuned till the end 3.
    3. 1. Mistake 5: Power spirituality -- Macho spirituality
  2. Slogan for the Power Spirituality -- God helps those who help themselves
    1. In February of 2000 George Barna did a poll asking if “The Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves” and the results were eye-opening:
      - 53% of Americans agree strongly [that it could be found in the Bible] 2. * 22% agree somewhat 3. * 7% disagree somewhat 4. * 14% disagree strongly 5. * 5% stated they don’t know 2. 2.

Of “born-again” Christians 68% agreed, and 81% of non “born-again” Christians agreed with the statement. Despite being of non-Biblical origin, the phrase topped a poll of the most widely known Bible verses. Seventy-five percent (75%) of American teens said they believed that it was the central message of the Bible.

This saying is ancient, goes back to Greece -- The Gods help those who help themselves, you see this expressed in two of Aesop's fables
Aesop was an extraordinarily ugly slave who by his wit and intelligence gains his freedom and becomes a counsellor to rulers in Greece. He is believed to have lived between 620 and 564 BC -- his stories may be much older than that, having been handed down in an oral tradition.

A WAGGONER was once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. “O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress,” quoth he. But Hercules appeared to him, and said:

“Tut, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel."

“The gods help them that help themselves.”

17th Century English political theorist Algernon Sidney made the modern rendering in English.
My grandpa Roberts used it a lot as well.
Focus on will power, will training.
1. Limitation of will power
A part with a focus on building virtues, but not deepening relationship with Christ
Defense against fear of perpetual failure.
Connects back to Mistake 3 -- Going it alone. This is a lonely spirituality, very independent
Fatal flaw -- it doesn't recognize our complete dependence on God.
1. Power of Positive Thinking. Norman Vincent Peal.
2. Proverbs 28:26 He that trusteth in his own heart, is a fool: but he that walketh wisely, he shall be saved.
3. Part that is reaching for omnipotence. Doesn't want utter dependence on God
  1. Without me you can do nothing. John 15:5
  2. Remedy 11: Embracing the parts that carry our powerlessness, smallness, neediness -- we need those things, they are essential for us to be small enough to approach God. Those parts are precious. Their burdens of shame, despair, anger, etc. -- those are not necessary.
    1. works of St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. Better than reading just reading their works, enter into prayer with them.
    2. John 15:5: I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.
  3. Remedy 12: Focus on Humility. Litany of humility. Litany of Trust
  4. Remedy 13: Entering into relationship with God as a little child. Let the little children come to me. St. Therese of Lisieux.
    1. Chapter 1 of Spiritual Childhood by Fr. Vernon Johnson on the Fatherhood of God. Ignatius Press 1953. Weaving Scripture verses. Abba, Pater. Mama Mary
    2. My Ideal: Jesus Son of Mary, Fr. Emile Neubert, Tan books.
    3. Episode 30 -- How Small and Childlike are We Supposed to Be?
  5. Mistake 6. Passive Spirituality
4. The prayer -- Oh Dear God, please lift the scourge of masturbation from me. I am helpless in its grip.
5. 1. Flip side of the power spirituality -- sometimes when the power spirituality fails, we relapse into this
6. 1. Recognizes the powerlessness, smallness and neediness that we all have.
7. 1. A different part takes over, one that copes by collapsing and passively waiting for rescue
8. 1. Or a part that just gives up. Accommodates the masturbation.
9. 1. Expectation of God doing all the work.
  2. Miraculous intervention -- in its extreme form, there's more or less a fantasy of falling asleep one night, and God performing a masturbationectomy -- removing all desires and impulses toward masturbation.
  3. No psychological miracles in the Scripture
    1. Correct me if I'm wrong on this 3. 1. Not violating the will and the intellect
      1. Parts holding tightly to the function of the masturbation -- this aligns with mistake 1 -- which is that the masturbation is the problem. 2. 4.
      2. Example of our Lady at the Annunciation.
      3. Remedy 14 To balance the Power spirituality and the passive Spirituality 20th Century Protestant theologian, thinker, and author Reinhold Neibuhr Serenity Prayer: Pray it every day. And listen.

God, grant me the Serenity

To accept the things I cannot change...

Courage to change the things I can,

And Wisdom to know the difference.

There is a longer version, that is much more complete.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

There's reason this is so important in 12-step programs
Remedy 15: Commit to doing what you can, even it seems like very little. Remembering that as little children we can offer very little. God in his justice doesn't demand more. That's not even mercy.
Mistake 7. The Why for the Change -- motives. Seeking and finding.
1. Problematic motives that can lead us away from our Lord. These motives may not necessarily be bad in and of themselves, but when they are elevated above the two great commandments, they become problematic.
2. Our motives vary by parts. Parts have different motives for wanting to get over masturbation
  1. Often our motives are Self-perfection, or if not self-perfection at least becoming good enough
    1. aspiring to Phariseeism
    3. Often can't see our own motives. Blind spots.
    4. Outward vs. Inward focus
  2. Or an inward focus that includes God.
    2. God often wants to improve our motives.
    3. Remedy 16: Exploring and discussing our motives with our trusted person. Ask that person how he or she sees our motives.
    4. Remedy 17: Bringing those motives to prayer. Lord that I may see. Prayer of blind Bartimeus. Domine ut vidiam.
  3. Mistake 8. Shaming the self for failures
3. Shame series -- episodes 37 to 49, and in episodes 37 and 38 we got into definitions of shame as a verb.
4. 1. Shame can motivate -- Internal critic part -- whipping us into shape.
5. 1. Shame is inhibiting -- can inhibit certain behaviors like masturbation
6. 1. Difference in usefulness of shame for chronic vs. single episode actions
7. 1. Remedy 18: really working with our internal critic. Understanding the reasons for the shaming, the good that the critic seeks in that -- and helping that critic integrate with the rest of your system, under the leadership of your core self. Often find that the critic is very young and very fearful and very overwhelmed with all the responsibilities of its role of directing and guiding and critiquing.
9. Mistake 9. The All or nothing trap -- all or nothing thinking, all or nothing judgement. All or nothing effort.
10. Accepting falling and rising. As many times as it takes. Accepting imperfections -- with the saints.
  1. Saints descriptions of themselves.
  2. Greater demands
  3. Omissions vs. commission.
  4. Comfort in the familiarity of the vices I know.
11. Remedy 19. Perseverance. It's normal to fall. We are fallen human beings in a fallen world. We need to get up. Every time.
12. Review of the 5 Mistakes, and the remedies here.
13. Mistake 10. The big one. Failing to see the struggle with masturbation as a gift
14. This is a tough one. Not the act of masturbation -- sinning itself not a gift. The struggle is a cross, not a gift.
  1. Even our crosses are gifts.
    1. 1. Romans 8:28.
    2. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
    3. No exceptions, not like All things…good except for masturbation -- you got that, well, buddy that is just too bad, there's nothing
    5. Remedy 20: Seeking for how the struggle with masturbation is a gift.
  2. Not the sin itself, but the struggle.
  3. Many people never seek to understand their trials, their suffering as a gift
    1. You can suffer as a rebels 3. 1. You can suffer as a stoic, but not willingly. 4. 5. Journaling about this, discussing it with your trusted other, opening a dialog 6. Praying about it. Asking to see. Blind Bartimeus prayer 7. Paul discovered it in 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 7 And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn[a] was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; 9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
    2. Wrap up
15. So in the next episode, we will go back to the stories of Luis and Richard that we started in Episode 51 -- remember, Luis was the seminarian and Richard was the 48 year old married man, father of four and both were struggling with masturbation but for very different reasons. The symptoms were similar, but the underlying causes were different. So we will bring all the concepts from the last three sessions together and flesh them out in the lives of our characters.
16. 1. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- we're still small enough in January 2021 that I can respond to everybody.
17. 1. February 19, 2021 -- 10 AM to 1:15 PM Eastern time. I have been invited to do a webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association entitled "Why Do I Avoid God? An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts' Negative God Images" Here we get into how different parts see God. Lots of experiential work. For information and registration go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events
18. 1. We have the Resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
  2. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in April. 2.
  3. 1. Will do a bonus podcast -- community members -- experiential exercise on seeing my main trouble-- whatever that struggle is -- as a gift. What gets in the way? How are my protector parts reacting to my main struggle? How do my protectors see that main issue? And how can we help them? Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on February 2, 2021.
  4. 1. We have our Second Wednesday Zoom meeting coming up from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 for Resilient Catholic Community members, and it's all about healthy sexuality and how parts are sexualized in certain kinds of experiences, and how that affects our sexual experiences and functioning later in life.
  5. 1. Bonus podcast for our Catholic Therapists in the Interior Therapist Community in Souls and hearts with more on how to help yourself and your clients unpack the polarization of their parts, and how your parts might be activated by some of your client's polarizations. Super excited -- reopening that community in March, experiential groups for human formation of Catholic Therapists from an IFS-informed perspective.
  6. 1. Can start by subscribing to this podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
  7. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- don’t forget about feedback, ideas, suggestions.
  8. 1. Patronness and Patron.
  9. IIC 53A "My main trouble"
19. Not specific to masturbation -- could be any struggle
20. 1. And it makes sense, given how parts view their experience. But parts have blind spots.
21. 1. My Main Trouble exercise
  2. Big open heart, appreciating parts
    1. 1. Parts have good intentions. Protectors are trying really hard to protect us.
    2. 1. Cautions -- difficult material -- window of tolerance, don’t have to do this, no steamrolling parts
    3. 1. Reassuring parts that we are not working with the main trouble in this exercise. We're not unpacking it or going into it.
    4. 1. We're addressing why it is hard to see that main trouble as a gift.
    5. 1. Checking inside. What parts are up as we consider the main trouble
    6. 1. Main trouble = the single most distressing thing --> just giving it a label, not unpacking it.
    7. 1. Listening to parts.
    8. 1. What would they need to begin to consider this trouble, struggle as a gift?
    9. 1. Writing down what they say.
    10. 1. Issues around gifts
    11. 1. Issues around crosses
    12. 1. Issues around God
    13. 1. Gratitude to parts. 15.
  4. IIC 53T Working with clients' protectors around the gift of troubles.
    1. Start with ourselves -- exercise we can use
    2. Remember to customize these exercises, using the client's language
    3. Providential worldview -- single most important predictor of treatment outcome for my clients
    4. You can do this with your clients
    5. Watch out for aligning too much with one part of a client.

View Details

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you each week the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we ask and answer the tough questions about the real problems we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. And we deal with these tough issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time.
4. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God's truth, goodness and beauty
5. Together, we are looking for a deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls unite with God and we can rise to the challenges and opportunities He provides us.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 52, released on January 25, 2021
9. This is the fourth episode in our series on sexuality and the second one on masturbation.
10. And it is titled: Breaking Free from Masturbation -- A Roadmap
11. We're following up on our last episode, episode 51 -- The Top 10 Reasons Why Catholic Men Masturbate.
  1. In that episode, we covered the underlying psychological issues that fuel impulses to masturbate.
    1. 1. But it's not enough to just understand the issues more clearly
    2. 1. We need guidance on how to live differently, how to work with the entirety of ourselves -- all of our parts, all of our modes of operating -- in the area of sexuality.
    3. So today, we're getting into answers for Catholics who deeply desire to have their sexuality ordered toward relationship, toward God, and toward their spouses or future spouses in a way that is life-giving.
    4. we're getting into answers for Catholics who experience masturbation as a dead-end, as a failed promise, as an inadequate answer for their deeper needs and desires.
    5. We will get into the first four mistakes that Catholics make in their attempts to overcome masturbation
    6. And we will get into the 10 remedies for those first four mistakes
    7. Not just about masturbation -- you can take out masturbation and substitute in any other sexual problem -- fetishes, porn, sexting, sexual obsessions, sexual compulsions, excessive sexual fantasies, whatever
    8. Remember that I promised you a map, not a ride in a limousine or on a magic carpet to your destination. It's a map, not an individualized treatment plan. This is not therapy. It's not magic. You still have to make your own journey. But this map lays out the terrain and the compass will provide direction for you on that journey.
    9. Some of you have been suffering for a long time. I get that. God sees your efforts, he sees your good intentions.
  2. Focus of this podcast is on interior integration -- overarching goal in the natural realm. Not talking about spiritual goals here, we are talking about the natural realm.
    1. So we need a way of understanding and modeling interior integration and also its nemesis -- interior fragmentation.
    2. I borrow heavily from Internal Family Systems approach, aka IFS approach, originated by Richard Schwartz.
  3. Really helps me clinically to understand the polarizations inside of myself and others -- the tensions, the conflicting desires and impulses, the internal tug-of-war, especially about moral issues that carry so much emotional weight, like masturbation
    1. 1. And IFS not only helps us understand our internal world, it guides us as to how to heal, how to change, how to grow in the natural realm. 4.

This podcast is heavily influenced by IFS, but IFS grounded in a Catholic worldview.

Review of Parts -- IFS perspective
1. Multiplicity and Unity of Self
2. 1. Really helpful for understanding why Catholic men do what they don't want to do.
  2. Romans 7:15 -- St. Paul's lament I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
  3. 1. Discussion of Parts
  4. within each person are separate collections thoughts, emotions, attitudes, impulses, desires, abilities, interests, relational styles, body sensations, and worldviews that are not just transient emotional states, but rather constitute discrete “parts,” subpersonalities or distinct modes of operating within the person’s larger internal system -- they seem like selves within us.
    1. 1. Each part within us can metaphorically seem like its own little person, with its own particular range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world.
    2. Modes of operating
    3. Subpersonalities
    4. Orchestra model
    5. Focus is on integration.
  5. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
  6. Three roles -- exiles, managers, and firefighters.
    1. Exiles --
      1. most sensitive -- become injured or outraged by important other in the family or social world. Threatens the system, external relationships
      2. Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
      3. Want care and love, rescue, redemption
      4. shame. Need for redemption
    2. Managers
      1. Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 3. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigilance. 4. Firefighters
      2. Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 5. 1. No concern for consequences 6. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 4. Parts can take over the person
    3. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 5. 1. We call it blending. 6.
    4. 1. Intentions of parts -- always good, but the means they choose can be very harmful, maladaptive.
    6. Mistakes
3. List of mistakes
  1. Considering masturbation as the primary problem. -- Gotta go deeper
    1. 1. Pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration
    2. 1. Going it alone
    3. 1. Using only the spiritual means
    4. 1. Six more common mistakes, but those are for the next episode. 6.
  2. 1. Mistake 1. Mistaking the primary problem -- Considering masturbation as the primary problem
  3. The primary problem drives the focus of the remedies
    1. 1. And masturbation is a problem -- but is it really the primary problem?
    2. I make so bold to say that on the natural level masturbation is never the primary problem 2. 1. It's a symptom -- Let's not stay on the surfaces (we discussed the surface reasons and the underlying real reasons in episode 51)
      1. Fever is a symptom
        
        If you had intense abdominal pain and a high fever and you came to the Emergency room 2. 1. And was diagnosed with abdominal pain and a high fever disorder
        
        Treatment was a painkiller Percocet for the pain and Extra-Strength Tylenol for the fever 2. 1. And the real cause was not detected -- the underlying infection that caused the symptoms of fever and pain -- like appendicitis. 3. 1. No physician thinks of himself or herself as a fever doctor 4. 1. As a psychologist, I don't think of myself as ever "treating masturbation"
        
        First, I work with persons, not conditions or disorder 2. 1. Second, the symptoms disappear if you resolve the underlying cause.
        
        If you resolve the appendicitis, the fever and the abdominal pain go away 2. 1. Similarly, if you resolve the underlying causes of masturbation, it will go away, too. 3. 3. 5. 2. 1. Symptoms are like the leaves of a weed
        
        Here on the farm we have dogwood trees -- like to grow up. Cut off the leaves and twigs -- no real effect. Cut it off at ground level, they spring back up. 2. 1. Gotta get the shovel and dig them out by the roots. 3. 3. 3.
        
        AA and other 12 step programs recognize that the addictive behavior is not the only issue -- you've got to get to the underlying causes -- Dry drunk
    3. Carole Bennett in a Psychology Today article outlines these signs of a dry drunk as:
      1. Resentment toward friends or family, especially toward those who called him out on his drinking 2. 1. Anger and negativity surrounding recovery, especially about not be able to drink 3. 1. Depression, anxiety, and fear of relapse 4. 1. Jealousy of friends who are not struggling with addiction 5. 1. Bitterness about lost time, lost opportunities, lost relationships 6. 1. Romanticizing their drinking days 7. 1. Being self-obsessed 8. 1. Replacing the addiction with a new vice (e.g., sex, food, and internet use) 2. 1. Tension -- White knuckling it 3. 1. Limited amount of willpower 4. 1. We do need to resist sinful impulses and temptations. 5.
        
        Anti-masturbationism as a religion (Parts)
    4. Religious manager part -- deeply concerned, driven by fear of God, fear of sin, fear of hell
      1. Doesn't want to see the deeper issues in the system 2. 1. Feels like the self is a sinner in the hand of an angry God 3. 1. God images activated -- episodes 23-29. 4. 1. Different parts have different God images
        
        Statue God image 2. 1. Drill Sergeant God image 3. 1. Magic Genie God image 4. 1. Outtogetcha Police Detective God image 5. 1. Critical Scrooge God 5. 1. Deeper issues in the system-- burdens that other parts hold about God.
        
        Great distrust of God
        
        Anger at God
        
        Deep disappointment in God.
        
        Often about the masturbation 6. 2. 1. Not a focus on God, but a focus on the self and a focus on masturbation
      2. How will I resist temptation 2. 1. How long have I gone without masturbating 3. 1. How sinful was my last act -- am I in a state of grace 4. 1. Why oh why do I sin like this -- why am I so stupid? 5. 1. When am I going to change? 6. 1. I am going to get better. I have a new book on this 7. 1. I have new spiritual practices, these give me hope 8. 1. And on and on -- little focus on God. 9. 3.
        
        Variation: Seeing masturbation as the only problem
    5. Tunnel vision
      1. Preserves the fantasy that I just have to conquer this one masturbation problem and then my life will be great, I have no other problems, especially I don't have the problems that are causing the masturbation. 2. 2. 1. If you see masturbation as the only problem, then masturbation will likely be your primary symptom. 3. 1. One closet where every problem is stuffed. 4.
        
        Solution: Find the deeper problem
    6. Remedy 1: Commit to finding the real reason, with God's help.
      1. Understanding the parts of us that are crying out -- deeper need 2. 1. Loneliness, Anger at God, disappointment with God, Insecurity, Feeling unsafe, Despair, Shame -- a sense of being unloved or unlovable. 3. 2. 1. Remedy 2: Bring God or Mary or a saint or your angel into the search for the underlying causes-- you will have to deal with the God images 7.
      2. Mistake 2. Pursuing Compartmentalization instead of integration
  4. Compartmentalization = fragmentation
    1. 1. Putting these masturbation behaviors into a box, separating them from the rest of me. That's just not me, or not really me, not really who I am.
    2. 1. Suppression is a defense mechanism aimed specifically at an emotion, desire, attitude or impulse that is perceived as too threatening or dangerous to keep in conscious awareness. Suppression is the intentional effort to force that threatening emotion, desire, attitude or impulse from consciousness, driving it into the unconscious where is not experienced in the same way.
    3. Can be adaptive in the short run -- if we will come back to the threatening experience and work with it in a later moment
    4. If it becomes a chronic way of coping, then It doesn't work in the long run -- the revenge of the suppressed.
    5. 1. Solution:
    6. Remedy 3: Committing to interior integration: Interior acceptance of all parts, all desires, all impulses, all thoughts, all memories as real -- as part of reality. 5.
  5. 1. Mistake 3. Going it alone
  6. Strong impulse this way because of shame -- how shame leads us to want to hide -- discussed in our series on shame, especially in episodes 37 and 38.
    1. 1. Social support, personal relationships are central to psychological healing and recovery
    2. 1. Dr. Lynne Knobloch Fedders Research over the past fifty years has demonstrated that one factor — more than any other — is associated with successful treatment: the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the patient.
    3. 1. And it makes sense
    4. 1. We are social beings, we are not made to go it alone.
    5. Ephesians 2:19: So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God
    6. Galatian 6:2: Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
    7. 1. Embarrassment, not wanting to share.
    8. 1. Desire to be self-sufficient
    9. 1. Solutions:
    10. Remedy 4. Find a confidant with whom you can check in daily. Daily. Not just regularly. Daily
      1. 12 Step Groups have their sponsors 2. 1. Exodus 90 has their anchors, their accountability partners. Daily check-ins. 3. 1. Somebody with whom you can really share how you are doing with masturbation, who is tracking how it's coming along. 4. 1. We are working toward that in the Resilient Catholics Community, and later this year, we'll be discussing accountability partners. 5. 2. 1. Remedy 5: Get to confession and address the spiritual dimensions. Talk about it. Spiritual Director, Confessor -- not just a few seconds once every couple of weeks, but getting into it. 3. 1. Remedy 6: Working toward Intimate relationship with God
      2. Relational Prayer 2. 1. Dealing with God images 4. 1. Remedy 7: Time with Friends -- being deliberate out it. 5. 1. Remedy 8: Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed therapist -- Interior Therapist Community members. Or maybe personal coaches. 6. 9.
      3. Mistake 4. Using only spiritual means
  7. Grace perfects nature
    1. 1. Many clients have used spiritual means for years and decades and not overcome masturbation
    2. Corporal mortifications -- cold showers, fasting, even self-flagellation -- use of disciplines, cilices.
      1. Can lead to body condemnation
        
        Preference for spiritual level problems over natural level problems - psychological issues are in the natural realm
        
        Neglects the role of natural causes -- natural causes needs solutions in the natural realm.
        
        Suspicion of mental health professionals -- understandable
        
        Repeat of Remedy 8: Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed therapist -- Interior Therapist Community members.
        
        Remedy 9: Sexaholics Anonymous or other groups.
        
        Remedy 10: Online groups -- like the Resilient Catholic Community 8. 3.
    4. Review of first four mistakes and their remedies -- see above.
    5. Wrap up
4. So in the next episode, we will continue with the mistakes people make in the natural realm in overcoming masturbation -- there are six more mistakes for us to cover, along with many more remedies.
5. 1. Feedback. Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have. Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- we're still small enough in January 2021 that I can respond to everybody.
6. 1. February 19, 2021 -- 10 AM to 1:15 PM Eastern time. I have been invited to do a webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association entitled "Why Do I Avoid God? An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts' Negative God Images" Here we get into how different parts see God. Lots of experiential work. For information and registration go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events
7. 1. We have the Resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
  2. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in April. 2.
  3. 1. Will do a bonus podcast -- community members -- experiential exercise, on why I go it alone -- mistake 3 when I try to solve my problems, whether with masturbation or anything else. -- Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on January 26.
  4. 1. Office hours for the RC community on Wednesday, January 27 from 9:15 to 10:15 AM Eastern time. Register on our app.
  5. 1. Bonus podcast for our Catholic Therapists in the Interior Therapist Community with more on symptoms vs. underlying problems in ourselves and our clients and we go deeper into the clinical implications of working with Catholics who masturbate and hate the fact that they do.
  6. 1. Can start by subscribing to this podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know.
  7. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com -- don’t forget about feedback, ideas, suggestions.
  8. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you each week the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is so fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. In this podcast, we ask and answer the tough questions about the real problems we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way.
3. In order to free you to love God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary, I help to you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God's truth, goodness and beauty
4. Together, we are looking for a deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls unite with God and we can rise to the challenges and opportunities He provides us.
5. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
6. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
7. This is episode 51, released on January 18, 2021
8. This is the third episode in our series on sexuality.
9. and it is titled: Top 10 Reasons Why Catholic Men Masturbate.
10. And maybe some of you think you know why Catholic Men masturbate.
11. But maybe, just maybe some of you are not satisfied with the simple, surface answers. Maybe some of you suspect that there are psychological reasons may be a lot deeper than the common explanations would suggest.
12. I'm here to say that I think there is so much more going on with masturbation than what may be available in conscious awareness. I've been a psychologist since 2001 and in the last 20 years, I've had the opportunity to explore the reasons for masturbation in the lives of many, many Catholic men.
  1. Top ten reasons that Catholic men give for why they masturbate -- but wait, there's more
  2. Top ten deeper reasons why they really masturbate
13. So if you are interested in getting a much more complete answers, answers that plumb the depths of our psyches stay tuned.
14. Why not women? Fair question. I've seen far more Catholic men actively struggling with this than Catholic women -- and I'm going off my clinical experience. Masturbation is a great concern for some women. I just know less about it in the lives of women.
  1. Many of the points are likely to be equally valid for women as for men.
  2. Valuable for women to understand why Catholic men masturbate.
15. Parents, be mindful of how much of this you may want your young children to hear.
Definitions
1. Important to define our terms and be clear about the concepts
  1. Confucius: The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names
  2. APA Dictionary of Psychology: n. manipulation of one’s own genital organs, typically the penis or clitoris, for purposes of sexual gratification. The act is usually accompanied by sexual fantasies or erotic literature, pictures, or videos. Masturbation may also include the use of mechanical devices (e.g., a vibrator) or self-stimulation of other organs, such as the anus or nipples.
  3. Objections: overdone sense of propriety --
    1. Victorian age -- women not able to be examined
    2. Coded language, often poorly understood
    3. Often driven by a sense of shame -- a desire to hide.
    4. Victorian Age characterized by a lot of sexual acting out. Lots of it.
    5. "Self-abuse"
    6. Fear of talking about masturbation will increase the likelihood of masturbating.
      1. Depends on the context.
      2. In a clinical context, no.
  4. Rebuttal -- if we can put our experiences into language and share them verbally
    1. Much better able to engage our intellect
      1. Fr. John Hardon -- his 1981 book "The Catholic Catechism": in addressing masturbation P. 355: More than ever, the Church is becoming aware of the need for probing beneath the surface of not only what a person is doing by why he is doing it. Impulses and tendencies that well up from the subconscious (or unconscious) are seen as contributing to overt actions that reflect the behavioral pattern of the environment, even while they contradict the deepest values in which a person believes. 2. 1. Experiences no longer pre-verbal -- chaos of emotions, body sensations, images, sensory experiences, desires, impulses -- we need to be able to name them, or they remain shadowy, dark, ominous 5. 1. And our will -- we are less likely to act out on them 6. 1. less likely to sin 7. 1. Contradicts a commonly held notion - that if we ignore, suppress, repress, avoid a problem it will go away
      2. Sin thrives in the darkness 8.
      3. Secular Psychology Views on Masturbation
  5. Joe Kort, Ph.D. 2020 Article in Psychology Today: Masturbation is Sexual Health.

And yet here we are in 2020 and talking about masturbation is still taboo in most of society. And that’s a shame, literally and figuratively, because masturbation is still widely considered shameful, and because for most people it’s a healthy and normal activity. There is actually a term these days for those who prefer masturbation over other forms of sex: solosexual.

World has radically different views from the Catholic Church on sexuality.
Mine is a minority opinion -- you can write me off as fringey if you want.
Catholic teaching on Masturbation
1. CCC

2351 Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.""The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."139

Is Masturbation a Mortal Sin?
1. CCC 1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."131
2. 1. Grave matter -- Grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent
  2. 2352 Referring to masturbation CCC 2352 goes on…To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.
    1. 1. Spiritual directors and confessors
    2. 1. Force of acquired habit, affective immaturity or other mitigating factors -- in some ways a much more significant structural problem -- lack of integration. 4.
  4. It can be really hard to have the humility in accepting Church teaching on this one.
  5. Why is it a problem on a natural level
3. Freud -- wrote of the "disease of masturbation" -- and even though he asserted that children were sexual beings, he documented his concerns about the effects of masturbation on adolescent sexual development.
4. 1. CS Lewis, 1956 letter to a close friend

"For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete his own personality in that of another and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is: always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is: always adored, always the perfect love, no demand is made of his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself." (Lewis 1956, p. 168) – Letter to a close friend

Dead end -- not really a solution -- closed to procreation and closed to loving the spouse.
1. Huge insult to the spouse.
  1. Shaming effect. Wife: I'm not good enough -- very activating,
  2. Most reasons given below, the spouse is not the cause.
  3. Still, great shame attaches. I'm not good enough.
Self-absorption -- CS Lewis quote above. Contrast it with Woody Allen: ‘Don’t knock masturbation,’ Woody Allen famously quipped: ‘It’s sex with someone I love.’
How big of an issue is it?
1. Stats
  1. Actions
    1. 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey 61% of Men masturbate
    2. 2010 Article in Journal of Sexual Medicine --
      1. In last month 69% of 25-29 y.o. men, nearly 2/3 of men 18-49
      2. 80% of men 18-49 in last year
    3. TENGA 2018 Global Self-Pleasure Report -- 92% of American Men masturbate.
    4. 1. Souls and Hearts informal surveys of Priests -- porn and masturbation. Sexual issues
  3. Understanding Why men Masturbate
2. Start with compassionate attempts to understand. Know what we are dealing with.
  1. Shaming parts beating up the man
  2. Very sensitive to any additional shame.
3. 1. Reasons men give for why they masturbate - FOTW in my office, in my Catholic practice over the last 20 years.
  2. Lust, I just want pleasure
  3. I'm weak, I lack willpower.
  4. To de-stress, calm down, unwind, relax, To fall asleep -- burned out
  5. It's a habit, I do it out of habit
  6. Anger
  7. Boredom
  8. Wife/girlfriend is frigid, cold, sexually distant, withholding -man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
  9. Preventing acting out with girlfriend
  10. Because I'm bad.
  11. The devil made me do it -- temptation
  12. Another common response. I don't know why -- I don't want to.
    1. Often scared, really uncomfortable with a feeling of loss of control 12. 1. Romans 7:15: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
    2. 1. Issues with these explanations
  13. Looking at the surface behaviors and only the immediate context of the masturbation
    1. 1. Lack of awareness, lack of access to much of their internal psychological and emotional lives
    2. Not recognizing deeper needs, deep intentions. 2.
      1. Masturbation as a symptom -- later in the causal chain.
    3. Also a problem in and of itself -- Fever of 107. 2. 4.
    4. 1. Review of Parts -- IFS perspective
  14. Multiplicity and Unity of Self
    1. 1. Really helpful for understanding why Catholic men do what they don't want to do.
    2. 1. Discussion of Parts
    3. within each person are separate, identifiable and enduring constellations of thoughts, emotions, attitudes, impulses, desires, abilities, interests, relational styles, body sensations, and worldviews that are not just transient emotional states, but rather constitute discrete “parts,” subpersonalities or distinct modes of operating within the person’s larger internal system. 2. 1. Like little persons within us, each with its own particular range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world.
      1. Modes of operating
      2. Subpersonalities
      3. Orchestra model
      4. Focus is on integration.
    4. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
    5. Three roles
      1. Exiles --
        
        most sensitive -- become injured or outraged by important other in the family or social world. Threatens the system, external relationships
        
        Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
        
        Want care and love, rescue, redemption
        
        shame. Need for redemption 4. 1. Managers
        
        Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 2. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigiliance. 5. 1. Firefighters
        
        Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 6. 7. Parts can take over the person
      2. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 8. 1. We call it blending. 9.
        
        Intentions of parts -- always good, but the means they choose can be very harmful, maladaptive.
      3. Look at sexual fantasies and the pornography that often goes with it
  15. Will have Dr. Gerry Crete on in Episode 53, in two weeks to discuss pornography
    1. Can be separated
      1. Conscious sexual fantasies -- often very difficult to talk about because of shame
      2. Unconscious sexual fantasies -- repressed with the part, but still active, still having an effect 4.
    2. 1. Looking at sexual history.
    3. 1. Deeper reasons -- focusing on psychological here -- not the spiritual. Vice exists, sinfulness exists, lust exists. We are looking at the natural foundation. 1. Loneliness: Yearning for intimate connection but with control -- CS Lewis quote 2. Insecurity or a sense of a lack of safety -- fears of abandonment
    4. Difficulty with real relationships -- current or possible
    5. Self-soothing. 3. Cry for help -- from parts exiled in the unconscious -- using a symptom that they know will attract attention.
    6. Single symptom presentation (see next episode) 4. Anger at God -- retaliation. 5. Regulating distance from God -- getting too close
    7. Fear of fusion 6. 1. Cycle -- self sabotage 7. 1. Fearing the next spiritual level -- the perceived demands. God image stuff. 8. 1. Perfect sin -- doesn't hurt anybody else
      1. Not true 2. 9. 10. Anger at wife
    8. Revenge -- unconscious anger -- not meeting my needs for a mother or a God. 11. 1. Acting out 12. 1. Begging for help from the wife -- maladaptive way 13. 1. Controlling sex life -- if you don't have sex with me, I'll do this. May not be conscious 14. Effects of sexual abuse
    9. Connection with abuser -- hanging on to relational connection 15. Deep, existential lack of Safety -- self soothing. 16. Testing reality, grounding
    10. I feel so dead inside. 17. 1. Primitive level Feeling something, anything 18. 1. Serves the same cutting -- bleeding proves that I am alive, even though I feel no life within me. Numbness. Hypoarousal. 19. 20. Temptation -- devils go after the most isolated, most lonely parts, carrying burdens.
    12. Follow the stories of:
4. Richard:
  1. 48 years old,
    1. 1. Grew up nominally Catholic, but in a troubled, broken home, parents divorced when he was 15, lots of conflict in the home growing up, parents dissatisfied, because his mother had an affair and it shattered his father when it was revealed.
    2. 1. Masturbated since his teenage years, high school locker room, Playboy magazines going around in 1987 right around the time that he parents were battling each other in high conflict and he had to try to care for his younger siblings. Really wanted to be included, be one of the guys on the basketball team. The other players really reveled in Richard joining them In viewing porn and in their conversations about their sexual exploits, as Richard had been considered a stuck up snob.
    3. 1. Tried to stop masturbating at various times in his life, furtive sensed it was wrong, knew enough about Church teaching. Fantasies of different women, women who were in their mid 30s. Brunette women with dark eyes, women with curves, a little heavier than the typical playboy centerfolds. Wanted to read the stories about their lives, what they needed, and fantasize about how he could meet their needs and then they would be devoted to him and highly committed.
    4. 1. Dated a lot of girls, most of them brunettes with dark eyes, lots of sexual relationships
    5. 1. Then married Linda, a very pretty woman with a lot of dependency issues who was crazy about him.
    6. 1. Sex before marriage was really sensual. After marriage, not so much. Richard felt burdened by his wife's dependency and passive resentment.
    7. 1. Married 22 years, four kids, regular Mass-goer, wanted to raise his kids right. Continued with porn and masturbation, always when he was alone with deep, often unacknowledged feelings of shame and inadequacy and fears of being abandoned again.
    8. 1. Deeper causes
    9. Fears of abandonment, insecurity rising up again -- unresolved from mom's erratic behavior
      1. Exiled part -- needing a mom, lonely, needy -- rises up 2. 1. In the past, gotten him into bad relationships -- terrible endings. Must avoid that
        
        Firefighter leaps in with porn -- keeps him from looking for an affair, attempt to distract from the loneliness, neediness, pain, weakness. Hyperarousal, attempt to flee from the intensity of the exiled part's experience 3. 1. Manager -- internal critic condemns himself. Did it again. 4. 2. 1. Loneliness 3. 1. Anger at wife 10.
        
        Luis
  2. Seminarian
    1. 1. Deep devotion to God
    2. 1. Parents married, Dad distant, mom thinks he's a little autistic, not emotionally attuned
    3. 1. Very close enmeshed relationship with Mom
    4. Part of the reason for going to seminary -- no other men, can be mom's one and only 2. 1. Experiences close relationships as fusion -- blending together. 5.
    6. Wrap up
5. Now that we have identified the issues around masturbation and its causes much more accurately and in greater detail, in the next episode, we'll get into how to overcome masturbation
6. 1. Follow the stories of Richard and Luis -- what happens with them.
7. 1. Welcoming the Interior Therapist Community to Souls and Hearts -- this community of 32 therapists working with me on their human formation and learning IFS principles. This had been in my private practice, Secure Foundations, but Dr. Gerry and I agreed that it would be great to bring it under the umbrella of Souls and Hearts. That community is currently closed to new therapists, but we will be reopening in just a few weeks -- all kinds of opportunities there, if you are a therapist, and we do a bonus podcast for them on clinical assessment around masturbation, how to approach understanding masturbation in your clients. If you're a Catholic clinician who is interested, get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
8. 1. February 19, 2021 -- 10 AM to 1:15 PM Eastern time. I have been invited to do a webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association entitled "Why Do I Avoid God? An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts' Negative God Images" Here we get into how different parts see God. Lots of experiential work. For information and registration go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events
9. 1. We have the Resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
  2. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in April. 2.
  3. 1. Will do a bonus podcast -- community members -- experiential exercise, a Parts Roundtable about Masturbation -- Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on January 19.
  4. 1. Office hours for the RC community on Wednesday, January 27 from 9:15 to 10:15 AM Eastern time. Register on our app.
  5. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
  6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
  7. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem! And for one episode, the last episode we called it "Resilient Catholics" -- but there is a podcast out there already called "The Resilient Catholic" so we don’t want to create confusion and division.
1. Interior
2. Integration
3. Catholics
4. Encompasses
  1. Human Formation
    1. 1. Radical Transformation
    2. 1. Shoring up the natural foundation for the spiritual life
    3. 1. Resilience
    4. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
    5. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
    6. This is episode 50, released on January 11, 2021
    7. and it is titled: In Search of a healthy, ordered sexuality.
    8. This is the second episode in our series on sexuality.
    9. We are going to spend time on sexuality and in the coming weeks we will address many topics, including masturbation, pornography, adulterous affairs, pre-marital sex, asexuality, homosexuality, artificial contraception and sexual trauma and its effects.
    10. But to put those issues into context, we need to understand what a health sexuality looks like.
  2. Vitally important because sexuality is so sensitive to how we live our lives in the natural realm
  3. Also vitally important because an authentic Catholic view on sexuality is so radically different from what the world offers us.
  4. Most baptized Catholic reject Catholic teaching on many sexual issues.
  5. So many Catholics struggle with sexual issues. Lots of confusion. Lots of distress.
  6. We need a guiding star, an image of what sexuality should be. That's what this episode is about.
    1. We will look at the authoritative sources of Catholic teaching 6. 1. but really flesh them out in a way that appreciates how people are wired physiologically, neurologically and psychologically 7. 1. So we can have answers to why we so often find ourselves falling and going astray in the sexual realm. 8.
      1. Parts
      2. Examples
    2. Vitally important to recognize a healthy sexuality because our sexuality is so sensitive to how we live our lives in the natural realm -- are we living in an ordered, virtuous way in harmony with natural and divine realities, or are we basing our actions on our subjective, distorted perceptions of reality. Sexuality is either the first or one of the first areas in our life to go wrong when we depart from reality. Sensitive barometer to how things are ordered or not ordered in our lives.
    3. Most baptized Catholic report that they reject Catholic teaching on many sexual issues.
      1. Pew 2014 Survey of more than 7200 Catholics, 57% Favor or Strongly Favor Same-sex Marriages
      2. Pew 2016 survey of 817 Catholics only 8% of Catholics believe using contraception is morally wrong. 41% believe its morally acceptable and 48% believe it's not a moral issue.
      3. Lots more statistics
      4. Social referencing: evaluating one’s own modes of thinking, expression, or behavior by comparing them with those of other people so as to understand how to react in a particular situation and to adapt one’s actions and reactions in ways that are perceived to be appropriate. APA dictionary
      5. Lukewarm Catholics look a lot like lukewarm Methodists, look a lot like lukewarm Jews, look a lot like lukewarm Buddhists, look a lot like lukewarm agnostics, look a lot like lukewarm atheists.
        
        Going with the cultural flow
        
        Relying on own perceptions and insights
        
        Everybody being influenced by the societal trends.
      6. We don't want to be constrained
  7. Reductionism. Universal, Eternal Moral Laws --> Confining, chafing Rules --> outdated decrees from decades or centuries ago, promulgated by old white men in black cassocks who aren't supposed to be having sex anyway -- what do they know? How are these teaching possibly relevant to my life in the 2020s. Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, creating an impression that sex is bad, almost any sexual activity is bad, I'm tired of being told how bad I am .
    1. 1. License vs. freedom
    2. Freedom is the capacity to choose the good for me and for others
      1. Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude (#1731). 2. License is the capacity to choose what I want -- to take what I want
      2. root of licentiousness -- lacking legal or moral restraints and especially disregarding sexual restraints
        
        Me as the measure
    3. Enlightenment -- man as the measure of all things instead of God. 2. 1. Ordered sexuality is what I think it is for me.
      1. Assumption that I know what is best for me, by my own lights
        
        No need for divine revelation 2. 1. No acceptance of an external authority 3. 1. Chesterton “We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.” The Catholic Church and Conversion 4. Assumption that I can determine what is best for me. 3. 9.
        
        So many Catholics struggle with sexual issues. Lots of confusion. Lots of distress.
        
        Catholic teaching on sexuality is very misunderstood, often watered down, often misrepresented.
        
        Intensity of bodily experience -- affects us.
        
        Market for it. We have itching ears
        
        2 Timothy 4: 2-4 Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. 3 For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: 4 And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.
    4. St. Hilary of Poitiers: mid-fourth century AD: …they will gather teachers together for these things which they desire. They will compile a doctrine that fits in with their desires, since they are no longer eager to be taught. They want to bring together teachers for that which they already desire in order that this large number of teachers whom they have sought and assembled may satisfy the doctrines of their own passionate desires. ON THE TRINITY 10.2.69 2. 1. GK Chesterton: The Catholic Church and Conversion 1926 : We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty allowing us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be social, when they would be social without any religion. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion. They say they want a religion like this because they are like this already. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do without it. It is a very different matter when a religion, in the real sense of a binding thing, binds men to their morality when it is not identical with their mood. It is very different when some of the saints preached social reconciliation to fierce and raging factions who could hardly bear the sight of each others’ faces. It was a very different thing when charity was preached to pagans who really did not believe in it; just as it is a very different thing now, when chastity is preached to new pagans who do not believe in it. It is in those cases that we get the real grapple of religion; and it is in those cases that we get the peculiar and solitary triumph of the Catholic faith. It is not in merely being right when we are right, as in being cheerful or hopeful or humane. It is in having been right when we were wrong, and in the fact coming back upon us afterwards like a boomerang. One word that tells us what we do not know outweighs a thousand words that tell us what we do know. And the thing is all the more striking if we not only did not know it but could not believe it. It may seem a paradox to say that the truth teaches us more by the words we reject than by the words we receive. 3. Subjectivity
    5. Physical Laws
      1. Gravity -- Peter Pan issue
        
        Fairy Dust was added later for health and safety reasons. Originally Peter and the Lost Boys could fly unaided, but after several reports of children injuring themselves attempting to fly from their beds, JM Barrie added Fairy Dust as a necessary factor for flying. 2. 4. 5. Seeking license at the expense of freedom
        
        We need a guiding star, an image of what sexuality should be
5. Bear with me here -- we will review what the Catholic church teaches about sexuality, but this is not primarily an apologetics show or a catechetical podcast.
6. 1. Chastity CCC 2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift.
  2. Unpack this
    1. 1. Sexuality is embodied
    2. 1. Sexuality is relational.
    3. 1. Complete and lifelong gift
    4. Integrity of the person 2. 1. Integrality of the gift -- the state of being total and complete 3. 1. Mt 5:27-28 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 4.
      1. Laws are like signposts around a pasture. 6.
    6. Five Main reasons why our sexuality becomes distorted and dysfunctional for most people
7. Not understanding who God is -- God images -- Not orienting ourselves toward God
8. 1. Not understanding who we are -- self images
  2. Episodes 23-29 God images and Self images
  3. 1. Not understanding the entirety of the gift in relationship
  4. 1. Not understanding the importance of the sacramental bond in marriage -- graces that are so helpful.
  5. 1. It's too hard. -- And it is too hard if we are closed to the graces. All things are possible with God.
  6. 1. Other possible causes
  7. Genetic problems, especially with the sex chromosomes
    1. 1. Congenital bodily defects
    2. 1. Endocrine problems with sex hormones -- woman with high levels of testosterone
  8. 1. If we really knew who God was and if we held on to that consistently -- if we really knew who we were and held on to that knowledge consistently -- we would follow Him and his laws for us. The laws are made for our good.
  9. 1. Taking the problem back the to the root causes.
  10. 1. Taking the sexual act out of context.
  11. 1. Love -- Charity -- Caritas
  12. Culture as the measure
9. Social referencing: evaluating one’s own modes of thinking, expression, or behavior by comparing them with those of other people so as to understand how to react in a particular situation and to adapt one’s actions and reactions in ways that are perceived to be appropriate. APA dictionary
10. Why are we confused and why do we engage in sexual vice?
11. Traditional explanation
  1. Pride.
    1. Reaching for omniscience
    2. reaching for omnipotence
    3. Making myself God.
    4. 1. Lust
    5. 1. And those things are there.
  2. 1. Alternative explanation
  3. Seeking some good in a misguided way -- seeking something we need
    1. 1. Safety and Security
    2. 1. Love
    3. 1. Connection, relationships
  4. 1. What does ordered sexuality look like
  5. Sexual acts in the context of marriage
    1. 1. Grounded in and informed by charity, expressed through chastity
    2. Gift of self 2. 1. CCC 2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. 3. 1. God is love -- is God involved.
    3. Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church
      1. Prayer before sexual act -- Book of Tobit, Chapter 8 -- Tobias and Sarah
      2. How far is too far -- 5.
    4. 1. Sin lead to a lack of integration in us -- internal disconnects among our parts.
    5. 1. Parts -- reviewed this in the last episode, #49
  6. The separate mental subsystems within us, each with own idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires, views of the world.
    1. Modes of operating
    2. Subpersonalities
    3. Orchestra model
    4. Focus is on integration.
    5. 1. Each part had good intentions for us, is trying to pursue a good.
    6. 1. Each part has a different understanding of sexuality, a different perspective on sexuality, based on its experiences and how it made sense of those experiences
  7. 1. Examples of parts
  8. Affair
    1. Linda 43 years old, returning to work as an ad executive in an agency after 15 years out of field, when she was a stay-at home mom
      1. Likes the work, likes the income, the sense of being valued, the professional wardrobe 2. 1. Husband is distant from her, preoccupied with work, deeply involved with sports both on TV and with their sons
      2. Not attuned to her sexually, emotionally, relationally 2. 1. Sex is ungratifying to her, she feels used, she doesn't know how to approach him about it, fears his anger 3. 1. Sex is about biweekly, little romance, little foreplay, over quickly as he orgasms and then falls asleep 4. 1. Resigned to the idea that this is just how it's going to be with him. 3. 1. Body issues going back to teenage years, a little overweight, not the most stylish clothes, teased, called names. Not one of the in crowd -- issues of self-worth 4. 1. Going well at the agency, resuming career trajectory 5. 1. New hire -- Tom, a high school classmate of hers -- popular, soccer player, one of the in-crowd, homecoming court. 6. 1. He remembers her, is friendly, cordial 7. 1. She helps him get oriented to the job, even though he is senior to her. 8. 1. Remembering old time 9. 1. Lingering over conversations 10. 1. He's divorced, 2 kids, he shares a little of his story with her, not a lot. 11. 1. Tom seeks to get her assigned to his division. 12. 1. Notices her new outfit (Her husband never does), but not a direct complement, nothing overt, nothing that you could really pin down. 13. 1. Linda is drawn to him. 14.
        
        Linda's parts
    2. Intimacy-seeking part He is so warm and kind, so affirming -- I need affirmation. Powerful longings stirring in a part that had been exiled, suppressed. Starving for gentleness, kindness, attention. Disconnected from God -- God is distant, cold. Life and death survival. I need this, I deserve this. Statue God image from Episode 25 2. 1. Moral part Warning bells starting to sound -- I'm being attracted, this is not right -- moral part of her. Conscience. Fears of acting out, fears of being shamed, fears of sinning and God's anger -- God is near, but really demanding. Drill sergeant God image, like from Episode 25. 3. 1. Minimizing part. Nothing's going to happen. I'm too old, I'm not attractive, I would never cross boundaries with him anyway, it's unthinkable. 4.
      1. Not to say that lust and pride are not operative. Seeking evil. 4.
    4. Shine the light
12. Pray about sexuality
13. 1. Ask, enter into relationship with God.
  2. Listen
14. 1. Is how I am acting sexually a gift to God, to the person I'm with -- spouse, fiancé, boyfriend or girlfriend, others close to me, parents
  2. Harmony of Goods. 2.
  3. 1. Talk with your spouse, fiancée, boyfriend or girlfriend.
  5. Wrap up
15. Next week continuing with Sexuality, several more episodes.
16. 1. We have the resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
17. 1. Will do a bonus podcast -- community members -- a shining the light exercise in prayer -- Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on January 12.
18. 1. Catholic therapists who are in my consultation groups -- special bonus podcast for you as well on addressing your own parts' experience of sexuality.
19. 1. Second Wednesday Zoom meeting for community members on January 13 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time-- discussing shame and sexuality and also healthy sexuality in different states of life. I will have some more things to share with you and then questions and discussion.
20. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in March, possibly April.
21. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
22. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
23. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Resilient Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem! That's right, in this new year we have a new name, and it's fitting because we have broadened our scope to do so much more than help you, our listeners deal with the Coronavirus Crisis.
1. When this started out.
  1. Coping skills, build resilience, not alone-- crisis management. Now a long crisis.
    2. Now not just about making it through the coronavirus crisis
    3. Now we are really about increasing resilience through transformation -- a radical transformation of self, overcoming anything that gets in the way of us loving God our Father and Mary our Mother with the trust and dependence of a little child.
  2. Resilience from a Catholic perspective
  3. And there are both great similarities and great differences in resilience understood from a Catholic Perspective and Resilience from a secular perspective
    1. Resilience through Human formation -- a lot more to say about this in the future.
    2. We are still all about rising up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.
    3. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
    4. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
    5. This is episode 49, released on January 4, 2021
    6. and it is titled: The secret impact of our shame on our sexuality
    7. This is the 13th and final episode in our series on shame. We are wrapping up that series, but we will be coming back to shame over and over again in future episodes, because of how central it is in our lives.
    8. This is also the first episode on a new series of episodes, a new series all about sexuality.
  4. We are going to spend time on sexuality and in the coming weeks we will address many topics, including masturbation, pornography, adulterous affairs, pre-marital sex, asexuality, homosexuality, and sexual trauma and its effects.
  5. And we're going to get into the topic of sexuality the same way we do with all the topics on this podcast.
    1. We assume that what the Catholic Church has always infallibly taught to be true is indeed true, and then starting from that theological, philosophical and metaphysical base, we bring in the best of what psychology offers. And we harmonize the best of psychology with what we know to be true by Divine Revelation. Here we don't try to reshape Catholicism to fit the latest and greatest woke ideas from the world about sexuality. 3. 1. So I will be coming from that Catholic base. And that is a minority position in psychology -- if you want to know what the latest trends and beliefs are in the secular psychology community you can check out the guidelines that the American Psychological Association puts out on its website APA.org. This podcast is for people who really want to understand psychology harmonized with the perennial teaching of the Catholic church 4. 1. And to that end, I invite feedback, especially if I teach anything that is in error. Please get in touch with me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594.
      1. Citations -- Catechism, Canon Law, Denzinger's Compendium, Ludwig Ott Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
      2. Don't email me and tell me that a confessor you went to ten years ago said that masturbation is normal and God doesn't mind it all. That's not helpful. 5.
    2. Sexuality is such a huge and complex issue and so confusing for people. One of the two most difficult topics for people to discuss. The other one? My relationship God, how I see God, all the personal or lack of personal connection with Jesus, with God our Father, with the Holy Spirit, with Mary, our Mother.
      1. Sexuality is difficult and confusing for so many reasons
  6. Shame is at the center -- hard to talk about this because it is so personal and so intimate, and often so bound up with shame.
    1. Sexuality not talked about, not discussed
      1. Modeling from parents -- conveyed a sense of embarrassment 2. 1. No modeling from others 3. 1. Deep feelings of incompetence, not knowing, not understanding 4. 1. Not sure about what is normal and not normal, what is morally acceptable, what is not 5. 1. Not wanting to embarrass a spouse or fiancé or girlfriend or boyfriend 6. 1. Not wanting to make the listener uncomfortable 7. 1. Not sure if the other person -- like a therapist -- will respect Catholic beliefs.
        
        Many clients reach out to Catholic therapists because of this fear -- if I am struggling with porn use or masturbation will this therapist inwardly mock my beliefs -- or outwardly say that masturbation is normal and porn use can enhance one's sexual experience. 2. 1. Many clients are afraid to disclose to a Catholic therapist their sexual experiences, for fear of being judged -- two-edged sword
        
        Some grounds for that -- some Catholic therapists are uncomfortable with hearing, may feel undue pressure to make sure some change happens, May be overly concerned with their own "participation" in some way with sexual material coming up. Not know what to do, and signal to the client that it's better "not to go there." 2. 3. 8. 9. Sexuality part and parcel of our bodies, all about our bodies
      2. Body keeps the Score -- body is where we tend to hide all kinds of unresolved psychological issues 10. 1. Catholics often hold Manichean and Jansenist ideas about the body. 11. 12. Catholics who are serious about their faith often have a propensity to start with self-judgement and self-condemnation, like at the end of a trial, without really understanding themselves well.
      3. Internal self-shaming 13. And all of this makes sense, makes sense, because almost all of us Catholic adults have sinned sexually. 14. Review of Shame (Episodes 37, 38 for full picture)
      4. Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action. (Click to episode 38 for a summary) 15. 1. Qualities of shame
        
        Shame is hidden. Hidden from others, hidden from God, often hidden from the therapist, hidden from self. 2. 1. Shame inhibits positive emotions 16.
        
        And a Catholic view of sexuality, in which sexuality is ordered to what is good, true and beautiful is so different than what the world offers us. Moral issues
    2. Stating a standard -- even reading a Bible passage can be considered hate speech.
      1. Cancel culture.
        
        Rule based rather than relationship-based approaches
      2. So many needs and messages being expressed
      3. Model of suppression and condemnation. Out of conscious awareness, then it doesn't exist any more -- Many clients -- why do we have to get into it -- it's just lust. I just need to stop having these thoughts, or recalling these memories or whatever. Parts that have very simplistic models, very simple ideas that are really lacking awareness of important realities.
      4. External attribution -- it's the demons. It's all temptation.
      5. Teachings vs. interpretations, implementations -- prudential judgement.
      6. Lots of bad advice out there.
    3. Secular advice based off of a primary orienting principle of satisfaction of our carnal desires, whatever they may be, as long as anyone else involved is consenting freely guided by the spirit of our age, the sexual revolution.
    4. So-called well-intentioned "Catholic" advice that doesn't reflect what the Church actually teaches
      1. Freelancing theologians and philosophers that have rejected the perennial teachings of the Church and create confusion among the faithful -- priests and bishops who teach things that are contrary to the deposit of faith handed down through the generations. 3. 1. Huge appetite for these novel pseudodoctrines on sexuality -- itching ears, so there is a receptive audience.
        
        Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. 4. 5. Advice that is mistaken because the advisor isn't comfortable dealing with the sexual issues the person has
      2. Siloed -- Philosophical and theological explications on sexual ethics -- not really helpful to the traumatized former sex workers I was working with 20 years ago. -- Hard to connect to their experience, not really sensitive to the pervasive impact of trauma. 6. 1. Inexperience 7. 1. Their own personal issues 8. 1. Priest actively masturbating -- conflicted about it. Unresolved longstanding problem. How are they going to handle this in confession? Errors of being too lenient, too harsh, etc. Sacrament still valid if the form is there and intentionality is there, but what about the human formation aspects
        
        Definitional issues -- broad definition of sexuality = all those factors or elements within a person that are associated with sex.
        
        Mindset: Attitudes, thoughts, fantasies -- intellect
        
        Heartset: Emotions, romance, relational factors
        
        Bodyset: Physical sensations, somatic reactions such as orgasm, bodily impulses, reproduction
        
        Soulset: Beliefs, conscience, spiritual aspects.
        
        Actions
        
        So many contradictory internal messages, ideas, passions -- internal battles about sexuality.
      3. Sexuality is such an important issue to address
2. So much confusion
3. 1. So many sexual wounds and injuries that are often deeply buried.
4. 1. Sensitive barometer
5. 1. Stakes are high. Our Lady of Fatima to St. Jacinta: More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.
6. 1. Lots of grave matter in the sexual arena -- pornography use, masturbation, artificial contraception, extramarital affairs -- another way of saying adulterous affairs, pre-marital sex, another way of saying fornication -- committing rape or incest, and these are just the beginning.
8. How are we going to go about it differently
9. Address the natural level aspects of human sexuality head on -- no skirting around the issues
  1. Clear, direct language -- so parents, be thoughtful about how much you may want your young children to hear from this series of episodes at their level of development. 2.
  2. 1. Fidelity to what the Catholic Church has historically taught -- humility, let me know.
  3. 1. But like we have been doing with this series on shame, we are going to bring in findings from psychology, physiology, neuroscience, to more deeply understand the truths of traditional Catholic teaching about sexuality.
  4. 1. Focus on clarity within -- via parts -- listening to the parts of us which is listening to ourselves.
  5. 1. Instead of repression, suppression, denial, instead of simplistic ideas that if I'm not thinking about it, it's not there -- I'm inviting you to look at what our internal experiences are telling us about us.
  6. 1. Moral distinctions -- between what is morally wrong, and what is disordered but not morally wrong.
  8. Discussion of Parts
10. Discrete, autonomous mental systems, each with own idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires, views of the world.
  1. Modes of operating
  2. Subpersonalities
  3. Orchestra model
  4. Focus is on integration.
11. 1. Each part had good intentions for us, is trying to pursue a good.
12. 1. Each part has a different understanding of sexuality, a different perspective on sexuality, based on its experiences.
  2. We discussed in episode 38 how each part has a God image, a way of understanding God -- this goes back to our God image series that ran from episodes 23 to 29.
  3. Similarly, each part has a different experience of sexuality.
  4. These experiences and understandings of sexuality can be quite distorted based on the part's experience and the meaning that the part made from the experience.
    1. Just like a part's God image -- the understanding of God can be very warped because of what a part experienced in relationship and how it made spiritual sense out of its experiences.
13. 1. Parts get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
14. 1. Three roles
  2. Exiles --
    1. most sensitive -- become injured or outraged. Threatens the system, external relationships
    2. Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships, including sexual relationships
    3. Want care and love, rescue, redemption -- can be motivated to do almost anything to be seen, cared for.
    4. shame. Need for redemption
    5. Often hurt sexually. Often carry the burden of shame from sexual experiences.
    6. Often desire sexual experiences that are corrective in some way
    7. May have experienced some kind of sexual contact in the context of relationships
    8. Often very young parts, caught in the past.
    9. They hold the material that is really threatening and destabilizing to our systems.
    10. 1. Managers -- usually the ones in charge.
    11. Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe, keeping the exiles suppressed
    12. Often guard against sexual experiences -- very self-protective
      1. Soulset -- moral issues 3. 1. Bodyset -- body integrity 4. 1. Heartset -- emotional intensity and relational attachments 5. 1. Mindset -- keeping a clear head, not being overwhelmed. 6. 7. Not all that interested in getting to know the exiles -- too much intensity there.
        
        Firefighters
    13. Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, cutting 4. 1. This is where a lot of sexual acting out happens. Desperately distracting from the exiles' pain and intensity. 5. 4.
    14. 1. Parts can take over the person
  3. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley
    1. 1. We call it blending.
    2. 1. Explains radically inconsistent approaches to sexuality -- when different parts are blended
    3. 1. Explains polarizations -- parts locked into combat within a person 5.
  5. IFS on the Self (more in episode 42)
15. Self defined as the seat of consciousness
16. 1. When self accepts and loves parts, those parts transform back into who they were meant to be
17. 1. Self-led mind is self-righting.
18. 1. self -- Active inner leader -- more than mindfulness
19. 1. Parts find the relationship with the self very reassuring
  2. But to reap the benefits they have to unblend from and notice the self
    1. 1. This is frightening can challenging to parts
    2. 1. Agency in the parts -- parts are making decisions about unblending in IFS model
  3. 1. Intrinsic qualities of the self
  4. Curiosity
    1. 1. Compassion
    2. 1. Calm
    3. 1. Confidence
    4. 1. Courage
    5. 1. Clarity
    6. 1. Creativity
    7. 1. Connectedness
    8. 1. Kindness
    9. 1. We want to approach issues around sexuality 11.
  5. 1. The self can be easily occluded, obscured, hidden by protective parts who take over in response to fear, anger or shame
  6. General state for most people is to be quite blended
    1. 1. Leads to self-absorption
  8. Examples -- made up, a composite
20. Seminarian -- concerned about homosexual desires and thoughts
  1. Uncle molested him as a child -- most involved male relative in his life. Most affection, the most caring. Took him fishing, took him boating, listened to him.
  2. Distant father found out -- threatened to beat up the uncle, banned him from the family's life.
  3. Identity issues for a part -- wanting to connect with this uncle, wanting him back in his life. Wanting to learn how to be a man from him. Emotionally connection
  4. Part is attracted to older men who remind him of his uncle. Confusing sexual aspects to it. All mixed in. Part isn't wanting sex with men per se -- that's not the focus. The part is trying to find what it needs to become a man, especially a man not like father, but one that is both warm and strong, that is emotionally connected and relational.
  5. Relieved that it is one part that is same-sex attracted.
21. 1. Masturbation
  2. We will go into this much more in a future episode
    1. 1. Lots of reasons for masturbation
    2. 1. Part's idea of relating is fusion -- that's how he connects
    3. 1. Pattern of masturbating when feeling closer to God
    4. 1. One Part terrified of God -- terrible God image, we will be consumed by God, we will be lost in God, like a drop of water in the ocean, we will lose our identity, we will be annihilated.
    5. 1. Better to masturbate to get some distance from such a terrible God.
    6. 1. Sin separates us from God -- for this part, that's seen as a good thing, necessary for self-preservation. Good intention, but that's not enough for an act to be ordered and morally good. Ends don’t justify the means. 8.
  4. What heals the shame? Real love. What heals sexual injuries and traumas -- authentic love.
    1. So the wounds have to come to light. Time heals all wounds -- ridiculous notion. Sexual wounds that are more than 60 years old, just as fresh and raw and painful as the day they were inflicted. Frozen in time.
    2. That's what we are looking for.
    3. You may need help -- a therapist, a group, a 12 step program, but it's really, really helpful to have one person who knows you well, including your sexual struggles.
  5. Wrap up
22. Next week continuing with Sexuality, several more episodes.
23. 1. We have the resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
24. 1. Will do a bonus podcast -- community members -- to work with your manager parts around why it may be really threatening for you to work with sexual shame. -- Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on January 5.
25. 1. Second Wednesday Zoom meeting for community members on January 13 from 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time-- discussing shame and sexuality. I will have some more things to share with you and then questions and discussion.
26. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in March, possibly April.
27. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
28. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
29. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. This podcast is about transformation -- a radical transformation of self, overcoming anything that gets in the way of us loving God our Father and Mary our Mother with the trust and dependence of a little child. This podcast is all about real love in real relationships and it's messy. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor -- This is episode 48, released on December 28, 2020
1. and it is titled: Shame and Repentance: St. Dismas
2. 1. it is the 12th episode in our series on shame.
3. 1. Thank you for being here with me.
4. 1. This episode stands alone
5. 1. Episodes 37, 38 and 39 lay out the conceptual foundations on shame
6. 1. Two episode we discussed how shame can lead to tragedy in the story of Judas Iscariot, and last episode, we looked at shame and redemption in the story of St. Peter
7. 1. Continuing to illustrate shame and related concepts with stories
  2. Now we are going to look at an story of intense shame and repentance.
    1. The story of the St. Dismas -- aka the "good thief" crucified at Jesus right hand
    2. Really going to look inside of the mind, heart, body and soul today of St. Dismas in his passion
    3. Really focus on understanding what happened in his life
      1. Understanding him in terms of his parts -- his different modes of operating, or his subpersonalities. 4. 1. Making sense of his decisions, his choices
        
        In our suffering, we can learn from St. Dismas. 1. An incredibly hopeful story 2. A story that offers us so much more than immediately meets the eye in the few verses devoted to him in the Gospels. 3.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. This podcast is about transformation -- a radical transformation of self, overcoming anything that gets in the way of us loving God our Father and Mary our Mother with the trust and dependence of a little child. This podcast is all about real love in real relationships and it's messy. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor -- This is episode 47, released on December 21, 2020
1. and it is titled: Shame and Redemption: St. Peter and You
2. 1. it is the 11th episode in our series on shame.
3. 1. Thank you for being here with me.
4. 1. This episode stands alone
5. 1. Episodes 37, 38 and 39 lay out the conceptual foundations on shame
6. 1. Last episode we discussed how shame can lead to tragedy in the story of Judas Iscariot.
7. 1. Continuing to illustrate shame and related concepts with stories
  2. Now we are going to look at an story of intense shame and redemption.
    1. The story of the Apostle Peter
    2. Really going to look inside of Peter's mind, heart, body and soul today
    3. Really focus on understanding what happened in his life
      1. Making sense of his decisions, his choices 4. 1. I share his name. I connect with him, he makes so much sense to me. Very similar parts. 5.
        
        In our fallen world, in our fallen human condition, all of us have elements of what Peter struggled with. 1. We can learn from Peter's redemption 3.
      3. Profiling St. Peter
8. Teaching you to recognize parts in other, parts in yourself
9. 1. I am an IFS therapist -- really interested in parts of people
10. 1. Understanding parts really helps us grow in the understanding of ourselves and others
  2. Socrates: Know thyself
    1. 1. Jesus: Removing the beam in your own eye
    2. 1. Recognizing, identifying your parts and the parts of others is really helpful for loving the other person. Why?
    3. 1. Loving a person means accepting loving all their parts. All of them.
    4. It is really helpful to know a part in order understand what it needs.
    5. Doesn't mean affirming every action
    6. Doesn't mean agreeing with every opinion
    7. Doesn't mean endorsing every desire
    8. Doesn't mean encouraging every impulse 5.
  3. 1. See what you resonate with
  4. 1. What are parts?
  5. Discrete, autonomous mental systems, each with own idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world.
    1. Modes of operating
    2. Subpersonalities
    3. Orchestra model
    4. Focus is on integration.
    5. 1. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
    6. 1. Three roles
    7. Exiles --
      1. most sensitive -- become injured or outraged. Threatens the system, external relationships
      2. Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
      3. Want care and love, rescue, redemption
      4. shame. Need for redemption
        
        Managers
      5. Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 2. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigiliance. 3. 1. Firefighters
      6. Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 4.
        
        Parts can take over the person
    8. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 2. 1. We call it blending. 3. 5.
    9. 1. IFS on the Self -- (recorded)
  6. Self defined as the seat of consciousness
    1. 1. Self can be occluded or overwhelmed by parts
    2. 1. When self accepts and loves parts, those parts transform back into who they were meant to be
    3. 1. Self-led mind is self-righting.
    4. 1. self -- Active inner leader -- more than mindfulness
    5. 1. Parts find the relationship with the self very reassuring
    6. But to reap the benefits they have to unblend from and notice the self 2. 1. This is frightening can challenging to parts 3. 1. Agency in the parts -- parts are making decisions about unblending in IFS model
      1. Intrinsic qualities of the self
    7. Curiosity 2. 1. Compassion 3. 1. Calm 4. 1. Confidence 5. 1. Courage 6. 1. Clarity 7. 1. Creativity 8. 1. Connectedness 9. 1. Kindness
      1. The self can be easily occluded, obscured, hidden by protective parts who take over in response to fear, anger or shame
    8. 1. St. Peters Parts -- or modes of operating
  7. Boldness, self confidence Overconfidence
    1. Manager Part. 2. 1. Fisherman who owned his own boat
      1. A part that wants to be big. 2. 1. Have to make quick decisions 3. 1. Dangerous occupation 3. 1. Respected in Galilee, a leader 4. 1. Courage, Fortitude 5. 1. Leads to forgetting the teaching of Jesus 6. 1. Established, married. 7. 1. Defends against a shame exile. 8.
        
        Spontaneity/Impulsivity 1. Manager leaping in 2. Quick reactions -- this part leaps into action instantaneously
      2. Man of action 3. 1. Courage here too 4. Trusted his instincts. 5. Capable of intense emotion 6. Driven by that emotion
      3. Seizing opportunities as they arise
        
        See opportunity, seize opportunity
        
        No dithering 7. 1. Can lead to rash actions 8. Not pausing for reflection, discernment, prayer -- can lead to some internal disorganization 9. Leads to forgetting the teaching of Jesus 10. Also a big part -- wants to command. 11. Defends against a shame exile
        
        Caretaking of others 1. Manager Part 2. A big heart. Very affectionate, paternal 3. Very protective of others.
        
        Moral Part Obedience Like my "Good Boy" Part
    2. Manager Part 2. 1. Strong sense of duty. Responsibility. 3. 1. Manager Part 4. 1. Aware of his sinfulness, his weakness. A familiar part 5. 1. Peter examined his conscience 6. 1. Motivated to repent -- can experience grief. 7. 1. Need for integration
      1. Awe and wonder
    3. A young part -- childlike
      1. Fearful Part
    4. Exile
    5. Depression is not his thing. Anger not his thing. Control and anxiety
      1. Part that reaches out for help in need
    6. When it is desperate. Unlike Judas. 2. 1. This part is small and willing to be rescued. 3.
      1. Transparency. What you see is what you get. No guile. Opposite of Judas. 9.
    7. 1. Pattern:
  8. Bold manager part -- self confidence
    1. 1. Teams up with Spontaneous Part -- impulsive, acting on instinct
    2. 1. Gets into trouble, pain, is corrected
    3. 1. Repents, seeks relationship and starts over in humility. 5.
  10. The story of Peter
11. Stories are so important
12. 1. Really enter into Peter's world, see Christ, see the world through his eyes
  2. Jesus calls Peter
    1. Matthew 14:18-20: 18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 2. 1. Mark: 1: 16-18: "immediately" 3. 1. Luke 5:1-11: While the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennes′aret. 2 And he saw two boats by the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, 7 they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the catch of fish which they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zeb′edee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” 11 And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
      1. Jesus walks on the sea
    2. Matthew 14:22-33 2. 3.

22 Then he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but the boat by this time was many furlongs distant from the land,[a] beaten by the waves; for the wind was against them. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear. 27 But immediately he spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.”

28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; 30 but when he saw the strong wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Relied on Christ, then relied on himself, then on Christ again.
1. Shifts
2. Recovery
3. Jesus allowed him to sink
4. Jesus reached out to him
5. Painting by Christian artist Yongsun Kim "Save Me-- The Hand of God"
How many times to forgive? Matthew 18:21-22 21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ
1. Mark 8:27-30 27 And Jesus went on with his disciples, to the villages of Caesare′a Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Eli′jah; and others one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he charged them to tell no one about him.
2. Peter is rebuked by Jesus
3. Mark 8:31-33 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
  1. Douay Rheims; Who turning about and seeing his disciples, threatened Peter, saying: Go behind me, Satan, because thou savorest not the things that are of God, but that are of men.
    1. 1. ESV & NASB: But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
  3. Peter at the Transfiguration
4. Mark 9: 2-8 2 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, 3 and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Eli′jah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. 5 And Peter said to Jesus, “Master,[a] it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli′jah.” 6 For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid. [DRA: They were struck with fear; NASB and ESV: They became terrified] 7 And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son;[b] listen to him.” 8 And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only.
5. 1. Luke 9:28-36 28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Eli′jah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep but kept awake, and they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli′jah”—not knowing what he said. 34 As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen;[a] listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.
6. Peter and the washing of feet
7. John 13:3-9 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. 5 Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. 6 He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
9. Peter's Denial foretold
10. John 13: 36-38 36 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward.” 37 Peter said to him, “Lord, why cannot I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the cock will not crow, till you have denied me three times.
11. 1. Matthew 26:30-35 And after singing a [l]hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. 31 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all [m]fall away because of Me this night, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ 32 But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” 33 But Peter replied to Him, “Even if they all [n]fall away because of You, I will never fall away!” 34 Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” 35 Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” All the disciples said the same thing as well.
12. 1. Mark 14:26-31

26 And after singing a [l]hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. 27 And Jesus said to them, “You will all [m]fall away, because it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I am raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” 29 But Peter said to Him, “Even if they all [n]fall away, yet I will not!” 30 And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, that [o]this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny Me three times.” 31 But [p]Peter repeatedly said insistently, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And they all were saying the same thing as well.

Luke 22:31-34 31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you,[d] that he might sift you[e] like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” 33 And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” 34 He said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me.”
1. Boldness, overconfidence. Does not take Jesus' admonition to heart. Doesn't accept the word of God. Insisting he knows more about himself and his future actions than Jesus does.
  1. Bluffing. Bluff and bluster. Trying to fake it till he makes it. He didn't make it.
  2. Humility. Yes Lord, even if he doesn't understand.
  3. Addictions, problems -- I can overcome by sheer force of will.
3. Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane
4. Matthew 26: 51-56

51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus [t]reached and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and [u]cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus *said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve [v]legions of angels? 54 How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?”

55 At that time Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me as you would against a man inciting a revolt? Every day I used to sit within the temple grounds teaching, and you did not arrest Me. 56 But all this has taken place so that the Scriptures of the prophets will be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left Him and fled.

Mark 14:32-50

32 They came to a place named [q]Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” 33 And He took with Him Peter, [r]James, and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. 34 And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and [s]keep watch.” 35 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began praying that if it were possible, the hour might [t]pass Him by. 36 And He was saying, “Abba! [u]Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” 37 And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not [v]keep watch for one hour? 38 [w]Keep watching and praying, so that you will not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again He went away and prayed, saying the same [x]words. 40 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy; and they did not know what to say in reply to Him. 41 And He came the third time, and *said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? That is enough. The hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being [y]betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up, let’s go; behold, the one who is betraying Me is near!”

43 And immediately, while He was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, came up, [z]accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs who were from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. 44 Now he who was betraying Him had given them a signal, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He is the one; arrest Him and lead Him away [aa]under guard.” 45 And after coming, Judas immediately went to Him and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed Him. 46 And they laid hands on Him and arrested Him. 47 But one of those who stood by drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and [ab]cut off his ear. 48 And Jesus said to them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me, as you would against a man inciting a revolt? 49 Every day I was with you within the temple grounds teaching, and you did not arrest Me; but this has taken place so that the Scriptures will be fulfilled.” 50 And [ac]His disciples all left Him and fled.

John 18:10-11 10 Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. 11 Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?”
Peter's Denial
1. Matthew 26:69-75 69 Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a slave woman came to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” 70 But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” 71 When he had gone out to the gateway, another slave woman saw him and *said to those who were there, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” 72 And again he denied it, with an oath: “I do not know the man.” 73 A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “You really are one of them as well, since even the way you talk [ae]gives you away.” 74 Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a rooster crowed. 75 And Peter remembered the statement that Jesus had [af]made: “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
2. 1. Luke 22:61-62 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went out and wept bitterly.
  2. Crushing shame. He went out. He didn't stay. He withdrew, he hid.
    1. Think about that moment.
      1. Enter into Peter's world -- get to know your parts
      2. Was he possibly suicidal?
    2. Consequence of being big
    3. Shame can get in the way of repentance -- the shame boat. No room for guilt.
    4. 1. John was able to stay small enough to be near Christ. 3.
  3. 1. John 18:15-18 15 Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. As this disciple was known to the high priest, he entered the court of the high priest along with Jesus, 16 while Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the maid who kept the door, and brought Peter in. 17 The maid who kept the door said to Peter, “Are not you also one of this man’s disciples?” He said, “I am not.” 18 Now the servants[b] and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves; Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.
  4. 1. John 18:25-27 25 Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said to him, “Are not you also one of his disciples?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” 26 One of the servants[c] of the high priest, a kinsman of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” 27 Peter again denied it; and at once the cock crowed.
  5. Did he pray?
  7. Peter not at the crucifixion

P. 207 Seeing in vision how Peter denied his Master three times, Mary wept and prayed fervently for him, and her prayers earned him the grace of an almost immediate repentant. Suddenly the door of the hall opened, and Peter rushed out, weeping bitterly. In the glare of the torches, he recognized John and Mary. His conscience was already deeply stirred by the penetrating look which Jesus a given him and now he trembled as the Blessed Virgin said to him: “Oh Simon, what about my Son? What about Jesus?”

Being unable to speak or to endure Mary’s questioning eyes, Peter miserably turned away. But Mary approached him and said in a voice choked with emotion: “Simon, are you not going to answer me?” Then Peter exclaimed: “Mother, do not speak to me! Your Son is suffering cruelly. They have condemned him to death – and I have shamefully denied Him three times!”

As John came near to speak to him, Peter ran off and made his way to the cave on Mount Olivet. Because of his perfect contrition, Mary obtained that God should soon forgive him, and she sent one of her angels to console him invisibly.

P. 220 John met Peter coming to the Cenacle after having spent the night weeping and repenting in a cave near the Holy City. They found some of the Apostles and went to the Cenacle. Peter alone went in to see Mary first. Falling at her feet, he said the sobs of intense sorrow: “I have sinned, Lady. I have sinned before my God, and I have offended my Master and you!” The Blessed Virgin knelt beside him and said: “Let us ask pardon for your guilt from my And Your Master.” Then she prayed for Peter and reminded him of the Lord’s many acts of mercy toward great sinners and of his own obligations as head of the apostles to give an example of strength in the Faith.

Peter and the Resurrection
1. John 20:3-10 Now on the first day of the week Mary Mag′dalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. 4 They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; 5 and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, 7 and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes.
2. 1. Luke 24:33-34 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them,34 who said, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
3. Healing
4. John 21:1-19

After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tibe′ri-as; and he revealed himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathan′a-el of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zeb′edee, and two others of his disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat; but that night they caught nothing.

4 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, have you any fish?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, for the quantity of fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved[b] said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his clothes, for he was stripped for work, and sprang into the sea. 8 But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards[c] off.

9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Jesus and Peter

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.[d] 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Exercise: Consider which part of the story resonated with you the most. What did you connect with? Probably some resonance with a part of you and a part of St. Peter. How do you feel toward that part of you? What gets in the way of you loving that part of you? If you reject that part of you in you, you will reject similar parts in other people. That will get in the way of you loving them.
Wrap up
1. Next week St. Dismas -- the thief on the cross next to Jesus, I will discuss his story in a bonus podcast just for RCC members. - Shame and the cross.
2. 1. Will do a bonus podcast on how I relate with St. Peter's parts. How I see them in me.
3. 1. We have the resilient Catholic community. That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. Its about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
4. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. I will be reaching out to those on the waiting list soon.
5. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
7. 1. Last Wednesday, second Wed. December 29, 2020 at 7:30 -8:30 PM EST -- social hour. Hanging out, celebrating Christmas, touching base
8. 1. Patronness and Patron. Include St. Peter

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges in our lives and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor -- it short, this podcast is all about relationships -- it's all about becoming much more relational in our lives and in our faith.
1. This is episode 46, released on December 14, 2020
2. and it is titled: Shame and Tragedy: Judas Iscariot and You
3. it is the tenth episode in our series on shame.
4. Thank you for being here with me.
5. Last episode we discussed how shame can lead to idolatry.
  1. Now we are going to look at an example of how shame did lead to idolatry
  2. the rejection of the true God for a false god
  3. the story of Judas, whose life ended in tragedy, the tragedy of abandoning and betraying Jesus Christ, true God and true man
6. Really excited about this episode
  1. Really going to look inside of Judas' mind, heart, body and soul today
    1. 1. Really focus on understanding what happened in his life, why did he act the way he did.
    2. Why did he do it?
    3. I don't accept the typical explanations for Judas' behavior because they seem too simplistic, they don't resonate at all with me.
    4. 1. In our fallen world, in our fallen human condition, all of us have elements of what Judas struggled with.
    5. I believe that there is the potential in you to repeat what Judas did. Fallen world, fallen natures.
    6. There but for the grace of God go I. Origin unknown, often attributed to John Bradford, Evangelical preacher of the 16th century.
    7. We can learn from Judas' tragic end.
    9. We are continuing to really immerse ourselves in the spiritual dimensions of shame.
  2. How shame on the natural level can impact us in spiritual ways
    1. Grace builds on nature -- disorder in the natural realm undermines the spiritual life.
    2. 1. I like to teach through familiar stories, weaving stories together.
    3. Especially through Scripture, really getting into the Word of God.
    4. Deeper understand of the people in the Bible stories, to see them in three dimension, bringing them to life
    5. Scripture is a gift from God to us -- a precious gift
      1. a way that God reveals himself to us 4. 1. And a way that God reveals you to you. If you look carefully, you can see aspects of yourself, parts of yourself in the people of Scripture 5. 1. You can connect with their experience, and I am here to help you with that. 6. 7. Stories help to illustrate the concepts we are learning and connect with them. Stories give us tangible examples so that we can really grip on to what we are trying to understand. 12.
      2. Judas was an important, powerful, evocative and mysterious figure to me growing up from when I was 5
7. I remember being about 5 years old and insisting to my mother that Good Friday should really be called "Bad Friday" because of how Jesus died.
  1. Deeply impressed by the story of the passion and death of Jesus.
  2. 5 and 6 year old think in black and white -- clear, simple categories
  3. And I thought Judas was very, very naughty to betray Jesus and tell Jewish priests how to catch him so they could nail him to the cross. That was very naughty.
  4. And Judas was a thief, too. He stole things. That was important to me.
    1. Let me tell you a story about my history as a thief.
    2. I was not a very good thief. But I was a thief at one time.
    3. Stealing was not tolerated in my family.
    4. When I was five we were on our road trip back from the Christmas visit with grandma and grandpa, and we stopped at a gas station. Inside the store, there was a Christmas tree decorated with striped candy sticks. Not just red and white, this one had all the colors of the rainbow.
      1. Oooh, pretty. Oooh, tasty. Shiny, too. Pretty, tasty, shiny. I took one.
      2. I'm not sure I was even really aware I was stealing.
    5. Sucking on it in the car, making it sharp and pointy. Where did you get that? No pretense.
    6. Mom and Dad -- that's not right, Dad makes a U-turn on the two lane highway, and drove me back about 10 miles to the gas station and I had to go in and tell the manager what I had done. I surrendered the half-eaten pointed little striped candy stick. I was mortified. Manager was very gracious, made it no big deal. I experienced real shame at the time. And I vowed to reform and not steal ever again.
    7. From my parents' reaction, I learned that stealing was very, very bad. It was a rule not to steal, even a commandment -- Thou shalt not steal, and that included taking candy canes off of Christmas trees inside gas stations.
    8. A part of me really learned that to be good, you have to know the rules and follow the rules
      1. and Judas was not following the rules about not killing Jesus and not stealing money.
      2. Could Judas be any worse? Judas was very, very naughty.
8. 1. Fast forward two years. When I was about 7, a man named Tim Rice came into my life. He told me a riveting story, portraying Judas in a very different way than just being very, very naughty. He told me about Judas' feelings and thoughts and worries and how distressed Judas had been and how Judas had done some bad things, but Judas was very human. I listened to the story that Tim Rice told me -- I wanted to hear it over and over again. Judas was so different than I had thought. He was more than just a stealer who betrayed Jesus.
  2. Who was Tim Rice? -- wrote the lyrics for the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Superstar.
    1. Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote the lyrics.
    2. Blast from the past-- anybody going back to the 1970s with me now?
    3. 1. Mom and Dad had the vinyl -- the two volume set and though I didn't have TV growing up, we did have a nice stereo and I was allowed to play records the turntable. Looking back on that it seemed a little ridiculous to let a seven year old play records on this really, really nice audio equipment, but there it was
    4. 1. And I, at seven years old, eight years, nine years old -- all the way until my sophomore years of college, I really gripped on to this musical
    5. JC Superstar was so emotionally evocative for me. Emotions just welled up in me in so many ways that never really happened at Mass or in religion class. 2. 1. Tim Rice really was telling me the most compelling story of Jesus and Judas and the Apostles and the sufferings and deaths of Judas and Jesus. 3.
      1. This musical had a huge impact on my formation
    6. The album cover came with a booklet that had all the lyrics for the entire musical 2. 1. I had them memorized. 3. 1. My family always went to the Good Friday Liturgy.
      1. I could be distracted in the liturgy
      2. because I knew that the tradition was always that after the liturgy we would come home and listen to all of JC superstar. Direct contrast with the liturgy 4. 5.
    8. Now I want to introduce you to a part of me -- my Good Boy part and tell you a little about his story.
      1. Good Boy took on his protective role in that moment in the car with my family when I was 5 -- when my parents reacted to the my great candy cane thievery.
        
        Good Boy was the part of me that was going to make sure that I followed the rules
        
        so I would never get in trouble and I would never be shamed.
      2. Now this part of me is very concerned about doctrinal orthodoxy.
        
        This part of me focuses on making sure that I walk the straight and narrow path, that I follow the rules, and that I don't lead anyone else astray.
        
        Good Boy protects me -- has led me to a lot of study and research around right and wrong.
      3. Good Boy is kind of like a little self-appointed angel that sits on my shoulder, telling me what is right and wrong.
        
        If he is disconnected from my core self, he tries to take over the role of being my conscience
    9. Not very good at it on his own because his vision is very limited, when he is not integrated with the rest of my system 2. 1. For example, when I was destabilized for a while in college, he led me into some intense scrupulosity -- it was brief, only two weeks, but it was really intense. 3. 1. Also, when he is disconnected from the rest of me, Good Boy is not very relational. He deals more in the realm of ideas, abstractions, philosophy, theology which is good and important, but he doesn't do relationships very well when he takes over and he can be really judgmental not only of me but other people as well. Really critical.
      1. Focuses on whether everyone is following the rules as he understands them
      2. Not very patient or kind and can real trouble understanding human weakness.
        
        Good Boy, if not connected with my core self, if he's operating on his own he wants to figure everything out on his own.
      3. He idealizes philosophical and theological knowledge and self-sufficiency 2. 1. He reaches for God's omniscience -- this is how this part of me, Good Boy, falls into idolatry.
        
        He assumes God is far away, like the vineyard owner who left his vineyard in the care of tenants and was gone a long time. Or the man who left talents to his workers and went away on a long journey.
        
        He believes that God helps those who help themselves and he's got to figure out how to please this distant God who is traveling far away but who is going to come back, so we had better have followed all the rules and been productive. 3. 1. So Good Boy, again if he is on his own, if he's not integrated or connected with my core self, he wants to be really big. And the way that he want to be big is to be very knowledgeable and to command me into the straight and narrow path. He doesn't resonate with the idea of a deep, personal, intimate relationship with Jesus or with Mary when he gets disconnected. He wants to be big by knowing things, especially about morality. Other parts of me want to be big in other ways -- being powerful, being socially adept, knowing how to read people, etc. Good boy want to be big by knowing things. 4.
        
        Now some years back, when I got into parts work and Internal Family Systems therapy, Good Boy was very open to integrating with the rest of my system, once he saw how good that would be, and once he could accept that believing that we had parts was not some modernist, New Age, heretical nonsense that was going to lead me to hell.
        
        Good Boy is now usually mostly integrated with the rest of my parts and with my core self, he is so helpful. Integration -- Good Boy is a part of me, generally much more integrated, not so autonomous now. He needs to be integrated to share in all the aspects of life that he doesn't have on his own.
    10. Still very focused on doctrinal issues -- we need to have the truth, I really value this 8. 1. But there are other issues that are really important -- relational issues, emotional issues, all kinds of other issues and experiences that are important and need to be factored in and other parts in my integrated self help with that. 9. 1. Good Boy plays an invaluable role in my system informing parts of my moral compass, he encourages me to read and study and be cautious about what I say, he helps balance out more exuberant, emotional parts of me. 10. 1. And I really like him and treasure him as a part of me. 11.
      1. Message from Good Boy: Good Boy wants me to announce at this point that there are lots of historical, theological, spiritual and doctrinal problems in the messaging of JC Superstar. There are lots of ways that that rock opera does not conform to a Catholic understanding of our Lord and the meaning of his life and death and it is no substitute for reading the Gospel and studying it.
        
        "It happens that we don't see Christ as God but simply the right man at the right time at the right place." "we are basically trying to tell the story of Christ as a man. I think he increases in stature by looking at him as a man." Time Magazine 1970
        
        Rice stated in a 1982 interview, "Technically I'm Church of England, which is really nothing. But I don't follow it. I wouldn't say I was a Christian. I have nothing against it."
        
        Thus ends this Public Service Announcement from Good Boy.
    11. Profiling Judas
9. Importance
  1. Judas is an absolutely critical figure for us as Christians, to understand
    1. 1. We not only have the potential to betray Jesus -- we do betray Jesus when we sin.

We can learn so much about ourselves by really understanding Judas all of his humanity

Temptation can be for some parts of us (like Good Boy, originally) to just condemn him in a simplistic story. Here's how the bare-bones simplistic story goes:
1. Judas was a thief who stole from the common purse
2. 1. He liked money. He sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver
3. 1. That was a lot of money -- greed was Judas' motive.
4. 1. He betrayed Jesus with a kiss, the scoundrel, and the Jewish authorities captured Jesus, gave him a totally bogus trial
5. 1. Then the authorities had Jesus beaten, tortured, mocked and crucified to death.
6. 1. Then Judas freaked out with remorse and he killed himself, which is what he deserved for being such a traitor and betraying Jesus.
7. 1. Dante put Judas in the 9th circle of hell. What more do you need to know.
9. We can do so much better than that simplistic story.
10. Sources
11. Using Scripture, Tradition, and the perennial teaching of the Church
12. 1. Using commentaries, especially those by Catholic saints
13. 1. Using what the mystics have to tell us -- private revelation
14. 1. Using the best of psychological theory and understanding to make inferences
15. Cautions -- We are speculating
16. Good Boy used to not really want me to speculate, 25 years avoided speculating
  1. Good Boy: I could get something wrong -- real fear of misunderstanding, and I did not want to be lead astray by emotions
    1. I felt like I was led astray by my emotions, and that I had made bad vocational decisions in which others had manipulated my emotions and blinded me 2. 1. I distrusted my emotional side.
      1. Good Boy motivated me to repudiate JC Superstar in college after I found out that there were lots of problems with it
      2. But also because I was very concerned about being emotionally moved in the spiritual life. I got rid of JC Superstar because it moved my heart and that was no longer trustworthy because I thought my more emotional parts had deceived me in a number of ways. I felt I had made big mistakes, made bad decisions, including a really bad vocational decision because of the influence of more emotional parts of me, and Good Boy was never going to let that happen again. Emotions were untrustworthy, emotions were unsafe.
      3. Wouldn't watch Mel Gibson's movie The Passion because of how emotionally evocative it was. And it was historically inaccurate in number of ways, and probably gratuitous with the violence. 3. 2.
    2. 1. We will probably get some of the particulars wrong
    3. 1. But the important thing is to really be trying to understand the human experience -- practicing. 1. Like we did with King David, and Crown Prince Amnon and Prince Absalom and Princess Tamar in episodes 40, 43 and 44. 2. There are elements of Judas' experience, as I understand it, that are common to us all, because we live in a fallen world, because of our fallen condition. 3. Easy for me, especially my Good Boy part if he is operating on his how to judge Judas and dismiss him to go with the simplistic story
    4. Understandable -- given how horrific Judas' crimes were. 4. 1. For many years, my Good boy part did not want to understand Judas, for fear that understanding him may lead me astray somehow. So no more JC Superstar. Judas is wholly bad, there is nothing redeemable about him, he is just a villain. 5.
    5. 1. Good boy wants me to invite any of you who detect something theologically wrong or misleading to let me know so that we can seriously consider it and offer any corrections in case there was anything inconsistent with our Catholic Faith.
    7. JC Superstar starts out with Judas discussing his concerns in a solo piece. The main character in JC superstar really is Judas -- it really is an epic, tragic story about Judas.
      1. Judas is the protagonist -- he speaks the first words in the rock opera, a long distraught monologue.
      2. Judas is also very sympathetically portrayed. I could emotionally engage with this characterization of Judas, he was approachable, he was understandable. He was human, he was in three dimensions.
    8. But back when I was a kid, neither Good Boy nor any of my other parts knew that the musical wasn't necessarily telling the story accurately. I was in Catholic school, but it was the 70s and 80s. Religion class and my catechetical formation never really told me the story of Jesus -- we learned facts and we glued felt shapes on burlap banners that hung in the church to symbolize something or other. The more interesting and hip and groovy the teachers all tried to make the Faith, the more boring it seemed to me. They were trying way too hard to be relevant. I never heard the real story told well, with all the details and all the emotion and all the raw human experience and the relational conflicts and the drama.
    9. Discussion of Parts
17. I'm going to look at Judas' internal experience, his internal dynamics. I am going to look at his heart, mind, soul and body. I am going to look at his core self and his parts in a much more nuanced way. Parts have personalities.
18. 1. Often we are dominated by one part -- a manager part that takes us over, like when parts in the Pixar movie Inside Out take over the control panel
19. 1. Will be doing a whole course on Internal Family Systems and parts for Community Members -- I am putting that course together now, and there are two main sections -- one section is going to be on the basics of IFS, how IFS understands the human person, with parts and self. The other part will be on how we can make sure this understanding conforms to the Catholic Faith, what adjustments need to be made. Huge benefit of being in the Resilient Catholics Community. We will also be talking more about IFS in the upcoming podcast episodes.
20. 1. Importance of self-governance
  2. Judas failed at self-governance -- he let himself be carried away by his parts. St. Thomas Aquinas would say that Judas let himself be carried away by his passions and did not govern them appropriately, leading to great sins. 2.
  4. History of Judas -- upbringing
21. Judas is a human being, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God. Not a "bad seed."
22. 1. Meaning of the name Judas
  2. Greek form of the name Judah -- Jeff Benner.

The name Judas is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Judah, in Hebrew יהודה (ye-hu-dah, Strong's #3063). Most Hebrew dictionaries will define this name as "praise," but as this English word is an abstract word it falls short of its true Hebraic meaning. The parent root of this word is יד (yad, Strong's #3027) meaning "hand". The child root ידה (Y.D.H, Strong's #3034) is derived from yad and means "to throw or stretch out the hand" and is the base root in the name Yehudah. If you were standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time you might throw your hands out and say "Wow, will you look at that". This is the Hebraic understanding of "praise" and the name Yehudah.

Iscariot -- from Kerioth
1. Or Iscariot may mean from the tribe of Issachar, one of the 12 tribes. St. Jerome
2. St. John Chysostom: Matthew described him as a betrayer, not as if he were viewed as enemy or adversary but as one writing a history. He does not say “the abominable, the utterly despicable one” but simply named him from his city, “Judas Iscariot.” He does so because there was also another Judas, “Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus,”
Life of Mary as seen by the Mystics -- Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, Venerable Mary of Agreda, St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Elizabeth Schoenau
1. Described Judas
  1. Good looking man with black hair and a reddish beard
  2. Charming and clever
  3. 25 years old businessman
  4. Illegitimate son of a dancer and an army officer -- we know from Scripture that his father was named Simon
  5. Very well dressed, eager to oblige
  6. Talked too much
  7. Liked to make himself appear important
  8. Intensely ambitious for fame, wealth and honors
  9. Saw that people were identifying Jesus as the Messiah and the future King of Israel
  10. Very active and zealous
  11. Criticized the human faults of his associates
  12. Especially jealous of the popularity of the apostle John.
  13. Mother Mary loved him, but he rejected her, rebuked her for suggesting that he was opening his heart to evil.
    1. Mother's love -- what he really needed. He had his plan.
    2. He rejected her.
  14. Growing dislike for both Mary and Jesus, and the hardships of being an apostle.
  15. Financial mismanagement -- choosing poverty.
3. Chosen by Jesus -- why did Jesus choose him?
4. Seems like a bad idea
5. Unstable, unreliable
6. Jesus chose Judas Iscariot because of Judas' need. My opinion -- Judas was deeply wounded, long history of shame. Jesus was going to work with him closely for three years.
  1. Jesus doesn't always choose his key players because of their strengths and talents. Sometimes he chooses them for their weaknesses.
  2. He gives us positions that are suited to meet our needs -- in the challenges and the struggles that they offer us.
  3. I'm not worthy. Well, that may be true. God will work with it.
7. Social and Cultural Factors
8. Roman oppression -- followed the Egyptian slavery and the Babylonian captivity
9. 1. Deep desires for a temporal savior -- assumption that it would be a military leader
  2. Joshua, who led the Israelites into the promised land after the exodus and conquered the Canaanites.
    1. 1. Like David -- David was a type of Jesus, and David had great military conquests
    2. 1. Not unreasonable. 4.
  3. 1. External change is needed.
  4. Assumption that external changes are needed to make everything all right.
  5. Analogous to liberation theology, social justice focus.
  6. Revolutionaries are particularly prone to fall into this mistake -- not tending to their internal systems, not finding peace in Christ, not repenting and turning to God, not removing the beam from their own eye
  7. Instead they focus on changing society, in government, in culture, that's where we need to focus our energies. We need the proletariat to rise up and crush the oppression of the bourgeoisie. The perceived practical solution is not prayer and union with God, but rather the time and energy and focus is on stopping election fraud and resisting government control and so on.
    1. Not saying those aren't important. But they are not at the center. They are not Jesus' first message of repenting or his first commandment of loving God with your whole heart soul and strength. With all of you. That's first. The relationship with God.
    2. Then, when you are focused on that intimacy with God, the personal relationship, the connection, then out of that you love your neighbor. You can't really love your neighbor if you are disconnected from God. Because God is Love. We start with the first commandment, which can really change how we see the second commandment.
  8. Pursuing external changes through societal reforms and culture shifts and revolutions and all that is easier than healing and growing internally. A focus on the external distracts us from the real work. Removing the beam from our own eye, loving ourselves in an ordered way.
  9. 1. Active sedition -- parties for independence
  10. Uprisings.
    1. 1. Simon the Zealot -- another apostle.
    2. 1. Barabbas -- often characterized as a robber. But according to Mark 15:7, Barrabas was in prison because he had taken part in a recent uprising. So he may have been a political and military rebel, a freedom fighter, any may have been popular with the people. 4.
  12. What do we know from scripture
10. Judas carried the purse.
  1. He was the treasurer -- he wanted to manage the financial affairs of the community.
  2. And he stole from it -- entitled
    1. Simplistic version of the story -- he was greedy, he coveted things 3. 1. More nuanced understanding
      1. Why do people steal? Greed. Ok. They want something OK. 2. 1. But what about other possibilities? What about symbolic meaning?
        
        Rich celebrities who shoplift 2. 1. Sometimes people can't tell you why they steal. 3. 1. Sometimes people steal for the thrill of it and throw away the merchandise. Hard to call that greed. 4. 1. Something is missing. Something that he is entitled to 5. 1. He is stealing from the community -- From Jesus. He is taking something from Jesus and the other apostles, he is taking money, a kind of sustenance. 6. 1. A void inside. Some kind of whole that would be filled by the sustenance of Jesus. By what the money represented. 7. 3. 4. 5. Judas was in the community physically -- physically present, but cut off relationally.
        
        Chapter 22 of St. Luke tells us that 1. Satan entered into Judas 1. Doesn't say that Judas formally invited Satan in. He wasn't necessarily just totally committed to vice and evil. 2. Not necessarily seeking a relationship with Satan. Satan is sneaky. 2. Judas went to the high priests, the Jewish authorities before the Last Supper. 3. Why did he do it?
        
        Judas relies on his own vision, his own understanding
11. Judas was so wrapped up in his own understanding
  1. He was taken over by a part -- a narcissistic part defending against shame, needing glory, needing recognition, needing to control events, needing to manipulate Christ
    1. Each part has a personality. This part's personality was that of a narcissist. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, 2ndEd. Nancy McWilliams
      1. Narcissism -- there is something missing from my inner life. A deficit model.
        
        Feels fraudulent and loveless
        
        What is common to narcissistic personalities is an inner sense of insufficiency, shame, weakness and inferiority. Terrified of those things.
        
        "Feelings of shame and fears of being shamed pervade the subjective experience of narcissistic people."
        
        Narcissistic parts hold the person up to unrealistic ideals, and either try to convince themselves that they have attained the ideas -- and then they become grandiose. Or they fall short and feel inherently flawed and defective rather than forgivably human -- depressive outcome
        
        Need for others is deep, but their love for them is shallow.
        
        Always aware of being judged. Can't tolerate it. Can't tolerate being negatively appraised. E.g. with Mary.
        
        Fear of fragmentation of their self -- awareness of fragility -- but if I climb high enough, if I get enough external affirmation, respect, admiration, esteem -- then I will be all right. I will be fine! Survival.
        
        Narcissistic people avoid feelings and actions that express awareness of personal fallibility or realistic dependence on others.
        
        Repentance and gratitude are very difficult. Admission of guilt or dependency exposes something unacceptably shameful.
        
        Attempts to fill the void -- can look like greed and vanity. 2.
        
        St. Cyril of Alexandria. Whenever he gains possession of anyone’s soul, he does not attack him by means of general vice. He rather searches for that particular passion that has power over him and by its means makes him his prey.
        
        Satan attacks through parts. Satan wants to take the core self of Judas down by approaching him through his narcissistic part that needs glory and recognition and is entitled because of shame. Not content to be a disciple, and apostle, even with all the miracles Judas wrought.
      2. Tempting him at a natural level.
      3. Grace perfects nature. 4.
        
        Proverbs 3:5.
      4. Motivation 1. was not for 30 pieces of silver -- St. Jerome - it was greed. 1. How much money?
      5. Price of a slave. 30 pieces of silver is what Joseph's brothers sold him for to the Midianites 2. 1. 30 shekels -- 10.5 grams per shekel. 315 grams 10.1 Troy oz. $24.01/t oz or $243. 3. 1. Denarius was a days wage for a soldier and was 4.5 g. 30 shekels would be 70 days wages. Maybe around $5000 $7000 in todays wages. 4. 1. Price of a field. Potter's field. 5. 6. Backlash would be huge. Selling your teacher, your master into death. Not worth it. Condemnation. Jesus had a huge following last week. Life could be at risk. Reputation would be shot. 7. Not very much money. 2. I don't think Judas thought that betraying Jesus to the Jewish authorities would lead to death. 3. I think Judas' dominant manager part basically narcissistic. That narcissitic manager part was motivated by a mixture of idealism and a need to matter, a need to be big. 4. Idealism -- Judas may have thought that Jesus was neglecting the temporal issues -- Jesus' approach is not going to get rid of the Roman oppression -- if he turned Jesus over to the authorities, Jesus would have to act
    2. Get large and in charge 5. 1. Manifest his power, begin the revolution! 6. 1. Jesus wouldn't allow his mission to be destroyed by death -- no Jesus would rouse himself, get away from all the navel gazing and inward focus and spiritual abstractions and the shoulder-rubbing with social outcasts and sinner and get down to dealing with the real issues -- dealing with the Romans and the Herodians and the Sadducees who were in league with them -- The external stuff. 7. 1. Bringing about a society that would be much closer to heaven on earth. 8. 1. And Judas, Judas Iscariot would be the one who gave him the push that he needed, who opened Jesus' eyes to the magnitude of his mission, who set up the situation that would launch the revolution. 9. 1. When Jesus then took over as the supreme leader, when he climbed the heights of temporal power, when he was crowned as king of the Jews, then
      1. Judas would bask in the reflection of Jesus' glory 2. 1. Then, by association with Jesus, and by his role in catapulting Jesus into action, Judas would shine in the reflected light of Jesus' earthly glory -- then Judas would get what he was entitled to, what he had worked for. 3. 1. Judas would then be important, he would matter, he would be big, he would be the master strategist for Jesus' ascent to power, he would have called the tactics. 4. 1. Judas -- I am called by God in this mission. God supports this. 5. 10. 1. Louis de Wohl, The Spear. Historical novel -- about the passion and death of Christ. 11.
      3. The Last Supper
12. Jesus washed Judas' feet
13. 1. Jesus place Judas at his left hand -- place of honor. Giving him honor, attention, physical proximity. Yearning, willing for him to connect. Not riding him, not condemning him.
14. 1. In Luke 22 it is after the first Eucharist with Judas -- giving Judas his body and blood -- uniting with him in that way -- that Jesus discusses Judas' betrayal.
  2. Such great love
  3. Such great understanding.
15. 1. Luke 22:21-22 Be yet behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. And the Son of man indeed goeth, but yet, woe to that man by whom he shall be betrayed.
  2. Not calling Judas out right away. Giving him time to consider. Gentle with him.
    1. ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME. CHRYSOSTOM: “When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples; and as they were eating, he said, ‘Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’” Even before the supper he had washed the feet of Judas. See how he spares the traitor. He did not say, “Judas, you will betray me,” but only “one of you will betray me.” This was again to offer time for repentance by keeping his identity concealed. He was willing to allow all the others to be alarmed, just for the sake of redeeming this one. All the others, whose feet he had washed and who had accompanied him everywhere and to whom he had promised so many things, were alarmed unnecessarily because of the one. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 81.1.15
17. By verse 24 The apostles are striving among themselves about who is the greater.

IS IT I, LORD? CHRYSOSTOM: Intolerable sorrow then seized that holy company. John says, “The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke.”16 Each of them asked in fear concerning himself, although conscious to themselves of no such imagination. But Matthew writes, “They were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, ‘Is it I, Lord?’” He answered, “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.”

Note precisely at what time Jesus revealed his identity. It was when it was his will to deliver the rest from this trouble. For they were horrified with fear and pressing in their questions. He wanted to give Judas time to change his mind, but he wanted also to relieve the others from their distress. But Judas continued to be incorrigible and past any hope of change. So now he is unmasked. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 81.1.17 -- Unforgivable sin. Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

THEY WERE SORROWFUL. JEROME: The others were grieved and very much saddened as they questioned Christ: “Surely, Lord, you don’t mean me?” Lest he seem to betray himself by keeping silent, he too, whose conscience was troubling him and who had boldly placed his hand in the dish, questioned him: “Surely, teacher, you don’t mean me?” To this he added lip homage and a show of incredulity. The others, who were not traitors, said, “Surely, Lord, you don’t mean me?” He who was the traitor did [NT Vol. IB, p. 247] not call him Lord but teacher, as if to have an excuse, upon rejecting the Lord, for having betrayed at most a teacher. “Jesus answered, ‘You have said so.’” The traitor was put to shame by the same response Christ would later give to Pilate.19 COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 4.26.25.20

Judas's suicide
1. Horrible realization that Jesus was going to die, that he had betrayed him
  1. Rocked his narcissistic part to the core. His manager came unglued. Chaos entered his system.
    1. 1. Great sense of shock -- horrified that his plans had unraveled.
    2. 1. He was now going to be ridiculed, condemned, treated with disgust, contempt, shamed -- everything that his narcissistic manager part was trying to avoid.
    3. IFS principle -- when a part acts autonomously, not guided by the core self, when we let our passion run us, that part always winds up getting exactly what it was trying to avoid.
    4. 1. Undoing
    5. Undoing is an unconscious effort to counterbalance some affect -- usually guilt or shame with an attitude or behavior that will magically erase it. 2. 1. "Ungeschehen machen" defense mechanism. Transliterated, it means "making un-happen" 3. 1. Taking the money back to the priests -- looking for human contact
      1. Priests were very direct that it was blood money. No bones about it, yep, you sold him to us for the price of a slave, and we are going to kill him.
    6. No empathy for Judas. They had used and discarded him.
    7. The priests did not want to see Judas' remorse -- because of what that activated in them, their own guilt, their own consciences.
    8. So the priests shamed Judas, compounding his misery and bringing him another step closer to despair.
    9. Can't put the blood money in the treasury
    10. Buy the potter's field with it. 6.
    11. 1. Thoughts
  2. Jesus would never forgive me -- because Judas was casting Jesus in his own image and likeness.
    1. 1. I've ruined everything. There is no hope for me, I can't bear this shame and humiliation, the loss of my reputation, the scorn that is waiting for me, the rejection, the condemnation, the infamy
    2. 1. I am the killer of Jesus. 4.
  3. 1. Notice how Judas continues to rely on his own strength and knowledge. He is trying to be big. He totally misunderstands God
  4. He does not pray. He does not reach out to Mary, to the other apostles, to anyone other than his co-conspirators in the murder of Jesus. 2.
  5. 1. Despair as the murder weapon, suicide weapon.
  6. 1. Hangs himself with a halter
  7. Definition of a halter: headgear that is used to lead or tie up livestock
    1. 1. Here on the farm we use halters for cows and calves and we have used them for sheep. Halters are used to lead an animal, to guide it. Really to help it.
    2. 1. Judas put the halter on himself. He led himself to his death, to his destruction
    3. 1. He was not led by the Good Shepherd. He did not listen, he did not pray, he relied on his own understanding, the limited, distorted perceptions of his narcissistic part and other parts. 5.
  8. 1. Good intentions -- sinful means -- driven by parts that are not connected with the self, not integrated, have very limited visions and may use totally sinful means to carry out their plans, even when their intentions are good.
  10. Possibility for Redemption -- could have been the greatest story ever -- if Judas had repented.
    1. Judas had the opportunity to have made the greatest comeback ever, the greatest repentance ever. There was the real loss. Jesus loved him would have forgiven him.
    2. Matthew 26:24 The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
  11. Very troubling to me. Why let him be born? Seems unfair, seems like a setup.
    1. 1. High stakes table.
    2. 1. Graces abounding
    3. Parts operating on their own become our own worst perpetrators. They can really abuse us. We have to govern our internal systems from our core self, and be integrated.
    4. Highly traumatized people are still morally responsible for their actions, though their culpability can be mitigated.
    5. Road to hell can be paved with good intentions.
  12. Exercise -- Judas in you. Narcissism in you --
    1. need for approval, need to be admired, need to be big, important
    2. Inadequacy, being small weak, needing help.
    3. React to
  13. Being a child
    1. 1. I am weak.
    2. 1. I have deep needs
    3. 1. I am far from perfect
    4. 1. I am fragmented
    6. How about your sins -- the things you have felt guilty about or ashamed of. The things you have tried not to think about, that you've tried to hide from yourself and from God.
  14. Do you think they are worse than what Judas did? Worse than betraying Christ and sending him to His crucifixion
  15. Remember how he treated Judas -- with what love and gentleness, with what compassion.
  16. There is no sin. Not murder, rape, abuse, extramarital affairs, fornication, pornography use, masturbation that can't be forgiven. You omissions too, all those can be forgiven -- all the times you refused to love God or others. All these can be forgiven if we approach the love of God.
  17. Are you sins really bigger than the love of Jesus? Really? Bigger than the love of Jesus -- who reached out with gentleness and compassion to his betrayer on the worst night of his life.
  18. Let's shift the perspective. Let's not focus so much on our sins, our failure, our weakness.
  19. Let's look at Jesus. Let's look at Mary. Let's see the love of God that is bigger than whatever sins we have committed. God's love is bigger than our unlove, our lack of love.
  20. Wrap
2. Next week -- next episode -- we will be discussing a story of shame and redemption -- St. Peter's story. And a bonus tidbit episode on St. Dismas -- the thief on the cross next to Jesus, I will discuss his story in a bonus podcast just for RCCD members.
3. 1. Super excited about the community. Really considering what it's about. It's about healing. It's about removing psychological obstacles to loving and being loved. It's about your core self really leading all your parts, all your passions in an ordered, governed, loving way. Its about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit who is Love Himself and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our Mother. It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
4. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does. I will be reaching out to those on the waiting list soon.
5. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
7. 1. Last Wednesday, second Wed. December 9, 2020 at 7:30 -8:30 PM EST. dicussion shame and the spiritual life -- really focused on parts and on how parts cope with shame and how does that impact prayer and our personal relationship with Christ and with each other.
8. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges in our lives and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor -- it short, this podcast is all about relationships -- it's all about becoming much more relational in our lives and in our faith.
1. This is episode 45, released on December 7, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the ninth episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: How Shame Leads Us to Idolatry
5. We are now Diving into the spiritual dimension of shame.
6. This podcast is all about transformation -- fundamental transformation of all of us -- all parts of us. Even the parts we keep secret, hidden.
  1. This podcast is all about removing psychological obstacles to following the two great commandments
  2. Not entertainment. Not about having a good time, just enjoying a entertaining podcast, funny and distracting.
  3. No this podcast is about developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, a personal relationship with God our spiritual Father, and a personal relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary, our spiritual Mother
  4. Any psychological obstacles you have to relating with others, you will have in relating to God.
    1. You will bring those relational inhibitions, those relational problems into your spiritual life because they are formed into you and they have not been healed through experiencing throughout your whole being who God really is.
    2. Spiritual realm is not some special place where the relational limitations you have are just dispensed, you're no longer trouble with them. No, you are still you in the spiritual realm.
  5. Any psychological issues you have with your earthly father and mother you will bring into your relationship with God as Father and Mary as Mother.
    1. Child psychologist -- transferences
Two major assumptions in the natural realm for why we don't have a personal relationship with a loving God.
1. Assumption 1. We do not believe that we are worthy to be in relationship with God -- driven by shame
2. 1. Assumption 2. We do not believe that God is worthy to be in relationship with us -- driven by negative God images -- see episodes 23-29
  2. Idolatry. We are not worshiping God as He is. 2.
  3. 1. And here is the more tragic part: We stay with those assumptions, even though they are so manifestly problematic and harmful. We don't seek, we assume that assumptions one and two are true.
  4. 1. Her is the great offer I am making to you. I am inviting you on an adventure, an adventure to discover who you really are, an adventure to discover who God really is, and adventure in learning to relate and to connect with our God, our God who is personal, who is relational, who is loving, who is Love Himself.
  5. 1. If you really knew who God was and you really knew who you are, and you really knew how God truly saw you -- you would always run to His loving arms. You really would.
  6. 1. But you don't know these realities at a deep, integrated level. We know them to some degree in our heads, in a theological way, in an abstract way, we can quote the Catechism. But not in our hearts, our souls, and our bones.
  7. 1. In fact, at a gut level, at an intuitive level the vast majority of us have varying degrees of certainty or confidence in very warped assumptions about ourselves and assumptions about God. These assumptions are wildly different from what God reveals to us about who he is and who we are through Scripture, through Tradition, and through the perennial teachings of our Catholic Church. In our hearts, in our bodies, in the depths of our souls, in our unconscious, We believe in lies. This is so common. And it's deadly and so much of it is driven by shame.
  9. Review of Shame
3. Definition of Shame
  1. Explored this in a lot of detail in Episode 37, the first in our series on shame. Shame is:
    1. The primary problem we have in the natural realm -- foundational problem. Grace perfects nature, if our natural foundation is infused with shame, it makes the foundation for our spiritual life shaky, unreliable, uncertain.
    2. That gives birth to so many secondary problems -- we tend to focus on the secondary problems, the problems that are further downstream -- so we are not getting to the root.
    3. 1. Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action. (Click to episode 38 for a summary)
    4. 1. Qualities of shame
    5. Shame is hidden. Hidden from others, hidden from God, often hidden from the therapist, hidden from self. 2. 1. Shame inhibits positive emotions
      1. Strategies for coping with shame
    6. 1. Chronic shame needs to be attenuated, reduced, titrated, ordered, regulated. 1. Chronic shame develops when a little boy or little girl has a sense of being rejected, unwanted, a burden. 2. When the child changes behaviors, does what he can to be better in the eyes of the adult and still is rejected, he can conclude that he just is a bad kid. 3. The difficulty is in the response of the others -- the caregivers. 4. But the child bears the burden of shame caused by the shaming of the caregivers. 5. Child sees parts of himself that are unacknowledged and unacceptable 6. Ostracized or invaded.
    7. 1. And we assume that God responds to us like our shaming caregivers -- soulset. We generalize from our experiences of shame and assume that God is like those caregivers. This is called a transference. 1. Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the feelings a person has about their parents, as one example, are unconsciously redirected or transferred onto the therapist. It usually concerns feelings from a primary relationship during childhood.
    8. 1. Ubiquity of Shame.
    10. Shame as the silent killer -- Episode 37
4. Shame can lead to spiritual death.
5. 1. Shame is the Silent Killer who Stalks you from inside (episode 37) and despair is the murder weapon.
6. 1. Spiritual view on this
  2. Primary struggle is against powers and principalities.
    1. 1. Satan's goals -- personal relationship with you.
    2. Satan is real, folks. Big effort in certain very mainstream Christian circles to undermine belief in Satan.
      1. Satan loves this. Very helpful and useful for him.
      2. He wants to work unobserved.
      3. IFS recognizes malevolent spiritual forces -- has a name for them -- unattached burdens.
    3. Blindness -- keeping us in the dark
    4. Despair, giving up 3.
  3. 1. Nathanson (1992, 1997) Four defensive scripts for avoiding shame: attacking self, attacking others, isolating from others, avoiding inner experiences.
  4. Attack self -- I am unworthy. I am bad, I am nothing.
  5. Attacking others first -- preemptive. Sarcasm, cutting humor,
    1. Condemning others. 3. 1. This can include God. Via poor God images. 4. 1. All distorted God images are attacks on God that allow us to justify cutting off the relationship or distancing ourselves from Him. Episodes 23-29 5. 1. God images of parts -- modes of operating 6. Isolate from others -- Isolating from God. Cutting ourselves off from relationship
    2. So we won't be seen 7. 1. So the shame won't be known, brought to light, increased 8. 1. Genesis 3. What does God do? 9. 1. Shame can drive flight from God.
      1. Avoiding God
        
        Not praying -- not entering into relational prayer. Mechanical vocal prayer. Prayer before meals. 2. 3. Not going to confession -- big one. 4. Fantasy that we will, by our own power, somehow redeem ourselves, make ourselves acceptable to God.
        
        Pelagianism
        
        Or somehow just waiting will change something. 5. Or just not thinking about the future -- not looking where this road will lead. Shortsighted vision. Some parts when they are in control do not look very far ahead. 10. 11. Avoid inner experiences
    3. We are so afraid of ourselves -- parts afraid of parts.
      1. Makes sense. We can't resolve the situation by ourselves. 2. 12. 1. Controlling-caregiving -- viewing others as more deserving, as more in needs 13. 1. Denying my own needs by extending myself to serve others
      2. but it's not out of charity -- it’s a defense, a way of running away from my own shame 2. 1. keeping just ahead of my shame shadow. 3. 14.
      4. Despair is the murder weapon, despair is the knife.
        
        Unforgiveable sin -- blaspheming against the Holy Spirit
        
        Satan uses our shame.
        
        Work with the parts of us burdened with shame that are abandoned, exiled within us.
        
        Wants us to be low-maintenance, caught in prisons that we maintain. Parts of us like prison guards keeping shame at bay.
      5. Thomas A Kempis, Imitation of Christ
7. Choosing our own spiritual reading -- problem
8. 1. Wretched worm spiritual literature
  2. Helpful for some -- parts with strong narcissistic defenses. 2.
  4. Shame and Pride
  5. Antidote to Shame is Love: There is one thing that disarms shame. One thing. And that one thing is Love. Real authentic Love. Charity. Love rescues us from shame. It transforms us, makes us immune to the shame who no longer has power over us. Love heals us from shame. Not our own efforts. So let's talk about love.
  6. God's message
9. I want a relationship with you, right now, as you are, with all parts of you, all of you, including all that you consider undesirable in you. I can heal all of it. But not without your permission.
10. 1. Nothing too dark, too shameful for God to accept in you and to heal
11. Healthy ways to deal with Shame
12. Childlike trust in God -- Absolute confidence in God, especially in God's love for us as a good Father for a little child. Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God is made up of such as these.
  1. Childlike trust in God -- Need to be small, like a little child, like a parvulus -- see episode 30 -- How small are we supposed to be, really?
    1. Recommend book: The complete spiritual doctrine of St. Therese of Lisieux. Fr. François Jamart, OCD. Society of St. Paul, 1961. 2. 1. St. Therese of Lisieux: "In order to belong to Jesus we must be little, but there are few souls who aspire to remain in that littleness." 3. 1. St. Therese of Lisieux: "My peace consists in remaining small; hence, when I fall on the road I can quickly rise again and Jesus takes me by the hand." 4. 1. We want to be big -- because we believe at a gut level that is safer -- we want to solve our problems by ourselves, we want to make ourselves presentable, overcome our sins, faults, failings, by our own efforts, we want to take over the role of God for ourselves, we want to be God for ourselves, we try to redeem ourselves. And that doesn't work.
      1. Proverbs 3:5 -- Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on our own insight. RSVCE2
      2. Have confidence in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not upon thy own prudence. Douay Rheims.
        
        Nothing pleases God more than for us to trust in him like a child, like an infant or toddler in a good father, knowing by faith first that he will provide for all our needs. That honors Him more than anything else. More than any penance, any mortification, any sacrifice, anything else we could give him.
      3. St. Therese of Lisieux: "In order to remain a little child, we must expect everything from our good Lord, as a child expects everything from his father, without worrying about anything.
      4. St. Therese of Lisieux: "The thing that pleases Jesus when He beholds my soul is that I love my littleness and my poverty and I have a blind hope in His mercy.
        
        We won't feel it at first -- this is based on faith and hope.
        
        We want to trust in us. That won't work.
    2. Not trusting ourselves -- giving up the unwarranted confidence we have in our own vision.
    3. 1. Humility in addition to the childlike trust and absolute confident in God.
  2. St. Therese of Lisieux: "If I am humble, I am entitled, without offending the good Lord, to do small, foolish thing until I die. Look at little children. They constantly break things, tear them up, fall, and all the while, in spite of that, they love their parents very much. Well, when I fall in this way, like a child, it makes me realize my nothingness and my weakness all the better and I say to myself: 'What would become of me? What would I be able to accomplish if I were to rely on my own powers alone?'"
    1. 1. St. Therese of Lisieux: "Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice. It consists In a disposition of the heart which makes us humble and little in God's arms, conscious of our weakness and confident even unto audacity in the goodness of the Father." 3.
  3. 1. Repentance:
  4. Shifting our vision from our sins, faults, weaknesses, failings, limitations, our shame -- to God's goodness and his love for us. Trusting in it before we feel it. Scene in the 1989 film Indiana Jones the Last Crusade -- the leap of faith. Villain says to Indiana Jones: It's time to ask yourself what you believe. The narrow bridge appears only after Indiana Jones steps into the chasm.
    1. 1. St. Therese of Lisieux: "It is only when His children ignore their constant lapses and make of habit of them and fail to ask His pardon that Christ grieves over them; but He is full of joy at the sight of those who love Him and after each fault ask His pardon and cast themselves in His arms.
    2. 1. St. Therese of Lisieux: "…I have learned that the way to Jesus is through His Heart. Consider a small child who has vexed his mother by a display of bad temper or disobedience. If the child hides in a corner through fear of punishment, he feels that his mother will not forgive him. But if instead he extends his little arms toward her and with a smile cries out 'Love, kiss me mamma, I will not do it again,' will not his mother press the little one to her heart with tenderness, and forget what the child has done? And yet, though she knows very well that her dear little one will misbehave again at the first opportunity, that means nothing if the child appeals to her heart. He will never be punished…"
  5. 1. Abandonment to God's mercy.
  7. Exercise -- parts of you.
  8. Wrap
13. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
14. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd
15. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
16. 1. This Wednesday, second Wed. December 9, 2020 at 7:30 -8:30 PM EST. dicussion shame and the spiritual life.
17. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 44, released on November 30, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the eighth episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: Rape, Incest, Shame, and Silence: A True Story Reexamined, Part 3
5. We continuing to deal with very heavy, very difficult material.
6. We are continuing our deep exploration of the internal worlds of Crown Prince Amnon and Princess Tamar as recounted in 2 Samuel 13.
7. We opened that up in Episode 40, with Part 1
8. We continued the story in Episode 43, last week with Part 2
9. Now in Part 3, we are continuing to learn what we learned about shame in the conceptual information about shame from Episodes 37, 38, 39.
10. We're going to focus on listening as we were learning about in Episodes 42 and that we continued practicing in episode 43 -- important to listen to episodes 40 and 43 before this one.
Cautions (summarize below)
1. There is an incestuous rape of a teenager in this story.
  1. I am not going into unnecessary graphic aspects about the rape itself
    1. 1. there isn't a need to get into the all the specific details of it
    2. 1. However, I am bringing out the emotional, relational and psychological impact of the traumas here, and not just the rape, but the betrayals and the failures to protect, and the injustice of it all and all the aftermath
    3. Those aspects -- betrayal, abandonment, the implications, the meaning of those contextual factors can be and often are worse than the actual physical violations. And Tamar tells us that in the scripture. 2. 1. Those realities can be very difficult to take, it's understandable why people want to avoid discussing them. 3. 1. We need to be real about these things. People who are traumatized, people who are burdened with shame, who are confused, who are lost -- they need resources. These kinds of awful violations happen. A lot. We need to talk about them. In this podcast I go into them. 4. 1. There is no neat and tidy way to talk about incest and sexual violence and its aftermath, especially the experience of shame. No whitewash, no clichés, no pious pablum. 5. 1. And we need to be able to put these thing into a Catholic context, see them from a Catholic viewpoint. 6. 4.
    5. Warnings --Summarize below. let's be prudent here in listening to the story -- not an episode for little kids to necessarily be listening to.
      1. As important as it is to deal with these topics
      2. Be thoughtful about where you are in your life journey, where you are in your healing -- this story may strike close to home for many of you
      3. You don't have to listen to the story or my analysis of it -- listen only if it is good for you -- even for people who are really psychologically well integrated, this is painful stuff.
        
        Unresolved sexual trauma -- this may be a great time, it may be a terrible time listen to it.
        
        Unresolved incest
        
        Unresolved betrayal
        
        Unresolved abandonment, especially by parents or church or civic leaders
        
        Sibling issues.
      4. Window of tolerance
  2. the zone of nervous system arousal in which you are able to function most effectively. When you are within this zone, you can readily take in information, process that information, and integrate that information more readily.
    1. 1. You can listen.
    2. 1. People in the window of tolerance are feeling emotions at moderate levels, not overwhelmed with emotion (hyperarousal) and not numbing their feelings out (hypoarousal).
  3. Review of levels of listening -- check out episode 42. Brief review. Summarize below
2. Listening to trauma may be easier with a written narrative than in person with the people immediately present
3. 1. Listening to -- Level 1 listening -- Listening with your mind, taking in information
  2. Often called active listening
    1. 1. Listen carefully to what is happening in the story
    2. 1. Grasping the content, the facts
    3. 1. Requires attention, concentration, taking in what the person is saying.
    4. 1. Focus externally on the characters, not internally on what is going on with your parts. Not distracted by own self-focus
  3. 1. Listening for -- Level 2 listening -- Rarer.
  4. This is speculative, we hold it lightly
  5. Listening to fill in the gaps in each character's big picture
  6. What is beyond and behind the words?
    1. Listening for the deeper layers of meaning in order to perceive what has not been said outright. 4. 1. understanding the experiential context for each of the characters 5. Listening to what the character does not say or do -- omissions. 6. What are we listening for when we are listening for?
    2. The person's experience -- to grasp the person's experience -- all the inner stuff.
    3. Emotions
    4. Intentions
    5. Thoughts
    6. Desires
    7. Attitudes toward the world
    8. Impulses
    9. Vision of the world
    10. Working models of the world, assumptions.
    11. Values
    12. Purpose in life
    13. I listen for identity
    14. and for shame. 7. Engage the Faculty of imagination to help us fill in the gaps 8. Taking in what the person means (in contrast to what the person says in Level 1) 9. What we are not doing:
    15. Not evaluating the merits of that perspective, not getting caught up in judging that perspective
    16. Not looking to right wrongs, not looking for justice, not asking deep existential questions about how could that terrible thing have happened to the person, not formulating advice, not looking to impress.
    17. Setting all that aside. To be with the characters in their stories, their narrative. Understanding them first.
    18. Taking that character's perspective in. Seeing the world through the other person's eyes. No matter how inaccurate or distorted that perception of the world may seem to be to us.
    19. 1. Listening with -- Level 3 listening -- Very rare -- characteristic of great therapists
  7. Listening with your whole self.
    1. 1. Listening with your heart and to your heart
    2. Window of tolerance. 2. 1. Listening to your intuition -- listening to your own parts -- what they are telling you.
      1. Emotions -- Fear, sadness, anger, disgust, happiness, etc.
      2. Impulses
      3. Intentions
      4. Thoughts that spontaneously arise
      5. Images
      6. Memories that pop up
      7. Body sensations
      8. Songs -- Internal Jukebox
      9. Sayings
      10. Gut sense
      11. All your inner experiences
        
        Remember, this is your stuff. This is your experience.
        
        Interpersonal field. Which parts of me are resonating with your parts.
        
        Listening for the shifts in messaging along with the shifts in relating.
        
        What does the person need
        
        Self as instrument -- tuning the instrument in to a frequency understand the other
        
        Curiosity -- why am I reacting this way.
        
        Compassionate connection 3.
    4. Read-through of Scripture 2 Samuel 13 1-22 -- last two episodes.
    5. Breakdown of the Story
4. And Amnon said, “Send out every one from me.” So every one went out from him. 10 Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother.
  1. Amnon sends everyone out. Authority of the Crown prince
    1. Tremendous power imbalance. The only one who could challenge the crown prince was David, the king. And David ordered Tamar to be there. 2. 1. If the servants don't leave they lose their positions at best, and could be executed. From a purely human perspective, the are in a catch-22 -- there is no good option. 3. 1. Nuremburg mentality -- Just obeying orders. 4. 1. If one witness had acted, if just one had sounded the alarm, or intervened, created a scene, how different this could have been. But you would have to risk the enmity of the crown prince and with that death. 5. 1. Theodore McCarrick report -- came out on November 10. I couldn't read it.
      1. How many people could have spoken up but didn't.
      2. Some tried anonymously.
      3. So much human respect.
      4. All seemed afraid of the power of McCarrick. History repeating himself.
        
        Bringing the food into the chamber -- bedroom. The trap is closing. Emphasis on "her brother."
    2. Theme from Jaws running through my mind.
    3. 1. 11 But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12 She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this wanton folly. 13 As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the wanton fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.” 14 But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her, and lay with her.
  2. He took hold of her. Making sure of his prey.
    1. She can't flee now. Flight would be Tamar's first instinct. And Amnon knew it.
    2. Impossible to call for help because Amnon had sent the servants away. No one to take her part.
    3. 1. Come lie with me, my sister
    4. Invitation to consensual sex -- this sounds like it was very erotic for Amnon. Part of his elaborated fantasy that would fill him up, make him whole.
      1. She might give up her virginity for him, because she desires him, too.
      2. Tamar may have the same sexual and romantic fantasy about him -- very arousing in a very disordered way.
      3. May go on and on -- secret trysts 2.
      4. Tamar keeps her cool.
    5. Really amazing to me. May have had special graces. This is not a typical response. It is far more adaptive that would be possible for most people in this situation.
    6. Her sympathetic nervous system has got to be ramping up into a fight or flight response, but she is still in her window of tolerance.
    7. She does not shut down
    8. She is thinking quicky and clearly, she can form arguments
    9. But I have to believe she is nearing the top end of her window of tolerance.
      1. No my brother, do not force me.
    10. Implication -- I will not do this. I am not volunteering. If sex happens it will be because you raped me. First rejection.
      1. Tamar could have consented, and afterward pretended that nothing happened. Who would know?
      2. The way the story is written made it so very clear that Tamar never considered violating her integrity and that she was a wholly blameless victim.
      3. For such a thing is not done in Israel -- do not do this wanton folly. Second rejection.
    11. Major violation of social norms
    12. Major violation of Deuteronomic law
      1. Deuteronomy 27:22 forbids a man from sleeping with his sister. 3. 1. Leviticus 18: 9, 11
        
        The nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, born in the household or outside -- you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 2. 1. The nakedness of the daughter of your father's wife, born in your father's household--she is your sister; you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 3. 4. 1. Leviticus 20:17
        
        And a man who takes his sister, his father's daughter or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is vileness and they shall be cut off before the eyes of their kinfolk. His sister's nakedness he has laid bare. He shall bear his punishment. Robert Alter 2. 1. Punishment was to be cut off from Israelite community, outcast, exiled. 3. 5. 1. Consequences
        
        As for me, how could I carry my shame Third rejection
    13. Tremendous blow to her identity.
      1. Virgin princess --> nobody, a social outcast, a pariah.
      2. Unmarried and unmarriageable. No one wanted to marry a non-virgin unless she was a widow or possibly divorced.
        
        And as for you, you would be as one of the wanton fools in Israel Fourth Rejection.
    14. Appeals to his identity. It is true.
    15. She senses that the four rejections are not working.
      1. Appeals to what is good, true and beautiful are having no impact.
      2. Appeals to social and religious norms do not phase Amnon
      3. Appeals to how she would be shame do not matter to Amnon
      4. Even pointing out how he will shame himself no longer penetrate into Amnon's awareness.
    16. This is a quadruple rejection for Amnon -- a quadruple refusal. Emphasized and reemphasized.
      1. Destroys his fantasy of consensual sex and all that his imagination had elaborated about it.
      2. Amnon's conscience is also burning now in the presence of Tamar's principled resistance
        
        The contrast is so strong between her virtue and his vice 3. 1. Amnon's part that carries shame is likely rising and about to take over
        
        Does he listen to that shame as a signal -- no, Amnon does not 2. 1. Can shame serve its inhibitory effect -- no -- Amnon will not allow it. 3. 4. 1. What happens instead?
        
        Amnon's parts that carry anger and hatred rise faster like firefighters to take out the pain of the shame. 2. 1. to drown out his awareness of the shame 3. 1. and to justify the impending rape as a consequence for Tamar wounding his pride. 4. 1. Catholic psychiatrist Conrad Baars -- Emotional substitution -- one emotion rises up to squelch another. 5. 5. 4. So Tamar is taking this all in. And she shifts her approach to one that hold out a possibility of legitimate sexual union. 4. Now therefore, I pray you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you. 1. King, not our father. Civil authority, arbiter of marriages. 1. Some believe she was trying to escape from his hands by any means in her power 2. she did not necessarily mean that a dispensation for marriage was possible 3. Unlikely such a request would have been granted. 4. Possible she was saying anything to play for time 2. I think it's likely that Tamar believed a marriage was possible. 1. May not have been aware of the Levitical prohibitions in Leviticus 18 and 20. 1. She would be much more familiar with Deuteronomy. 2. She may have seriously believed that given the nature of the situation that David might agree to a dispensation. 3. Either way, she was desperate. 5. But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her, and lay with her.
    17. He would not listen to her -- would not see her as she was.
      1. She made it as difficult as possible for him to do what he did
      2. But he did it anyway.
        
        I don't know what to say.
        
        This happened.
        
        Listen to your parts now, notice what is going on inside you, how you are reacting. 9.
      3. 15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Arise, be gone.” 16 But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other which you did to me.”[b] But he would not listen to her. 17 He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.”
        
        Post-rejection. Amnon shifts -- huge shift emotionally and in terms of his desires.
    18. He must have her immediately --> He must be rid of her, immediately 2. My read: Part of the intense attraction for Amnon was in how the sexual union was forbidden, but he was going to have it anyway. She rejected him. She is now going to pay the price. He is just going to take what he wants. He goes on a power trip, no longer relational in any sense, not even a distorted, warped sense like before.
    19. Breaking sexual taboos. I can do this. The rules no longer apply to me. I am above the law.
    20. Amnon -- emphasizes the sibling relationship with Tamar -- as though that were important.
    21. Act of rebellion -- of independence, of autonomy. I make the rules for me and for others now. Crown prince. Might have been growing up with this idea.
    22. I don't need a relationship. I can just take what I need by exploiting others.
    23. Way of establishing power and dominance over David -- having sex not with his concubines or wives, but with his daughter. 3. Amnon hated her with a very great hatred
    24. Amnon's original warped fantasies of a secret ongoing mutual sexual relationship with Tamar are totally destroyed
      1. Amnon did not get what he hoped for -- so unrealistic
        
        Thinking with his hormones 2. 1. vs. Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and rely not on your own insights. Yeah. Especially when they are so driven by testosterone. 3. 2. 1. Sexual arousal is now gone. 3. 1. He had wanted her, she never wanted him sexually. 4. 1. Hatred covering his shame. 1. Heaping coals down on his head. 2. Parts -- Hatred is a firefighter part that rises up to protect his system from being overwhelmed by the intensity of his shame and self-loathing.
        
        I think Princess Tamar's words stayed with him.
        
        Remember what she called his intentions to have sex with him? Wanton folly.
        
        Remember what Tamar said he would be if he carried out these evil designs? Wanton fool of Israel
        
        And Crown Prince Amnon burned in his shame of knowing those words to be true. 5. 6. But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other which you did to me.”
    25. Even after the rape, Tamar is still functioning. This is remarkable. She is still fighting, still lucid, still able to engage in an effective way.
      1. Not typical, especially given the tremendous implications for Tamar 7. 1. She is still fighting for dignity. She can feel his hatred. She is still appealing to him. 8. 1. Tamar is appealing for Amnon to marry her
      2. Scott S. Biblical Hermeneutics stack exchange 2016 discussion.
        
        Tamar aware of Deuteronomic law, but not levitical law.
        
        Marriage not possible due to Levitical law. 2. 1. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed and seizes her and lies with her and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days. 3. 1. Common law in Near Eastern cultures at the time. 4. 1. Last-ditch attempt to salvage her life. 5. 1. She is desperately trying to salvage her future, making a futile gambit to avoid lifelong shame 6. 1. The shame of being unmarried and unmarriageable made marrying her rapist seem preferable to being a pariah.
        
        She is trying also to salvage the situation morally as best as was possible for both of them.
        
        sending away would be a direct violation of Dt 22:28-29 -- He has to marry her. But he won't. That's not part of his plan. He wanted her as sexual object, not as a wife. 7.
        
        Externalization of his experience
      3. Fantasy that his shame and anger are caused by Tamar 2. 1. So he rejects her, banishes her. But she won't go.
        
        She points out another wrong he is doing, a greater wrong
        
        Explain that. Position of hatred. 3.
        
        But he would not listen to her. 17 He called the young man who served him and said, “Send this creature, pray, away from me and bolt the door behind her.”
        
        Dynamic equivalence strikes again in the RSVCE translation. .
      4. Not really "this woman" -- "this one" -- Hebrew is Z'ot. as though she is not human.
      5. Robert Alter translates it as "this creature" emphasizing how dehumanizing her dismissal is. 2. He would not listen.
      6. He would not engage, he would not see her
      7. She was an object to him.
        
        The object of his sexual/relational desire at first
        
        Then an object of hatred, contempt, disgust. 3. Calls his servant to put her out. Symbolic. Banishment. Rejection. Bolting the door 4. Servant put her out -- rejection, shaming. He basically has to throw Tamar out, like trash into the street.
      8. Irony here -- Bolting the door behind her mad it seem like Tamar had made a shameful proposal to Amnon -- and she is the one treated like a prostitute
      9. Power aspect here for Amnon. I am beyond the rules. The rules and laws don't apply to me. I am the favored crown prince.
      10. Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for thus were the virgin daughters of the king clad of old.[c] So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her. 19 And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent the long robe which she wore; and she laid her hand on her head, and went away, crying aloud as she went.
5. She is not going quietly. She is grieving multiple losses.
  1. She wants the world to know she is grieving. She will not hide. She will not make this easier for Amnon. She stays with the vulnerability.
  2. I will make you see me. I will not be invisible.
  3. Ashes on her head, ashes and tears on her robe, her ketoneth. And probably, in a cruel twist of irony, also her blood, blood from the violation of her virginity. Part of the shame. No longer pure.
  4. Laid her hand on her head -- symbol of God's hand heavy upon her.
  5. Crying aloud
6. 1. Perhaps she hoped that her public protest and grief would force Amnon to marry her in observation of the Deuteronomic Law.
7. 1. Perhaps Tamar hoped that her public mourning would force David's hand to take up and judge her claim against Amnon and that Amnon would get what he deserved.
9. 20 And her brother Ab′salom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar dwelt, a desolate woman, in her brother Ab′salom’s house. 21 When King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. 22 But Ab′salom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Ab′salom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister Tamar.
10. Absalom: Has Amnon your brother been with you?
  1. Not "our brother" -- your brother. My take Absalom knew what happened. He has sensed it.
    1. 1. Maybe he saw the blood on Tamar's torn sleeve robe, her ketoneth.
    2. 1. Your brother -- emphasizes the incestuous nature of the rape. 4.
  2. 1. Now hold your peace, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.
  3. Hard for me to imagine a less attuned statement in all of Scripture at this moment. What was Absalom thinking?
    1. 1. Do not take this to heart? He wants her to stop crying and settle down.
    2. 1. He is your brother -- he is the crown prince -- that makes it so much worse! And that is a reason for Tamar to hold her peace?
    3. Just keep it in the family? Hush, Hush
      1. Secret family culture 2. 1. That didn't work. The whole sordid story was eventually got written in the Bible, the most-read book in all of human history 2.
        
        Absalom sees an opening here to take Amnon out.
        
        Absalom is next in line for the crown after Amnon, and the wheels are turning
        
        Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar.
    4. Spoke neither good nor bad to Amnon. Did not confront him then, when it would have helped Tamar 3. 1. Doesn't want resolution by marriage -- doesn't want this to resolve, because that would thwart his plan for taking the crown. 4. 1. No, Absalom was playing the long game
      1. for power and dominance
      2. With cold vengeance and murder in his heart
      3. Feeling justified -- he now has a very objective reason for murdering his brother
        
        Carrying out the death sentence required by Leviticus 20 -- but more out of revenge than justice. 4. 1. Given their father, the king's inaction. 5. 5.
        
        When King David heard of all these things he was very angry.
        
        He was going to hear about it all.
        
        And he was very angry
    5. Doesn't say what he is angry about -- we don't know. 3. 1. David protects his favored, eldest son.
      1. David protected the abuser, the rapist, not his daughter the victim.
      2. No visible consequences for Amnon. He goes on as usual.
      3. Such indulgence -- no punishment -- and now either can't or won't stand up to Amnon. It would have been heroic for David to start now, to bring the hammer down, but he didn't And parts of Amnon know it. Playing Dad. One can almost feel the contempt.
      4. Consequence of his pattern of failing to discipline his sons -- this wasn't new. 4.
      5. So Tamar dwelt, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom's house.
  4. No longer able to dwell with the other virgin princesses
    1. 1. A desolate woman
    2. Desolation -- complete emptiness. Sense of being destroyed, so damaged inside. Anguish. Misery. Numbness. Deadness inside. Devastation, ruin. 2. 1. Hypoarousal. Downregulated. Shutting down. 3. 1. Three major, heartbreaking, colossal failures by the three closest men in her life
      1. Brother Amnon who raped her and abandoned her 2. 1. Absalom who shushed her and minimized everything 3. 1. David her father and her king, who was passive and did nothing.
        
        Not just a question of him failing as a father
        
        He failed as king to bring justice to one of his subjects. 4.
        
        Tamar numbs out. Loses will to live. Losses are immense, after her adrenaline wears off.
      2. No one heard her 2. 1. Safe place was no longer safe. 3. 1. Her voice was silenced -- by Absalom and her father, King David. 4. 1. Mindblowing. This was David. King David, slayer of Goliath, victorious in battle, beloved by God. 5. 1. Shame and humiliation 5. 1. She can never marry, she can never have children, she will carry the effects of the rape for the rest of her life. She is an outcast. 6. 1. David's silence means that others who want to help her are very limited. The king has spoken through his silence. So the king perpetuates the wrong. 7. 1. And she lost other things. Can she resort to the Psalms
      3. Can she sing Psalm 23 -- she would have heard it.
        
        The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
        
        Oh wait. David wrote that. 2. 1. Now some say that language of psalm 23 was in a late version of Hebrew that probably dated to The Second Temple period was basically the fifth century BC -- but many think it does go back to
        
        Tamar: What did I do wrong? Did I cause this? How come no one protected me, listend to me? Where is God?
      4. This is why I couldn't sleep that Thursday night 2. 1. God: I lavished graces upon her. 3. 9. 9.
      5. That's the last we hear of Tamar. Let's take a break. Sit with this for a minute. Notice. Jot down a few things that you are experiencing.
      6. Wrapup
11. Practice this listening -- as far as you can go. Share your experience of listening to this episode with another person. You might invite someone to trust to listen to these episodes with you. If that seems too much, read 2 Samuel 13 -- see what you can read between the lines. Write it down in a journal, put your experience into words.
12. 1. Where do you struggle with the listening
  2. Those points of struggle can help you identify where you need to work in your life
    1. 1. Notice what got activated. The parts of the story that stirred you up can help you understand what you need to connect within yourself.
    2. The burdens that parts of you are bearing 3.
  3. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
  4. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd
  5. 1. Friday, November 28, 4:00 - 5:15 PM EST, we had Office Hours for RCCD members. Community members can check out the recording.
  6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
  7. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 43, released on November 23, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the seventh episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: Rape, Incest, Shame, and Silence: A True Story Reexamined, Part 2
5. We are back to dealing with very heavy, very difficult material.
6. We are going back to the story of Crown Prince Amnon rape of his half-sister the princess Tamar that is recounted in 2 Samuel 13. Remember that both Prince Amnon and Princess Tamar were King David's children.
7. We opened that up in Episode 40, with Part 1 -- now that we have taken two episodes to look deeply at King David's upbringing, especially around shame and his wounds
  1. So that we can better understand his role in this present situation
    1. 1. And now we are ready to return to the rape and so much of what went into it and came out of it.
    3. We are going to be applying what we learned about shame in the conceptual information from Episodes 37, 38, 39.
    4. We're going to focus on listening as we were learning about in Episodes 41 and especially 42.
  2. Cautions
    1. There is an incestuous rape of a teenager in this story.
  3. I am not going into unnecessary graphic aspects about the rape itself
    1. 1. there isn't a need to get into the all the specific details of it
    2. 1. However, I am bringing out the emotional, relational and psychological impact of the traumas here, and not just the rape, but the betrayals and the failures to protect, and the injustice of it all and all the aftermath
    3. Those aspects -- betrayal, abandonment, the implications, the meaning of those contextual factors can be and often are worse than the actual physical violations. And Tamar tells us that in the scripture. 2. 1. Those realities can be very difficult to take, it's understandable why people want to avoid discussing them. 3. 1. We need to be real about these things. People who are traumatized, people who are burdened with shame, who are confused, who are lost -- they need resources. These kinds of awful violations happen. A lot. We need to talk about them. In this podcast I go into them. 4. 1. There is no neat and tidy way to talk about incest and sexual violence and its aftermath, especially the experience of shame. No whitewash, no clichés, no pious pablum. 5. 1. And we need to be able to put these thing into a Catholic context, see them from a Catholic viewpoint. 6. 4.
    4. Warnings -- let's be prudent here in listening to the story -- not an episode for little kids to necessarily be listening to.
      1. As important as it is to deal with these topics
      2. Be thoughtful about where you are in your life journey, where you are in your healing -- this story may strike close to home for many of you
      3. You don't have to listen to the story or my analysis of it -- listen only if it is good for you -- even for people who are really psychologically well integrated, this is painful stuff.
        
        Unresolved sexual trauma -- this may be a great time, it may be a terrible time listen to it.
        
        Unresolved incest
        
        Unresolved betrayal
        
        Unresolved abandonment, especially by parents or church or civic leaders
        
        Sibling issues.
      4. Window of tolerance
  4. the zone of nervous system arousal in which you are able to function most effectively. When you are within this zone, you can readily take in information, process that information, and integrate that information more readily.
    1. 1. You can listen.
    2. 1. People in the window of tolerance are feeling emotions at moderate levels, not overwhelmed with emotion (hyperarousal) and not numbing their feelings out (hypoarousal).
  5. Review of levels of listening -- check out last episode
8. Listening to trauma may be easier with a written narrative than in person with the people immediately present
9. 1. Listening to -- Level 1 listening -- Listening with your mind, taking in information
  2. Often called active listening
    1. 1. Listen carefully to what is happening in the story
    2. 1. Grasping the content, the facts
    3. 1. Requires attention, concentration, taking in what the person is saying.
    4. 1. Focus externally on the characters, not internally on what is going on with your parts. Not distracted by own self-focus
  3. 1. Listening for -- Level 2 listening -- Rarer.
  4. This is speculative, we hold it lightly
  5. Listening to fill in the gaps in each character's big picture
  6. What is beyond and behind the words?
    1. Listening for the deeper layers of meaning in order to perceive what has not been said outright. 4. 1. understanding the experiential context for each of the characters 5. Listening to what the character does not say or do -- omissions. 6. What are we listening for when we are listening for?
    2. The person's experience -- to grasp the person's experience -- all the inner stuff.
    3. Emotions
    4. Intentions
    5. Thoughts
    6. Desires
    7. Attitudes toward the world
    8. Impulses
    9. Vision of the world
    10. Working models of the world, assumptions.
    11. Values
    12. Purpose in life
    13. I listen for identity
    14. and for shame. 7. Engage the Faculty of imagination to help us fill in the gaps 8. Taking in what the person means (in contrast to what the person says in Level 1) 9. What we are not doing:
    15. Not evaluating the merits of that perspective, not getting caught up in judging that perspective
    16. Not looking to right wrongs, not looking for justice, not asking deep existential questions about how could that terrible thing have happened to the person, not formulating advice, not looking to impress.
    17. Setting all that aside. To be with the characters in their stories, their narrative. Understanding them first.
    18. Taking that character's perspective in. Seeing the world through the other person's eyes. No matter how inaccurate or distorted that perception of the world may seem to be to us.
    19. 1. Listening with -- Level 3 listening -- Very rare -- characteristic of great therapists
  7. Listening with your whole self.
    1. 1. Listening with your heart and to your heart
    2. Window of tolerance. 2. 1. Listening to your intuition -- listening to your own parts -- what they are telling you.
      1. Emotions -- Fear, sadness, anger, disgust, happiness, etc.
      2. Impulses
      3. Intentions
      4. Thoughts that spontaneously arise
      5. Images
      6. Memories that pop up
      7. Body sensations
      8. Songs -- Internal Jukebox
      9. Sayings
      10. Gut sense
      11. All your inner experiences
        
        Remember, this is your stuff. This is your experience.
        
        Interpersonal field. Which parts of me are resonating with your parts.
        
        Listening for the shifts in messaging along with the shifts in relating.
        
        What does the person need
        
        Self as instrument -- tuning the instrument in to a frequency understand the other
        
        Curiosity -- why am I reacting this way.
        
        Compassionate connection 3.
    4. Read-through of Scripture 2 Samuel 13 1-22 -- I am going to read it with more inflection, more interpretation of the words.
      1. Now Ab′salom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar; and after a time Amnon, David’s son, loved her. 2 And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 3 But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jon′adab, the son of Shim′e-ah, David’s brother; and Jon′adab was a very crafty man. 4 And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Ab′salom’s sister.”
      2. 5 Jon′adab said to him, “Lie down on your bed, and pretend to be ill; and when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it, and eat it from her hand.’” 6 So Amnon lay down, and pretended to be ill; and when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Pray let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.”
      3. 7 Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house, and prepare food for him.” 8 So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. And she took dough, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. 9 And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out every one from me.” So every one went out from him. 10 Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother.
      4. 11 But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12 She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this wanton folly. 13 As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the wanton fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.” 14 But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her, and lay with her.
      5. 15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Arise, be gone.” 16 But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other which you did to me.”[b] But he would not listen to her. 17 He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.” 18 Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for thus were the virgin daughters of the king clad of old.[c] So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her. 19 And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent the long robe which she wore; and she laid her hand on her head, and went away, crying aloud as she went.
      6. 20 And her brother Ab′salom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar dwelt, a desolate woman, in her brother Ab′salom’s house. 21 When King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. 22 But Ab′salom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Ab′salom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister Tamar.
      7. That's the last we hear of Tamar. Let's take a break. Sit with this for a minute. Notice. Jot down a few things that you are experiencing.
    5. Background
10. Ages
  1. Amnon 20
    1. 1. Tamar 19
    2. 1. Absalom 18
  2. 1. Physical locations -- convent-like separation
  3. Tamar is a royal princess a virgin -- the harem eunuchs are tasked with watching her closely.
    1. 1. She lived in women's quarters, always accompanied by guards and other women
    2. A kind of convent, a very protected environment. 2. 1. Separated from men, so that nothing untoward would happen to them, especially nothing that would compromise their virginity. 3.
      1. the virgin daughters of the king were protected from us unsolicited advances from men, all men
    3. Told that she has a long-sleeved robe -- a beautiful and very modest public testament of her protected status as a virgin. 2. 1. Ketoneth Hebrew name for it. Only other place that word is used is for the robe, multicolored coat of Joseph -- son of Jacob. Remember Joseph Sold by his brothers into slavery. Brothers spilled blood of a goat on the robe to convince their father of Joseph's death. 3. 4.
    5. David
11. Compromised morally
  1. Bathsheba -- well known. Violating sexually boundaries
    1. 1. Unleashes a predatory precedent into his family. Unintended consequences
  2. 1. Curse on his house -- communicated by Nathan the prophet.
  3. 1. He has many wives -- at least 7 named, at least 10 concubines
  4. 1. Sibling Rivalries
  5. Sons grew up without strict paternal discipline, different mothers were jealous of each other
  6. 1. Demands of duties of state
  7. 1. Idealization of Amnon -- totally not understanding him
  8. Parents almost never believe the incest (confirm)
  10. Increasing boundary violations -- mark them out
  11. Cues to listen Checking in with the listener
  12. Breakdown of the Story
12. Now Ab′salom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar; and after a time Amnon, David’s son, loved her. 2 And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 3 But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jon′adab, the son of Shim′e-ah, David’s brother; and Jon′adab was a very crafty man. 4 And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Ab′salom’s sister.”
  1. Virgin -- means more than not ever having had sex
    1. She was young. No references to older virgins in this time 2. 1. Still living with her father, under his care and protection and under his authority
      1. Word Study -- Amnon, David's son, "loved her"
    2. Really disturbed by this language. Confucius: The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. 2. 1. Then Isaac brought her into the tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. Genesis 24:47. Love at first sight. Isaac met her and immediately made her his wife. Intensity there, and maybe some idealization. 3. 1. What is the Hebrew? way·ye·’ĕ·hā·ḇe·hā
      1. Some day some listener who actually knows Hebrew is going to call me out
        
        Several of the more dynamic translations render it "fell in love with her"
        
        Even less literal translations will go with "became infatuated with her."
        
        A lot of lust mixed in for Anon.
        
        May be a mixture of things. They grew up together. Sibling relationships are complex.
        
        Desire increased over time. Amnon watched Tamar grow up. This may have built up over years, unchecked to the point where Amnon was
        
        So tormented that he "made himself ill" -- Tamar was a virgin, protected by their father, King David, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her.
    3. Not with her. To her. At this point, Amnon still may have some moral constraints. He knows that such a thing is not done.
    4. But he also has an example of his father King David who used his power and influence to pursue his sexual fantasies with Bathsheba -- Amnon saw this at age 18, two years earlier, and it had to have made an impression.
      1. David got what he wanted -- Bathsheba as wife
      2. And while the first son of David and Bathsheba died as a consequence
      3. Baby Solomon was then born not long after and was now toddling around the palace
      4. So it may not have seemed to Amnon that David's consequences were all that bad.
      5. David seemed to have gotten away with it.
    5. Obsession
      1. EMDR therapist Jim Knipe, book EMDR toolbox -- discusses how intense experiences can be distorted in a positive, idealized direction, including sexual arousal.
        
        Knipe writes how a chronic distortion of perception can occur when an intense positive experience remains unprocessed and is somehow a solution to an unresolved trauma.
        
        This occurs when the experience, positive within itself, has the additional positive effect of enabling the person to contain or avoid significant emotion disturbance.
        
        The positive experience allows the person to shift awareness away from something that is upsetting to something that is pleasant.
        
        When this happens, the result can be what we might call an idealization defense -- a positive experience that is not only positive in itself, but also a means of avoiding a problem in the person's emotions.
        
        Winning the jackpot at slots -- an idealized experience.
        
        Gus very down on himself. Loser, trouble with employer, conflict with wife. Deep sense of shame, of feeling unlovable
        
        Goes to the casino, playing dollar slots.
        
        Real low point
        
        Wins a jackpot. So much attention. He is a winner now! People admiring him, congratulating him. He is on top of the world.
        
        Winning isn't integrated into the narrative of his life, his life story
        
        Feeling so much shame isn't integrated into his life story either.
        
        Both are unresolved experiences. And they are connected
        
        So Gus idealizes the slots machines -- he begins to gamble. He remembers in highly idealized ways how great it was to win the jackpot.
        
        Highly idealized memories of that also keep him distracted from his unresolved shame, his feeling of being unlovable and his relational problems.
        
        If this is going on for Amnon, he may be idealizing some pleasant early relational experience with Tamar -- something that was helpful in some way for him to deal with a trauma -- and then he ran with it.
        
        Fantasizing about some kind of relationship with Tamar helped him avoid something painful within him. It need not have been sexual initially.
        
        And then, perhaps with the onset of puberty
        
        He may have worked sexual fantasies into his idealization of Tamar 3. 1. Ammon may have been acting out sexually
        
        Masturbating 2. 1. having sexual relations with other women, abusing his power, and imagining that it was Tamar. 3. 4. 4. 1. Psychologist Joseph Nicolosi Jr. Reintegrative therapy 1. intense, disordered idealization that drives a sexual attraction 2. reflects an attempt to find in another person something that is missing in oneself -- some void, some inadequacy. 3. The disordered idealization and its manifestation in an intense sexual preoccupation is driven by a negative self appraisal -- something missing in the person
        
        Negative self-appraisal -- sounds like shame. 4. 1. Deep wound of inadequacy 5. 1. Amnon knew, for all his charisma, his power as crown prince, his gifts and talents and status that he was deeply flawed and sinful 6. 1. Deep sense of being bad, ridden with vices. 7. 8. For Amnon, he may have seen the virtue in Tamar. Her goodness. But especially her innocence. 9. He knew he didn't have it 10. He sought to share virtue with her. Or to take hers from her. 11. Very speculative. 12. This kind of process is unconscious 13. Doesn't justify it at all. 5. 11. We do know that Amnon was not thinking of marriage and building a family together with her. 1. Debate about whether a marriage was even possible between the half-siblings. 1. I think it may have been possible with a dispensation from David, even with the prohibitions in Leviticus 2. Even if it were not legal. David has a lot of power. Power can be abused. 2. But David likely had other plans for Tamar -- she at 19 probably had a marriage already arranged -- it may have been imminent, as she was old enough to marry. 3. No political advantage to marrying Amnon and Tamar. And it's bad optics. This is not the old-time Egyptian royal family here. 12. So what to do? What do you do when you really really want something that seems impossible to have and you feel like you need it? You bring in a crafty friend. Enter Jonadab. 1. Who we seek out matters 2. Part of Amnon knows that Jonadab could connive 3. Jonadab could make the impossible possible. All you have to do is violation the norms, the standards, the laws, the religious commands, that's it. 4. And Jonadab has the wily imagination to figure out how to short-circuit all the protections. He has the nefarious vision to know how to dupe the king and neutralize the guards and servants. 5. Jonadab -- motivations
      2. If you can will it, you can have it one way or another -- Nietzschean will to power 6. 1. Jonadab may have gotten a vicarious, twisted pleasure in being able to set such things in motion. Acting out. 7. 1. Currying favor with Amnon. Amnon will be king. 8. 1. What a small, stony heart. What a tragic, evil figure. What a snake. 9.
      3. 5 Jon′adab said to him, “Lie down on your bed, and pretend to be ill; and when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it, and eat it from her hand.’” 6 So Amnon lay down, and pretended to be ill; and when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Pray let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.”
  2. There is no pause here between Jonadab's plan and its execution. Amnon carries out the plan, exactly as Jonadab laid it out, at once.
    1. 1. There he is moaning in his bed. Looking deathly ill.
    2. 1. David comes. Doctors are called. Physical examinations. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, but this is the crown prince. Remedies discussed.
    3. 1. The patient moans again, and comes up with an idea that may seem to help.
    4. 1. Let "My sister" Tamar -- emphasizing the sibling relationship -- put David at ease -- come give me bread to eat. Ok, he wants food. That's good. It's better that he wants to eat than not eat.
    5. 1. Weird request of watching Tamar make cakes and then eating them from her hand as she feeds him.
    6. David misses the cues her, or he chooses to not investigate.
      1. He may be agitated about the "severe illness" of his favored son Amnon.
      2. He may not want to know that something is very amiss here, very wrong
      3. The implications of Amnon setting up a bedroom meeting with his half-sister Tamar may be eluding him.
    7. We are getting into unfathomable territory, possibly, here for David -- my son couldn't possibly be considering anything untoward with Tamar. Unthinkable. Inconceivable. And he's so sick.
      1. And there are so many safeguards in place
        
        social norms, religious prohibitions, legal prohibitions 2. 1. Also, there were the servants. Potential witnesses. Whose function is to protect. 3. 4. The reality of incest is often is a big surprise to parents -- if they ever even acknowledge it. 5. Parts of David may have suspected that there was danger, but other parts did not want to admit the possibility that his favored son Amnon had such a potential for evil and silenced any alarms that may have been going off inside him. 3. David does not know his sons, and may not want to know them, given his idealization of them
      2. Head in the sand. 4. 1. Not wanting to see the curse on his family play out -- The curse prophesied by Nathan in the previous chapter. Avoidance. 5. 1. David starts undermining boundaries, removing physical limits. 6. 1. David's shame could be activated if he were to see the generational effects of his sins
        
        Many wives and concubines 2. 1. Bathsheba -- adultery and murder for sexual desires 3. 1. Indulging his sons, not disciplining them, not loving them enough to challenge them to virtue 4. 1. Perhaps even being afraid of them, of Amnon making a scene like a spoiled adolescent. 5. 1. But that passivity is very costly -- leading not only to the rape of Tamar, but also to fratricidal murder, and to all-out civil war between the armies of David and Absalom. 6. 7.
        
        7 Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house, and prepare food for him.” 8 So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. And she took dough, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. 9 And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat.
        
        It's already happened as Jonadab laid out. Amnon filled in the details with his own imagination.
        
        Word study -- cakes
    8. Hebrew Word: levav or levivah.
      1. Root of these words is the Hebrew word "lev" which translates as heart.
        
        These dumpling-like cakes or you might think of them like pancakes with a thicker batter -- these cakes were rapidly and easily made, and they were thought to strengthen the heart. You know, to give the heart a boost of energy.
        
        Heart cakes or “heartening dumplings”
        
        a traditional food for the sick
        
        So even the name of the bread has a kind of sensuality about it -- and informed Hebrew might perceive in the name of the food something strange about Amnon's request.
      2. Some hints were there, the signs were there. Parts of David probably were detecting that something was strange, but these parts were probably silenced by other parts that did not want to think nasty things about Amnon, did not want to question him, challenge him.
      3. We can choose to listen to these parts that might pick up on the hints
      4. But David only hears or chooses to hear? that Amnon wants a special treatment -- he was sick.
      5. In short, David's crowned head was in the sand.
        
        Tamar is completely unprepared.
    9. Parts of her might have suspected that Amnon could be a predator 6. 1. But that is not a very nice thought. Who wants to think that? 7. 1. If you can't think something nice, don't think anything at all. 8. 1. So other parts of her may have suppressed those concerned parts. Good girl parts, trusting parts, parts that don't want any ridiculous accusations to be made. Parts that want to believe that everything is ok. 9. 10. Sexual predators are often family or friends, and the prey's misplaced trust and confidence is a great asset to the predator in carrying out his wicked designs. 11. Amnon may have a fetish going on here
    10. There’s something very creepy about Amnon, a grown man, lying in bed, watching his beautiful younger sister knead dough for him.
      1. I don't know how that lands with each of you, but to me, it feels really pornographic.
        
        I see Amnon savoring this visual with sexual pleasure, quivering with anticipation 2. 1. He has waiting so long for what is about to happen 3. 1. All the noble parts of him are suppressed. He is now on a mission. There is no going back, the wheels are in motion. 4. 1. And he is about to get what he has been longing for and scheming for. 5. 1. His sister kneading dough, baking cakes and feeding him by hand. 6. 1. Very predatory. 2. 1. Types of incest Karen Souza of Santa Cruz, CA
        
        Overt incest is sexual contact by a relative.
        
        Unlike overt incest, covert incest does not involve physical touching, but instead is as non-physical sexually-laced intimacy usually between a parent and child but also between two blood relatives. The child feels used and trapped, the same as with overt incest.
        
        Emotional incest -- involves role reversals. 3. 12.
        
        Wrapup
13. Practice this listening -- as far as you can go. Share your experience of listening to this episode with another person. You might invite someone to trust to listen to these episodes with you. If that seems too much, read 2 Samuel 13 -- see what you can read between the lines. Write it down in a journal, put your experience into words.
14. 1. Where do you struggle with the listening
  2. Those points of struggle can help you identify where you need to work in your life
    1. 1. Notice what got activated. The parts of the story that stirred you up can help you understand what you need to connect within yourself.
    2. The burdens that parts of you are bearing 3.
  3. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
  4. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd
  5. 1. Friday, November 28, 4:00 - 5:15 PM EST, we had Office Hours for RCCD members. Community members can check out the recording.
  6. 1. You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
  7. 1. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 42, released on November 16, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the sixth episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: Practicing Deep Listening: Understanding King David's Shame
Introduction to IFS.
1. Developed by Richard Schwartz
2. 1. Discussion of Parts
  2. Discrete, autonomous mental systems, each with own idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world.
    1. Modes of operating
    2. Subpersonalities
    3. Orchestra model
    4. Focus is on integration.
    5. 1. Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
    6. 1. Three roles
    7. Exiles --
      1. most sensitive -- become injured or outraged. Threatens the system, external relationships
      2. Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
      3. Want care and love, rescue, redemption
      4. shame. Need for redemption
        
        Managers
      5. Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe 2. 1. Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigiliance. 3. 1. Firefighters
      6. Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles 2. 1. No concern for consequences 3. 1. Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting 4.
        
        Parts can take over the person
    8. Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley 2. 1. We call it blending. 3. 5.
    10. IFS on the Self -- (recorded)
3. Self defined as the seat of consciousness
4. 1. Self can be occluded or overwhelmed by parts
5. 1. When self accepts and loves parts, those parts transform back into who they were meant to be
6. 1. Self-led mind is self-righting.
7. 1. self -- Active inner leader -- more than mindfulness
8. 1. Parts find the relationship with the self very reassuring
  2. But to reap the benefits they have to unblend from and notice the self
    1. 1. This is frightening can challenging to parts
    2. 1. Agency in the parts -- parts are making decisions about unblending in IFS model
  3. 1. Intrinsic qualities of the self
  4. Curiosity
    1. 1. Compassion
    2. 1. Calm
    3. 1. Confidence
    4. 1. Courage
    5. 1. Clarity
    6. 1. Creativity
    7. 1. Connectedness
    8. 1. Kindness
  5. 1. The self can be easily occluded, obscured, hidden by protective parts who take over in response to fear, anger or shame
  6. General state for most people is to be quite blended
    1. 1. Leads to self-absorption
  8. 3 levels of Listening -- Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House, Phil Sandahl & John Whitemore 1998 Co-active Coaching: New skills for coaching people toward success in work and life. I am expanding their concepts.
    1. Listening to -- Level 1 listening -- Listening with your mind -- Many people struggle with this
  9. Often called active listening
    1. 1. Listen carefully to what the person says
    2. 1. Grasping the content
    3. 1. Requires attention, concentration, taking in what the person is saying.
    4. 1. Focus externally on the other person, not internally. Not distracted by own self-focus
    5. Listening for -- Level 2 listening -- Rarer. Characteristic of very good therapists.
  10. Listening in search of something-- filling in the gaps in the person's big picture
  11. What is beyond and behind the words?
  12. Holding it lightly. Speculative endeavor.
  13. Listening to what the person does not say
  14. Listening with the third ear The "third ear," a concept introduced by psychoanalyst Theodor Reik 1983 Book , refers to a special kind of listening -- listening for the deeper layers of meaning in order to perceive what has not been said outright. It means understanding the emotional underpinnings conveyed when someone is speaking to you.
  15. What are we listening for?
    1. The person's experience -- to grasp the person's experience
    2. Emotions
    3. Intentions
    4. Thoughts
    5. Desire
    6. Attitudes toward the world
      1. Glass half empty or half full
    7. Impulses
    8. Vision of the world
    9. Working models of the world, assumptions.
    10. Values
    11. Purpose in life
    12. I listen for identity and for shame.
  16. Listening for both the words and the entire context
    1. 70-93% of communication is nonverbal -- Albert Mehrabia, Professor Emeritus at UCLA
      1. Voice -- tone, inflection, volume 38% of communication 2. 1. Body language -- glance patterns, facial expressions (including micrexpressions -- smiling matters a lot), posture, fidgeting, head movements, hand gestures, 3. 4. Summarized in his 1971/1980 book Silent Messages 5. Based on one word communications 6. Challenged by Philip Yaffe debate about it. 8. Faculty of imagination -- What Aristotle called Phantasia activities in thoughts, dreams and memories. 1. imagination is a faculty in humans and most other animals which produces, stores, and recalls the images used in a variety of cognitive activities, including those which motivate and guide action (De Anima iii 3, 429a4–7, De Memoria 1, 450a22–25). 9. Focus here on understanding, entering into the other person's perspective
    2. Taking in what the person means (in contrast to what the person says in Level 1) 10. 1. Not evaluating the merits of that perspective, not getting caught up in judging that perspective 11. 1. Not looking to right wrongs, not looking for justice, not asking deep existential questions about how could that terrible thing have happened to the person, not formulating advice, not looking to impress. 12. 1. Setting all that aside. To be with the person. 13. 1. Taking that perspective in. Seeing the world through the other person's eyes. Stepping into their shoes
      1. Listening with -- Level 3 listening -- not exactly what Laura Whitworth and her colleagues meant -- going way beyond. Very rare -- characteristic of great therapists
  17. Listening with your whole self.
    1. 1. Listening with your heart and to your heart
    2. Window of tolerance. 2. 1. Listening to your intuition -- listening to your own parts -- not just words
      1. Emotions -- Fear, sadness, anger, disgust, happiness, etc. 2. 1. Impulses 3. 1. Intentions 4. 1. Thoughts that spontaneously arise 5. 1. Images 6. 1. Memories that pop up 7. 1. Body sensations 8. 1. Songs -- Internal Jukebox 9. 1. Sayings 10. 1. Gut sense 11. 1. All your inner experiences 3. 1. Remember, this is your stuff. This is your experience. 4. 1. Interpersonal field. Which parts of me are resonating with your parts. 5. 1. Listening for the shifts in messaging along with the shifts in relating. 6. 1. What does the person need 7. 1. Self as instrument -- tuning the instrument in to a frequency understand the other 8. 1. Curiosity -- why am I reacting this way. 9. 1. Compassionate connection 9.
      2. Listening to David's childhood
9. Could be historical mistakes
10. 1. Point is to listen. Three levels
11. 1. Episode 41 -- argued that Jesse did not know David was his son until it was revealed by the prophet Samuel
  2. David raised as a bastard, in the household as the illegitimate son of Nitzevet
  3. David's brothers wanted to kill their adulterous mother by stoning (as the law called for) and the unborn baby David within her womb, but out of love for his former wife, Jesse intervened.
  4. From the time of his birth onwards, then, Nitzevet’s son David was treated by his brothers as an disgraced, social outcast, worth nothing.
  5. Noting the conduct of his brothers, the rest of the community assumed that this youth was a treacherous sinner full of unspeakable guilt
12. 1. Part of David bore the pain of shame -- he was shamed. He was rejected. He was ridiculed, condemned, misunderstood and a part of him bore that.
  2. So that he would not be overwhelmed by it all the time.
  3. Discussion of parts who step in to take the burdens. Especially shame
    1. So we can function in day to day life. 3. 1. Protectors against shame
      1. Great achievements -- in battle, in administration, in setting up liturgical functions. 2. 4.
      2. Psalm 69
  4. Read the psalms out loud
    1. Reason that the breviary, the Liturgy of the Hours is read aloud. Psalms are the majority of the LOH, the prayer of the Church. Express so much of human experience. So rich -- mindset, heartset, bodyset and soulset. 2.
      1. The youth David trusted in the Lord.
      2. 1Save me, O God!

For the waters have come up to my neck.

2 I sink in deep mire,

where there is no foothold;

I have come into deep waters,

and the flood sweeps over me.

Here we have a reliance on God as Protector, Savior.

3 I am weary with my crying;

my throat is parched.

My eyes grow dim

with waiting for my God.

Here we have great suffering -- bodyset

4 More in number than the hairs of my head

are those who hate me without cause;

mighty are those who would destroy me,

those who attack me with lies.

What I did not steal

must I now restore?

5 7 For it is for thy sake that I have borne reproach

that shame has covered my face.

8 I have become a stranger to my brethren,

an alien to my mother’s sons. Doesn't say father's sons.

9 For zeal for thy house has consumed me,

and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me.

Without a father to rely on here in his earthly life, David turned to God.

17 Hide not thy face from thy servant;

for I am in distress, make haste to answer me.

18 Draw near to me, redeem me,

set me free because of my enemies!

20 Insults have broken my heart,

so that I am in despair.

I looked for pity, but there was none;

and for comforters, but I found none.

21 They gave me poison for food,

and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

29 But I am afflicted and in pain;

let thy salvation, O God, set me on high!

30 I will praise the name of God with a song;

I will magnify him with thanksgiving.

33 For the Lord hears the needy,

and does not despise his own that are in bonds.

Psalm 22

To the choirmaster: according to The Hind of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

1My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

6 But I am a worm, and no man;

scorned by men, and despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock at me,

they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;

8 “He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him,

let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

9 Yet thou art he who took me from the womb;

thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts.

10 Upon thee was I cast from my birth,

and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God. -- No mention of father.

Bodyset

14 I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint;

my heart is like wax,

it is melted within my breast;

15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue cleaves to my jaws;

thou dost lay me in the dust of death.

Praise -- Deep faith in Christ

23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!

all you sons of Jacob, glorify him,

and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or abhorred

the affliction of the afflicted;

and he has not hid his face from him,

but has heard, when he cried to him.

David become Saul's lyrist or player of the lyre
1. 1 Samuel 16 14-23
2. 1. Saul tormented by an evil spirit because he had departed from the way of the Lord
3. 1. David is
  2. Skillful in playing the lyre
  3. A man of valor
  4. Prudent in speech
  5. A man of good presence
4. 1. And Saul loved him greatly
5. 1. David became Saul's armor-bearer
6. 1. Refreshed Saul
8. David and Goliath 1 Samuel 17
9. David in Saul's service
10. 1. Still feeding Dad's sheep -- killing lions and bears from his youth.
11. 1. David hear Goliath breathing threats and ridiculing the Israelites.
12. 1. Oldest brother Eliab still hating on him
  2. 28 Now Eli′ab his eldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eli′ab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, “Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption, and the evil of your heart; for you have come down to see the battle.” 29 And David said, “What have I done now? Was it not but a word?”
  3. 1. And David kills Goliath and is praised by the people.
  5. David Victorious
13. Women singing
14. 1. 1 Samuel 18 Saul gets jealous, looks for ways to kill him. Throwing spears at him, trying to get him killed by the Philistines at the head of his army, but David is victorious.
15. 1. 14 And David had success in all his undertakings; for the Lord was with him. 15 And when Saul saw that he had great success, he stood in awe of him. 16 But all Israel and Judah loved David; for he went out and came in before them.
16. God loved David
17. Name means in Hebrew "beloved."
18. 1. Three anointings
  2. As a shepherd boy in Bethlehem—1 Samuel 16:13.
    1. 1. As king over Judah at age 27—2 Samuel 2:4.
    2. 1. As king over all Israel at age 30—2 Samuel 5:3-5.
  3. 1. 1 Samuel 13:14 but now your kingdom will not continue; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart; and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”
  4. 1. David worshipped the Lord
  5. 73 psalms attributed to David
    1. 1. Appointed certain Levites to play the harp, lyre, cymbals and trumpets to worship the LORD at all hours before the ark. 1 Chronicles 16.
    2. 1. He strongly desired to build God a permanent temple. He felt guilty for living in palace of cedar while the Ark was in a tent and relayed Nathan his dream to build a temple — 2 Sam. 7:1-14. David funded the temple, set aside the materials.
    3. 1. David never turned to idols. Most of the 42 kings who ruled Judah and Israel at one point or another turned to idolatry. 1 Kings 11:4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5.
  7. The Downfall
19. This was David's weakness. Often said sins of the flesh
20. 1. Go back to listening
21. 1. Parts seeking to make up for a sense of something missing, something inadequate.
22. 1. Polygamy.
  2. How many wives and concubines did David have?
    1. Seven wives are named in scripture and he had more than that -- more are referred to. 2. 1. At least 10 concubines. 3.

2 Samuel 20:3 reads And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten concubines whom he had left to care for the house, and put them in a house under guard, and provided for them, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as if in widowhood.

These were the concubines that his son Absalom defiled to make a political display of power and dominance over his father in 2 Samuel 16:22. “So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.”

Moses: And he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply for himself silver and gold. Deuteronomy 17:17
Part interpretation.
David and Bathsheba
1. This is in 2 Samuel 11

11 [a]In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Jo′ab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathshe′ba, the daughter of Eli′am, the wife of Uri′ah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am with child.”

Bathsheba is now pregnant, and David starts to try to cover his tracks. He summoned her husband Uriah, who was at the front, in battle with the Ammonites. When Uriah arrived, David tried to send him home, so that when the child was born, Uriah and everyone else would naturally assume that the baby was his. But Uriah was a man of honor. Verse 11 Uri′ah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths; and my lord Jo′ab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife?[b] As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” He is a man of honor -- stark contrast.
Nathan's Prophecy
1. 2 Samuel 12 7-15 Nathan said to David, “You are the man. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul; 8 and I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have smitten Uri′ah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uri′ah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.’” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord,[a] the child that is born to you shall die.” 15 Then Nathan went to his house.
2. Parts of David
3. Deep sense of shame -- fundamental sense of inadequacy that he looked to be met by women -- seeking to have needs met.
4. 1. David never really known -- unknown in his father's house, and then rocket to stardom -- idealized by people. Women singing his praises, 10x better than King Saul.
5. 1. When David was recollected -- he acted in benevolent ways -- he pleased God. God was meeting his needs.
6. 1. Nitzeveh was his mother -- the one who cared for him when others didn't
7. 1. Parts need redemption -- who can complete me.
  2. Drifting away from God, from responsibilities of being with his soldiers.
  3. Wives
  4. Concubines
  5. Bathsheba -- adulterous relationship.
  6. Lust -- shame cycle. Dominated by a part.
    1. Role of our Mother -- David didn't have that. 6.
    3. Now we are set up for assessing David and his silence in the whole situation with Tamar.
    4. David honored as a saint, listed in the Roman Martyrology on December 29. Made it to heaven. Very imperfect. There is redemption.
    5. Call to Action
8. Practice this listening -- as far as you can go. With another person. If that seems too much, read 2 Samuel 11 and 12 -- see what you can read between the lines. Consider Bathsheba's experience. We know little about her. She did mourn her husband.
9. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
10. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd
11. 1. Second Wednesdays November 11 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Zoom meeting -- we discussed trauma, shame and sprituality, all grounded in a Catholic perspective. I will be going into some areas in a deeper way than I can with the podcast. Come and join us. Soulsandhearts.com/rccd
12. 1. Friday, November 28, 4:00 - 5:15 PM EST, Office Hours for RCCD members.
14. Patronness and Patron.

View Details

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 41, released on November 9, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the fifth episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: Rewind: Trauma and Shame in King David's Childhood
5. We cover really difficult topics in this podcast --
  1. we go to the really challenging places that other podcasts are unwilling or unable to go.
  2. Because we have to. Because people are caught in those places and they are hurting, because people are trapped and people are in danger, they are in peril.
  3. And we need to reach out to them.
  4. And you know what? We are those people too.
    1. We have parts of us trapped in bad places, places we don't understand, places we are afraid of, places that we don't want to go by ourselves, all alone
    2. But together, each of us can understand much more of our unconscious.
6. This is the second of a subseries highly experiential episodes -- these episodes are opportunities for experiential learning -- to learn a lot about yourself -- about who you really are, about your history.
  1. St. Paul
    1. Romans 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 2. 1. Romans 7:18b-19 I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want [that] is what I do. 3. 1. St. Paul doesn't understand himself -- St. Paul, a pillar of virtue, author of half the books in the New Testament, St. Paul, who endured outrageous sufferings, amazing self sacrifice -- he's admitting to being dominated by his unconscious. 4. 1. Isn't a question of willpower -- Paul had extraordinary willpower, hard to imagine many saints that can best him in terms of willpower. 5. 1. It’s a question of insight. Of understanding.
      1. Won't be complete
      2. But we can have much more insight and understanding than we do now. 6.
      3. Continuing story of Princess Tamar, Crown Prince Amnon, Prince Absalom, and King David
  2. But diving much deeper into in the inner experience of these characters and others
    1. Why did they do the things that they did
    2. Why did they say the things that they did
    3. What were they thinking, feeling, sensing, believing, desiring, seeking
    4. And what where they missing, what where they forgetting, not noticing?
    5. What made them tick?
    6. 1. Through clinical eyes.
    7. 1. Much more to the story than the brief account in 2 Samuel 13
    8. We will be using other sources -- e.g. archeology to help us understand the time and culture 2. 1. But also psychological insights about shame, trauma, the motives for the rape, 3.
      1. Why -- not just to understand this story and the people this story
      2. But to help you understand your story and the people in your story
    9. Really about you understanding you
      1. I will be discussing the different internal parts or modes of operating for these men and women to help you gain insight into them. To make sense of their actions to see them in 3 dimensions instead of just in the short account given in the Scripture 2. 1. Scripture is the word of God -- we need to unpack it, we need to decode the human language of revelation as the Pontifical Bible Commission put it in
        
        The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church -- 1993 Pontifical Bible Commission, endorsed by St. Pope John Paul II
        
        Psychology and theology continue their mutual dialogue. The modern extension of psychological research to the study of the dynamic structures of the subconscious has given rise to fresh attempts at interpreting ancient texts, including the Bible. 2. 1. Psychological and psychoanalytical studies do bring a certain enrichment to biblical exegesis in that, because of them, the texts of the Bible can be better understood in terms of experience of life and norms of behavior. 3. 1. As is well known, religion is always in a relationship of conflict or debate with the unconscious. 4. 1. It [the unconscious] plays a significant role in the proper orientation of human drives. Psychology and psychoanalysis… lead to a multidimensional understanding of Scripture and help decode the human language of revelation. 5. 2. 1. What I am offering is admittedly speculative -- I am speculating about motives, internal conflicts, internal experience of the real people in the story
        
        I won't get it all right 2. 1. But the point is to show you a way to think about internal experience -- your own and others in a much deeper, more insightful way. It's about learning how to seek inside yourself to understand your own internal experience -- emotions, sensations, beliefs, attitudes, impulses, desires, intentions, conflicts, all the internal stuff. It's about that process, learning to seek. Seek and ye shall find. 3. 1. It's a way to understand the unconscious -- your unconscious, all the conflict inside, all the mysterious elements 3. 1. Utterly faithful to the fullness of truth as revealed by the Catholic Church. 4. 1. We are bringing the best of psychology to the fullness of divine revelation -- all in the service of being able to understand ourselves better so we can understand others better
        
        You can really understanding anybody else very well if you don't understand yourself. You'll misinterpret what you see in the other person.
        
        If you don't tolerate awareness of anger in yourself, and you sense anger in your relationship with another person, you'll assume it's the other person who is angry -- defense of projection 2. 5. 3. 12.
        
        Not just some psychological self-discovery project --
        
        to help you understand the story of others, and the people in their stories
        
        So you can love them -- and love Christ in them.
        
        We are going to get some of this wrong -- we won't be 100% accurate, but that's it's not the point right now. Tamar doesn't need us, at this point in her life, to empathize with her. She's dead and experiencing her eternity. So is King David, Prince Amnon, Prince Absalom, they died nearly 3000 years ago. We are practicing understanding with this story.
        
        Preparation
7. Episodes 37,38, and 39 provide the conceptual foundation for understanding shame and guilt in the natural realm, in the psychological realm.
  1. If you haven't listened to them and you are a conceptual thinker, you like the principles and ideas first, I would encourage you to listen to Episodes 37, 38 and 39 -- lots of conceptual meat in them
  2. For those of you who learn through examples and stories, those three conceptual episodes may make a lot more sense once we work through this case history -- you can go back and listen top episodes 37, 38, 39 after hearing out this story, get a lot more out of those conceptual episodes the second time around.
  3. Listen to Part 1 -- Episode 40.
8. 1. Overview of today
  2. Safety
    1. 1. Review of active, attuned listening
    2. 1. Story of King David
  3. 1. Safety
  4. Hearing about childhood trauma can pull for unresolved trauma in you -- parts carrying trauma can begin to well up and I don't want you to be overwhelmed
    1. 1. Hearing about shame can also pull for unresolved shame.
    2. 1. How do you care for yourself -- attuning to yourself. Listen especially to your body -- bodyset -- this is so important anyway
    3. Are you in your window of tolerance
      1. Window of tolerance the zone of arousal in which you are able to function most effectively
      2. Notice Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode
      3. Notice Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights
      4. Might have some of those reactions. Monitor how much.
        
        paying attention to your body reactions
        
        those body sensations will tell you very important things
      5. Things that you will not be aware of, things that are outside your conscious awareness. Our bodies hold our intense, overwhelming experiences for us, so that we are not flooded with them all the time
      6. Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score
        
        Take it slow. Stop if needed. Listen with someone else if that's helpful. Respect what you are hearing from yourself about safety and danger. 5. 4.
    4. 1. Active, attuned listening -- 3 levels of listening
  5. Listening to a new story, a story of David's childhood.
    1. 1. Listening to yourself -- body reactions, emotions, thoughts, memories, attitudes, beliefs, sayings, images the particulars of your internal experience
    2. To the degree that it feels safe enough, secure enough, let's be open, let's really allow space for parts of us to be heard, and see what comes up if we are accepting that we aren't always aware of everything in us. 2. 1. God knew before the beginning of time everything that you would experience in your life, all the attachment injuries, all the relational wounds, everything that would cause shame. 3. 1. And He has remedies for it all. You can ask yourself, could this be part of your healing. Could He make use of this episode and this exercise to show you something? If so, are you willing to hear it, even if it is difficult 4. 1. Pencils and paper at the ready, can pause the episode to write down more. 5. 1. And remember take what is helpful. If you find yourself going into fight or flight or going down into freeze, stop the episode and take a break, and reground, take a walk, engage in an activity, reconnect with your surroundings. Ok. Here we go. I will read this slowly. 6.
      1. Listening to the characters -- to their internal experiences -- bringing them into three dimensions. 4.
    4. King David
9. Starting with him -- we need to go back five generations.
10. 1. I argue that David had a terrible childhood, childhood full of rejection and alienation, full of being misunderstood by other, false accusations, others reviling him, condemning him, mocking him, shaming him.
11. 1. I think David misunderstood himself in a major way and did not really know who he was.
12. 1. And it helps to understand those terrible childhood experiences to understand possible motives to understand David and why he was so passive and took no action in response to his son Crown Prince Amnon raping his daughter Princess Tamar. If we want to better understand the story of Tamar, let's understand the story of her father David and we are going to roll back to his childhood.
  2. David's terrible childhood experiences and the aftermath doesn't justify his sin of omission in failing to act in response to the rape. I'm not saying that at all. I want to be really clear.
13. 1. Almost nothing in scripture about David's childhood.
14. 1. First we hear of David in Scripture Anointing by Samuel when he was but a youth, 10-15 years old
  2. You've heard the story, but have you really heard the story? And the backstory?
    1. 1. Let's listen to the story, to ourselves, and to the characters
    2. 1. 1 Samuel 16 1-13 Robert Alter's Translation
    3. Robert Alter -- Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, translator of The Hebrew Bible -- Literal Translation, what the words actually said, not dynamic equivalence, what the translator thinks the words mean. Transliteration. 2. 1. Read it here
      1. Why wasn't David there -- traditional explanation -- he was the youngest, he had work to do keeping the sheep. Ah nice. Somebody had to do it. Sheep gotta have a shepherd you know, lots of wolves running around, can't have the sheep just looking after themselves.
    4. Nonsense. Jesse was an important figure, he was prominent, he was wealthy, he was established. He had servants, field hands. He has lots of people. Jesse is the head of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of Torah Law. It wasn't that David was the only one who could do the work.
      1. He was just forgotten. You know, kids, especially those rascally little ones, you never know what they are up to…
    5. I say nonsense. This is a huge deal. Samuel is coming. A huge event -- everyone wants to see this. David would want to see this -- he wouldn't be kept away unless order he was under orders. Kids are curious. 2. 1. Remember that Samuel was fearsome. The Elders were trembling in Samuel's presence, asking if he came peaceably or not. If the great prophet Samuel wants to see your sons, you bring them out. 3. 1. Jesse is also upright and good. Jesse is one of the “eight princes of man” that would come out of Bethlehem in Micha 5:4 according to Sukkah 52b, a book of the Talmud. 4. 1. Jesse is not going to disobey the prophet Samuel. He obeys, not so much out of fear, but out of righteousness. 5. 1. And Jesse did bring all his sons out to Samuel but also deliberately kept David out of sight. Why? How could that be?
      1. Robert Alter --
    6. Originally referred to consecrating Jesse and his sons -- Hebrew bā-nāw 16:1 and 16:5
    7. Samuel "The Lord has not chosen these." One can imagine a pause here. Jesse looks confused. Samuel has come to anoint one of his sons as king, but has rejected all of his sons. How can that be?
    8. Then in 16:11 Samuel changes his language. I think Samuel may have been divinely inspired -- he was a prophet after all -- he no long asks about sons. He asks about lads or young men Hebrew: han-nə-‘ā-rîm no longer asking about sons, but broadening the word out to "lads" or young men.
    9. Jesse still confused -- catches the word shift, thinking of who is left in the household -- David. David is a lad, a young man… Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are these all the boys?” And he said, “The youngest is still left, but behold, he is tending the sheep.”
    10. But he makes no move or offer to get him -- this whole situation is bizarre and unthinkable for Jesse. Samuel sees the confusion and get clear and direct with Jesse to help him get with the program. So Samuel said to Jesse, “Send word and bring him; for we will not take our places at the table until he comes here.”
    11. Only after that much direction does Jesse finally send for David.
      1. David? How can that be? The great prophet Samuel wants me to fetch David to him, to evaluate him to see if David is fit to be king? What is going on?
      2. Samuel has to demand it directly and names the consequences if Jesse doesn't fetch him.
    12. Based on this, I am strongly suspecting that Jesse can't imagine Samuel anointing David as king Why?
    13. Remember Jesse doesn't number David among his sons and present David to Samuel -- even though he's a righteous man and Samuel was clear in his instruction.
    14. because Jesse did not know that David was his son. Whoa. That's why this is mindblowing for Jesse. He has just entered the Twilight Zone.
    15. This takes some explaining. 7.
    16. 1. Let's go back to David's Birth. What do we know about it
  3. David was the Eighth of eight sons
    1. 1. David was the youngest son of Jesse
    2. Jesse was the son of Obed and the grandson of Ruth and of Boaz. He lived in Bethlehem, in Judea, and was of the Tribe of Judah, he was a farmer, breeder and owner of goat
      1. Jesse's wife, David's mother was never specifically names in the Bible.
    3. This is striking and very odd. King David -- of immense importance. And his mother never named in the Bible?
      1. David wrote Psalm 51 after his disastrous adulterous affair with Bathsheba. It’s the fourth penitential psalm. And one verse stands out. Verse 5.
      2. In verse 5, King David wrote: “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
    4. Traditionally, most commentators think David was referencing original sin, the sin that plagues all mankind -- you know, Adam, Eve, the forbidden fruit and all that business.
      1. St. Robert Bellarmine for example, in his Commentary on the Psalms writes
        
        The iniquities and the sins alluded to [in this verse, verse 5] could not have been the sins of David's parents, for his parents were pious and devout people; he alludes to the sins of our first parents, as is evident from the Hebrew. 2. 1. Robert Alter -- David may indeed trace it [the sinfulness] back to the sexual act in through which he was conceived. Hebrew is entirely consistent with David being the product of illicit sex. 3. 1. What if we interpret verse 5 exactly as it reads — “ in sin did my mother conceive me” means exactly what it says — David’s mother conceived him in an act of sin. She committed adultery and David was the byproduct of this infidelity. 6.
        
        Do we have any evidence of infidelity -- Yes we do, from other sources, but we have to go back four generations.
        
        Naomi and Elimelech -- David's great-great grandparents fled with their sons to Moab from Bethlehem in at time of famine.
        
        Remember the Moabites and Israelites were historical enemies -- Moab was one of the Canaanite peoples
        
        Elimelech dies and the two sons marry Moabite women -- Mahlon marries Ruth and Chilion marries Orpah. Then Mahlon and Chilion both die, the famine ends, Naomi wants to return to Bethlehem and her Moabite DIL Ruth wants to go with her. And Ruth does. Orpah returns to her father's house.
        
        Ruth and Boaz -- parents of Obed and grandparents of Jesse. David's Great-grandparents
  4. After the return to Bethlehem, Ruth gleans in the field of Boaz -- Boaz is so impressed with her kindness, which did not correspond with the reputation of Moabites. Boaz and Ruth fall in love.
    1. 1. The Jewish traditional law explicitly forbade Hebrew women from marrying Moabite men because of how the Moabites treated the Israelites when they were wandering in the wilderness, after being freed from their taskmasters in Egypt.
    2. 1. Boaz and the Jewish sages understood this law according to the “Oral Torah”
    3. forbidding intermarriage with Moabite men who converted (who were the ones responsible for the cruel conduct)
    4. while exempting female Moabite converts.
    5. 1. Boaz and Ruth marry
    6. 1. With his marriage to Ruth, Boaz was going to make this oral Torah tradition much more widely known, for there was a lot of confusion
    7. 1. But Boaz died the night after his marriage with Ruth.
    8. 1. Ruth conceived on the night she met with Boaz and subsequently gave birth to their son Obed, the father of Jesse.
    9. 1. The following is from secondary sources citing the Midrash, which is a Jewish biblical exegesis.
    10. Credit to an article entitled the Nitzevet, Mother of David, The bold voice of silence By Chana Weisberg on chabad.org which looks at David's mother through the Midrash
    11. Midrash was initially a method of interpreting the literal meaning of biblical texts. In time it developed into a sophisticated interpretive system that reconciled apparent biblical contradictions, established the scriptural basis of new laws, and enriched biblical content with new meaning.
    12. 1. According the Midrashic opinion, During Ruth’s lifetime, many individuals were doubtful about the legitimacy of her marriage to Boaz -- Boaz wasn't there to make the arguments, and he had rivals.
    13. 1. Many believed that his death proved that God had condemned Boaz’ marriage to Ruth, and had punished him accordingly.
    14. Obed is born from Ruth and Boaz's union
    15. Then Jesse is born from Obed and his wife, who is unnamed in Scripture
    16. Jesse married Nitzevet, an Israelite.
    17. However, after Jesse had seven sons with his wife Nitzevet (after many years of being together, he had gained honor as a righteous man and spiritual leader in the community) private doubts began torture him about whether or not his lineage was forever tainted by his Moabite blood -- was he ethnically pure -- an attack of scrupulosity.
    18. It was at this point that he resolved to cease all marital relations with Nitzevet in order not to dishonor her. He abandoned the marriage in order not to dishonor her and bring shame upon her because she, as a pure Israelite woman, would be sinning to be bound by marriage someone who was of impure Moabite ancestry. You might say he abandoned his marriage to her out of love for her. But he kept her in his household and met her physical needs and cared for her. And his seven sons knew this. They knew about the separation of their parents. Their parents were no longer lawfully married, if they ever were.
    19. And there's the rub. Jesse began to doubt the legitimacy of his seven sons to succeed him. If his lineage was impure, then his children were bastards and impure as well. So after years of continence, Jesse, wanting an unquestionably legitimate heir, devised a scheme to have a baby son, following the model of his forefather Abraham: through his wife Nitzevet's Canaanite maid.
    20. If Jesse has a son from such a union, the son would be recognized by all as a legitimate heir, thus securing Jesse’s family line. Weird but true. When Jesse brought his plan to the maid, the maid, who loved Nitzevet told Nitzevet about the plan, and the two of them planned a midnight switcheroo, just as old Laban had done so many years earlier with Leah and Rachel, fooling Jacob. Nitzevet loved Jesse and wanted more children with him, even though now they were no longer married in the eyes of Jewish law.
    21. In the dark, Nitzevet took the place of her maid and had what would be considered adulterous relations with Jesse. On that night, Nitzevet conceived baby David, and Jesse had no clue until months later when it became obvious that Nitzevet was pregnant. How in Hades did that happen? Nitzevet is not talking.
    22. Being considered unmarried, Jesse and his seven sons believed she had to have committed adultery or fornication with someone. And according to Jewish law, she had committed adultery with Jesse -- they were no longer married, because Jesse ended the marriage with a divorce decree. No one knew but Nitzevet and her maid that Nitzevit had committed adultery with Jesse -- remember they were no longer married. Psalm 51:5 David said “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
    23. The sons wanted to kill their adulterous mother by stoning (as the law called for) and her illegitimate baby with her, but out of love for his former wife, Jesse intervened.
    24. Nitzevet did not reveal to her husband that the child was his, for she did not want to embarrass him by revealing the truth of what had happened.
    25. Instead, she chose to bear the shame of their son.
    26. Unaware of the truth behind his wife’s pregnancy, but having compassion on her, Jesse ordered his sons not to touch her. “Do not kill her! Instead, let the child that will be born be treated as a lowly and despised servant. In this way everyone will realize that his status is questionable and, as an illegitimate child, he will not marry an Israelite.”
    27. From the time of his birth onwards, then, Nitzevet’s son David was treated by his brothers as an disgraced, social outcast, worth nothing.
    28. Noting the conduct of his brothers, the rest of the community assumed that this youth was a treacherous sinner full of unspeakable guilt.
    29. Nitzevet held her silence. Only she and her maid knew the identity of David's father -- that he was indeed the eighth son David.
  5. And that's why David was not initially counted among Jesse's sons. That's why he had the dangerous job, as a lad, of tending the flocks in a distant pasture. That's why he was barred from he celebration -- a Cinderella figure, condemned and despised and abandoned by almost everyone, and only his mother and one maid knew his true identity. That sounds like a type of Christ to me.
  6. Consider -- let's get into these character's heads.
    1. Think of the sense of betrayal that Jesse must have felt. He ended the marriage with Nitzevet to protect her from shame and from dishonor and from spiritual death -- because he loved her he made that sacrifice -- and she goes sneaking around and having sex with some other guy, getting pregnant and bearding him, making him a laughing stock and disgracing herself.
    2. Think of the burden of Nitzevet -- bearing the shame, and her son's shame silently, with only one maid and God to know the truth -- shunned by all but her son and her maid, waiting for justice. Disrespected and shamed by her other seven sons who did not understand, who could not understand.
    3. Think of the shame and surprise of the seven brothers -- David to be made king -- the object of ridicule, the bastard, the scapegoat will take power in Israel. Fear. What's going to happen
    4. Think of the shame of David now. A bastard child. An object of ridicule and hatred,l rejected by everyone except his mother. Growing up without a father, not knowing who his father was. Persecuted ruthlessly by his brothers, who had wanted to kill him, who thought he was only a half-brother -- and now by God's grace and power and justice lifted up to the kingship. Who would have thunk it? But that my friends is classic God for you. That's the kind of thing he likes to do. He is a God of surprises.
  7. Psalm 69
  8. Traditional Jewish interpretation is that it is about David's Childhood.
  9. Listen
    1. to the adolescent David, the bastard, the rejected one -- this may have been written before his anointing or afterward, as he remembered and relived his childhood experiences. See David as a type of Christ. Terrible suffering and shame.
    2. Listen to yourself- what resonates with you. Write it down. Value your reactions.

Save me, O God!

For the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire,

where there is no foothold;

I have come into deep waters,

and the flood sweeps over me.

I am weary with my crying;

my throat is parched.

My eyes grow dim

with waiting for my God.

More in number than the hairs of my head

are those who hate me without cause;

mighty are those who would destroy me,

those who attack me with lies.

What I did not steal

must I now restore?

O God, thou knowest my folly;

the wrongs I have done are not hidden from thee.

Let not those who hope in thee be put to shame through me,

O Lord God of hosts;

let not those who seek thee be brought to dishonor through me,

O God of Israel.

For it is for thy sake that I have borne reproach,

that shame has covered my face.

I have become a stranger to my brethren,

an alien to my mother’s sons.

For zeal for thy house has consumed me,

and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me.

When I humbled[a] my soul with fasting,

it became my reproach.

When I made sackcloth my clothing,

I became a byword to them.

I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,

and the drunkards make songs about me.

But as for me, my prayer is to thee, O Lord.

At an acceptable time, O God,

in the abundance of thy steadfast love answer me.

With thy faithful help rescue me

from sinking in the mire;

let me be delivered from my enemies

and from the deep waters.

Let not the flood sweep over me,

or the deep swallow me up,

or the pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O Lord, for thy steadfast love is good;

according to thy abundant mercy, turn to me.

Hide not thy face from thy servant;

for I am in distress, make haste to answer me.

Draw near to me, redeem me,

set me free because of my enemies!

Thou knowest my reproach,

and my shame and my dishonor;

my foes are all known to thee.

Insults have broken my heart,

so that I am in despair.

I looked for pity, but there was none;

and for comforters, but I found none.

They gave me poison for food,

and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Let their own table before them become a snare;

let their sacrificial feasts[b] be a trap.

Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see;

and make their loins tremble continually.

Pour out thy indignation upon them,

and let thy burning anger overtake them.

May their camp be a desolation,

let no one dwell in their tents.

For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten,

and him[c] whom thou hast wounded, they afflict still more.[d]

Add to them punishment upon punishment;

may they have no acquittal from thee.

Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;

let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

But I am afflicted and in pain;

let thy salvation, O God, set me on high!

I will praise the name of God with a song;

I will magnify him with thanksgiving.

This will please the Lord more than an ox

or a bull with horns and hoofs.

Let the oppressed see it and be glad;

you who seek God, let your hearts revive.

For the Lord hears the needy,

and does not despise his own that are in bonds.

Let heaven and earth praise him,

the seas and everything that moves therein.

For God will save Zion

and rebuild the cities of Judah;

and his servants shall dwell[e] there and possess it;

the children of his servants shall inherit it,

and those who love his name shall dwell in it.

Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action.
Call to Action
1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
2. 1. Discuss what you experienced in engaging the Story of David's childhood with another person who has listened -- if you are in the RCCD community, that is a great place to do in, on the boards if you want, or if you have someone who you've connected with and you both agree -- ask first -- there would be a good place.
3. 1. Get on the waiting list soulsandhearts.com/rccd
4. 1. Second Wednesdays November 11 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Zoom meeting -- we will be discussing the Story of Tamar, trauma and shame, all grounded in a Catholic perspective. I will be going into some areas in a deeper way than I can with the podcast. Come and join us. Soulsandhearts.com/rccd
6. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 40, released on November 2, 2020 -- we made it to forty together.
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. Steep learning curve -- starting to find my groove now, not nearly as rough and awkward as when I started.
4. and it is the fourth episode in our series on shame.
5. and it is titled: Rape, Incest, Shame, and Silence: A True Story Reexamined, Part 1
6. This is the first of three or four highly experiential episodes -- these episodes are opportunities for experiential learning -- to learn a lot about yourself and your history.
7. Pushing the envelope of what is possible for learning from our experiences in an interactive podcast.
Review
1. Series on shame is vitally important.
  1. Most people can't define shame -- if we can't put what shame is into words adequate, we can't think about it clearly, we can't engage our intellect and our will
  2. Deficits even in experts' definitions -- they can be very incomplete -- even Brene Brown's definitions are incomplete
  3. Really critical to understand what shame and guilt are and what they cause, what they do to us. More than just natural life and death -- also spiritual life and death.
2. 1. We have been really exercising our deductive reasoning skills so far in this series on shame.
  2. Deductive reasoning
    1. Start by understanding basic principles and general concepts 2. 1. And reasoning from those, arrives at specific observations and conclusions
      1. Top down approach 2. 1. Starting from the general, and getting down to specifics 3. 1. Clarified definitions of shame and guilt -- really necessary
      2. Three episodes ago, in episode 37, we introduced shame as the silent killer who stalks us from within
        
        Defined shame -- I drew from many sources 2. 1. Conceptual exploration -- understanding a much more complete picture of shame as not only an emotion, but also a bodily response, a signal, a self-judgement and an action. 3. 2. 1. Two episodes ago in episode 38, I invited you to see the signs of shame in yourself and others, to recognize shame in ourselves and in others, becoming better able to detect it, because shame very often, almost always, remains hidden and unrecognized from what it really is. 3. 1. Last episode, Episode 39 we discussed shame and guilt conceptually -- multifaceted aspects of guilt, three aspects -- guilt as a moral state, guilt as a legal state and guilt as an emotion.
        
        Comparing and contrasting shame and guilt -- conceptual distinctions 4. 4. 2.
        
        But a lot of us struggle to learn that way -- with deductive reasoning, staring with generalities and drawing specific conclusions from them. Seems so intellectual, so conceptual, it can be hard for some of us to see it -- 1. we need concrete examples, something we can see, feel, sense, something tangible that we can wrap our minds around. 2. We need a story -- preferably a true story with real people who did real things, said real words, and who had real experiences. That kind of thing helps me understand the overarching principles. 3. Stories and case histories help us with inductive reasoning -- going from the specifics of a real, given situation to general conclusions.
    2. Sometimes called bottom-up reasoning.
    4. Our Plan with the Story
3. Today, we are going to start with a true story, a real story, chock-full of trauma, shame and guilt.
  1. And we will go through this story multiple times to really flesh it out.
  2. We will begin with the facts, the particulars, we will be getting into the details
  3. And from those specifics, we will work our way upward toward clarifying the general principles by studying them in a real-life context
  4. Can think of the principles we've learned about shame and guilt as the first broad strokes in a drawing, the outline of shame -- now we are going to bring in specifics, we will bring in details in color and this drawing will come alive in the story
  5. That is what we are doing today. We are start with a story. And eventually we will review what we have learned about shame and guilt, the conceptual ideas and we are going to put bring those concepts into this real-life situation.
4. 1. Preparation
  2. So the last three episodes provide the conceptual foundation for understanding shame and guilt in the natural realm, in the psychological realm.
    1. If you haven't listened to them and you are a conceptual thinker, you like the principles and ideas first, I would encourage you to listen to Episodes 37, 38 and 39 -- lots of conceptual meat in them
    2. For those of you who learn through examples and stories, those three conceptual episodes may make a lot more sense once we work through this case history -- you can go back and listen top episodes 37, 38, 39 after hearing out this story, get a lot more out of those conceptual episodes the second time around. 2.
  3. 1. What is our plan with this story -- delicate material, no surprises
  4. Brief go over some cautions about this story, how to listen prudently
    1. 1. Next I will go through some training with you as to how to listen to this story to really engage with the story and apply it to your experience -- this is a really important part of your work, so I hope you'll tune into the section that is coming up on how to listen to this story.
    2. 1. Then, I am going to introduce the main figures in the story -- today in this episode, number 40
    3. 1. Next , in this episode, I will give a little bit of the context and the back story behind the story, things I was able to find out and pull together about the story.
    4. 1. And in this episode, I will read the story as it was originally published -- this is in the public domain, it's fairly easy to find -- you can google it.
    5. The published version is quite short -- 4 paragraphs, about 680 words more or less, depending on the version
    6. While there is detail and substance, the story is not told in a particularly psychologically-minded way -- it's more like a news report focused on the facts -- the behaviors of the characters, not as focused on their internal experiences and their relational connections.
    7. 1. Those are all the things I am doing in this episode. But wait there's more, there's a lot more. I just can't fit it all into one episode, there's just so much.
    8. 1. In the next episodes Then I will go over the story again, filling in a lot of other details
    9. We are going to take our time with the telling, and bring out the details
    10. There is much more to this story than meets the eye in just the published account
    11. Together, we will find the richer texture -- bringing in a lot more of the connections/
    12. I will bring in of the family history -- Back in the day, this was a well-known family, so there are other sources beside the one published account.
    13. Cultural context -- these events didn't happen last week, so will bring in some of what the current events were, the attitudes and the cultural factors.
    14. Most important, thought, as a psychologist, I will get into internal experiences of the real people -- window into their hearts and minds.
    15. Making reasonable inferences -- speculative.
    16. 1. In the next episodes We will go through the five dimensions of shame for each of the characters in the story, all of whom have very different experiences of shame
    17. 1. In future episodes We will go through Nathanson's four defensive scripts for avoiding shame: Attack Self, Attack others, Isolate self, Avoid inner experience
    18. 1. This story will also be a bridge to us exploring the spiritual dimensions of shame.
    19. Haven't really gotten into the effects of shame on the spiritual life
    20. The many ways shame sabotages our capacity to receive God's love, to take in His love and care
    21. How shame compromises our capacity to love God back
    22. How shame undermines our relationship with our neighbor
    23. This story will serve as a reference point for understanding shame and the spiritual life in future episodes in our series on shame.
    24. 1. Benefits
    25. Why go through this work? 2. 1. As difficult as it will be, if we can make sense of this story, it will help us make sense of other stories that are similar at least in some ways
      1. It will help us make sense of our own stories of trauma and shame
        
        Sometimes it’s easier to have some distance in looking at trauma and shame 2. 1. It’s easier to understand the experience of sexual abuse its consequences, especially shame in someone else’s life.
        
        From a distance, you can see how the dynamics of violation, trauma, betrayal and shame work more clearly
        
        Remember our own shame is hidden hard to recognize -- easier with other people 3. 1. Understanding the stories of these real people can help us to accept our experiences and come to love ourselves in an ordered way -- so that we can heal. 4. 2. 1. It will help us make sense of others' stories of shame -- help us to accept and love them with greater compassion and attunement. 3. 1. Help ourselves and others along the road to salvation 4. 1. Grace perfects nature. Apart from vice -- In the natural realm I know of nothing disordered that harms the natural foundation for the spiritual life more than shame. 5. 3. 12.
        
        Cautions 1. There is an incestuous rape of a teenage girl in this story.
    26. We won't be graphic about the rape itself 2. 1. there isn't a need to get into the gory details of it 3. 1. we won't be gratuitous or sensational about that. 4. 1. However, I will bring out the emotional, relational and psychological impact of the traumas here, and not just the rape, but the betrayals and the failures to protect, and the injustice of it all and all the aftermath
      1. For the teenage girl, the rape, as horrific as it was, the rape was not the worst part of the trauma. We need to get that, we need to really grip on to that. 2. 1. That can be very difficult to take
        
        As I got into this story, I was up several hours last Thursday night, reeling with the impact -- really wound up. 2. 1. Seeing this story through clinical eyes, not just the published account, but entering into the internal worlds of the characters -- that was tough, agitating. 3. 1. Hard for me right now. I'm a seasoned clinician, I have seen a lot of really bad things go down, a lot of wreckage, truly vicious and horrible things. And this story really hit me hard. 4. 1. Understandable that people would want to avoid this kind of material. It causes us to suffer. 5. 3. 1. We need to be real about these things. People who are traumatized, people who are burdened with shame, who are confused, who are lost -- they need resources. These kinds of awful violations happen. A lot. We need to talk about them 4. 1. There is no neat and tidy way to talk about incest and sexual violence and its aftermath, especially the experience of shame.
        
        We don’t want avoidance of these topics -- even when it masquerades as propriety. 5. 1. And we need to be able to put these thing into a Catholic context, see them from a Catholic viewpoint.
        
        If we don't get into them as Catholics, if we don't address sexual violence, rape, incest, family trauma, those who have suffered these traumas will experience being abandoned again, unheard and unknown.
        
        And they will look for explanations and meaning making from somewhere else, from some other sources that do not have the fullness of revealed Truth.\ 6. 5.
        
        Warnings -- let's be prudent here in listening to the story -- Lucy and James
  5. As important as it is to deal with these topics
    1. 1. Be thoughtful about where you are in your life journey, where you are in your healing -- this story may strike close to home for many of you
    2. 1. You don't have to listen to the story or my analysis of it -- listen only if it is good for you -- even for people who are really psychologically well integrated, this is painful stuff.
    3. Unresolved sexual trauma -- this may be a great time, it may be a terrible time listen to it.
    4. Unresolved incest
    5. Unresolved betrayal
    6. Unresolved abandonment
    7. Sibling issues.
    8. 1. If you listen, this story will move you in various ways -- I already mentioned one night of little sleep for me.
    9. 1. How to listen -- attuned listening 3 levels of listening -- 1) listening to the story -- ordinary sense of the word 2) listening to yourself to your own experience of hearing the story; 3) to the inner experience of the characters
    10. You will listening to the story and my speculative recreation of it 2. 1. But also listening to yourself
      1. Hearing about trauma can pull for unresolved trauma in you -- parts carrying trauma can begin to well up and I don't want you to be overwhelmed 2. 1. Hearing about shame can also pull for unresolved shame. 3. 1. How do you care for yourself -- attuning to yourself. Listen especially to your body -- bodyset -- this is so important anyway
        
        Are you in your window of tolerance
        
        Window of tolerance the zone of arousal in which you are able to function most effectively
        
        Notice Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode
        
        Heart starts racing 3. 1. Breathing quickens 4. 1. Pupils dilate 5. 1. Blood rushes to arms and legs 6. 1. Face can flush red 7. 1. Get ready to defend ourselves or attack or run away 8. 9. Notice Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights
        
        We disengage socially 10. 1. Want to disappear, hide, camouflage ourselves. 11. 1. Shut down. Numb out. Dissociate 12. 1. Lowering of the head 13. 1. Breaking off eye contact 14. 1. Tightening up of muscles, curling up in a ball (spine) -- hunching to protect vital organs. Making one's body smaller, less visible 15. 1. Feeling like ice water in the veins, cold freezing sensation 16. 1. Fluttering in belly. 17. Might have some of those reactions. Monitor how much. 2. 1. paying attention to your body reactions 3. 1. those body sensations will tell you very important things 1. Things that you will not be aware of, things that are outside your conscious awareness. Our bodies hold our intense, overwhelming experiences for us, so that we are not flooded with them all the time 2. Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score 4. 4. 1. Listening to your emotions -- what feelings come up. You can write them down. 5. 1. Listen to your thoughts -- to your attitudes, to your desires, to your memories, what songs come to mind as you listen, all your internal experience -- note what they are 6. 1. You can make notes -- what parts of the story struck you, what elements of the story really caught your attention or generated emotions or body sensations or other inner experiences -- what moved your heart or blew your mind, or rocked your body in some way. 1. Can note down the time markers for those significant elements of the story 2. This requires some focus, so as we get into this material, might be good to have some dedicated time to give it your full attention -- hard to do this while driving, exercising 7. 1. As I mentioned, I will tell the story multiple times, each with increasing intensity. 1. If you are really activated and agitated by the first telling, the published version with just the facts and the behaviors, that's an important sign -- really pay attention to it. 2. Talk through it. Bring it to your therapist. You can have your therapist listen to these episodes as well -- these topics are great for therapists, Catholic or not. 8. 1. Process these story episodes with someone you trust, preferably someone who has listened to them as well. Good time to reach out to a trusted friend or family member and introduce them to the Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem! Podcast. 9. 3. 1. To the degree that you are able, listen to the characters. 1. Real people 2. Building your capacity to understand them and enter into their internal worlds. 1. Even when that is really difficult, when it is painful 2. Stretching ourselves, our comfort zones, but not leaving our window of tolerance. 4. 1. So three levels of listening -- listening to the story, attuned listening to ourselves and if we can, if we are abler, compassionate listening to the persons in the story. Some of them will be much easier to connect with than others. 5. 6.
        
        Introducing the characters
5. King David --
  1. born about 1035 BC in Bethlehem
  2. 1025 BC anointed by Samuel age 10-13
  3. 1020 BC David defeats Goliath -- 15-17 years old
  4. 1000 BC David assumes kingship of Judah, anointed king at Hebron reigns 7 years 6 monhts, marries Maacah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah
  5. 982 Solidifies his empire after 7-10 years of war
  6. 980 BC Adultery with Bathsheba
    1. Arranges for Uriah slain in April
    2. December Nathan confronts David 2 years before our story begins.
    3. "the sword shall never depart from your house"
    4. "I will raise up adversity against you from your own house" (parts of 2 Sam 12:10-11).
6. 1. Prince Amnon
  2. Name means "faithful"
  3. born about 998 BC in Hebron 20 years old.
  4. Oldest son of King David and Ahinoam, David's second wife
  5. crown prince -- power and privileges
  6. Favorite of King David
7. 1. Prince Absalom
  2. Name means "father of peace"
    1. 1. born about 996 BC 18 years old
    2. 1. Third son of King David by Maacah.
    3. 1. Younger half-brother of Amnon
    4. 1. Most handsome man in the kingdom (2 Samuel 14:35)
    5. Now in all Israel there was no one so much to be praised for his beauty as Ab′salom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. 26 And when he cut the hair of his head (for at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight. About 5 lbs of hair. Very virile. 2. 6.
    6. 1. Princess Tamar
  3. Name means palm tree, symbol of justice
    1. 1. born about 997 BC
    2. 1. 19 years old
    3. 1. Very beautiful
    4. 1. Daughter of Maacah
    5. 1. Half brother to Amnon -- crown prince
    6. 1. Full brother to Absalom
    7. 1. Virgin daughter to the king, wears a robe with sleeves -- ketoneth
  4. 1. Jonadab
  5. The LORD is noble
    1. 1. cousin and friend to Amnon as well as his friend.
    2. 1. He is "very crafty" "very subtle." 4.
  6. 1. Amnon's servants -- with him at all times
  7. 1. Tamar's handmaidens -- with her at all times
  8. The Timeline
8. 978 BC Amnon rapes Tamar -- David in his mid to late 50's
9. 1. 976 BC Absalom kills Amnon
10. 1. 976 BC - 974 BC Absalom courts favor with the people of Israel.
11. 1. 969 BC Absalom declares himself king at Hebron and marches toward Jerusalem.
12. Ready for active, attuned listening? Ready to really engage now?
13. Listening to the story
14. Listening to yourself -- body reactions, emotions, thoughts, memories, attitudes, beliefs, sayings, images the particulars of your internal experience
  1. To the degree that it feels safe enough, secure enough, let's be open, let's really allow space for parts of us to be heard, and see what comes up if we are accepting that we aren't always aware of everything in us.
    1. 1. God knew before the beginning of time everything that you would experience in your life, all the attachment injuries, all the relational wounds, everything that would cause shame.
    2. 1. And He has remedies for it all. You can ask yourself, could this be part of your healing. Could He make use of this episode and this exercise to show you something? If so, are you willing to hear it, even if it is difficult
    3. 1. Pencils and paper at the ready, can pause the episode to write down more.
    4. 1. And remember take what is helpful. If you find yourself going into fight or flight or going down into freeze, stop the episode and take a break, and reground, take a walk, engage in an activity, reconnect with your surroundings. Ok. Here we go. I will read this slowly. 7.
  2. Scripture 2 Samuel 13 1-22
15. Now Ab′salom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar; and after a time Amnon, David’s son, loved her. 2 And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 3 But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jon′adab, the son of Shim′e-ah, David’s brother; and Jon′adab was a very crafty man. 4 And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Ab′salom’s sister.” 5 Jon′adab said to him, “Lie down on your bed, and pretend to be ill; and when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it, and eat it from her hand.’” 6 So Amnon lay down, and pretended to be ill; and when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Pray let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.”
16. 1. 7 Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house, and prepare food for him.” 8 So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. And she took dough, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. 9 And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out every one from me.” So every one went out from him. 10 Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. 11 But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12 She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this wanton folly. 13 As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the wanton fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.” 14 But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her, and lay with her.
17. 1. 15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Arise, be gone.” 16 But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other which you did to me.”[b] But he would not listen to her. 17 He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.” 18 Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for thus were the virgin daughters of the king clad of old.[c] So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her. 19 And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent the long robe which she wore; and she laid her hand on her head, and went away, crying aloud as she went.
18. 1. 20 And her brother Ab′salom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar dwelt, a desolate woman, in her brother Ab′salom’s house. 21 When King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. 22 But Ab′salom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Ab′salom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister Tamar.
19. 1. That's the last we hear of Tamar. Let's take a break. Sit with this for a minute. Notice. Jot down a few things that you are experiencing.
21. Future -- much deeper dive. We have all the preliminaries out of the way. In the next episode, I will be walking you through this story with much more background and with my particular perspective on it through the eyes of a seasoned Catholic trauma psychologist, Far more depth, much greater detail.
22. Call to Action
23. Can start by sharing these podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon. Share it on social media -- buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you. Share them, let others know
24. 1. Discuss what you experienced in engaging the Story of Tamar with another person who has listened -- if you are in the RCCD community, that is a great place to do in, on the boards if you want, or if you have someone who you've connected with and you both agree -- ask first -- there would be a good place.
25. 1. If you're listening to this as it just comes out, you have one more day to join the RCCD community learning together
  2. Tough topics -- can work through this critical information yourself or with a friend, or you can join us in the RCCD community and we can do it together.
    1. 1. You can work through these themes on your own, you can think about these things and apply them to your life by yourself -- but you don't have to. It's so much better and it's so much more relational to apply this podcast to your life with other serious Catholicss doing the same kind of work on their natural foundation -- Others likeminded Catholics in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.
    2. 1. Experientially unique -- drawing from all kinds of fields and techniques to bring you transformative experiences that don't require you to be in therapy.
    3. 1. Great discussions -- real life examples. Vulnerability on the discussion threads
    4. 1. If you are in psychotherapy or counseling, so are many of our RCCD members -- membership and all the resources and the community support -- all that is a great supplement to your therapy work.
    5. 1. Not in therapy? Great opportunity to take advantage of resources and the relationships and connections so you don't have to do all this on your own.
    6. 1. Second Wednesdays November 11 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Zoom meeting -- we will be discussing the Story of Tamar, trauma and shame, all grounded in a Catholic perspective. I will be going into some areas in a deeper way than I can with the podcast. Come and join us. Soulsandhearts.com/rccd 8.
  4. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 39, released on October 26, 2020 and it is the third episode in our series on shame.
2. and it is titled: The Real, Radical, and Resounding Differences Between Shame and Guilt.
  1. Two episode ago, in episode 37, we introduced shame as the silent killer who stalks us from within.
  2. Last episode, episode 38, I invited you to see the signs of shame in yourself and others, to recognize shame in ourselves and in others, becoming better able to detect it.
    1. That's important, because shame pulls us to allow our shame to remain hidden, unobserved, unrecognized for what it is.
    2. Shame is tricky, it's slippery, it loves to camouflage itself.
  3. Encourage you to listen to those last two episodes, very rich, RCCD community members discussing listening multiple times, really working on understanding.
3. Now that we have a much better understanding of shame from the last two episodes, we are going to take the next step.
  1. This episode will stand alone, I will give you the context.
    1. 1. Today, in Episode 39. We are going to understand much more deeply the difference between shame and guilt.
    2. Many people use them interchangeably they don't recognize a difference. I feel bad with both of them because something is wrong.
      1. Shame vs. Guilt Distinction. I asked about this in intake evaluations. 2. 1. Five negative emotions. Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shame and Guilt. 3. 1. What's the difference between shame and guilt. 4. 1. Most people could not tell me the difference. Rare that someone could give me a good answer. 5. 6. Do you know the difference between shame and guilt? Do your siblings know the difference? Does your spouse or significant other, do your friends, your kids, your siblings.
        
        As we will see, it a crucial distinction -- because the upshot is that we work with them in very different ways.
        
        focusing today recognizing the difference between shame and guilt
    3. Important psychologically 2. 1. Important spiritually 3. 1. Not just an idle curiosity, the kind of thing philosopher like to debate about 4. 1. But a real world concern
      1. Brene Brown: I believe the differences between shame and guilt are critical in informing everything from the way we parent and engage in relationships, to the way we give feedback at work and school. 5.
        
        Bernard Williams (1993) claims that guilt and shame overlap to a significant degree and we will not understand either unless we take both seriously.
        
        Catholic guilt or Catholic shame. 9.
      2. Review.
        
        Shame has been very difficult to define. Most definitions have been inadequate and very contradictory.
        
        Shame mentioned only once in the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church.
        
        CCC1216 on Baptism: Baptism is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God's Lordship.
        
        Shame not mentioned in Fr. Hardon's modern Catholic dictionary or in the Traditional Catholic Dictionary or in the 1917 Catholic encyclopedia.
        
        Shame also not listed in the American Psychological Association's Dictionary of Psychology. Ooops.
        
        Brene Brown:
        
        I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.
        
        Shame has five dimensions: shame is a primary emotion, shame is a bodily reaction, shame is a signal to us, shame is an internal self-judgement, and shame is an action -- a verb (review).
        
        Shame as primary emotion-- primary emotions are those that we feel first, as a first response to a situation. They are unthinking, instinctive, automatic emotions that we have. Heartset
    4. Can be conscious or unconscious 2. 1. Held by a part of us. -- part of us burdened with shame. Doesn't just come and go in waves 3. 1. Also a self-conscious emotion 4. 1. Also a moral emotion. 5. Shame as a bodily reaction not under bodily control -- bodyset
    5. Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode in response to shame
      1. Heart starts racing 2. 1. Breathing quickens 3. 1. Pupils dilate 4. 1. Blood rushes to arms and legs 5. 1. Face can flush red 6. 1. Get ready to defend ourselves or attack or run away 7. 6. 1. Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights
      2. Shut down. Numb out. Dissociate 2. 1. Head drops 3. 1. Breaking off eye contact 4. 1. Tightening up of muscles, curling up in a ball (spine) -- hunching to protect vital organs. Making one's body smaller, less visible 5. 1. Feeling like ice water in the veins, cold freezing sensation 6. 1. Fluttering in belly. 7. 8. Shame as a judgment -- a negative, critical, global judgment of who I am as a person. -- mindset 1. Part of me holds this disparaging perspective of myself 2. Part of me accuses me of being incompetent, inadequate, worthless, unlovable, bad or even evil, 3. A judgement about who I really am originally picked up from the perspective of an important other who was perceived as critical or rejecting. 9. Shame as a signal. Shame has a function as a signal to us, as a warning. 1. Shame is a signal that there is a lack of attunement or an even more serious threat in one or more of our important relationships. It has important function 2. Shame functions as a "social threat detector" that signals us to modify or avoid behaviors that will cause us to be rejected by those we need. 3. 10. Shame as action -- a verb -- “shaming” is an action that is intended to cause someone else to feel inadequate, worthless, unlovable, a loser, etc. for being or doing something that the shamer feels is wrong or undesirable.
    6. It is a quick way to control another person, especially one in a dependent positions 11. 1. It is a quick way for us to control ourselves. Part of us is forced into the role of shamer to anticipate consequences. 12. Shame has five dimensions: shame is a primary emotion, shame is a bodily reaction, shame is a signal to us, shame is an internal self-judgement, and shame is an action -- a verb (review).
    7. Definition of Guilt
4. Three primary classes of definitions of guilt -- Moral State, Legal State, and Self-conscious, moral emotion.
  1. Objective moral state
    1. Moral state: Fr. Hardon's Catholic Dictionary: A condition of a person who has done moral wrong, who is therefore more or less estranged from the one he offended, and who is liable for punishment before he has been pardoned and has made atonement. 2. 1. Focus on the objective moral state of a person. Guilt is a moral condition 3. 1. Soulset -- condition of our soul 4. Legal state -- court proceedings. Someone is found guilty of a crime. 5. Guilt as a self-conscious and a moral emotion -- but not a primary emotion:
    2. American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology
      1. Guilt is a self-conscious emotion characterized by a painful appraisal of having done (or thought) something that is wrong and often by a readiness to take action designed to undo or mitigate this wrong. It is distinct from shame, in which there is the additional strong fear of one’s deeds being publicly exposed to judgment or ridicule. 2. 6. 1. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
      2. Guilt is, first and foremost, an emotion. You may think of guilt as a good way to get someone to do something for you out of a sense of obligation, but it's more accurate to think of guilt as an internal state. In the overall scheme of emotions, guilt is in the general category of negative feeling states. It’s one of the “sad” emotions, which also include agony, grief, and loneliness 7. 1. Negative Emotional Typology see emotionaltypology.com - You feel guilty when you did something that caused harm to someone, and you hold yourself at least somewhat responsible. Imagine the feeling of running over the neighbor's dog while backing out of your driveway or mistakenly accusing your daughter of stealing cookies when your spouse actually took them.
      3. Feeling guilty is often associated with moral transgression, i.e. committing a crime or a sin.
      4. We need to distinguish feeling guilty (as an emotional experience) from being guilty (as a legal or moral judgment).
        
        Someone may have committed a severe crime and be tried as guilty, without feeling any guilt. 3. 1. The opposite can also be true: you can feel guilty when, rationally speaking, you haven’t done anything wrong and no one holds you responsible. 4. 1. For example, imagine you invite a friend to come over, and on the way to your house she has a serious accident. No one blames you, as you had no way of knowing this would happen, but you can nevertheless experience a great deal of guilt. If this happens, you basically mistake a causality – if you hadn’t invited her, she would still be alright – with a responsibility – that you could somehow have known or done something to prevent it. 5. People who feel guilty often have the impulse to undo or repair their wrongdoing, for example, by refunding the financial damage -- a need to right the wrong done.
        
        If the damage is irreversible (e.g., if something unique has been destroyed) or if someone else’s trust has been irreversibly betrayed, the guilty person may instead try to atone for his wrongdoing, i.e. by punishing himself. 6. If someone feels guilty for doing something wrong that other people don’t know about, they will have an urge to confess what they did. In all three cases, the explanation seems that the guilt-feeling person wants to demonstrate that she is not a bad person, but merely a good person who did something bad. 8. Review of Guilt
    3. Better defined that shame 9. 1. Simpler -- only three dimension rather than five. 10. 1. Moral state -- that has been emphasized by the Church 11. 1. Also a self-conscious moral emotion characterized by a painful appraisal of having done (or thought) something that is wrong and often by a readiness to take action designed to undo or mitigate this wrong. 12.
    5. Storytime with Dr. Peter
5. I want to take us back to January 1976
6. 1. I'm in the second semester of first grade at St. Gabriel School in Neenah Wisconsin
7. 1. It's recess time after lunch -- and it's really, really cold, wind blowing, but in those days, the teachers sent you out for recess to burn off your energy. So we were playing and running and jumping in the bitter cold sunshine. All dressed up in a heavy coat, scarf, hat, mittens, snow pants and boots. Frostbite was a real possibility, and we Wisconsin kids knew how to dress for the cold.
8. 1. So it's time to come in so the kids are stomping the snow off their boots, unwinding scarves and pulling off mittens, putting everything into the little cubbies we have in the hallway.
9. 1. And I took my scarf, hat, mittens, coat and boots off, and my snow pants
10. 1. I am absentminded. As all my winter gear comes off, my mind a million miles away thinking of a book I've been reading while all the chattering and clamoring of first and second graders goes on around me.
11. 1. Then the whole hall goes silent. I undressed too far. To this day, I don't know why, but I took my blue corduroy uniform pants off too. And I am stand there in my mustard yellow uniform shirt, my green cardigan uniform sweater, and my whitey-tighties. My Fruit of the Loom underwear. You know it's Froot of the Loom because it says so in big letters on the elastic waistband.
12. 1. That's right. What you've had bad dreams about, what has woken you up in a cold sweat, what you were relieved to discover was just a dream -- well, in that hallway in January 1976 was my cold, hard reality.
13. 1. At that point, everything seemed to go in very slow motion. I saw the surprised faces of my fellow students, looks of shock and disbelief and a few smirks on the faces of the boys. I looked down and saw my bare skinny white legs and my pants on the ground. The blood rushed to face, and I could hardly move.
14. 1. Jan W., the biggest of the second grade girls she broke the silence by calling out in her big-girl voice -- "Peter took his pants off", accompanied by a pointing finger. Then there was a collective gasp, then confusion and then a gale of laughter from some of the boys and the whispered twittering of "Did you see that? He took his pants off!"
15. 1. I regained control of my body and with amazing rapidity, faster than I ever had before, I leapt into my pants zipped, snapped and belted them, and tried to pretend that nothing had happened. I was filled with intense self-conscious emotions.
17. Shame and Guild are both Moral Emotions and self-conscious emotions
18. Haidt (2003) defines moral emotions as those “that are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent” (p. 276).
  1. Moral emotions provide the motivational force—the power and energy— to do good and to avoid doing bad Kroll and Egan 2004. 2.
  2. 1. June Price Tangney, Jeff Stuewig, and Debra J. Mashek Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior 2011 Annual Review of Psychology
  3. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride are members of a family of “self-conscious emotions” that are evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation.
    1. Can be conscious or unconscious
    2. These emotions punish or reinforce behaviors
    3. shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride function as an emotional moral barometer, providing immediate and salient feedback on our social and moral acceptability.
    4. When we sin, transgress, or err, aversive feelings of shame, guilt, or embarrassment are likely to ensue
    5. When we “do the right thing,” positive feelings of pride and self-approval are likely to result.
    6. The potential for feeling these emotions guides behavior -- can check us from doing wrong. 2.
  4. 1. Shame vs. guilt from Tangney, Steuwig and Mashek 2011 Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior Annual Review of Psychology
  5. Three ways to distinguish shame and guilt (List them) Type of eliciting event, public vs. private nature of the transgression, failure of self vs. failure of behavior. Mythbusting.
    1. Type of eliciting event -- lying, cheating, stealing, failing to help another, disobeying parents -- some acts lead to feelings of shame, others to feeling of guilt
      1. -- no prototypical shame-inducing vs. guilt-inducing behaviors. 2. 3. Public vs. private nature of transgression
      2. Shame arises in public -- due to the exposure and disapproval of others because of some shortcoming or transgression 4. 1. Guilt happens in private -- an experience arising from the disapproval own's own conscience 5. 1. Not much research basis for this distinction
        
        systematic analysis of the social context of personal shame- and guilt-eliciting events described by several hundred children and adults (Tangney et al. 1994) indicated that shame and guilt are equally likely to be experienced in the presence of others. 2. 1. Solitary shame experiences were about as common as solitary guilt experiences. 3. 1. Even more to the point, the frequency with which others were aware of the respondents’ behavior did not vary as a function of shame and guilt
        
        contradicts the public/private distinction. 2. 4. 1. People focus on other's evaluations because they are already feeling ashamed -- looking for confirmation. They are not feeling shame because of others' evaluations, which they can easily misinterpret. 5. 6. 7. Conceptualizing the fault as a failure of self vs. a failure of behavior
      3. First proposed in psychological literature by Helen Block Lewis in 1971, updated and revised by Tracy & Robbins (2004) appraisal-based model of self-conscious emotions 8. 1. Lewis: Shame involves negative evaluation of global self. Guilt involves a negative evaluation of a specific behavior
        
        Listen to the difference:
        
        I did that horrible thing 2. 1. I did that horrible thing 2. 9. 1. This third distinction is backed by the research. experimental and correlational methods showing that internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions for failure were positively related to shame, whereas internal, unstable, controllable attributions for failure were positively related to guilt. 10. 1. What's the more painful emotion? Shame. Shame is the more painful emotion -- because it is about who I am rather than what I did. It's about all of me. 11. 12. Shame leads to hiding, guilt leads to amending. 1. Shame -- hide, escape, deny -- shame inducing experience 2. Guilt -- more likely to lead to reparative behavior 13. Focus of distress
      4. Guilt -- focus on the other person -- empathy, reaching out, wanting to make it ok.
        
        Research on emotional dispositions demonstrates that guilt-proneness consistently correlates with measures of perspective-taking and empathic concern. 14. 1. Shame -- self-absorption -- focus on me, reduced capacity for empathetic connections with others.
        
        Research shame-proneness is (depending on assessment method) negatively or negligibly correlated with other-oriented empathy and positively linked with the tendency to focus egocentrically on one’s own distress.
        
        Emphasis on the bad self derails the empathetic process.
        
        I'm in my own world of hurt, indequacy, and if I’m worthless and bad, what can I offer anyone else?
        
        Reactions to Anger
      5. Shame -- Across individuals of all ages, proneness to shame is positively correlated with anger, hostility, and the propensity to blame factors beyond the self for one’s misfortunes
        
        Shame as a disposition:
        
        Helen Block Lewis saw this in case studies in 1971 -- Humiliated Fury. 2. 1. In fact, compared with those who are not shame-prone, shame-prone individuals are more likely to engage in externalization of blame, experience intense anger, and express that anger in destructive ways, including direct physical, verbal, and symbolic aggression, indirect aggression (e.g., harming something important to the target, talking behind the target’s back), all manner of displaced aggression, self-directed aggression, and anger held in (a ruminative unexpressed anger).
        
        Breaking points. 3. 1. Finally, shame-prone individuals report awareness that their anger typically results in negative long-term consequences for both themselves and for their relationships with others. 4. 1. Consistent with these findings, Harper et al. (2005) recently evaluated the link between shame-proneness and perpetration of psychological abuse in the dating relationships by heterosexual college men. Shame proneness was significantly correlated with perpetration of psychological abuse, and men’s anger mediated this relationship. 2. 1. Shaming -- situational factors
        
        For example, in a study of anger episodes among romantically involved couples, shamed partners were significantly more angry, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior, and less likely to elicit conciliatory behavior from their perpetrating significant other (Tangney 1995b). 2. 1. Empirical evidence for the shame-rage spiral described by Lewis (1971) and Scheff (1987), with (a) partner shame leading to feelings of rage, (b) and destructive retaliation, (c) which then sets into motion anger and resentment in the perpetrator, (d ) as well as expressions of blame and retaliation in kind, (e) which is then likely to further shame the initially shamed partner, and so forth—without any constructive resolution in sight. 3. 17. 1. Guilt: 1. Stuewig et al. (2006) examined mediators of the link between moral emotions and aggression in four samples.
        
        They theorized that negative feelings associated with shame lead to externalization of blame, which in turn leads shame-prone people to react aggressively.
        
        Guilt, on the other hand, should facilitate empathic processes, thus reducing outward directed aggression.
        
        As anticipated, we found that across all samples, externalization of blame mediated the relationship between shame-proneness and both verbal and physical aggression.
        
        Guilt-proneness, on the other hand, continued to show a direct inverse relationship to aggression in three of the four samples.
        
        In addition, the link between guilt and low aggression was partially mediated through other-oriented empathy and a propensity to take responsibility. 18. 19. Psychological Symptoms
      6. Tangney, Steuwig and Mashek 2011 Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior Are there intrapersonal or intrapsychic costs for those individuals who are prone to experience shame vs guilt?
        
        Shame
        
        Research over the past two decades consistently indicates that proneness to shame is related to a wide variety of psychological symptoms. These run the gamut from low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety to eating disorder symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation 2. 1. Robust findings The negative psychological implications of shame are evident across measurement methods, diverse age groups, and populations. Both the clinical literature and empirical research agree that people who frequently experience feelings of shame about the self are correspondingly more vulnerable to a range of psychological problems. 3. What about guilt
        
        Although the traditional view is that guilt plays a significant role in psychological symptoms, the empirical findings have been more equivocal. Clinical theory and case studies make frequent reference to a maladaptive guilt characterized by chronic self-blame and obsessive rumination over one’s transgressions 4. 1. Recently, however, theorists and researchers have emphasized the adaptive functions of guilt, particularly for interpersonal behavior 20. 21. Illegal, risk, and otherwise ill-advised behaviors
      7. Because shame and guilt are painful emotions, it is often assumed that they motivate individuals to avoid doing wrong. From this perspective, anticipated shame and guilt should decrease the likelihood of transgression and impropriety. 22. 1. Guilt
        
        Tibbetts (2003) found that college students’ guilt-proneness was inversely related to self-reported criminal activity. 2. 1. Among adolescents, proneness to shame-free guilt has been negatively correlated with delinquency (Merisca & Bybee 1994, Stuewig & McCloskey 2005; although Ferguson et al.1999 found a negative relationship between guilt-proneness and externalizing symptoms among boys, the opposite was true for girls). 3. 1. Guilt-prone college students, too, are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol (Dearing et al. 2005). 4. 1. Even among adults already at high risk, guilt-proneness appears to serve a protective function. In a longitudinal study of jail inmates, guilt-proneness assessed shortly after incarceration negatively predicted recidivism and substance abuse during the first year post-release (Tangney et al. 2006). 23. 1. Shame
        
        In studies of children, adolescents, college students, and jail inmates, shame does not appear to serve the same inhibitory functions as guilt (Dearing et al. 2005, Stuewig & McCloskey 2005, Tangney et al. 1996b). 2. 1. To the contrary, research suggests that shame may even make things worse.
        
        Ferguson et al. (1999) found that shame-proneness was positively correlated with externalizing symptoms on the Child Behavior Checklist. 2. 1. In a sample of college students, Tibbetts (1997) found a positive relationship between shame-proneness and intentions toward illegal behavior. 3. 1. Shame-proneness assessed in the fifth grade predicted later risky driving behavior, earlier initiation of drug and alcohol use, and a lower likelihood of practicing safe sex (Tangney & Dearing 2002). 4. 1. Similarly, proneness to problematic feelings of shame has been positively linked to substance use and abuse in adulthood (Dearing et al. 2005, Meehan et al. 1996, O’Connor et al. 1994, Tangney et al. 2006). 3. 24. 2.
        
        Brene Brown sums it up: Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.” How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake?” How many of you would be willing to say that? Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.
        
        Adaptiveness: Tagney, Stuewig, and Mashek 2011 On balance, guilt appears to be the more adaptive emotion, benefiting individuals and their relationships in a variety of ways, but there is growing evidence that shame is a moral emotion that can easily go awry.
        
        Review --
        
        Return to my story -- Both shame and guilt.
        
        My background -- more prone to guilt than shame.
        
        I had a deep sense of being important to Mom, cherished and valued
        
        I also had a deep sense of right and wrong. Mom and Dad disciplined me, and Mom would always say that it hurt her more than it hurt me (and it looked like that too.)
        
        I had a deep sense of propriety -- proper behavior. I was taught that you always dressed in my bedroom and that my sister shouldn't see me undressed.
        
        So there was shame -- due to the public nature of my unintentional disrobing -- but not so much for feeling inadequate or worthless or bad. I had made a mistake, a grievous one in my opinion, but not one that destroyed my sense of self worth.
        
        I felt guilty for exposing the girls of the class to my pants-less state. Mortified by that.
        
        But the kids reacted as though it was just a mistake. A curious, remarkable mistake, but just a mistake. I wasn't an idiot, or a flasher or anything like that. Just an absentminded kid who took the undressing after recess one step too far. That was it.
        
        Future directions:
        
        Now we have the basic learning for understanding shame and guilt at the natural level .
        
        We'll also get into the spiritual impact of shame.
        
        We'll get into the so-called "Catholic Guilt" and see if it's really guilt or could it possibly be shame? Or something else?
        
        We will be moving into more of the space where the psychological and the spiritual overlap. Soulset
        
        For example, your parts who feels unloved and unlovable, who carry your shame -- how do you think those parts understand God? Would those shame-burdened parts see God as loving and caring? Or in some other way?
        
        How does your internal critic, you know that voice that has running commentary about your faults and failings, that exacerbating your shame -- how does that part of you see God?
        
        What is the relationship between shame and pride? How do they connect?
        
        How can we learn from examples of shame and guilt in the Scripture?
        
        How does Satan use your shame against you? Remember, grace perfects nature, so it makes sense for Satan to attack at the weak points in your natural foundation.
        
        All here at the Coronavirus crisis Carpe Diem podcast, where harmonize the best of psychology with the Truths of our Catholic Faith.
        
        Call to Action
19. Life Saving Information
  1. Shame is the "silent killer who stalks you from within"
    1. 1. Shame is hidden, camouflaged, deceptive, tricky
    2. 1. God wants to involved you -- YOU -- in his plan of salvation for others.
    3. Who might you reach out to 4.
  2. 1. Can start by sharing these podcast -- get them out there, with your personal testimonial -- how they have helped you. Share them, let others know
  3. 1. Listening about shame
  4. Use the word shame -- not a perfect word but good enough
    1. 1. Give the definition, the five dimensions
  5. 1. Talking about shame
  6. Telling usually doesn't work.
    1. Person struggling with deep shame -- you tell them it's not their fault, they are not bad -- harp music I'm not bad? Heavens open up -- I'm free -- you just freed me from my shame. Heavenly voices
    2. If you really knew me, you would feel exactly the same way about me. If you saw who I really was through my eyes, you would know how despicable I am
      1. I'm the expert on me, by the way. 3. 2.
      2. Being with others -- but you really have to be dealing with your own shame too.
      4. RCCD community learning together
20. Tough topics -- can work through this critical information yourself, or you can join us and we can do it together.
  1. Cutting edge
  2. Conceptually difficult -- you won't get this level of discussion on shame and guilt in most graduate programs in clinical psychology and in almost none will you get the combination of the best of psychology and an authentic Catholic worldview, based on research, the best conceptualizations and also clinical experience. If any of you can show \me a curriculum that goes into this depth on guilt and shame from a Catholic perspective, please send it to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
  3. Working through guilt and especially shame is critical to our well being on both the natural and spiritual levels -- we know that through clinical experience, and through theoretical conceptualization backed by solid empirical research. There are serious consequences to unaddressed shame.
  4. You can work through these themes on your own, you can think about these things and apply them to your life by yourself -- but you don't have to. It's so much better and it's so much more relational to apply this podcast to your life with other serious Catholicss doing the same kind of work on their natural foundation -- Others likeminded Catholics in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.
21. 1. Great discussions -- real life examples. Vulnerability on the discussion threads
22. 1. If you are in psychotherapy or counseling, so are many of our RCCD members -- membership and all the resources and the community support -- all that is a great supplement to your therapy work.
23. 1. Not in therapy? Great opportunity to take advantage of resources and the relationships and connections so you don't have to do all this on your own.
24. 1. First office hours last Wednesday, October 21 -- great Q&A on shame, very thought provoking, recorded.
25. 1. Bonus Podcast from last episode -- shame in marriages
26. 1. Friendships forming.
28. Patronness and Patron.

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 38, released on October 19, 2020
2. and it is titled: Seeing the signs of shame in yourself and others.
3. We are going to understand much more deeply the nature of shame, where shame comes from and how it manifests itself inside of us, and how it is expressed.
4. We are focusing today on learning more about shame and recognizing it -- recognizing it in ourselves and in others, becoming better able to detect it.
5. Remember parts of the dynamics of shame include shame remaining hidden, unobserved, unrecognized for what it is. Shame is tricky, it's slippery, it loves to camouflage itself.
6. We are in a series of episodes about shame. In future episodes we will get to how shame affects our spiritual lives and we will also focus on how to heal from shame, how to break out of the vicious shame cycles in which we find ourselves spinning.
So Let's start by Circling back -- review of shame from the last session and then adding some real depth and nuance as we review and expand upon what we covered in the last episode, Episode 37.
Shame is:
1. The primary problem we have in the natural realm
2. That gives birth to so many secondary problems -- we tend to focus on the secondary problems, the problems that are further downstream -- so we are not getting to the root.
3. Drawing heavily from Kathy Steele, Suzette Boon, and Otto van Der Hart -- trauma clinicians and researchers who have worked with real clinical population, real people, not just academicians.
4. Also drawing from Richard Schwartz and Regina Goulding -- Mosaic Mind.
  1. Be open to really learning about this
    1. this can be challenging 2. 1. take what suits you -- can slow way down. If this is really activating for you, consider psychotherapy -- Souls and Hearts course on how to choose a therapist. 3. If you can resolve your dysfunctional shame -- have a deep sense of being lovable and loved, by God, others and yourself, you've solved most of your psychological issues on the natural level. 4. Shame has five dimensions: shame is a primary emotion, shame is a bodily reaction, shame is a signal to us, shame is an internal self-judgement, and shame is an action -- a verb (review). 5. Adding today behavioral expression of shame
    2. These behavioral expressions of shame are not shame itself, but they are intimately linked with shame and some of the best indicators of unrecognized shame. 6.
      1. Shame is more than most people assume. We tend to have very limited, very primitive understandings of shame -- very unidimensional.
      2. Let's review the five dimensions of shame.
      3. Shame is a primary emotion -- heartset
  2. Primary emotions are those that we feel first, as a first response to a situation. They are unthinking, instinctive, emotions that rise up spontaneously
    1. 1. More nuanced. Just because you're not feeling shame in the moment does not mean that it's not there.
    2. Consider how a wave of anger feels. You feel normal, fine, then something happens and there is this intense anger or even rage, and then it passes, the anger goes away again. That how we typically think of these emotional experience. That how we make sense of them. But that's not how it is. That is a dangerous illusion. A falsehood. A pipe dream. The anger didn't just come and go, just like that. And you know this at some level, because sometimes you ask yourself -- why am I so angry about that little thing, why did something so minor just set me off? The emotional reaction is disproportionate to the trivial event.
    3. A wave of shame -- feels like it wasn't there, and then something happened, like a negative review from your boss it was there in all its intensity and you're just trying to hold it together through the rest of your performance review, and then the shame passes and you're not feeling it anymore. If I don't feel it, it's not there. Seems reasonable, right?
    4. But what if, what if that wasn't what really happened. What if the same amount of shame was within you the whole time -- it was just latent, outside of awareness. And rather than the shame coming and then going, what if it was your awareness of your shame and anger that changed. What if you at first where disconnected from your shame out of touch with it. Then your defenses were overrun and you were overwhelmed with shame, and then your defenses were able to come back online and you no longer felt the shame. What if the intense shame was there the whole time? That's a whole different model Let's say that you were disconnected from unresolved shame.
    5. A high level of shame or anger can endure within us and be intensely felt only on rare occasions when our defenses open up, when they dilate and we can see and feel the shame or anger. In other words, all that anger or shame generally resides in the unconscious.
    6. Unconscious
      1. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling --
        
        Schelling suggests that there are two principles in us: “an unconscious, dark principle and a conscious principle”
        
        later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1797, who read the 18th century German idealists. 6. 1. Freud. Unconscious Mind is like an iceberg 10% above the water -- visible -- that is consciousness -- what we are aware of in the moment. The vast majority of the iceberg is below the water, outside awareness -- what you sense is what you get. 7. 8. In North America, we largely don't act as if we believe in the unconscious. 9. I think all of us, because of original sin, the sins of others, our own personal sins, the fallen world we live in and our fallen natures -- we have deep reservoirs of shame. We know we need redemption. We can sense it at a primal level, and we have ways of distracting ourselves from that reality, from defending ourselves from that reality. 10. Richard Schwartz on parts -- we are not just single unitary personalities Understanding Parts
      2. Separate mental systems each with their own
        
        Emotions 2. 1. Expressive style 3. 1. Abilities 4. 1. Roles in the system of the person 5. 1. God images 11. 1. Can think of them as modes of operating, subpersonalities, ego states, inner children 2. Parts get forced into extreme roles due to attachment injuries, trauma to protect us from being overwhelmed
        
        e.g. with rage, despair, shame. 3. 4. Parts also can be trapped back in time. e.g. flashbacks -- where we are back in the shameful experience
        
        frontal cortex goes offline 5. 1. Leaving parietal, cortex basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus 6. 7. Exiled Parts are the modern lepers, tax collectors and prostitutes -- the undesirables, because of the burdens they carry -- e.g. shame, anger, depression, anxiety, etc. 8. Protector parts work hard to protect you from your exiled parts -- e.g. from being overwhelmed. 12. So certain parts of us -- parts of us that are exiled -- carry the shame. And our internal systems get organized to hide our shame in the unconscious, to distance ourselves from shame so that we won't be overwhelmed by it and so we can continue to function If we didn't have a way to manage the shame it would continually overwhelm us. Or the rage or despair or the fear.
        
        Shame as a judgment -- a judgment of who I am. a critical perspective of myself, a very negative attitude toward myself. -- mindset
  3. A judgement about who I really am from the perspective of a critical, rejecting other.
    1. I look at myself through the eyes of critical, angry or disappointed other, often my mom or dad, daycare worker, teacher or other caregiver.
    2. 1. But we have internalized it. We've take it inside. Now a part of us plays the role of the external critical person
    3. 1. This parts of me repeat messages I've picked up from important others:
    4. I am a burden. 2. 1. I am too needy, too dependent, I bring other people down and make them suffer 3. 1. I don't deserve attention and care. 4. 1. Alcohol, TV and the newspaper are more important than me. 5.
      1. May no longer the case, no longer accurate. Anachronistic, no longer applies. No longer in second grade.
      2. But these judgments are held by the judging parts of me that are trying to protect me from my own shame, from the shame-bearing parts carry the emotional aspects of shame -- a shame-filled heartset, but also the cognitive aspects of shame -- a shame-filled mindset.
      3. And because the emotional and cognitive dimension of shame are so threatening, the parts are banished, they are driven out of awareness into exile in the unconscious. But they are not gone. They are just silenced for the moment. 16.
    5. Shame is a bodily reaction -- automatic, involuntary bodily response: Bodyset
5. Charles Darwin
  1. 1872 published a book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals"
  2. Darwin described shame the following bodily reactions:
    1. blushing (vasodilation in face), confusion of mind, downward cast eyes, slack posture, and lowered head -- Crying -- which can exacerbate shame 3. When exiled parts that are burden with shame break through into conscious awareness, they can overwhelm us with their distress that then takes over our bodies. This is like in the Pixar movie Inside Out when the very thin purple Fear character takes over the control panel and dominates everything in the main character Riley.
    2. Window of tolerance the zone of arousal in which a person is able to function most effectively -- when we are feeling intense shame, we get yanked out this window of tolerance. 4. Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode in response to shame
    3. Heart starts racing 5. 1. Breathing quickens 6. 1. Pupils dilate 7. 1. Blood rushes to arms and legs 8. 1. Face can flush red 9. 1. Get ready to defend ourselves or attack or run away 10. 11. Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights
    4. We disengage socially 12. 1. Want to disappear, hide, camouflage ourselves. 13. 1. Shut down. Numb out. Dissociate 14. 1. Lowering of the head 15. 1. Breaking off eye contact 16. 1. Tightening up of muscles, curling up in a ball (spine) -- hunching to protect vital organs. Making one's body smaller, less visible 17. 1. Feeling like ice water in the veins, cold freezing sensation 18. 1. Fluttering in belly. 19. These bodily reactions are not under voluntary control. Ever tried not to blush? Didn't it just make it worse when you couldn't stop it? Even though you wanted to play it cool. you just kept getting redder and redder, which led to a more intense shame response.
    6. Shame is a signal. Functions of Shame This often gets missed. The upside of shame. Why it exists.
      1. Shame is a signal that there is a lack of attunement or an even more serious threat in one or more of our important relationships. It has important function
  3. Shame functions as a "social threat detector" that signals us to modify or avoid behaviors that will cause us to be rejected by those we need.
    1. 1. Then the shame response to the shame signal occurs. Shame signal leads to the shame response -- the shame response inhibits emotions, thoughts, sensations, beliefs or behaviors that are perceived as unacceptable to powerful others who we need.
    2. 1. So Shame is a survival mechanism. It helps save us from potential terrible consequences. Inhibition -- family in church -- lots of little kids, all perfectly dressed, all perfectly behaved, parents beaming in response to getting complements about their little angels, so well behaved. Parents may have put the fear of God into the children to keep them still. Inhibitory function of shame -- not wanting to displease God, not wanting to displease the parents who may have parts that are very overinvested in the public impressions their family makes on the parish community. 4.
  4. Shame as action -- a verb -- “shaming” is an action that is intended to cause someone else to feel inadequate, worthless, unlovable, a loser, etc. for being or doing something that the shamer feels is wrong or undesirable.
6. It is a quick way to control another person, especially one in a dependent positions
7. 1. It is a quick way for us to control ourselves. Part of us is forced into the role of shamer to anticipate consequences. E.g. rambunctious boy on Saturday morning -- hung over mother cussing him out from the top of the stairs to shut up and let her sleep.
  2. If a part of that body takes on the shaming function and whenever he starts getting boisterous, tells him to shut up and be good and stop being such a noisy pain in the rear end, he can save himself the verbal backlash and maybe even worse from his alcoholic mom. It's a way of managing an extremely difficult situation.
9. Qualities of shame
10. Shame is hidden. Hidden from others, hidden from God, often hidden from the therapist, hidden from self. Hidden in the unconcious, carried by our exiled parts, which are like lepers. Not allowed into the community for fear of a contagion of shame, shame taking over.
11. 1. Disappear, hide, camouflage
12. 1. Shame inhibits positive emotions
13. How shame is expressed -- going into Behavioral Expressions of Shame
14. What to look for in yourself and others -- clues that shame is lurking, hidden, even if you don't feel it. We may need to infer it.
15. 1. Therapists particularly need to know this information. So much shame is missed by therapists -- lots of reasons for that.
16. 1. Shame is hard to measure -- the more important a phenomenon is, the harder it is to quantify, to measure.
17. 1. 2017 Journal of Child and Family Studies
  2. A New Measure of the Expression of Shame: The Shame Code
    1. 1. Canadian researchers Kalee De France, Dianna Lanteigne, Jenny Glozman & Tom Hollenstein 3.
  3. 1. shame has predominantly been measured by self-report questionnaires, which typically capture trait shame or shame proneness
  4. unable to capture the experience of shame as it occurs and is observed by others
    1. 1. Shame does not have a canonical facial expression, however, some facial and behavioral expressions that may be indicative of the experience of shame have been identified.
    2. shrunken or compressed posture that includes body tension, dropped shoulders, or lowered head in a manner akin to a “hang-dog” look
      1. These submissive displays can be seen as social signals of appeasement, and attempts to reduce social conflict or scrutiny
      2. they tend to evoke cooperative behavior from others, and are associated with less punitive responses
    3. shame can be identified by tension in the facial muscles
      1. turning down the corners of their mouth -- frowning 3. 1. tucking their lower lip between their teeth 4. 1. pursed lips 5. smiling while experiencing shame may not appear genuine (i.e., non-Duchenne smile) indicating a false expression of positivity
      2. the key difference between this “real” happy smile and a “fake” happy smile lies in the orbicularis oculi – muscles that wrap around the eyes. All smiles require a contraction of the zygomatic major muscles, the muscles that lift the corners of the mouth. A real smile, a Duchenne smile adds the eyes. The skin around the eyes wrinkles into crows' feet by the tightening of the orbicularis oculi muscles.
      3. embarrassed smile, a smile accompanied by gaze aversion, or a nervous smile
      4. another appeasement behavior, where the individual experiencing shame attempts to placate the observer and avoid judgment or punitive behavior. 6. gaze aversion or hiding one’s face -- attempt to hide.
      5. not seeking to contest resources or escalate conflict 7. Speech Patterns
      6. verbal uncertainty -- hemming, hawing 8. 1. such as stammering 9. 1. long pauses 10. 1. Going silent 11. tendency to withdraw, such as disengaging from the emotional trigger 12. Freezing halting behavior or remaining rigidly still 13. distracting oneself through fidgeting “manipulations of one’s own body parts or objects, such actions being peripheral or non-central to ongoing events or tasks” (Mehravian & Friedman, 2006, p. 406) 3.
      8. Strategies for coping with shame Nathanson (1992, 1997) Four defensive scripts for avoiding shame: Attack Self, Attack others, Isolate self, Avoid inner experience
18. Attack self -- part of you accepts the mindset of shame, the beliefs -- I am inadequate, I am a loser, stupid, incompetent, fat -- it's safer to turn the anger and disgust inward.
  1. When you mix anger and disgust you get contempt, which is the most corrosive emotion in relationship, including our relationship with ourselves. If you want to ruin a relationship, there is nothing better than a contemptuous attitude
    1. 1. In attacking the self, the shame may not be felt at all -- rather it's just assumed that I am worthless, no good, evil -- not even possible to say "I feel ashamed" -- there is just the attack on the shame-bearing part. 3.
  2. 1. Attacking others first -- this one is often counterintuitive. Stay with me here.
  3. This is when one of your protector parts, in order to shield you from your own shame, attacks another person. You are not the problem -- the other person is. Anger and disgust are directed away from the self toward blaming and shaming another person in order to salvage your own sense of self-worth. You externalize the shame, you project it on someone else.
    1. 1. Wants you to not know about the underlying shame -- and doesn't want anyone else to see your shame either.
    2. 1. If the other person is feeling the shame, is getting overwhelmed by their own shame, then the shame is there and not in you. The other person is inferior and you are superior -- the other person has the shame problem not you. And these shaming parts are driven by shame that they are totally unaware of.
    3. 1. Lot of marital conflict stems from shame and shaming. Lots of it. The primary problem.
    4. 1. Number one issue in aggressive, pushing people who cut others down -- bullies, intimidators, tough guys, gaslighters, manipulators -- it's a part of a person who is desperately trying to ward off shame. . That doesn't make it all right. That doesn't make it not sinful.
  4. 1. Isolate from others part of you accepts the message of shame and believes it. And feels terrible and hides. No desire to be exposed, to be vulnerable to more ridicule, more shaming. Just hiding. Like Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, after eating the forbidden fruit. Lots of anxiety and fear. See how anxiety and fear are secondary emotions to the shame? They flow from the shame. So many problematic emotions have shame at their root, at their core, but shame is so tricky, the other emotions seem to be the problem.
  5. Avoid social situation
  6. Limit relational interactions
  7. Withdraw
  8. Look at others with dread.
  9. 1. Avoid inner experiences
  10. Denial
    1. 1. Dissociation -- disconnection
    2. 1. Numbing
    3. 1. Depersonalization or derealization
    4. 1. Attempts to distract self -- TV, movies, alcohol, sex, binge eating, obsessions, hyperactivity, dissociation, manic episodes, incessant humor or joking, changing the subject when the conversation pulls for looking inward, focusing on the other person, excessive caregiving with no self-care, compulsive do-gooding
    5. 1. also spiritual bypassing -- a flight into spiritual practices to avoid dealing with your inner experiences -- lots of litanies and prayer cards and holy hours and lectio divina, but with a driven quality to it, a rigidity, a nearly exclusive outward focus.
    6. 1. Little or no awareness of shame, or shameful actions, reactions, faults or negative characteristics. 8.
  12. We will get to working with shame -- much more constructively, how do we do that? It's coming. I will be giving you strategies for working with shame in upcoming podcasts. Can't rush it. There's often a strong impulse to rush through working with shame.
  13. We'll also get into the spiritual impact of shame. Soulset For example, if you have a part who feels unloved and unlovable -- how do you think that part would understand God? Would it see God as loving and caring if it has been shut off from love? What about your parts that have been shamed by important others and by other parts of you? How would they see God? How does your internal critic, you know that voice that has running commentary about your faults and failings, exacerbating shame -- how does that part see God? What God images do these parts have? How Satan uses your shame against you? Remember, grace perfects nature, and it makes sense for Satan to attack at the weak points in your natural foundation. We will get into those issues as well\ as the relationship between shame and pride. All here at the Coronavirus crisis Carpe Diem podcast, where harmonize the best of psychology with the Truths of our Catholic Faith.
  14. Let others know about this podcast. Who do you know that might be suffering from shame? Reach out -- send them a link. Soulsandhearts.com Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play. Get the word out. Whole series on shame -- going far more in depth than most people every comprehend. All from a Catholic perspective.
  15. Bonus Podcast on Sex difference in shame. This is getting long. How are men and women different. That is available to our Resilient Catholic Carpe Diem community.
  16. RCCD community: Example past Zoom meeting October 14
19. a guided meditation to help you locate a part of you that feels unloved and unlovable and to reach out with care and gentleness to that part -- how to work with parts that carry the burden of shame. -- Very positive response to that experience, RCCD members really getting in touch with parts that feel unlovable and carry the burden of shame. It's not that hard for many people to reach out to these parts of themselves and really be with them. Seek and ye shall find.
20. 1. recorded the introduction and the meditation sections of this so RCCD community members can do it on their own.
21. 1. Building a whole library of different exercises and techniques to help you.
22. 1. Example: Office hours -- we will be discussing shame in zoom office hours on October 21 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern -- free for RCCD members. Going in to the concepts of this podcast. Lively Q&A. Place to get questions answered -- but we won't be getting into any individual issues there.
23. $25 per month
24. Temporarily halting admission to the RCCD community November 3 – less than a month away -- won't reopen until sometime next year, in 2021 lock in prices for all of 2021.
25. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.
26. Pray for me. I will pray for you.
27. Patroness and Patron

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.

a. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 37, released on October 12, 2020

b. and it is titled: The Silent Killer Who Stalks You From Inside.

I want to talk with you about the silent killer, the worst adversary I face clinically, the greatest rival, the greatest opponent to love and life that I have ever met within another person or within myself.
This one is a very stealthy, effective, ruthless killer -- often hidden beneath the surface of our consciousness, in the murky waters deep below where we can see. But then at times it surfaces, Powerful, moving. And maybe you think I'm being dramatic -- but I'm not. I've seen it kill other and I've been seriously wounded by it myself.

a. Killer on the natural level and also on the spiritual level. This assassin slays not only hearts, minds and bodies but also souls. A very comprehensive murderer, very complete, this hitman does his work often slowly but very thoroughly.

b. Who is this killer? High blood pressure? No. Stroke? No. Heart disease? No. Diabetes? No. Cancer? No. These can and do kill bodies, but as serious as they are, they are nowhere near as deadly to most people as our silent killer.

c. Who is this killer? The devil you say? Satan? No. Not Satan. Satan cherishes this killer, and prizes the stealthy sneaking, clandestine work.

d. No, it's not Satan because this killer lives within us in a way that demons ordinarily do not. This killer has a pass to roam within us, to move in our being. Satan doesn't, unless we are possessed. Besides, Satan does not have permission to slay us, or to harm us unless God permits it, at least with His passive will, and only then for our greater good.

e. This killer seems meek and modest, but when it whispers its messages in our ear, it evokes in us fear, anxiety, depression, and efforts to do more and more, and it can also provoke us to anger, aggression, and violence. Unchecked, this killer can bring us all the way to helpless, despair and suicide.

f. Some of us try to numb ourselves to distract ourselves from this killer by using alcohol, drugs, food, binging on Netflix, hours of social media, masturbation, porn, shopping, compulsive exercise, gambling, surfing the web, video games, sleeping the day away, dissociating and even cutting and burning our bodies, all in an attempt to escape.

g. Who is this killer? It is absolutely vital for us to know -- is it guilt -- no. Depression -- no, Anxiety, Fear, Anger -- no, no, no. Is it pride? No, not pride. But this killer has a close and intimate relationship with pride. The killer feeds pride and is nourished by pride. Who is it? Take a moment and really think about it. We need to know this killer, this adversary. And we will. Today we will be getting to know this silent killer. But not yet. We've got to look beyond the killer for a moment.

There is one thing that disarms this killer. One thing. And that one thing is Love. Real authentic Love. Charity. Love rescues us from this killer. It transforms us, makes us immune to the silent killer who no longer has power over us. So let's talk about love.
Shifting gears. Two great commandments --

a. Matthew 22:35-40 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

b. Main task is to love God and love our neighbor. With all of ourselves. All your heart, all your mind, all your soul. All of us.

c. And we need to love our neighbor as ourself. Think about that. Love our neighbor as ourselves.

i. Jesus doesn't say we need to love our neighbor more than ourselves -- it could be implied, but I wonder about whether that's possible.

d. So that means we need to be loved

i. Reflecting on last week's episode -- Why we flee from real love. the capacity to receive love --

ii. We discussed fear, avoidance, anger

iii. We went into how real love burns, it requires us to give up dysfunctional coping mechanisms

iv. It can require us to give up good things that are lesser than love.

v. We discussed require us to be open, receptive and thus also vulnerable

vi. But we didn't discuss what or who causes our vulnerability to seem so dangerous to us. Who does that? That is the silent killer rearing its ugly head again. It's our silent killer makes the vulnerability seem so perilous, so potentially catastrophic for us.

e. We need to be loved in order to pass that love on

i. Last episode Nemo dat quod non habet -- No one gives what they don’t have. Nemo dat rule.

ii. To reflect that love back to God

iii. To be a channel of love to others

iv. And to love ourselves in an ordered way

So ultimately, what I want is for you to be able to love God so much better and to love your neighbor so much better

a. So we will do a whole series of episode on loving God and another whole series of loving our neighbor

i. Focusing on the psychological aspects that can make this much more difficult than it needs to be

ii. Souls and Hearts -- Grace perfects nature.

But we need to start with receiving love better

a. So first, we will do a whole series of episodes on receiving love.

i. From God our Father

ii. From Mary our Mother

iii. From Jesus and the Holy Spirit

iv. From the Saints

v. From ourselves

vi. And from others

And to kick that series off loving ourselves better, we need to know what are the obstacles, especially the psychological obstacles to receiving love. We need to know what stands in the way, what are the hurdles, what makes it difficult for us to receive love.

a. And that brings us back, face to face with our silent killer. And now it's time to name the killer.

The silent killer, the worst adversary I face clinically, the greatest rival, the greatest opponent to love and life that I have ever met within another person or within myself is [drum roll] Shame. S-H-A-M-E. Shame.
So what is shame. How do we define it.

a. English has real limitations, a significantly restricted vocabulary when it comes to expressing the nuances of internal experience. It's really important to get this straight.

b. Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston -- really done a great job of bringing the topics of shame and vulnerability into the public square for discussion

i. Her definition of shame: I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we've experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection

ii. Great start and better than most definitions out there. But still incomplete. Brene Brown is primarily a researcher, though she is a licensed master social worker and has clinical experience. I approach this as a trauma therapist who really specializes in shame work.

c. Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgement, and an action.

d. Drawing heavily from Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation -- A practical, integrative Approach by Kathy Steele, Suzette Boon, and Otto van Der Hart. Experts in complex trauma, with a real focus on the disconnects that happen within the person who has experienced trauma.

i. Those disconnects, when severe enough, become dissociation

ii. Those disconnects are, by definition, a lack of integration.

e. Shame is a primary emotion -- heartset

i. Primary emotions are those that we feel first, as a first response to a situation. They are unthinking, instinctive, automatic emotions that we have. Under threat, we feel fear. We don't have to think about it. We see a Bear in our campsite. Hmm Bear. Big teeth. Looks feriocious. It's coming at us. Ok, it's time to be scared.

ii. Emotional response to

a real or perceived abandonment
Rejection
The loss of relationship -- a relationship we sense (rightly or wrongly) that we need to survive

f. Shame as a bodily reaction -- physiology of shame Bodyset

i. Defenses against shame are immediate, unmediated by our higher-order thought processes

The intellect does not have time to reflects
The automatic nature of the defenses against shame compromises the will's effectiveness in the moment.

ii. Takes us out of the window of tolerance

Window of tolerance the zone of arousal in which a person is able to function most effectively. When people are within this zone, they are typically able to readily take in information, process that information, and integrate that information more readily. People in the window of tolerance are feeling emotions at moderate levels, not overwhelmed with emotion and not numbing their feelings out. People in the window of tolerance respond to the demands of everyday life without much difficulty -- they can make pretty good decisions, carry out their role responsibilities, do what they need to do.
Stressful cortisol levels go up, and our ACTH levels rise, indicating a stress response.
Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode in response to shame

a. Heart starts racing

b. Breathing quickens

c. Pupils dilate

d. Blood rushes to arms and legs

e. Face can flush red

f. Get ready to defend ourselves or attack or run away

Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights

a. We disengage socially

b. Want to disappear, hide, camouflage ourselves.

c. Shut down. Numb out. Dissociate

d. Lowering of the head

e. Breaking off eye contact

f. Tightening up of muscles, curling up in a ball (spine) -- hunching to protect vital organs. Making one's body smaller, less visible

g. Feeling like ice water in the veins, cold freezing sensation

h. Fluttering in belly.

g. Functions of Shame This often gets missed. The upside of shame. Why it exists.

i. Shame is a signal that there is a lack of attunement or an even more serious threat in one or more of our important relationships. It has important function

ii. Shame inhibits other emotions, thoughts, sensations, beliefs or behaviors that are perceived as unacceptable to powerful others who we need.

Steele Boone and van der Hart refer to it as a "social threat detector" that alerts us to modify or avoid behaviors that will cause us to be rejected by those we need. They see this as part of social evolution.
Shame helps us learn the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior so that we can be part of our group, with the optimal level of closeness and distance.

a. By 12 to 18 months or so, toddlers show signs of shame in response to misattunement or disapproval. Mommy and Daddy's reactions help guide the child through developmental milestone and avoiding shame is a part of that.

Shame is a survival mechanism. It helps save us from potential terrible consequences -- example of abuse. Inhibiting of crying -- I'll give you something to cry about. Freezing, staying still not crying.
Some shame needs to be accepted. The only ones who don’t seem to experience shame at all are psychopaths -- sociopaths. Think of it -- someone who is shameless -- that's hardly a compliment.
Shame as a judgment -- mindset

a. A judgement about who we really are from the perpective of a critical, rejecting other.

i. We look at ourselves through the eyes of critical, angry or disappointed other, often a parent or other caregiver.

b. But we have internalized it. We've take it inside. Now we are doing it to ourselves.

c. We repeat messages we've picked up from important others:

i. Nobody cares about you.

ii. You're a loser

iii. You can't do anything right

iv. You should never have been born.

d. May no longer the case, no longer accurate. Anachronistic, no longer applies. No longer in second grade.

Chronic shame needs to be attenuated, reduced, titrated, ordered, regulated.

a. Chronic shame develops when the child has a sense of being rejected, unwanted, a burden.

b. When the child changes behaviors, does what he can to be better in the eyes of the adult and still is rejected, he can conclude that he just is a bad person.

c. The difficulty is in the response of the others -- the caregivers.

d. But the child bears the burden of shame caused by the shaming of the caregivers.

e. Child sees parts that are unacknowledged and unacceptable

f. Ostracized or invaded.

And we assume that God is like our caregivers -- soulset.
Shame as action -- “shaming” is an action that is intended to cause someone else to feel inadequate, worthless, unlovable, a loser, etc. for being or doing something that the originator feels is wrong or undesirable.

a. It is a quick way to control another person, especially one in a dependent positions

b. Little children will do almost anything to preserve their attachments to their parents

c. Teachers, coaches, instructors -- huge powers

d. Also romantic partners are motivated my shame -- seems to protect from the loss of relationship.

Qualities of shame

a. Shame is hidden. Hidden from others, hidden from God, often hidden from the therapist, hidden from self.

b. Shame inhibits positive emotions

Strategies for coping with shame

a. Nathanson (1992, 1997) Four defensive scripts for avoiding shame:

i. Attack self

ii. Attacking others first -- preemptive. Sarcasm, cutting humor,

iii. Isolate from others

iv. Avoid inner experiences

Controlling-caregiving -- viewing others as more deserving, as more in need. Denying my own needs by extending myself to serve others, but it's not out of charity -- it’s a defense, a way of running away from my own shame, keeping just ahead of my shame shadow.
Brief review Shame is: a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal, a judgment, and an action. There's not a simple definition.
Enough for today. We will get more into shame and how to work with it in the next several episodes. So much more to unpack. This was conceptually heavy -- lots to understand.
Lucy had a comment.
Great stories of how this podcast is changing lives. I want your stories -- stories of how the podcast has impacted you -- send them to me. crisis@soulsandhearts.com, PM me in the community. Let me know if I can use them on the air. Your story can help other people. Cell is 317.567.9594.
RCCD community: I want to tell you about the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community.

a. The RCCD community brings together people who are really interested in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm,

b. Catholics who are seizing this day, this moment, as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth.

c. We are bringing in IFS concepts and guidance on working with your parts in your system, to help you become more self-aware, to better love God, others, and yourself.

d. Example Upcoming Zoom meeting

i. Join me for a guided meditation to help you locate a part of you that feels unloved and unlovable and to reach out with care and gentleness to that part -- how to work with parts that carry the burden of shame.

ii. When is it? Wednesday, October 14 7:30-8:45 PM Eastern time. Two days from release

iii. We will record the introduction and the meditation sections of this so RCCD community members can do it on their own.

iv. Building a whole library of different exercises and techniques to help you.

e. Example: Office hours -- we will be discussing shame in zoom office hours on October 21 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern -- free for RCCD members. Going in to the concepts of this podcast. Lively Q&A. Place to get questions answered -- but we won't be getting into any individual issues there.

f. $25 per month

g. closing November 3 – less than a month away -- won't reopen until sometime next year, in 2021 lock in prices for all of 2021.

h. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

Shout out to Catholic therapists and counselors

a. Are you seeking

i. Greater insight into yourself as a clinician and better self-care?

ii. New therapeutic skills to help your clients help themselves?

iii. Deep, personal connections within a small group of other Catholic therapists who understand the unique demands of our lives?

iv. Guidance on how to work with your clients' parts in therapy or counseling -- I have an answer and a possibility for you.

b. I am leading Catholic Internal Family Systems consultation groups

i. Get together every month for 90 minutes via Zoom in groups of 8.

ii. Experience IFS techniques through a variety of exercises that I will lead -- demonstrations.

iii. Practice IFS techniques, working on our own real issues as a therapist within our own internal systems, in the holding environment of the group

iv. Participate in some interpersonal processing, based on an IFS understanding of parts and self, recast in accordance with our Catholic faith

v. Amazing response 29 of 32 slots are filled, but there are 3 left

Two for the Second Wednesday of the month, starting October 14 from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern time -- gotta move quick on this.
One slot for the Fourth Wednesday of the month, starting October 28 from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern time

vi. Check out [insert website link]

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Episode 36: Why We Flee from Real Love October 5, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being love and to loving.

Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 36, released on October 5, 2020 and it is titled: Why We Flee from Real Love.

Getting right into it today, not reviewing, no listener questions, so buckle up. This is a critically important topic
Three main reasons. Pain, fear and anger -- all rooted in misunderstanding and distortions.

a. We want to avoid all these things. Natural instincts.

i. Freud's pleasure principle: is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs.

Tolerating being loved -- deliberate use of language

a. No, I just want to be loved -- what they are saying is I just want to be emotionally gratified. What we want

i. Hallmark Card Commercials

ii. Hallmark Movies

iii. Romance novels. Easy love that just come naturally. Emotional Junk food that nourishes illusions.

b. Easy to be loved when you are a baby-- natural openness and receptivity

c. Negative experiences

d. Fallen natures in a fallen world

i. Slings and arrows -- attachment injuries, relational wounds

ii. More significant trauma

iii. Sense of vulnerability, it's not safe.

Fear
Avoidance
Adam and Eve in Genesis 3

iv. We are familiar with the disorder, the dysfunction -- our ways of coping.

e. People who want to focus on loving, not being loved.

i. More "noble"

ii. Focus is on the other

iii. But so limited. Doing good things for the other, not "being with."

Real love burns -- it hurts --

a. Gratification and Frustration.

b. Perfection of God's love has an impact -- burning, purifying effect -- refining of silver and gold

i. 1 Peter 1:7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

ii. Isaiah 48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.

iii. Zechariah 13:9 And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”

iv. Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.

v. Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

Examples of PT. Burn unit.

a. Not understanding. Being small. Children.

Fleeing from love leads us to hell. Ultimately It's the only thing that lead us to hell. If we embraced love fully, we would not sin. God is love. If we embrace love fully, we are embracing God fully. And then sin becomes impossible for you.

a. Hell on earth -- pain is God's megaphone -- CS Lewis.

b. Gauge of holiness -- one's receptivity to love (Episode 35 -- radical receptivity)

Love is not what we think it is. Gratification and Frustration. We misunderstand love.
Being loved is the most important prerequisite - Absolutely required

a. Old Latin saying Nemo dat quod non habet

i. No one gives what they don’t have. Nemo dat rule.

ii. You can't give what you don't have.

b. What every client needs coming into my office

c. Sin is a lack of love - a moral evil. Failure to love. Two great commandments -- the opposite is omission, the omission of love.

d. Evil is a privation of good. Of love.

i. St. Augustine in the Enchridion Chapter 4: All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil.

ii. not just the absence of a good, but the absence of a good that properly belongs to a species.

iii. Darkness is a lack of light.

e. Evils we experience make us jaded.

f. ls us. It perfects us.

Why being loved is important-- Real love restores us. It brings us back. It heals us.
Examples of tolerating being loved

a. Animal Examples

i. White Fang -- love master Weedon Scott

ii. Horse Whisperer -- Buck Brannaman Polayed by Robert Redford in the 1998 movie -- acts as a therapist

b. Literature examples

i. Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740

ii. Story of Refiner's fire.

iii. Insert Lucy Segment

iv. Petrarchan Sonnet: She Who was Abused

Her spiteful eyes, they scream, “We swim in tears.

You see how God has cursed and battered me.

Yes, speak again of grace and care that He

poured out on me in childhood’s tragic years.”

“You fool! Are you so blind, as my death nears,

To try again to love me, Pharisee?”

“I’m wounded, and ashamed, and damned I’ll be

If I’ll get speared once more by hope,” she sneers.

In anguish, angry and ashamed, she fled

from One who loved her, deep and sure, who stayed

behind her, patient, silent. His heart bled,

respecting her will, choices she has made,

still yet He seeks her. She now turns her head.

At last, their eyes meet, His calm, hers afraid.

This outcome can go either way. I've seen both ways.
Gentle balance here.
The iterative dance -- childlike trust -- Fear of vulnerability. Little bit of openness, retreating.
Extreme examples -- reactive attachment disorder
Bridget Adams Bellingham, WA

a. One of the definitions of "hind" is a female deer or a doe. Johnny translates to John. So our imaginary listener John Doe who wants to remain anonymous changed his name to "Johnny Hind." That is the Dad play on word

Lucy on the Dad Poem.
Send me your poetry -- psychology and Catholicism. Journeys of the Soul. Website Souls and Hearts.
Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Call me at 317.567.9594.

$25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there. Closing November 3 – less than a month away

Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

Past Zoom meeting September 29 7:30 PM Eastern time. Openness and receptivity. Garden wall exercise. Really great for people who are afraid of God. You can actually see and feel how God respects your boundaries and limits and doesn’t want to invade or violate you or take you over, but to be separate but near. We will record parts of this so RCCD community members can do it on their own.

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Episode 35 Being Both Big and Small September 28, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of our Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being love and to loving.

Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 35, released on September 28, 2020 and it is titled: Being Both Big and Small.

Ok, so it’s time for questions from our listeners from the last couple of sessions. But only I got only one question from the last session in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem! community, and she essentially answered it so well herself in our RCCD discussion boards that I don’t have a lot to add. So I am going to make up a question – from an imaginary listener who wants to remain anonymous, so I am going to call him Johnny Hind: The good thing for a host about making up questions is that you can have them be exactly what you want them to be, and that’s what’s happening now.

From Johnny Hind: Dr. Peter, what about responsibility? What about being grown up? I’m confused about how, the challenges of this world, I’m supposed to be mature, wise, virtuous and so on. That doesn’t sound like being a baby or a toddler. I can’t just curl up in a corner suck my thumb and wait for God and Mary to rock me to sleep all the time. I have responsibilities! How do I be both small, childlike, trusting and but also grow to the fullness of manhood or womanhood?

Those are our questions for today.

So for the last five episodes, numbers 30 to 34 we have been discussing being small, being like little children, going beyond just accepting our absolute dependency on God – but embracing it.

following the words of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Matthew 18 1-4 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 19 13-15 Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people; but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and went away.

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

John 15:4-5 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

1 Peter 2: 2-3 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—

Now we are going to look at the other side of the coin. Maturity, Responsibility

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

Ephesians 4:15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ

Sirach 15 Do not say: “It was God’s doing that I fell away,” for what he hates he does not do. Do not say: “He himself has led me astray,” God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God. Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand. Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.

CCC 1730-1738 Freedom and Responsibility.

So here we have the two demands. To be childlike and to be mature. To be small and to be big. These demands, to be small and big can become extremes. And in the spiritual life, there are two heresies that reflect these two extremes: Quietism and Pietism.

Two extremes:

Quietism The Spanish theologian Miguel de Molinos developed Quietism. From his writings, especially from his "Dux spiritualis" (Rome, 1675), sixty-eight propositions were extracted and condemned by Innocent XI in 1687

Catholic Encyclopedia. Quietism in the broadest sense is the doctrine which declares that man's highest perfection consists in a sort of psychological and spiritual self-annihilation. and a consequent absorption of the soul into the Divine Essence even during the present life. In the state of "quietude" the mind is wholly inactive; it no longer thinks or wills on its own account, but remains passive while God acts within it. Quietism is thus generally speaking a sort of false or exaggerated mysticism.

Passivity in therapy. Psychopathology-ectomy. Want a general anesthetic, and for me to remove all the dysfunction and problems while they rest. With my psychotherapy scalpel. You’re the doctor, you’re supposed to be able to do this.

Pietism is a movement within the ranks of Protestantism, originating in the reaction against the highly intellectualize and reified Protestant theology of the seventeenth century, and aiming at the revival of devotion and practical Christianity. Its appearance in the German Lutheran Church, about 1670, is connected with the name of Philipp Jakob Spener – German Lutheran Theologian, Father of pietism.

His sermons, in which he emphasized the necessity of a lively faith and the sanctification of daily life

It is primarily one’s own individual achievements, the way a man as an individual lives up to his religious duties and moral commandments, the way a woman imitates the "virtues" of Christ, that ensure them justification. Spiritual growth is an individual self-improvement project that minimizes the role of the Church, mystical body of Christ and all believers.

In therapy, pietists have to do it all by themselves. Unwilling to receive help. Suspicious of it. Might reduce the magnitude of their own achievements, They have to be captains of their own ships, bootstrappers.

The quietist says, “Do nothing for yourself.” God does it all. I’m totally passive. God takes all the action.

The pietist says, “Do everything for yourself.” God is passive and inert. I take all the action.

So we have Quietism and Pietism. Huh, those rhyme. Quietists and Pietists. All of a sudden I am feeling kind of poetical. You know, this podcast, it’s a creation of culture, it’s not some low-brow, dumbed down, mass-market tabloid of a show. No, we are cultured here. We bring in the arts, literature, sometimes even music. You know what I’m thinking…

I’m thinking maybe I should compose a poem to help you remember the different between quietism and pietism. This is a true story, in college, I briefly considered a career as bard, a poet for hire, who would compose verses for special occasions. Wow, this is like a dream come true..

I’ve got that same feeling coming on me now that I get just before my kids are grimacing and accusing me of uttering a “Dad poem.” Which is like a Dad joke that rhymes. It’s got to rhyme.

There is no need to call on the muses (that’s pagan anyway). I think I’ve got this. It’s coming to me. Ok, I’ve got it, get ready, here we go.

The poem is called “The unhappy couple” -- But don’t worry it’s going end well, that help will come to them. Let me see.. Hmmm.

Exhausted from toil was the pietist

While depleted and numb was the quietist.

These souls, pseudo-devout

Need counseling no doubt

Quick, call a Catholic psychiatrist!

All right, now let’s get serious, let’s plunge into, let’s grab onto the questions that our imaginary anonymous listener Johnny Hind has offered us.

be diving into the question of what responsibility while being receptive. If we are supposed to have a great childlike confidence in God, if we are to be like parvulos, like little children, itty bitty ones in our relationship with our Father God and our Mother Mary, working through the trust issues from our first two years of life, what does that mean for our accountability, our responsibility, our obligations in the Christian life? How are we supposed to be childlike and trusting, but also mature, grown-up and taking responsibility for our lives? How do we reconcile all these seemingly contradictory positions? Stay with me for answers. We digging into these questions, and do you know where we will find the answers? We will find the answers buried like treasures, in the soil. Our answers to this apparent paradox are to be found in the soil.

So let’s start at the beginning. A very good place to start, so I’m told. And when I think of beginnings, I think of Genesis. Creation story.

Living Soil: Fertile Crescent Near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. That soil was already good. Very alive. Very fertile.

Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

This is the Hebrew word for "man". It could be ultimately derived from Hebrew אדם ('adam) meaning "to be red", referring to the ruddy colour of human skin, or from Akkadian adamu meaning "to make". According to Genesis in the Old Testament Adam was created from the earth by God (there is a word play on Hebrew אֲדָמָה ('adamah) meaning "earth" – red earth (clay)

When God made Adam and Eve, he chose to need the clay, like a potter needs the clay.

Isaiah 64:8 But now, O Lord, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.

St. Augustine, Sermo 169: God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us.

Receptivity not equal to passivity, quietism. Potter and clay

Potter needs the clay. Living clay. Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

We choose how to care for our soil. Soil amendments – fertilizer, what we take in. Tilling. Rototill or broadfork. Mulching. Watering. Composting. Removing the rocks. Aerating. Encouraging the worms, the microbial life.

Matthew 13:4-9 “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears,[a] let him hear.”

Ist major point.

Active Receptivity. Preparing. Plan of life. Dedicated time to pray. Conversational prayer. Time for reflection. Caring for the natural foundation. Journaling. Getting in touch you’re your mindset, bodyset, heartset, soulset. Being recollected. Being ready for action. Sunday Mass, maybe daily Mass. Regular confession. Examinations of conscience (that are relational)

2nd major point. We choose what to plant in our soil. What do we take in? Through our senses. Netflix? Internet news over and over? Social media? YouTube? Shallow romance novels? Porn? What are we taking in? What seeds are we planting in our soils.

Galatian 6:7. whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. You reap what you sow. You get to choose what you are sowing. Varieties are important. Tomatoes this year. They fit my soil.

Plan of life. What we take in with our senses. We might not will that what we take in will grow, but it will grow.

Natural processes.

So much work to do conventional farming. Adding N, Phosphorous, Potassium. Don’t trust the soil, use it as a holding ground. Or get rid of it altogether – hydroponics, where you grow plants in gravel in a nutrient rich solution.

Humility, Awe, wonder.

Mary and Zechariah.

Dad poem, day play on words… Put it on the forum, email or call, I will announce who solves it. Prize: Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Curtis Mitsch and Edward Sri. First volume of the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture by Baker Publishing. I have two copies, I bought one, and then I loved it so much I bought the entire, this is my number 1 go-to scripture commentary for the New Testament and I have a lot of commentaries. And Ted Sri has been a close friend of mine since the early 1990s, and I really like his work.

Email me at crisis at soulsandhearts.com or call or text me on my cell – 317.567.9594, the first one to get the right answer to what the dad play on words is gets the prize. I will look at the time stamps.

Feed back on the episode.

$25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there. Closing November 3.

Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

Upcoming Zoom meeting September 29 7:30 PM Eastern time. Openness and receptivity. Garden wall exercise. Really great for people who are afraid of God. You can actually see and feel how God respects your boundaries and limits and doesn’t want to invade or violate you or take you over, but to be separate but near. We will record parts of this so RCCD community members can do it on their own.

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Episode 34 Radical Receptivity September 21, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 34, released on September 21, 2020 and it is titled:. Radical Receptivity. Radical spiritual receptivity. We’ve been building up to this topic over the last few weeks, so before we get into radical receptivity, let’s just cast a glance back where we’ve been over the last few episodes:

In the last episode, episode 33, we explored openness in the natural realm

· Because Grace perfects nature, we often start with the natural realm

· looked at how psychologists define openness

o Openness as one of the big five personality traits

§ Along with neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness

o open individuals are curious about both the inner and outer worlds, they have experientially rich lives compared to closed individuals.

o Lack of conventionality, willingness to question authority, prepared to consider new ethical, social, and political ideas.

· we looked at the six domains within openness:

o fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, and values (repeat)

Today, we’re going to look at openness in the spiritual life, in the spiritual realm.

Receptivity:

· I often use the word receptivity to capture a sense of openness in relationship with God and Our Lady, our spiritual parents. And not just openness – but more than openness.

o having the quality of receiving, taking in, or admitting.

o able or quick to receive knowledge, ideas, etc.: a receptive mind. Mindset

o willing or inclined to receive suggestions, offers, etc., with favor: a receptive listener. Mindset:

o What about taking in relationship, connection – relational receptivity.

o Radical openness. Toddler, infant – taking in almost everything he has.

So in this episode, we’re going into radical openness in the spiritual life, what I am calling radical receptivity to emphasize how we need to take in to receive from God and our Mother Mary.

Remember, the primary developmental task of the infant and toddler is to learn to trust. We discussed this in episodes 30 and 31. Our primary task is to learn to trust. And remember that we’ve identified that the one essential thing for a Catholic to be resilient is that childlike trust, that absolute confidence in God.

Psalm 22: Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
10 On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

You kept me safe on my mother’s breast.

If we have that childlike trust, that absolute confidence in God, nothing stops us from being resilient. We can fall down, and we can get up, because we have a deep awareness, in our bones, that we are deeply loved, cherished, that God and Mary delight in us. But this childlike trust, this absolute confidence is the primary area where we fail.

Listen to the way that St. Peter refers to us as Christians, as Catholics:

1 Peter 2: 2-3 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Listen to St. Paul: But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. 1 Thessalonians 2:7

But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of all the flesh. (1 Corinthians 3:1-3)

The Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and God’s tender care, like a mother.

Isaiah 49 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,

all you who love her;

rejoice with her in joy,

all you who mourn over her;

that you may suck and be satisfied

with her consoling breasts;

that you may drink deeply with delight

from the abundance of her glory. (Isaiah 66:10-11)

As a clinician, I see this so much psychological baggage around trust, so many psychological impediments around this absolute confidence in God, and these stemmed from negative experiences we’ve had. It doesn’t have to be abuse or neglect, can also be just the common attachment injuries that we sustain, believe us to be guarded, careful, and cautious. We bring these into our relationship with God our father, and with Mary our mother. And it’s not just in my clients, this is ubiquitous it’s everywhere it is in all of us.

Isaiah 40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather together the lambs with his arm, and shall take them up in his bosom, and he himself shall carry them that are with young.

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

The only reason we don’t experience this is because we don’t let God in. Because we’re afraid, guarded, self-protective, and we don’t know.

Review of how Mary is our primary Mother.

Fr. Emil Neubert, my ideal: Jesus son of Mary, part one, chapter 4:

Mary is even more truly your mother then your earthly mother.… She loves you – you, all imperfect and ungrateful as you are; she loves you with a love that surpasses in intensity and in purity the motherly love of all the mothers in the world. Above all, she is more truly your mother because of the nature of the life which she has given you.

RCCD member Jonathan is putting together a book club in the RCCD community.

O1 Openness to Fantasy: vivid imagination, active fantasy life, daydreaming as not only an escape, but a way of creating an interesting inner world for themselves.

O2 Openness to Aesthetics: a deep appreciation for art and beauty, moved by poetry, absorbed in music, intrigued by art.

O3 Openness to Feelings: receptivity to my own inner feelings and emotions, and consideration of emotion is important in life. Deeper emotional states, more differentiated emotional states, feeling emotions more keenly.

O4 Openness to Actions: willingness to try different activities, to go new places, it eats unusual foods. Preference for novelty and variety over familiarity and routine. May change hobbies

O5 Openness to Ideas: intellectual curiosity, pursuing intellectual interests for their own sake. Willingness to consider new, unconventional ideas. Liking philosophical arguments.

O6 Openness to Values: willingness to re-examine and reevaluate social, political, and religious values. Close individuals accept authority and honor tradition. Opposite of dogmatism.

0-24 months, trust vs.mistrust. Episodes 30 and 31.

Imagery:

· Being held

· Swaddled

· Rocked

· Listened to

· Cried to

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The lactation of St. Bernard. This painting depicts the spiritual nourishing of St. Bernard by the milk of Our Lady, based on this legendary mystical experience: Bernard prayed before a statue of the Madonna, asking her, "Show yourself a mother" ("Monstra te esse Matrem"). The statue came to life and and squirted milk from the breast onto the Saint's lips.

As Bernard prayed, “Monstra te esse Matrem” (“Show yourself a mother”), the statue came to life and Mary pressed her breast to nourish and wet the lips of Bernard, dry from singing her praises. The picture also illustrates the idea that Bernard’s preaching and eloquence were “sweet as milk.”

His preaching has earned him other tributes within the Church, such as the “Marian Doctor” and the “Troubadour of Mary.” Song of songs.

Baby takes in, receives everything. That is our reality.

Fear of openness – same-sex attracted men, Christ – sexualization of Mary.

Kidnapping story.

Receptivity – Fiat, from our Our Lady. Not seeing. Blessed are those who do not see and still believe. Domine ut videam.

Gideon. 300 vs. 125,000 Following the directions. Trumpets, torches, vases, blindness in the night.

32,000 to 10,000 (Fear) to 300 (lapping water). 135,000 Midianites. Judges 7.

Mary at Annunciation

What is the alternative.

Adam and Eve in the garden, hiding, no longer open to experience, what happens when we hide

Tight rope, narrow road, scrupulosity

Driving with the headlights on. Want to see the whole route. We see enough.

Hating surprises.

Break out of the wagon wheel ruts. Comfort in the familiarity of the dysfunction I know.

2 Great commandments

Exercise of walled garden. – Will be doing that in a Zoom meeting

crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594 or if you are in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, the RCCD community, you can private message me or you can include your responses, your reactions on our discussion of this podcast episode

$25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there. Closing November 3.

Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

Upcoming Zoom meeting

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Episode 33. – Being Open and Coping Well September 14, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 33, released on September 14, 2020 and it is titled: Being Open and Coping Well

Today we’re going to explore openness in the natural realm. And as a special bonus, we will explore closedness.

Abierto Cerrado.

Review:

Episode 32: Ways to increase trust, especially given the negative experiences. 0-24 months. Exercise – popular. Need more of that.

Episode 31 The One Thing You Must Have to Be Resilient. The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust

There is one thing that separates those who are resilient from those who are not. Childlike Trust (particularly in God’s goodness and his Providence for me in particular) separate those who are resilient from those who are not. Absolute confidence in God.

Episode 30: discussion of why we mistrust God so much, and it is because we are trying to be way too big. Trying to make it on our own we don’t feel safe. Trust is faith in action.

We hate and fear the dependency required to be in a real relationship with God.

Reciprocal relationship between openness and trust.

Why do I bring in Non-Catholic ideas: What makes me different. Not closed to new ideas.

Catholic with a small c -- universal.

St. Augustine: On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana)

CHAP. 40.—Whatever has been rightly said by the heathen we must appropriate to our uses. Paragraphs 60 and 61

Branches of heathen learning … contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them.

Not only natural learning, but we can learn truths regarding the worship of God.

Freud. How many times have I heard Freud being dismissed out of hand by Catholics because of his views on religion. I get it. Freud: God as an illusion, we’re like infants who need a big, strong father to keep us safe and secure. A big daddy in the sky.

Religion had its uses to keep the unwashed masses subdued so that civilization could develop. We needed something to help us restrain violent impulses and keep life on earth from turning into an episode from Jerry Springer. But now we have reason and science. Reason and Science.

I travel in a lot of traditional Catholic circles, I attend the Latin Mass, love the beauty of the ancient Mass. Not a lot of traditional Catholic psychologists. Consulted nationwide, coming to Indianapolis, lot’s of suspicion. Lots of rejection of psychology

But listen to what Freud is saying – we need a father. We have an infantile need for a Father. He says it more clearly than a lot of Catholic speakers do – which Catholic media personalities have you heard really driving home the point that we are little, like todders, like infants in our need. Freud found part of the Truth.

Pope Francis. Not to bash the pope. Not about that in Souls and Hearts or this podcast or the RCCD community.

September 8, 2017 New Yorker The Pope’s Shrink and Catholicism’s Uneasy Relationship with Freud

Pope Francis Sought Psychoanalysis at 42,” the Times headline read. Other outlets treated the news more salaciously—“Pope Reveals,” “Pope Admits.” Some noted that the psychoanalyst in question was Jewish, or that she was a woman. Below the headlines, though, the stories were the same: a French sociologist named Dominique Wolton had published a book of interviews with the Pope, and, buried on page 385, amid discussions of the migrant crisis and the clash with Islam, America’s wars and Europe’s malaise, was the four-decade-old scoop that had made editors sit up. “I consulted a Jewish psychoanalyst,” Francis told Wolton. “For six months, I went to her home once a week to clarify certain things. She was very good. She was very professional as a doctor and a psychoanalyst, but she always knew her place.”

Almost immediately, the news drew venom from the Pope’s detractors. A writer for the Web site Novus Ordo Watch, a mouthpiece of the ultra-conservative Catholic fringe—its slogan is “Unmasking the Modernist Vatican II Church”—insisted that Francis’s treatment by a “female Jewish Freudian” was “a really big smoking gun,” incontrovertible evidence that his “mind is saturated with Jewish ideas.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio appears to have undergone such an experience before he became Pope. When he started psychoanalysis, he was in the last year of his tenure as provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, 1979. The military junta’s Dirty War was raging, and it had put Bergoglio to the test. “I made hundreds of errors,” Francis told an interviewer, in 2013. “Errors and sins.” He described the period as “a time of great interior crisis.” Lucky him that he found a therapist who, mostly with the acutely focussed and patently empathetic listening that characterizes a good analyst, could enable his return to wholeness. “She helped me a lot,” he told Wolton.

Biology we learned about the double helix structure of DNA. Beautiful.

that James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. 1962. Nobel Prize

James Watson: Very anti-Catholic. Anti a lot of things. Racism, anti-semitism. .

He also said that while he wished the races were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Infanticide “If a child were not declared alive until 3 days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few have under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

Raised Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion."

Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God."

In like manner, 1978, Pacific News Service. Dr. Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize along with Watson said:

“No new-born infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”

Summer 2004 New Atlantis

In this, as in much of his work, Crick was driven by a profound and fiery atheism, and saw himself combating an almost medieval mindset on the part of religious communities in America and Europe. Back in 1960, he had accepted a position at Churchill College, Cambridge on the condition that the (then new) college would not build a chapel for its faculty and students. A few years later, a donor offered a large sum of money to the college for the construction of a chapel, and when the faculty voted to accept the donation, Crick resigned. In explaining his work in neuroscience, Crick described his project as standing in opposition to Catholic doctrine — or at least his vastly oversimplified and caricatured understanding of it.

IPF protocol in Episode 32. Helpful to some – some said it was weird, New Agey. I don’t use it.

Secular Definition of Openness

I have to. Treatment for bulimia in the early Church Fathers. Treatments for complex trauma in the writings of the doctors of the Church.

NEO-Personality Inventory -- 3 Big Five.

Neuroticism

Extraversion

Openness

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

open individuals are curious about both the inner and outer worlds, they have experientially rich lives compared to closed individuals. Lack of conventionality, willingness to question authority, prepared to consider new ethical, social, and political ideas.

O1 Openness to Fantasy: vivid imagination, active fantasy life, daydreaming as not only an escape, but a way of creating an interesting inner world for themselves.

O2 Openness to Aesthetics: a deep appreciation for art and beauty, moved by poetry, absorbed in music, intrigued by art.

O4 Openness to Actions: willingness to try different activities, to go new places, it eats unusual foods. Preference for novelty and variety over familiarity and routine. May change hobbies

O5 Openness to Ideas: intellectual curiosity, pursuing intellectual interests for their own sake. Willingness to consider new, unconventional ideas. Liking philosophical arguments.

O6 Openness to Values: willingness to re-examine and reevaluate social, political, and religious values. Close individuals accept authority and honor tradition. Opposite of dogmatism.

Big Five Inventory

Security and Attachment are prerequisites for openness. Awe, wonder come after. Heaven Hell and six foot spoons.

Openness in different aspects –

Mind (understanding of the Faith Isaiah 55),

Heart (emotions, intuitions, the ways of the heart), Ezekiel 11:19 “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”

Body (bodily sensations)

Soul – religious experiences, charismatics, not my vision – Passion of the Christ. Next episode – receptivity. We’re going to take all this into the realm of the spiritual.

Closedness. CBT, meds, playing it safe. Talent buried. Fear. Rigidity in some therapists. Am I being a good therapist. A Catholic enough therapist. Self-focus rather than focus on the client

When to be open, when to be closed. Adam and Eve needed to be closed.

Problematic openness.

Adam and Eve

NEO-PI3 manual “Openness may sound healthier or more mature to many psychologists, but the value of openness or closeness depends on the requirements of the situation, and both open and closed individuals perform useful functions in society.”

The walrus and the Carpenter. Lewis Carrol and the plight of the overly open oysters. Opened and eaten. Only one old oyster was left.

Tragic story of Division 36, Kugelman’s Psychology and Catholicism Mass apostasy.

Exercise – just a taste.

Premium Bonus Podcast. Openness Exercise (discussion to follow). Guided imagery.

The RCCD community brings together people like you, people that are really interested learning how to accept love and how to love God and neighbor, who want a psychologically informed approach to learning, who want to shore up the natural foundation for the spiritual life. Our community is more active than ever,

Fascinating Discussion Last Thursday Zoom Meeting Building Trust in God the Father through our Mother Mary – continuing on in the RCCD community App 29 comments in less than 24 hours.

in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm, and who are seizing this day, this moment as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth. We are adding features to the RCCD community. Membership in the RCCD community is free for the first 30 days, $25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there,

Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

Fascinating Discussion of Episode 32

September 18.

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Episode 32. – Trauma, Trust, Treatment and Truth September 7, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where with God’s help you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 32, released on September 7, 2020 and it is titled: Trauma, Trust, Treatment and Truth. Today is a deep dive into the effects of trauma and attachment wounds on Trust. And then we will discuss how by God’s grace and with his help we can experience God as he is, not our distorted God images, rise out of the ashes of our experiences and our injuries.

Very specific techniques to help.

Era of Coronavirus – call to trust God and Mary.

Reviews

Episode 30: discussion of why we mistrust God so much, and it is because we are trying to be way too big. Trying to make it on our own we don’t feel safe.

We hate and fear the dependency required to be in a real relationship with God.

On my terms, on my conditions, within my vision, within my understanding. We’re going to meet as equals. We are going to be partners, like equally or almost equally yoked. God is my co-pilot bumper sticker. Becoming small so that God can be big.

Episode 31 The One Thing You Must Have to Be Resilient. The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust

In both those episodes, we look at the critical period from age 0 to 24 months, when the major developmental task is to resolve the conflict between trust and mistrust. Almost every development will psychologist points to this as the critical developmental work in this stage of life.

We also discussed how so much of the developmental work in this during the ages of 0 to 24 months is done not by the infants or the toddler, not by the little child, rather by the parents. We don’t expect infants and toddlers to be listening to self-help tapes and engaging in self-improvement classes. They are far from the age of reason. So in this issues of trust, God and Mary do the main lifting. We allow ourselves to be changed, to be formed.

What little children, what infants and toddlers have is a great capacity for receptivity and a freedom from self-consciousness. They have a natural humility. They don’t worry about their self-image so much. They are flexible. They use their imaginations. They don’t fear failing. They don’t degrade themselves when they’re trying new things. They can be learning to walk, falling down, and laughing at themselves. They can make mistakes, they can try things out.

No one expects perfection from a little child.

Most therapies have focused on greater maturity, greater self-efficacy, being a more effective agent in the world, growing up.

List of therapies and their goals

These therapist have trouble when there is complex trauma, especially when that trauma goes back to the first two years of life. Recent protocols developed. Bootstrap therapies don’t work. Very low success rates.

Focus on complex trauma –
Complex trauma:

a. is usually interpersonal i.e. occurs between people usually people who know each other

b. involves being or feeling trapped

c. is often planned, extreme, ongoing and/or repeated

d. often has more severe, persistent and cumulative impacts

e. involves challenges with shame, trust, self-esteem, identity and regulating emotions.

f. Results in different coping strategies. These include alcohol and drug use, self-harm, over- or under-eating, over-work etc.

i. emotional dysregulation

ii. changes in consciousness – dissociation

iii. negative self-perception – shame, inadequacy

iv. problems in relationships

v. distorted perceptions of others, including abusers

vi. loss of systems of meaning – losing my religion REM 1991

g. affects emotional and physical health, wellbeing, relationships and daily functioning

Complex trauma is trauma that occurs repeatedly and cumulatively, usually over a period of time and within specific relationships and contexts.” Examples include severe child abuse, domestic abuse, or multiple military deployments to dangerous locations.

Single incident trauma occurs with `one off’ events. It is commonly associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Single incident trauma can occur from a bushfire, flood, sexual or physical assault in adulthood, or from fighting in a war.

Dyadic resourcing is typically a five step process:

identifying a nurturing adult resource,
make the resource real for the client
formulating a parent-child relationship involving the resource
intensify the client's experience of that relationship
helping the client to have the experience of both the child and adult in the resource dyad.

Brown and Elliott IPF Model 2017 book -- Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair

The IPF method differs from traditional attachment-based treatments in that the primary agent of change is the patient’s relationship with his or her imagined attachment figures rather than the relationship with the therapist. p.304.
The Ideal Parent Figure protocol uses guided imagery to help participants change their attachment representations.

a. The therapist encourages the client to imagine being with parent figures who were entirely constructed from their imagination

b. During IPF therapy, the therapist guides the client vividly imagine himself or herself as a young child

c. and, as a young child, connecting and relating to new set of parents

i. not the parents or any caregivers they grew up with.

ii. Completely imagined parents, parent who are entirely fabricated in the imagination of the client.

d. These imagined parents are supposed to possess the all the parental qualities that promote secure attachment.

e. When you are doing the IPF protocol, you are to truly immerse themselves in the fantasy experience

i. 5 senses experiencing physical sensations in accordance to what is being imagined, like a really vivid dream.

ii. Importantly, when needed, the therapist helped participants to differentiate imagination from memory, making sure participants were not simply recalling their own past experiences during the guided imagery. In short, the purpose was to co-create new experiences.

f. Read the prompt on p. 309

g. The therapist brings to the client’s mind descriptions of specific qualities that these imagined parents possess:

i. they protect their child – felt safety and protection

ii. Feeling seen and known by the imagined parents

they are attuned to their child’s emotional states

iii. they calm and sooth their child – reassure and comfort the child

responsive when the child is upset, dysregulated

iv. The imagined, ideal parents cherish the child, they rejoice in the very presence of the child, they delight in the little things that the child does.

v. they encourage their child to attend to his or her inner experience and explore the environment which helps the child to develop – they will the good for the child.

h. Sound familiar? These specific parent figure qualities are based on attachment needs that, when met, are considered to promote secure attachment

i. Five conditions of secure attachment. Review them – Episode 23 Sinning, God images and Resilience.

Trolley to Land of Make-Believe. Fake it till you make it…

Ideal Parent Figure method in the treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder related to childhood trauma: a pilot study 2017 study, peer reviewed, European Journal of Psychotraumatology

17 French clients with Complex PTSD. Five Weeks of Psychotherapy.

Results: A significant decrease in symptom severity and attachment traumatization and a significant increase in quality of life were found, both with medium-to-large effect sizes. The 8-month follow-up assessment showed outcome stability.

Laurel Parnell: Big name in trauma therapy, EMDR circles. Tapping in:

P. 13 within each of us is a hidden potential, wellspring of untapped natural resources that we can use the healer psychological wounds and help us better navigate challenges we face in our lives. The problem is that these resources are too often buried, and we don’t know how to access them.
Nurturing Figures

a. Mary as a nurturing figure p57

b. Angel as a nurturing figure p.60

Protector Figures
Inner Wisdom Figures
Calm and Peaceful Resource Person

a. p. 30. Resources are inherent qualities, such as love, wisdom, strength, enjoy, as well as memories, experiences, mental images, or people to we can connect. Resources reside within us.

b. p. 202 Mary as a “calm and peaceful resource person.”

OK, so these are three modern therapeutic approaches that all use mother and father figures. Issues with trust and deep sense of shame, inadequacy.

Attracted to Catholicsim. Three in One God.

Attracted to a spiritual family – as a psychologist, needing father and mother. God as Father. Mary as Mother.

Mary is our real mother. Our primary mother, our first mother. Trust issues. Go to Mary. Go to Mother. Feels safer.

Action item. Practical tips:

Set aside time for relationship with Mary

a. starting small but regular

b. Building up to 20 minutes

c. Gloriously imperfect

Start with Mary My Ideal Jesus: Son of Mary take what is helpful.
Art – Marian art

a. Focus on her, who she is.

b. Not who you are. That can come later. Limited inward focus.

Breathing-- autonomic regulation
acceptance of whatever happens
confiding
listening
Writing – colors,

a. What does she say, what do you say.

b. What are the obstacles

She will help you.

We will get into the obstacles in the next episode. Perfectionism.

The RCCD community brings together people like you, people that are really interested in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm, and who are seizing this day, this moment as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth. We are adding features to the RCCD community. Today we are launching our first polls to be able to connect better with our RCCD members. Membership in the RCCD community is free for the first 30 days, $25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there, including the God Image Questionnaire, which you can take to help you sort out which of the 14 God images we have just reviewed in the last five episodes are most relevant to you. The God image questionnaire is up there. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.

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Episode 31. -- The One Essential You Must Have to Be Resilient August 31, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 31, released on August 31, 2020 and it is titled: The One Thing You Must Have to Be Resilient. The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust. Repeat. Absolute confidence in God’s providence. But to have that absolute confidence, you have to be like a infant or toddler, a parvulum if you’re a guy or a parvula if you’re a gal.

Jesus told St. Faustina, “The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them. I rejoice that they ask for much, because it is My desire to give much, very much. On the other hand, I am sad when souls ask for little, when they narrow their hearts”. (Diary 1578) Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska

Freewheeling

Up until the last episode Scripting – more like a formal presentation – some moments when I broke out and riffed.
Now much more natural, more conversational

a. I like this better anyway, to be with you

b. Getting used to not seeing you physically, but I can see you in my mind’s eye

I’m learning to trust in this process, that God and our Lady will be present and guide me, I am working on being small with this and having fun with it, much more childlike way.
That the episode doesn’t have to be perfect, and that it’s better to leave room for spontaneity and inspiration
Saves time – 6-7 hours, a lot of it fretting about wording.

a. I can put the time back into the community in other ways.

Thank you to the RCCD community members for the feedback – Jonathan, Martha, Ann, and John it helps me with my growing edge to keep trying new things.

Best Spiritual Reading Book Chapter Title ever -- Chapter 2 of Life of Union with Mary – Fr. Emile Neubert

Take Only what Applies to You”

Review: spiral back to Episode 30 – Why do we have so much difficulty trusting God – it’s because we are too grown up. We’re too big.

Eric Erickson 1902-1994

Emphasized social development rather than resolution of sexual issues
Developmental Tasks that need to be resolved in each stage
Birth to 18 month the main conflict and developmental task is trust vs. mistrust.
This is the most important phase of life. Shapes our view of the world, in addition to our personality.

a. Can I trust those who care for me, those who are near me?

b. Task is Hope – if this phase is adequately resolved, the result, Erickson said, is a sense of hope and confidence that relationships are beneficial, they are good. A sense of personal competence.

c. If successful in this, the baby develops a sense of trust, which "forms the basis in the child for a sense of identity." Failure to develop this trust will result in a deep pervasive fear and a sense that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.

Parallel in attachment theory – John Bowlby 1907-1990 psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Infants and toddlers instinctively turn to their parents in distress unless there is disorder – what Bowlby and Ainsworth found.

The formation of early healthy emotional connections to mother and father is central to identity development. Relationships are crucial, and challenged Freuds ideas about the primacy of psychic energy. Security is dependent on healthy relational bonds.

Erickson and Bowlby said that the first and greatest challenge, the first and greatest task in the natural human development is to learn to trust, to be able to trust in relationship, it’s the foundation for all other development. Gotta get that straight.

I argue that the first and greatest task, the first and greatest challenge in the spiritual life is to trust God.

We are resilient not because of our own efficacy, our own ability, our own strength, our own intelligence, our own resources, our own knowledge, our own skills, talents, money, possessions, but Catholic resilience depends on connecting to and sharing in the love and power and omniscience of God, sheltering under His wing. And if we are spiritually small in our relationship with God, when we fall, it’s not that far to the ground. We won’t get hurt.

Effects of the Fall – psychological devastation.

However the infant and the toddler will always be disappointed and wounded by the parents, because mom is not perfect, and dad is not God. Often this is totally unintentional.

Paraphrased From Nancy McWilliams (2011) Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (second edition).

Men may easily underestimate how intimidating they are to their young daughters; men’s bodies, faces, and voices are harsher than those of either of girls or their mothers, and they take some getting used to. A father who is angry seems particularly formidable, perhaps especially to a sensitive girl. If a man engages in tantrums, harsh criticism, erratic behavior, or sexual violation, he may be terrifying. A doting father who also intimidates his little girl creates a kind of approach-avoidance conflict; he is an exciting but feared object. If he seems to dominate his wife, as in a patriarchal family, the effect is magnified. His daughter will learn that girls and women are less valued than boys and men.

Oldest daughter Grace, married earlier this month, “the practice child.” Grace and me.

There are parts of us that think we are going to be annihilated if we are small, if we are vulnerable again. This is terrifying for us. Think about the differential 6 foot tall and 1600 lbs, 12 ft. tall. Able to lift a ton worse than getting in the wrestling ring with Andrew the Giant.

24 month toddler is less than 3 feet tall and about 27 lbs. , can squash the toddler like a bug. Survival is on the line.

I want to meet God on my terms, on my conditions, within my vision, within my understanding. We’re going to meet as equals. We are going to be partners, collaborators, like equally or almost equally yoked.

Trust is faith enacted in relationship. Repeat.

CCC 150 Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. Faith vs. works, reified to the realm of belief.

Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"

Faith without works is dead. James 2:26.

Matthew 9 17 And one of the crowd answered Jesus, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit; 18 and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him; and when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus[d] asked his father, “How long has he had this?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Trust is faith enacted in relationship. The father of the demoniac is asking for help to enact his faith.

I do believe, help my unbelief.

Luke 19:8…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth

Val Conlon: Trust in the Lord and in His mercy is the key to open the flood gates of His mercy. Trust is an act of our free will, which gives the Lord permission to act freely, according to His will. Our trust gives God the freedom to act mercifully. By our trust God can fulfil His plan and desire to have mercy on all.

“Most dear to Me is the soul that strongly believes in My Goodness and has complete trust in Me. I heap My Confidence upon it and give it all it asks” Divine Mercy in my soul # 453 Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska

Listener question/suggestion: This listener I’ve known for several years and since she is local, she was come by the Souls and Hearts studio to ask her question / make her suggestion.

Happy God Images

Call in leave a voicemail, email or text. Bring those questions in.

Goal is to get that trust throughout our whole being, every fiber of our being. That is an experiential process. Can’t think our way there, can’t study our way there. Advanced degrees. Defense of compensation. Corrective relational experience. So that our God images, what we know about God in our bones is accurate, it reflects who God really is.

Two responses to resist negative God images. 1) resist. 2) change the underlying God image.

It pleases God very much for us to work with these God images. This is counterintuitive, bringing things up. Example of kidnapping and disorientation. Extreme example.

From the beginning of time, God knew all the mistakes our earthly parents would make, all the sins of commission, all the sins of omission, great and small, every imperfection, every failing and shortcoming, and all the impact all those would have on us. He knew all the details of our upbringing, every trauma, every attachment injury, every relational wound from the most minor pinprick to the greatest harms we would experience.

He doesn’t actively will harm to befall us. Allows it – in his passive will, allows other to fail to be evil, but he has a plan to make up for every one of those injuries.

Mother Mary and God the Father to make up for all deficiencies in natural parent. Not just spiritual parents. He knew that parents would fail:

Isaiah 49:14-16 But Zion said, “the Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

My Ideal: Jesus, Son of Mary Fr. Emile Neubert Mary as our Real Mother, First Mother, Spiritual Mother .

Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombière

A lot of the developmental work of children is done by their parents, especially from 0 to 24 months. Much of it happens before the age of reason. The child can’t do it by himself.

Trust of our Lord in the flight to Egypt. Herod (murderous – infanticide) 429 miles as the crow flies. Strangers in a strange land

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Psalm 138:6 The Lord is on high, but cares for the lowly and knows the proud from afar.

Smallness (humility) versus pride. “The proud I know from afar” because they won’t let Me be close. We have to be small in order to be near God. Example of the Pharisees versus the publican. God wants relationship.

The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust. Repeat. Absolute confidence in God’s providence. But to have that absolute confidence, you have to be like a infant or toddler

The trust of Blessed Faustina in Jesus was beyond all abandonment. Jesus said to St. Faustina, "your duty will be to trust entirely in My Mercy, My duty will be to give you all that you need. I am making Myself dependent on your trust" (Diary 548).

We have to have trust in order to love others. Where that trust is really matters. Do we trust ourselves? Our significant other? What is our anchor, our mainstay?

Eternal consequences

Doesn’t matter why we flee from God.

We will have to resolve these issues in purgatory, including natural-level issues. Nothing disordered gets into heaven.

Sneak peak to next episode – we will go back to the secular resilience literature and look at what it has to say in the light of these last two episodes.

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Episode 30. How Small and Childlike are We Supposed to Be? -- August 24, 2020.

Let’s jump right in with this critical, central question. Why is it that we have such a hard time trusting God? Why is it that our confidence in God is so inconsistent, why is it that we are so fickle? Why is it so hard for us to have the absolute confidence in God that He merits, that he deserves from us? That’s what we will be addressing in episode 30 of Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, released on August 24, 2020 from the Souls and Hearts studio in Indianapolis.

The title for today’s episode is How Small and Childlike are we Supposed to Be? We’re going to get into the psychological side of this question of childlike trust in particular. There are other sides to the question – the spiritual side, the moral side – we’ll address those sides in passing. But what is so often neglected, so often denied, so often ignored, and thus so unknown and unavailable to so many Catholics – what we really need so badly -- is a realistic, accurate understanding of the psychological factors, the factors in the natural realm that get in the way of us trusting our God and our Lady.

We’ve certainly touched on some of these factors before, so let’s review for a moment, let’s go back to take a look at what we’ve developed in previous episodes. So here is the causal chain as we’ve described it so far:

We have distorted God images in our bones, we have distorted God images in the emotional, intuitive parts of us. The trouble happens when we give in to those God images, we let them dominate us, we let them take over, we default to them, and we act in accord with those false God images. Then, our self-image deteriorates. Meanwhile, we drift away from God or even flee from him. All the while, we are losing our peace, joy, well-being. When that gets bad enough, we become symptomatic – anxious, depressed, apathetic, hopeless, panicky, obsessive, whatever our symptoms are.

So let’s back up one more link in the causal chain and ask the question: What’s the main psychological reason we don’t resist our problematic God images? I’m again talking psychological reasons here, not just spiritual reasons like having a particular vice.

Psychologically, we lose track of who God really is. We don’t God clearly in those moments, and we waver, we are tempted to doubt, we are inclined to fall again into our destructive patterns, whatever those are for us. We are lured by our false God images into ways of thinking, feeling, desiring and acting that are harmful to us and to others.

Why Do We Mistrust God and Mary So Much ? I’ll give you the answer. It’s because we are too grown up. We are trying to be way too big. Actively mistrusting – fearing. Or just not considering God at all.

That what we are like when we act big.

We know this. We know the Bible verses. We’ve heard them. But do we really get what they are saying?

Matthew 18

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

2 And calling to him a child (RSV, NAB), “little child” (DR) (ESV)he put him in the midst of them,

3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me;

6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,[a] it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

1 In illa hora accesserunt discipuli ad Iesum dicentes: “ Quis putas maior est in regno caelorum? ”.
2 Et advocans parvulum, statuit eum in medio eorum
3 et dixit: “ Amen dico vobis: Nisi conversi fueritis et efiiciamini sicut parvuli, non intrabitis in regnum caelorum.
4 Quicumque ergo humiliaverit se sicut parvulus iste, hic est maior in regno caelorum.
5 Et, qui susceperit unum parvulum talem in nomine meo, me suscipit.
6 Qui autem scandalizaverit unum de pusillis istis, qui in me credunt, expedit ei, ut suspendatur mola asinaria in collo eius et demergatur in profundum maris.

very little, very small, tiny. petty, insignificant, Tiny. Like babies. Like sheep in their understanding.

When we approach God: like that. When sent out as sheep among wolves Matthew 10:16 Wise (Shrewd) as serpents, simple as doves. Harmless, plain, sincere, without guile.

Without me you can do nothing.

19 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:19)

30 “I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. (John 5:30)

Matthew 19

13 Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people;

14 but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

15 And he laid his hands on them and went away.

13 Tunc oblati sunt ei parvuli, ut manus eis imponeret et oraret; discipuli autem increpabant eis.
14 Iesus vero ait: “ Sinite parvulos et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire; talium est enim regnum caelorum ”.
15 Et cum imposuisset eis manus, abiit inde.

Parvulus: Childhood. But emphasis on infancy. Little, slight, unimportant, very young, insufficient, indiscreet, not able to understand. Diminutive of Parvus -- small, little, ignorable, unimportant.

A story of cousin Ryan. 3 or 4 years old. Dapper seersucker suit and matching cap. Christmas morning – big deal on Mom’s side of the family. I was young teenager. Wanting to be a big man. Ryan was playing.

For St. Therese of Lisieux, everything is based on and flows from spiritual childhood asserts Fr. François Jamart in The Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Therese of Lisieux. A mindset, a heartset, a bodyset, a soulset that is all about being little, abandoning oneself to God as a little child in all things.

It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to love Letter 197 to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart.

But that is much easier said than done.

There are parts of us that think we are going to be annihilated if we are small, if we are vulnerable again.

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant[b] does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another.

Eric Erickson, psychoanalyst – psychosocial development rather than psychosexual development. Personality developed in a series of stages – looked a the entire lifespan of individuals.

Developmental Tasks that need to be resolved. Birth to 18 month the main conflict and developmental task is trust vs. mistrust. This is the most important phase of life. Shapes our view of the world, in addition to our personality.

Can I trust those who care for me, those who are near me?

Task is Hope – if this phase is adequately resolved, the result, Erickson said, is a sense of hope and confidence that relationships are beneficial, they are good. A sense of personal competence.

Hungry, thirsty, cold, sick, tired, in need of a diaper change – in need of reassurance, whatever the issue is. Crying is important, it’s a means of communication.

Care from parents is critical. – do my needs get met?

Parallel in attachment theory – John Bowlby.

· Safe haven: Returning to the attachment figure for comfort and safety in the face of a fear or threat.

· Secure base: The attachment figure acts as a base of security from which the child can explore the surrounding environment.

Evolutionary emphasis

We can trust other people, sometimes, but it’s harder with God. We can’t see Him in the same way.

Action item: Going back to 0-24 months. Family Stories, older siblings, parents. What was it like for you. Father – Vietnam.

Break Point

Action item Being Little

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Episode 29. Magic Genie Gods and Party-Pooper Gods, August 17, 2020.

Brief review: let’s go back and review, what are God images again?

My God image how my heart feels God to be in the moment. My God image is who my emotions tell me that God in this present moment. My God image is very subjective, often driven by factors that are outside of my awareness in the moment, it can be miles away from who I know God to be when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and all is well with me and the world. . So it is critical to understand is that your God images are not necessarily who you profess God to be with your intellect and your will. They are the subjective, unfiltered, spontaneous, passion-driven representations of God that can vary wildly, sometimes even from moment to moment.

Similarly, my self-image is who I feel myself to be in the present moment, it is who my passions are telling me that I am right this minute. M self-images are much more driven by emotion, much more intuitive, subjective, and they also vary a lot more from moment to moment. My self image in the moment fits with my God image in the moment. Sometimes the self-image can drive the God-image, and sometimes the God image drives the self-image.

If you want more about God images, check out episodes 22, 23, and 24 of this podcast where I go into the concepts in much more depth.

Jessica from Texas has been intrigued by God images – she’s taking us another step with this question:

How do God images affect our relationships and reactions to others? Repeat. This is a great question.

We’ve discussed God images and self-images and how they differ from our God concept and our self-concepts. Similarly, our God images and self-images impact how we see others in the moment.

Let’s consider an example. If I’m really struggling with an Elitist Aristocrat God image, where my passions are telling me in the moment that God doesn’t need me, he’s too good for me, he has other people that he prefers, others who are much more in his favor, upon whom he bestows his gifts, his graces, and his love, with little for me. If that’s how I’m seeing God in my God image, and my self-image is that I’m left out, excluded, denied, and the private of good things from God, this God image and self-image combination is going to have an impact on how I see others. For example, I might experience jealousy toward my brother Phil whom I consider to be in God’s favor. I may resent Phil, and if I give into this image of him, I will treat Phil out of that jealousy, by holding back good things that I could give him because I feel my brother Phil is already getting so much from God. Why should I give him anything – he already has so much and I get so little from God. I need to keep what I have.

Let’s take another example. With his Elitist Aristocrat God image, 24-year-old Ian might feel inadequate around Tina in their Catholic Young Adult Group. Ian sees God favoring Tina in so many ways. Ian feels unworthy of being around Tina, and therefore he refuses to engage with her, in order to avoid an exacerbation of his sense of shame. So even though Ian is romantically attracted to Tina, he doesn’t ask her out because of the inhibiting effect of his God image and the self-image that goes with that Elitist Aristocrat God image.

God images and their corresponding self-images impact the way we see all aspects of our lives. Our perceptions of reality are profoundly influenced by our God images and are self-images, and this extends not just to how we experience others, but it reaches to the furthest corners of our minds and impacts all our internal impressions, not only of God and self, but of everything. Our God images and are self-images create filters that color our perceptions of everything that has happened, that is happening, and that will happen in our lives. Many of these perceptions and impressions do not enter into our awareness, but they impact us just the same.

In fact, I argue that we build an implicit religion around each of our individual God images. Let’s take this slow and easy, because this has some conceptual depth to it.

The Catholic Dictionary defines religion as the moral virtue by which a person is disposed to render to God the worship and service he deserves. [Repeat]

Each warped God image demands certain things from us and informs us about how he is to be worshipped and served. For example, the Demanding Drill Sergeant God image always wants more and more, he wants me to always strive harder, to exhaust myself in prayer and service to others. So in my religion to that God, I put in long hours of volunteering, I push others to do the same, and I treat both myself and others harshly. The Vain Pharisee God image demands that I grovel before him, and humiliate myself in order to give him constant homage, and credit for all success. Therefore, in my worship and service to the Vain Pharisee God I’m extremely stringent and down on myself, and I degrade myself in my prayer and cut myself down in my Bible study group. The Outtogetcha Police Detective God image insist on perfection, and enjoys catching me in sins of commission. Therefore, part of my religion is to be very conservative, to only take on what I feel I can do without any mistakes, so I avoid the messy business of relating to others in a deep way and stay on the periphery of my parish community.

Sometimes we can infer our God image from the religion we seem to be practicing. For example, if I notice I am not praying, what might that say about my recently activated God images?

So Jessica, thank you for this question of How do God images affect our relationships and reactions to others? How we react to our God images and how we react to our self-images in the moment colors are perceptions of everything.

In the previous four episodes of the Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem! Podcast, we have covered twelve God images from Bill and Kristi Gaultiere’s 1989 book Mistaken Identities. I’m adding much more color and background to these God imagers, to make them come even more alive for us Catholics in our present day with the challenges of the coronavirus. With a little imagination, you can see how these God images impact everything if we let them, if we give into them. There’s no corner of our lives no detail of our lives that will escape being affected when we default to our problematic God images.

So the final two God images will cover in this sequence are the Magic Genie God image and the Party-Pooper God image. Let’s go ahead and get into those God images now.

Magic Genie God Image: The Magic Genie God image is really an interesting one. In this God image, God gives me what I if I do what he what he wants me to do. God and I make deals with each other. If I follow the right steps, the right formula, I get what I from God. God is like a divine vending machine. I provide the right inputs, I insert my spiritual quarters, and I get the spiritual and material merchandise that I desire. The implicit religion with the magic Genie God is very transactional. I do what God wants me to do, and he bestows the blessings I want upon me. I scratch his back, he scratches my back. The implicit religion with the magic Genie God is reflected in the Protestant prosperity gospel movement, also known as the health and wealth gospel. The prosperity gospel message is that financial blessings and physical health are the will of God for its followers, and that greater faith, upbeat speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth. In the prosperity gospel, Holy Scripture is seen primarily as a contract between God and man. If I deepen my faith in God, he will deliver security and prosperity. See you can see how an implicit religion such as the prosperity gospel derives from the magic Genie God image.

Bible verse: the Bible verse the Gaultieres chose was Job 4:6 when Eliphaz the Temanite, when he speaks to Job. Eliphaz is chiding Job, and promoting a very transactional understanding of God. Eliphaz follows what Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitsch call a “traditional doctrine of retribution, which holds that a man reaps from God whatever he sows by his actions – sin brings him suffering; righteousness brings him rewards. In chapters 4 and 5, Eliphaz is telling Job that he must have sinned, he must have offended God because of all the misfortunes Job has suffered.

Job 4:6 Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?

5:8 as for me, I would seek God, and to God what I commit my cause here Eliphaz is implying that Job has not been seeking God or committing his cause to God because of the misfortunes.

5:11 he sets on high those who were lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety

Self-image: For people with a Magic Genie God image, there is a strong sense of needing to be in control in the relationship with God. If I have this God image, I feel that I’m not worth being loved by God just for me. I have to do certain things, I have to perform in a certain way in order to get God to love and help me. However, there is also a curious sense of entitlement. If I do what I believe God wants me to do, then I am entitled to the blessings that I desire. I have a right to claim those blessings because he has promised them to me in our transactional relationship. . If things seem to be going my way, I can inflate with a sense of self-satisfaction and mastery.

If I experience challenges and difficulties in life, I will look to see if I failed in any of my contractual obligations with God, following Eliphaz’s recommendations. Suffering has little redemptive value to me, and in fact, I may have a deep assumption that it could be avoided altogether if I merely do the right things in the right way at the right time. After all, my magic Genie God wouldn’t want me to suffer.

Attachment history: What does the relational history of those with a Magic Genie God often look like? Not surprisingly, children who grew up with a very transactional relationship with their parents frequently develop such assumptions about God. Some parents are very adept at quid pro quo relationships with their children. These parents know how to give desirable things to their children, but generally see frustrating their children as undesirable and negative. Parents who overemphasize the importance of material possessions or who are preoccupied with health concerns at the expense of other existential concerns can give rise to the formation of Magic Genie God images and their children. Also, children and adults who have experienced success in transactional relationships, who have thrived in a worldly sense in their environments can bring this into their spiritual lives as well, hoping in some way that God will engage with them in similar ways, ways that they have found gratifying and profitable.

Coronavirus crisis: How might the coronavirus crisis impact Magic Genie God images? First, preoccupations with health and material possessions are running much higher these days, as both can be threatened due to the coronavirus and its effects. This can cause those who have Magic Genie God images to believe that they are failing in their end of the transaction. This can lead to resentment, and it can exacerbate questions and concerns about being loved by God. Our present coronavirus moment as an opportunity to break free of Magic Genie God images. People may also have their magic Genie God images activated when the criticize others who have suffered misfortunes that they have not suffered. They may assume that those who have had health compromises or who have lost jobs, income or standards of living have violated their contractual agreements with God. These critics, like Eliphaz, may also be openly critical of those like Job who have suffered. And these critics do so without understanding the actual spiritual realities, of God’s mysterious ways.

Vignette: Vivian was raised by very successful, career-oriented parents. Her father was an lawyers, one of the best patent-law attorneys in Missouri, highly accomplished. Her mother rose to be the charge nurse at the ICU at the Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis. Success seemed to come easily to both of them, and they both wanted their children to be successful in the same ways as they were, achieving status and influence both in their professional communities and in the St. Louis Catholic community. There active in the pro-life movement, and were major donors to various Catholic causes.

When Vivian wanted things from her parents, she now to get them. The terms of the transactional way that her parents worked were not hard to discern. Because she was talented, she was willing to be molded into her parents image, more so than most children. She readily accepted the perks that her parents’ status could grant her. Her parents were well-connected at St. Louis University and it was decided she would go there. Vivian attributed much of her worldly success to her prayer life and her connection with God, neglecting to see how privileged her upbringing had been, how many natural gifts had been bestowed on her. She believed that she could make good happen out of just about every situation, by her own efforts and in her relationship with God.

When she met Paul, who is studying at a local culinary Institute, she was intrigued. He was handsome, tall, physically strong. She liked the fact that he grew up on the quote wrong side of the tracks” and seemed a little rebellious. Vivian wasn’t fully conscious of how she saw him as a challenge, a man to be reformed, to be made over in her own image, to be rescued from his own darkness. And when she married him at age 24, against her parents’ wishes and the recommendations of some of her closest friends, she really didn’t know what she was getting into. She wasn’t prepared for the rough ride that marriage would be, the ups and downs, and how focused her husband was on his career. She railed at God from a position of entitlement demanding how he could’ve let her marry Paul and chafing under the responsibilities of married life and motherhood. She racked her brain to try to figure out what she had done wrong. She doubled her prayer time and it seemed like nothing was working.

Vivian knew that her parents were disappointed in her choice of spouse, but was still surprised when they cut off financial support, expecting the young couple to make it on their own. Now, due to her husband’s financial decisions, they were in a lot of debt, relying on her income to float them through the era of the coronavirus. Vivian was angry at God, feeling like he had defaulted on his end of their arrangement, and she was becoming more and more rebellious, which further alienated her from her parents. Her parents, for their part, suggested in a variety of ways that had she listened to them about Paul, she would be having none of these difficulties, and that her life would have been wonderful, like their lives.

Party-Pooper God Image: The Party-Pooper God is really a downer. He is depressing, downbeat, he is pessimistic, disapproving, and unhelpful. He keeps giving me the message that my efforts won’t work, that I won’t succeed, that I won’t make it, no matter how hard I try. This God tells me that my hopes and dreams are foolish, that I am dust and ashes, but I want to mount to anything. God seems unconcerned about the effects of these messages on me.

Bible verse: Psalm 39: I said, “I will guard my ways that I may not sin with the tongue; I will bridle my mouth, so long as the wicked are in my presence.” I was dumb and silent, I held my peace to no avail; my distress grew worse, my hurt became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; and I spoke with my tongue: “Lord, let me know my end, what and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is! Behold, thou hast made my days a few hand breaths, and my lifetime is as nothing in thy sight. Surely every man stands as a mere breath! Surely every man goes about as a shadow! Surely for not are they in turmoil; man heaps up, and knows not who will gather!

Deliver me from all my transgressions. Make me not the scorn of fools! I am dumb, I do not open my mouth; for it is thou who hast done it. Remove thy stroke from me; I am spent by the blows of thy hand. When thou dost chasten man with rebukes for sin, thou dost consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely every man is a mere breath!

Self-image: the self-image of those that have a Party-Pooper God image is characterized by hopelessness. I don’t feel worthy of having a God-given purpose in life, of not having a special plan. I don’t understand why God wants to shut down good things when they seem to start happening for me and why life has to be so hard for me. I can feel singled out for being dumped on. I feel very disconnected from God, like he doesn’t really see how his negativity affects me. I have low motivation and low levels of hope. I also am afraid to hope, for fear of being disappointed yet again. Nothing works out the way I wanted to.

Attachment history: So what does the attachment history of those with a Party-Pooper God image often look like? It’s not uncommon for this God image to develop when there is significant depression in the family of origin, either in the parents, or in the child himself or herself. Those with a melancholic temperament are more prone to develop this kind of God image. It is also not uncommon when children have struggled at different points of separation and individuation, such as at six years old in making the adjustment to the demands of school. Retreat into this kind of God image can help them make sense of their experience of failure -- I failed, not because I didn’t give it my all, but because God didn’t want me to succeed. Those who have had difficult adjustments can externalize responsibility by blaming their Party-Pooper God image for the troubles.

Coronavirus crisis: so how does the coronavirus impact the Party-Pooper God image? For those who felt like they were struggling and who were downcast and felt downtrodden prior to the coronavirus and its effects, the coronavirus can make things so much worse. They can have a sense like in the lyrics from Roy Clark and Buck Owens that “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” In the present era, bitterness and resentment can rise up as those with Party-God images feel like God continues to strip away the remaining good things in their lives, almost in a nonchalant way, regardless of their cries and pleas.

Vignette: Paul had always considered himself a survivor. He grew up in a home with a very depressed mother and a father who was almost never around and who spent his income profligately on himself, leaving Paul and his siblings in second-hand clothes. Paul always felt like he had to work three times harder for one third of the benefits that others got by not even trying, he made it through he graduated from high school, and then paid his way through his training at the Culinary Institute of St. Louis, with the dream of one day owning a restaurant. He went through life with a chip on his shoulder, leading him into unnecessary conflict with chefs and restaurant managers, which got him fired, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not. Paul felt that he never got his big break.

He prayed to God with dogged persistence, though, for his dream of owning restaurant. In January 2020, at the age of 32, married to Vivian for the past 8 years, and with two young children, he believed that God was finally smiling on him. By using all his savings, cashing out his wife’s 401K, and taking on a considerable debt, he bought a little restaurant on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri that he intended to change from a small town, local diner to something much more upscale. Just as he was about to open in April after extensive renovations, Missouri was locked down due to the coronavirus. His restaurant was shut down, no revenue, no established reputation and his cuisine was not amenable to take-out orders. Paul was devastated. He felt that things had finally come together, and God popped the balloons, pulled the plug on the music and shut the lights off on his party.

As Paul became more desperate and preoccupied about his restaurant and his financial situation, he had more and more difficulty seeing the beautiful things that he did have in his relationship with his wife and in his children. His spiritual field of vision narrowed to the failure of his restaurant. He felt beaten and battered by God’s careless disregard for his situation and he blamed God.

So there is the Party-Pooper God image.

Experiential Exercise

Create a space and time for this – quiet not likely to be disturbed, for at least 10 minutes. Shut your phone off, close out email, have a pen and paper or a recording device handy. No pressing engagements, no hurry. This is not therapy, but it is an experiential exercise to help you learn about yourself.

Break Point.

Preparation

Big open heart toward yourself. Willingness to really know yourself, the secrets of your own heart. Willingness to accept whatever you find in your heart, in your soul, in your mind, in your body. To hear what you might not have been willing or able to hear before. A willingness to be surprised.

I’m going to ask you two simple questions and I want you to write down the first things that comes to mind, unfiltered, uncensored. Stop the podcast after each one to write your responses down, as fast as they come to mind, your responses. Or, if you prefer, record your responses as you say them out loud. The important thing is to put your initial, uncensored, unfiltered responses into words so you can be able to work with them in an entirely different way. You can stop at any time if this seems too uncomfortable.

Who is God?

Who am I?

Note the parts of your responses that stand out to you. Reasons for each of the responses. Some of this may really be obvious.

Action item: Reach out to someone about what you wrote down. Share it, discuss it in relationship with someone else in the mystical body of Christ, your confessor, spiritual direction, a friend, your spouse, somebody. Share it with me if you want to – crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594 or if you are in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, the RCCD community, you can private message me or you can include your responses, your reactions on our discussion of this podcast episode, episode 29. But continue to work with your responses to the questions: Who is God? Who am I?

So here’s a sneak peek into next week’s episode.

Ryan from Texas asked “how do we connect with Mary. Why so some Catholics seem to have a really strong connection to Our Lady and others don't? Is it related to biologic differences between men and women or is it more experiential and related to relationships with our earthly mothers? What other psychological factors impact that relationship?"

I really like this question.

In the next episode, we will be address Mary images – how our internal representations of our spiritual mother are initially formed and what psychological factors influence change in our images of Mary over time. You’ll want to be there for that, don’t miss it.

Patroness and Patron

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Episode 28. Police Detective Gods, Pushy Salesman Gods, and Heartbreaker Gods – August 10, 2020

So will cover three more God images today, the Outtogetcha Police Detective God, Pushy Salesman God, and Heartbreaker God. In the previous three episodes, numbers 25, 26, 27, we covered a total of nine God images.

Brief review: let’s just spiral back and review, what are God images again?

My God image is my gut-felt sense of God -- it’s how my heart feels God to be in the moment. My God image is who my emotions insist that God is right here, right now. My God image is very subjective, it can be miles away from who I know God to be intellectually, who I profess God to be. So it is critical to understand is that your God images are not necessarily who you profess God to be with your intellect in your will. They are the subjective, unfiltered, spontaneous, passion-driven representations of God that can vary wildly, sometimes even from moment to moment.

That’s a brief review of God images and self-images, but if you want more of a conceptual background for God images, check out episodes 22, 23, and 24 where I much more in-depth explanation of them.

So what is the connection between problematic God images and resilience? Because remember, we are in a sequence in this podcast that is all about resilience. Here is where we get right down to it. We need a deep and abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providence in order to be resilient. That resilience is an effect – it’s a consequence of the deep, abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providential care for us, His love for us. If you have a deep, abiding, childlike confidence in God and His providential love for you, for you specifically, you will be resilient. Period. Full Stop. Let me say that again, this is absolutely critical to understand. If you have a deep, abiding, childlike confidence in God and His providential love for you, for you specifically, you will be resilient.

Let’s keep in mind how the main psychological reason why we don’t have that deep abiding confidence in God is because we don’t know Him as He truly is. We have problematic God images. We give into those problematic God images, we default to them, we let them dominate us. And these distorted God images lie to us about who God is. They whisper half-truths to us and they draw us away from the real God when we give in to them, when we don’t resist them.

These distorted God images also lie to us about who we are, leading to distorted self-images. Note please don’t misunderstand me. There usually are at least some elements of truth even in the most distorted God images and the most warped self-images. The messages from these distorted God-images and these inaccurate self images aren’t purely false. The messages actually have some kernel of truth in them, which can make it confusing for us.

So here is the causal chain:

We have distorted God images à we give in to those God images, we let them dominate us à our self-image deteriorates à we drift away from God or we flee from him à we lose peace, joy, well-being à we become symptomatic – anxious, depressed, apathetic, hopeless, whatever our symptoms are.

Too often, we tried to intervene at the end of the causal chain. We want to intervene at the symptomatic level. For example, we may take antidepressants to try to knock out our depressive symptoms. Or we might use progressive muscle relaxation or guided imagery or grounding techniques to reduce our anxiety. I’m not condemning these practices, they can be helpful for symptom management. But no medication in the world is going to correct a dysfunctional, distorted God image on its own. Have you ever heard of any psychotropic drug that in its slick advertising promises to improve your relationship with God?

Symptom-focused approaches don’t get at the root causes of our psychological distress. They can create some space with symptom relief for us to more effectively address the root causes, but symptom focused approaches don’t heal those root causes on their own.

It’s also important to note that just because we have anxiety or sadness doesn’t mean we have a distorted God image driving it. Our Lord experienced intense grief. He experienced anxiety in the garden of Gethsemane. This was not a psychological disorder. Our Lady was anxious when searching for 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem. This was not because she had some kind of anxiety disorder or emotional dysfunction. So it’s important to note that not all negative emotional experiences or all psychological distress are an effect of problematic God images.

So we had a great meeting last Friday night there were 13 of us from the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community in that meeting for a question-and-answer session about God images. It was an excellent discussion. This message came through clearly: Dr. Peter, Dr. Peter, help us resolve are problematic God images help us to work through them help us to heal from these burdensome distorted God images that drag us down. I get it. I hear you. I’m with you. I am working on how to present solutions to you.

I am going ask for little patience. I have nearly 2 decades of experience helping people one-on-one to work through their God images, and while I have a lot left to learn, I do know some things about it. I am still very much sorting through how best to address God images in a podcast format, and how best to assist people with their problematic God images in the RCCD community. Together, we are going to go through some trial and error with that.

Right now, we are really focused on identifying different types of God images. Identification of God images is an essential prerequisite to actually doing the God image work. So I’m excited that people want to work on their God images.

I’ve started having people sign up on the interest list for a course on God images that would focus specifically on resolving them. If you’re interested in getting on that list let me know at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594. If you are already a member of the RCCD community, you can reach me by private messaging me on our app -- that is actually the fastest way to get in touch with me. If you are in RCCD member already, and you are not on the app please let me know, we’d love to have you join us on that format. We’re really moving most of our interactions to the app.

If you are not yet a member of the RCCD community and you’ve been thinking about it – and I know some of you have been thinking about it – take the leap. It’s free for the first 30 days, $25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there, too many to list now. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community. If you can’t find it, let me know and I will personally help you through the registration.

The RCCD community brings together people like you, people that are really interested in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm, and who are seizing this day, this moment as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth. And we are doing it together, we are growing together in relationship, so friendships are forming in our community, connections are being made, and there is a lot of sharing and support. Could you use more support from like minded Catholics – could you benefit from more connection with people like you who are interested in psychology, Catholicism, resilience and breaking free from whatever is holding us back?

If you’ve got everything you need right now in that department, I’m happy for you, that’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing. But if you are missing something, especially around relational connections, then maybe, just maybe, our community may be a good fit for you.

All right, enough with the marketing now, let’s get back to content. Today, we are diving into three new problematic God images: the Pushy Salesman God, the Outtogetcha Police Detective God, and the Heartbreaker God. Bill and Kristi Gaultiere discuss these God images in their 1989 book Mistaken Identities, and I’m adding much more color and background to them, to make them come even more alive for us Catholics in our present day with the challenges of the coronavirus.

Outtogetcha Police Detective God: this God is caught up in demanding perfection from me. It definitely sees me, he watches me carefully, he’s looking for when I make mistakes, and he holds my sins against me. He is legalistic, and his vigilance never ceases. He spies on me, I can feel his eyes on me, and this Outtogetcha Police Detective God loves to catch me in the exact moment moment of sinning. He never misses my smallest error or imperfection, and he tallies all of them, great and small in his book. He is stingy with forgiveness, my offenses are never blotted out, no erasures are ever made in his book. He focuses on an exacting justice, carefully measured out. He wants to put me in the dock and condemn me, but to do it in a way that is justified and ordered so that he can meet out punishment to me and be satisfied. In his Muppet characters Statler and Waldorf, who set up in their balcony with negative running commentary about the rest of the cast, delighting in all the cast members’ mistakes.

Bible verse: Job 10:5-7 Are your days like the days of a mortal, and are your years like a human lifetime, That you seek for guilt in me and search after my sins, Even though you know that I am not wicked, and that none can deliver me out of your hand?

Self-image: when my Outtogetcha Police Detective God image is activated, I get very nervous about making mistakes. I become cautious. I don’t expect second chances. I don’t feel accepted if I am imperfect. I am constantly monitoring myself. I have difficulties being spontaneous. It’s easy for me to slip into scrupulosity, to consider my imperfections as sins. I mistake my overly demanding conscience as the voice of God. I may secretly believe that others are soft and morally lax, content with lukewarmness. I am like a hamster on a wheel of moral perfection, striving toward faultlessness and perfect virtue, but I never make it, no matter how fast I make the wheel spin. I’m caught up in the heresy of Pelagianism, believing that I have to earn God’s love through a process of self-perfection. I feel like God picks on me.

Attachment history: Individuals who develop an Outtogetcha Police Detective God image frequently were raised in homes where the parents were very invested in upright and proper moral behavior. These parents often saw the children as extensions of themselves, and were preoccupied with how their children’s actions reflected on them. Parents like this and needed their children to behave well in order to feel better about themselves. Sometimes, the opposite type of parenting can also generate an Outtogetcha Police Detective God image. When children have parents who are absent and disengaged, they can impose their own rigid moral codes on themselves, untempered by mature reasoning, and unbuffered by compassion.

Coronavirus crisis: when things seem very difficult for me in the coronavirus era, and my Outtogetcha Police Detective God image is activated, I might initially run faster and faster on my hamster will, but then I become exhausted, and and then I can then act out in various ways. Binging on food, alcohol, movies, video games, shopping, pornography – all of those behaviors are not uncommon with this kind of God image. My attitude can become, “If I’m going to be bad, I’m going to be bad. I can’t please God anyway.” The harder I try, the further I fall behind. And God just keeps making it harder and harder for me. Sometimes, people with this Outtogetcha Police Detective God image can become more demanding of others when they are stressed by all of the effects of the coronavirus. Thus, you might experience an uptick in criticism from a supervisor or superior with this God image activated, who is stressed in the current environment.

Vignette: Sarah felt that you never measured up to her father’s expectations. In grade school, when she brought home a 98% on a spelling test, he would grill her about the one word she missed, having her spell it repeatedly at supper. He always discussed how he had such high expectations for Sarah because he loved her, and wanted what was best for her. Sarah’s father saw so much potential in Sarah -- she could have the world, if she just put her mind to it. Sarah was the oldest of five children. Academically, intellectually, she was the most gifted of all her siblings. Her father put together a demanding regimen, designed to “bring out the best in her.” When she protested, when she pushed back as a child, he told her how when she was older, she would thank him for challenging her to be her best.

When she was a teenager, Sarah’s father read her diary. He snooped around and he would eavesdrop on her conversations. He had a way of ferreting information out of her friends and their parents. He always referred to Sarah as “my girl” and “the girl after my heart.” He held success tantalizingly just out of Sarah’s reach. When she won her high school sectionals the 400 meters, her father didn’t celebrate her success – rather, he immediately went to discussing the level of competition at regionals, and her possibilities for making it to the state. She feared making mistakes. She didn’t expect to be accepted. When her boyfriend Jason was also critical of her, there was some comfort in that, because it was familiar. Her father zeroed in on the Jason’s imperfections, categorizing them, and offering suggestions for how we could improve himself. Neither Sarah nor her boyfriend Jason felt comfortable at her house.

When she didn’t get in to Swarthmore College, her father was furious. He demanded to see her essays again, and nitpicked at them, even though he had reviewed them before. He harped on how she must have underperformed during the interview with admissions staff and reviewed other ways in which she might not have measured up.

Sarah had little connection with a merciful, compassionate God. She saw God is someone she always had to work hard to please, but she would never succeed. Never succeed. She was very dominated by an Outtogetcha Police Detective God image. Having been raised Catholic, primarily by her retiring and dominated mother, she said prayers, but they seemed really flat and fruitless. She received the sacraments and said the right things in CCD class to complete the program, but after confirmation, she left religion behind. She just wanted God to leave her alone.

So Sarah went off to Vassar for college, not far away from where her maternal grandparents lived in upstate New York. She heard her father’s voice in her head, with his incessant demands. She longed for relief from all this internal pressure. She needed some kind of spirituality, but she didn’t know what she was looking for.

Pushy Salesman God: So the pushy salesman God, this God is ill-mannered, he’s demanding, he wants to force me to do things his way. He wants to shape me into mold he has made for me. He doesn’t really respect my boundaries or limits. He will try to subtly trick me with his glittering, dazzling smile and a veneer of friendliness. If that doesn’t work, he is willing to force me to get what he wants from me. There’s no collaboration or cooperation with this God. It’s his way or the highway. The demand is all for conformity. If I want to be a good Catholic, if I want to be in relationship with him, I’ve got to buy what he’s selling, I’ve got to play the role he’s chosen for me. My desires, my opinions, my preferences, my ideas, my individuality, none of this makes any difference to the Pushy Salesman God. This is a God who takes advantage of my human weakness, he tries to manipulate me, he uses heavy-handed tactics to get what he wants from me. If I do what the Pushy Salesman God wants, sometimes I get meager rewards, but sometimes I don’t. He’s not reliable.

Bible verse: The Bible verse the Gaultieres chose for the Pushy Salesman God image is again from Job, chapter 14, verses 19 to 20. God, you destroy the hope of man. You forever overpower him, and he departs. You change his appearance and send him away.

So here you can see the deep power differential, how God is forcing me, overpowering me, and then sending me away, hopeless. There’s no sense of mutuality, of collaboration.

Self-image: When my Pushy Salesman God image is activated, I feel like I have no value unless I’m dancing the steps that God has laid out for me. I feel used when I follow this Pushy Salesman God. I feel bereft and rejected if I don’t follow him. I can’t set any limits or boundaries with God. I have to be vigilant to keep him from manipulating me. It’s not safe to be close to him, but I can’t do without him. I am distrustful and suspicious of him, I have to keep one eye on him at all times, because he’s a sneak. I wonder why he treats me this way, what’s wrong with me that I deserve such maltreatment. Maybe I am really worthless and deserving of being used and even abused. Many years ago, a client told me about male exotic dancer who went by the moniker “Moist Towelette” -- that was his stage name, “Moist Towelette.” That self-given name captures a real sense of being used and thrown away, and it captures a sense of the self-image that goes with the Pushy Salesman God image.

Attachment history: Not surprisingly, the history of people with a frequent Pushy Salesman God image is often characterized by relationships in which more powerful others took advantage of the person, usually when the person was vulnerable because he or she was young, or in difficult circumstances. Often, people with this God image are very ambivalent, very conflicted about whether to trust or not. Trusting others means losing my sense of integrity. Keeping my sense of integrity means I will be isolated, alone, rejected.

Often, people with this God image have greater than average innate needs for relationship and connection. These are people who need people, they want to be in relationship. Issues around trust, safety and security are most prominent. They do feel seen by powerful others, including God, but often as objects of desire to be used and discarded. Childhood sexual abuse can freely give rise to a Pushy Salesman God image, particularly if the abuser was frequently around, and the abuse went on over time, and there was a mix of punishments and rewards that went with the experience of abuse.

Coronavirus crisis: So let’s bring this into the coronavirus era. How does the coronavirus impact the Pushy Salesman God image. Right now, people are experiencing a sense of loss in many different areas. It’s not uncommon for this to be tied to an assumption that I have not been pleasing the Pushy Salesman God. Or alternatively, it may mean that I haven’t pleased him, and now I’m suffering is consequences. I didn’t fit into his mold. Maybe I tried to and failed. Or maybe I have just rejected him. Maybe the losses I’ve experienced have push me over the edge, and I have had it, I am so over this Pushy Salesman God. I’d rather go it alone.

Vignette: Let’s follow up with Sarah where we left off. She is in her freshman year at Vassar and doing well academically, but really stressed. After a semester, Jason transferred to join her at Vassar, to be closer to her. Jason had recently gotten into some esoteric, New Age beliefs, and was experimenting with “finding himself” and now interested in “exploring his sexual potential”. He began to push Sarah’s boundaries around physical intimacy. Initially, he wheedled and cajoled, joked and teased, but as she continued to resist, he stepped up his pressure. In high school, she is seen as a refuge, and as an alternative support figure to her father. However, she was increasingly uncomfortable with the ways that he was trying to manipulate her. Jason knew that Sarah had some dependency on him, and was trying to exploit that. He worked to increase her vulnerability, trying to cut her off from friends she had made in her first semester that recognized some of the manipulative dynamics. One of Sarah’s friends, Aurora, a radical feminist, pointed out all the problems she saw ins Sarah’s relationship with Jason. Aurora hated Jason, and viewed him with deep suspicion, and also was jealous of him. Sarah desperately wanted a relational connection with someone. Jason it seemed to offer that connection in high school, but now he seems more and more focused on physical contact.

As the problems continued to mount with Jason, Sarah reconnected with some of her friends from her first semester. One of them, Emily, was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and was warm and kind to her. Sarah tried to pray with Emily. Sarah experienced God now is still demanding, but in a different way. He still wanted her to conform to his desires, but now he seemed more greasy, more slick, and more manipulative. Emily encouraged Sarah to bring these impressions of God to God in prayer, and prayed with her. Emily was really patient with her, and brought her into a Bible study where she had the support of other Christian college students.

Jason sensed that his hold on Sarah was slipping away, and he upped the pressure. One Friday night, after he had been drinking, he lashed out at her verbally, and then physically, slapping her, and tearing at her blouse. This is the first time that he had been physically violent with her, and Sarah was stunned and speechless, freezing. Just then, Aurora knocked at the door, and when Sarah opened it, Aurora immediately understood what was happening. She roared at Jason, and pointed her pepper spray at him and Jason fled. Aurora put her arm around Sarah and comforted her as Sarah spilled out the whole story of what had just happened.

Sarah continued to pray with Emily and work on a relationship with Jesus, she realized how much her relationship with Jason had impacted how she saw God. She saw how she believed that a core level that God just wanted her to conform into do whatever he wanted, to have her meet his arbitrary demands, like Jason wanted her to meet his sexual demands. She appreciated how Aurora and Emily, both in their individual ways had supported her, and helped her limit Jason’s intrusions. She was also able to successfully break off the relationship with Jason.

So there is the Pushy Salesman God. Now we’re moving on.

Heartbreaker God: This God breaks promises to me. He raises my hopes high, and then dashes them back down to the earth. He draws me in to trust him, and then when I need him and seek him, he is nowhere to be found. I put my fragile self in his hands, and he treats me casually, carelessly, thoughtlessly. And I get hurt, wounded.

Bible verse: Psalm 60:10. Have you not rejected us O God? You do not go forth, O God, with our armies. Can you hear the lament, in which the psalmist feels like God has abandoned him, broken his word, gone back on his promises to be with Israel always?

Self-image: With this God image, I feel like Charlie Brown, running up to the football. The Heartbreaker God is like Lucy, who yanks the ball away at the last second, and I wind up on my back wondering why ever trusted God again. Why does God treat me this way? Why does he not have mercy on me? Why does he not care for me? Am I not worth his consistent and unfailing care? Why will he not let me depend on him? Why doesn’t he follow through on his promises to me? What’s wrong with me?

Attachment history: This Heartbreaker God image can develop in childhood when I have experienced a deep disappointments and intense grief with little opportunity to process through their losses. This could happen for example to children whose parents divorce. In this situation, children are always aware at some level of the degree of conflict between their parents. They desperately yearn for their parents’ marriage to improve, and cling to any signs of hope, any indicator that things are getting better. So many children pray with great intensity for their quarreling parents, longing for peace and stability in their homes. They ride the emotional roller coaster up and down up and down, with its gut-wrenching intensity. They hear that all things are possible with God, but in the end, it feels like God just breaks their hearts too.

The Heartbreaker God image can also emerge when parents die from illnesses, or in war. It could happen when there is financial ruin. Heartbreaker God images are known to emerge during and after the breakup of romantic relationships, especially when my romantic partner ends the relationship unilaterally or has an affair. The Heartbreaker God image can also develop later in life if a spouse is abandoned in her marriage, especially if the divorce seemed to come out of nowhere.

Coronavirus crisis: During the era of the coronavirus, there are no shortage of losses in people’s lives. It’s the losses that are not seen through a Providential lens that can activate a Heartbreaker God image. Losses in the present can trigger unresolved losses from the past, with all their emotional intensity. When the churches were shuttered, and access to the sacraments was denied, many people described feeling heartbroken, and some may have wondered where God was? Why did he allow himself to be lost to us in the Mass, in the Eucharist, in confession? The coronavirus is also stressing marriages. According to nolo.com which provides free legal help, the search term spiked up 32% from March to May of 2020, as the lockdowns initially took hold. From March to May of 2019, a year ago, there was a decrease of 6% in nolo.com searches for help with divorce.

Vignette: so now, Sarah is in the second semester of her sophomore year at Vassar. She is continue to deepen her relationship with Emily and with Aurora. It troubles Sarah that Emily and Aurora don’t get along. Emily is nice enough to Aurora, but Aurora seems to dislike Emily, and somehow be in competition with her. Sarah is continuing to develop her prayer life, really working on an intimate relationship with Jesus, and now attending a nondenominational Christian church. While she finds some of the Campus Crusade coeds a little rigid and moralistic, she feels part of a community that feels wholesome and uplifting.

Sarah also like spending time with Aurora, and she finds kind of edgy, raw, witty, and earthy. Aurora has a take no prisoners approach to life, and Sarah is attracted to her apparent strength. One night, as the two of them were drinking in Aurora’s apartment, Aurora sat close to her, and then burst into tears, confessing to Sarah how much she loved her, how she had loved her since she first met her. Aurora told Sarah how she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her, and how she yearned to be with her as more than a friend. Aurora reached out to touch Sarah’s face and then she saw Sarah’s expression.

Sarah was shocked. It had never occurred in Sarah’s wildest dreams that Aurora might be romantically interested in her. Sarah jumped up, backed away and burst into tears. She fled from the apartment while Aurora wailed in the foyer and begged Sarah not to go, not to leave, to stay and talk it out. Sarah was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of betrayal and loss, and she experienced a major revivification of all the hurt and intrusion from her relationship with Jason.

Sarah realized how much she had invested emotionally in Aurora and how she had been blindsided by her. She felt a deep sense of betrayal, and she understood Aurora’s relationship with her in an entirely different light, and she felt waves of sorrow, loss, and fear wash over her.

Sarah found Emily, and laid out the whole story. She was afraid that Emily might judge her or think that she somehow had led Aurora on, that she might be same-sex attracted. Emily continued to be patient, listening with a compassionate, gentle presence, not trying to fix anything or give advice. Sarah realized in her prayer that she was now blaming God for the loss of her relationships with Jason and Aurora. She was surprised at how emotionally entangled she had become with Aurora.

Sarah was struggling with a Heartbreaker God image. As she had before, Emily encouraged Sarah to bring all of this anger and disappointment she had in Jesus to Jesus. With Emily’s encouragement and presence, Sarah could be more real with Jesus. One evening, she laid it all out in great detail, recounting the stories of her experiences of Jason and Aurora in great detail, with all of her feelings. It took most of Emily’s large box of Kleenex for Sarah to get through both stories. It was messy, but Sarah was able to tell Jesus how she really felt about him, about the betrayal and disappointment and the heartbreak and the losses. But when she did, she felt a huge sense of relief in being able to put this all into words and share it with her Lord. And in the midst of the pain, she felt the beginnings of peace. Both Emily and Sarah recognized the moment as a breakthrough in her journey with God.

All right, so there we have them – three God images, the Outtogetcha Police Detective God, Pushy Salesmen God, and Heartbreaker God. And we’ve seen how they can weave though the life of one person.

One final reminder to consider joining us in the RCCD community – go to Souls and Hearts.com and check it out. Now I need your feedback. Email me with feedback at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or text or call at 317.567.9594, or if you are already in the RCCD community, put it up on the discussion boards, I want to hear from you. Let me have the feedback – positive, negative and everything in between.

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Episode 27. Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods – August 3, 2020

For those of you who are new to the podcast, first of all, a very hearty welcome to you, I’m glad you’re joining us. I want you to know that each episode can stand alone, and I will provide you with the background you need to understand each episode. However, if you want more of a conceptual background for God images, check out episodes 22, 23, and 24.

Brief review: let’s just circle back around and review, what are God images again?

My God image is my experiential sense of God it’s how my heart sees God, what my feelings tell me about God. My God image is very subjective, it doesn’t necessarily follow what I know about God in my head. My God image is formed out of the relational experiences I’ve had. Different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at any given time. So what’s important to remember is that your God images are not necessarily what you profess to believe with your intellect. Rather, they are the unfiltered, spontaneous, uncensored, gut-felt sense of God in the moment.

Similarly, my self-images are much more driven by emotion, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment. My self-image is who I feel myself to be in a given moment, it is who my passions are telling me that I am in the moment. Self-images go together with God images – they impact each other.

In the last two episodes, episode 25 and 26, we looked at a total of six different negative God images originally identified by Christian psychotherapists Bill and Kristi Gaultiere in their 1989 book Mistaken Identities. Those were the Drill Sergeant God, the Statue God, the preoccupied managing director God, Unjust Dictator God, the Vain Pharisee God, and the Critical Scrooge God.

I do want you to know that I’m going beyond their initial conceptualizations and adding much more in these podcast episodes, most of it derived from my clinical experience and also my own experience in my journey with God. So I just want you to know that I am adding a lot of new material, but I do think their initial pioneering work really deserves to be credited.

All right, so let’s go to listener questions. Ryan from Texas has this question:

“After identifying problematic God images in my own life, I want to know how deterministic God images are. Are they imprinted from childhood or do they change with time? And what we do to make our God images align with the loving and caring God we profess to know in our God concept?”

Great question, Ryan. Let’s get into that just briefly right now, and I will say much more about it in future podcast episodes. I also very much want to do a much more in-depth course at Souls & Hearts on God images, particularly how to respond to them, and also how to bring them into greater harmony with who God really is.

That’s one measure of mental health, is when our God images reflect the reality of our loving and caring God. So if you are interested in a course like that, let me know. Once I have 25 people that would be committed to a much more in-depth course, and would be willing to pay for it, I could begin to set aside the time to create it. If you’re interested in that, call me or text me at 317-567-9594 or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and let me know, and I put you on the list.

So back to Ryan’s question Initially, God images are formed in us from our first days. Even as infants, we are learning about the world and nonverbal assumptions are being formed in us. Imagine an infants, I will call him baby Joe, who has an attuned, psychologically healthy mother who can really enter into the baby’s experience. The mother is able to intuit what the baby needs, and meet those needs in a loving, competent way. The baby has a sense of being seen and known, and also has safety and security, which are the first to conditions of secure attachment. This sets the baby up to have a greater sense of safety and security, a greater sense of being seen and known by God.

Contrast that baby’s experience with another, who I will call baby Tom, whose father recently divorced his mother. Baby Tom’s mother is stressed out, having to reenter the workforce, feeling a deep sense of shame and abandonment, and is struggling with depression and anxiety. Unconsciously, baby Tom’s mother blames baby Tom for driving away her husband. This is going to have a huge impact on baby Tom’s sense of being seen and known, of being safe and secure.

So it’s clear that baby Joe and baby Tom are going to have different starting points with regard to their God images. The impact of parents’ ways of relating with children is difficult to underestimate when it comes to the generation of children’s God images. Nevertheless, and this is very important, there is another factor that has an even greater impact on what the ultimate God images are. And that, my dear listeners is what is our experience of the actual living God. These God images that are formed in us beyond our control will change over time, if we bring ourselves into contact with God really is. The reason that so many God images seem to be so sticky, they seem to hang around so much, is because they have not yet been corrected by God. Sometimes God delays correcting these God images, to draw us into deeper relationship with him. Other times though, we refuse to allow God into our lives in a way that would help us see and know who he really is. We default to our negative God images and we don’t invite him into our lives. And there are reasons for that, and will get into those in future episodes. For now, Ryan, I want you and the rest of the listeners to know that the way we engage with the living God, as he is, the way we allow him into our lives into relationship with us – that is going to have much more of an impact on our God images over time than our original upbringing.

So our God images can and should change over time. As we deepen in the spiritual life, as we deepen our relationship with God, our God images will conform more to our God concept, which will conform more to who God really is.

Ok, with that, let’s dive into the three God images we are reviewing today, these are the Robber God, the Elite Aristocrat God, and the Marshmallow God.

Robber God: This God robs me of good things, and prevents me from having good fortune. He seems jealous when I succeed, he is like a “wet blanket,” a God who spoils things I enjoy. God is a thief who pries cherished possessions and relationships out of my hands, deprives me even of the things I need. All of this is under the pretext of making a better Christian and loving him more. This God feels unjust, stingy, and jealous.

Bible verse: Psalm 88: 4-8 I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom thou dost remember no more, for they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. Thy wrath lies heavy upon me, and thou dost overwhelm me with all thy waves. Thou hast caused my companions to shun me; thou hast made me a thing of horror to them.

You can see all the losses the psalmist is experiencing. The loss of strength, the loss of relationship with God, feelings of imprisonment, like in a dark deep pit, the loss of companionship, friendship. The loss of my respectable, curated image to others. It’s all in there.

Self-image: Because my robber God really doesn’t want to have good things, things that I enjoy, I must hang onto all that I can lay my hands on. I have to sneak pleasures and enjoyment, because God doesn’t believe they are good for me. I’m conflicted about whether I am worth having good things. I feel insecure, that my grasp is tenuous on the things that I treasure. I have to be very careful with this robber God, to not overstep so that he won’t take any more good things from me. This leads to a lot of spiritual frustration and hiding from God. I’m expecting losses. I consciously or unconsciously blame God for my losses. I wonder, consciously or unconsciously if this robber God enjoys taking things away from me. I have difficulty giving cheerfully because so much feels taken from me, without my consent.

Lent is often miserable for individuals with prominent robber God images. Very little concept of redemptive suffering. Suffering seems meaningless, unless it is somehow satisfying to God.

One client of mine many years ago described having a target on his back, a target that attracted God’s attention, leaving God to take away any good things that he was able to achieve. Anger tends to be prominent, and others may experience individuals with a prominent robber God image as having a chip on their shoulder.

Attachment history: Frequently the attachment history may be characterized by grief due to losses that have never been adequately resolved.

The attachment history may also feature parents who were jealous of their child’s talents, possessions, relationships, or other goods, and who put themselves in competition with their child. These parents were too enmeshed with their children to be able to celebrate their children’s accomplishments. Rather, their children’s achievements make the parent feel inadequate or insecure. Thus, the parents may work subtly and unconsciously to undermine their children’s successes.

This God image can also be present when a child loses a parent in some way, to death or divorce or to chronic health problems or mental health issues. It can be very confusing to a child why God would allow such losses to occur. The child whose mother died could say: Since he is all-powerful and all-knowing, he must have wanted me to be robbed of my mother, he must have wanted my father to drown in his grief and his vodka.

This God image can also emerge when a child is victimized by cliques at school, or by bullies who cut them down to size, stole their money or food, or were jealous and undermining of the friendships that they formed.

Coronavirus crisis: I think many of us can see how the coronavirus crisis might exacerbate a robber God image. Many good things have been taken away from us in this crisis. Losses can range from life to health to income to employment, to relationships – we could lose relationships due to death, but also relationships can be compromised by social distancing, lockdowns, and disagreements about how to respond to the coronavirus. Why did God send us this virus, anyway? Is he just trying to strip me down again, make me survive with just the bare minimum? Like slave owner who gives his slave just enough to survive, but not to thrive?

Vignette: David was born in 1948, into a relatively healthy, close-knit Catholic, working-class family. He grew up in the 1950s and 1960s surrounded by relatives and good relationships. At age 19 he was about to be drafted so he decided to enlist in the Marines. He went through boot camp and in late 1967 was ordered to Vietnam. There he saw combat and was drawn into some horrible atrocities against civilians in the 1969 Tet Offensive as new infantryman. His world was turned upside down, and he know he was changed. During the Tet offensive, he was wounded by mortar fire, which caused extensive damage to his right leg and some disfigurement to his face. He also lost two of his closest buddies.

David’s leg never fully recovered, and he walked with a limp. The woman he loved, rejected him upon his return, having found another boyfriend. He struggled with flashbacks and night terrors. He saw God is robbing him of all the good things that he had had in his life. He found it hard to relate with his family anymore, actually, he felt like he had no home anymore, as he did not fit in with his parents and siblings. He felt that only other Vietnam vets understood his experience, so we never talked about it unless he was drinking with old comrades in arms. His reactive mission to civilian society was slow, operating in fits and starts, with many gains and losses, and he never seem to get ahead. He blamed this on God. David saw God is stealing from him his happiness, his peace, his joy, the woman he loved, his buddies on the battlefield, and his integrity. David had a Robber God image. This is an example of a God image that developed later in life, after his childhood.

He eventually married, but remained self-absorbed, silently struggling with internal conflicts over guilt, shame, rage, fear. Others experienced him as cool, detached, and generally very self -controlled and very proper in his demeanor. His war buddies kidded David and told him that when he wasn’t drinking, David seemed like a 19th century English butler.

David concluded that God didn’t want him to have good things that God wanted him to suffer for the sins and crimes he committed. David clung to cigarettes, bourbon, sports, and movies as a way to distract himself and cope. Emotionally, he was very closed off from his wife and his children and spent most of his time alone.

It wasn’t until his children are grown and gone that he actually sought help. David benefited from some specific trauma treatments, including EMDR that broke him out of the downward spiral he had been in. He is just now, late in life praying again, and beginning to make sense of his experiences, bring them for the first time in decades back to God.

Elitist Aristocrat God: This God considers himself to lofty, too good, too perfect to connect with the likes of someone like me. He has a superior attitude, and he doesn’t seem to need me or care about me. He operates in an entirely different plane, up in the sky, apart from mere mortals like me. God just isn’t there for me. He has his favorites, the ones who are more like him, of higher stature, of greater importance. But I’m not one of his favorites. I get the cold shoulder from God.

Bible verse: Psalm 88:9, 13-14 Every day I call upon thee, O Lord; I spread out my hands to thee. …But I, O Lord, I cry to thee; in the morning my prayer comes before thee. O Lord, why dost thou cast me off?

You can see all the psalmist is crying out to God, and feeling cast off, ignored, the prayers, seemingly disregarded. Maybe there’s a part of you that can resonate with these feelings, feelings of being disregarded, or set aside by God.

Self-image: I feel like I was born under an ill-fated star, I was born on the wrong side of the tracks. God doesn’t associate with low-class people like me. God just doesn’t even notice me, I’m too far beneath him. He ignores me. On the rare occasions he does notice me, he puts me down. When I pray, my words just get lost in the void. He is not there to hear my prayers. I’m excluded from the circles of the people he favors. I get the crumbs under the table, like the dogs. I’m not good enough to be in God’s good graces. God doesn’t need me for anything, he doesn’t really want me in his sight. If he knows me, he knows me from afar, and he doesn’t really like what he sees.

Attachment history: The Elitist Aristocrat God image can emerge when a child feels very distant from his or her parents. The child’s parents may have been self-absorbed, caught up in their own social or professional images, the ways they were seen by the world. A child may accurately or inaccurately assume that he or she is not mom or dad’s favorite one. Children like this are sometimes grown by their parents rather than raised by their parents. An Elite Aristocrat God image can form when her daughter experiences her father or mother is all caught up in professional work, with the family always playing second fiddle to the importance the parent places on his or her occupation. Perhaps the child’s parents are caught up in “keeping up with the Joneses.” The experience is not so much of rejection by God as never being accepted by God in the first place.

Coronavirus crisis: the coronavirus has caused significant distress for many Christians with this particular Elite Aristocrat God image. It is easy for many people to imagine that God is not interested in their sufferings and in their trials and miseries, that God has left them to their own devices out of a sense of superiority. He does not deign to stoop down and help me, a lowly one, in my time of need. He helps others to have access to greater resources. They can adapt and adjust with minimal inconvenience. The impact of the coronavirus on me is severe, and more evidence of God’s disregard for me.

Vignette: so let’s discuss Michael, David’s oldest son. Michael was born five years after his father returned from Vietnam, and David never really bonded with his son. Michael grew up realizing that his relationship with his father did not look like how the boys in the neighborhood played with their fathers. Their fathers came to the baseball games and the basketball games. Many of their fathers were warm and engaging. It was his friend Tim’s father that taught him to throw and catch, to hit and field. David’s mother was preoccupied with caring for her husband, desperately wanting his attention too. Tim’s father saw Michael, in a way that Michael’s own father didn’t.

In the logic that youngsters use to sort these things out, Michael assumed that his father’s distance, reserve, and aloofness were his fault. He desperately tried to get his father’s attention, to no avail. Dad seem like an elite aristocrat – very proper, very distant, very uninterested in him. Michael unconsciously imported that image and transferred it to God. Michael saw himself as unworthy of his father’s attention, not good enough to be noticed by his father. This wounded self-image led him to conclude that God also saw him that way. Michael struggled with a deep sense of inadequacy and shame about not being good enough. Michael vowed never to treat others that way. So even though he himself felt fairly distant from God, he tried to be warm and caring in his relationships, to be the exact opposite of his father, especially to his own children.

Marshmallow God: God is nice, but he is also either weak or incompetent. God is very soft, and quite passive. When others harm me or persecute me, he doesn’t safeguard me, he doesn’t advocate for me, he doesn’t defend me, he just wants me to take it, and “turn the other cheek.” God doesn’t want conflict, he wants to be liked, and he is likely to follow those who dominate him.

Bible verse: Psalm 13: 1-2 How long, O Lord? Wilt thou forget me for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Alternative Bible verse: Psalm 25:1-2 To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in thee I trust, let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me.

Self-image: When others take advantage of me, God believes it would be wrong for me to stand up for myself. I should be passive like God is. If I set boundaries and limits on others’ behaviors, that would not be good. It would be wrong for me to move away from my dependency. Since I’m helpless, I need to stay away from danger, and avoid and hide from trouble as best I can.

Attachment history: when this God image forms in children, those children often have parents who are friendly, warm, but who have not adequately protected their children. They may have resisted recognizing or intervening when their children were being harmed out of a sense of fear of offending others. For example, they may not have advocated for a child who is being unfairly singled out and harassed by a teacher or coach. The child may have seen his parents be pushed around or dominated by more powerful others, to the detriment of the whole family.

Alternatively, sometimes this God image develops when parents are overprotective, and communicate to the child that he or she is weak, hopeless, and dependent and that is how it should be. The child can then form the idea that this is how God must be as well. We must be nice, we must be like God, so God must be nice.

Coronavirus crisis: in the coronavirus era, God may seem passive, just letting things unfold without any divine intervention. We may have parts of us that feel that God is not up to the challenge of helping us through the coronavirus. We may have a sense that our bishops and priests have not helped us through the crisis, and may have made our lives even more difficult by unnecessarily blocking churches and restricting access to sacraments, even going beyond the restrictions that were required by government decrees

We may have gotten the message from civic and church leaders that we are naïve children that would have unnecessarily risked our own lives and the lives of others if we had been able to attend Mass, that we could not make appropriate judgments, so the these leaders needed to protect us from ourselves.

We may have parts of us that feel that God is not up to the task of administering justice to those criminals who really need it. God seems to be very nice and soft towards those who undermine the Church from within, wayward bishops and cardinals, priests, and others. The much-maligned fire and brimstone from previous centuries may seem wholly absent to us, now. It may appear, in this coronavirus era, God does not seem to set limits on anyone-- lying, cheating, fraud, and all kinds of misbehavior go unchecked in the government and in our culture. This all can exacerbate a Marshmallow God image.

Vignette: so Michael married and had two children of his own. He worked hard to be caring and gratifying to everybody. Unconsciously, he equated firmness with coldness. Indeed, Michael had difficulty setting boundaries and limits with others, as he was so conditioned to want others to like him. Thus, when his oldest son Daniel went off to school, and experienced bullying on the bus, he tried to help his son understand bullies’ point of view and why the bus driver did not intervene. Michael didn’t advocate for little Daniel in a way that would have been helpful. When Daniel had a Little League coach that rode him mercilessly, calling him names and mocking him in front of the other boys, his father did not stand up for him. His father was more invested in maintaining a good relationship with the coach, and trying to win him over to treating Daniel better that way. Daniel’s experience of his father was that he was very nice, warm, gregarious, but powerless in the face of conflict. As a seven-year-old, Daniel generally saw his father as a good man, he assumed that God must be like his father. This also fit his experience, because no one advocated for him when he was persecuted by authority figures.

OK. So those are the three God images for today. The Robber God, the Elite Aristocrat God, and the Marshmallow God. This episode is already getting fairly long, so I don’t have time to go into how these three God images are commonly generated in children who are sexually abused. I see this a lot. Abuse and neglect have really harmful effects on God images, as you may imagine. So just for the members of the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community, I am going to do a little bonus episode, a premium episode on sexual abuse and these three particular God images. That particular episode may be a little more intense for people, so it’s also better to be done in our community. Bonus episodes are one of the benefits of becoming a member. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the all courses and shows tab and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community, free for the first 30 days and then $25 per month after that. Those memberships are what makes this podcast possible, the RCCD members offset the costs of producing this podcast and the overhead for Souls and Hearts.

Other benefits for RCCD members include the pdfs I reprinted for the God Image Questionnaire by Bill Gaultiere, who has given us permission to reformat and reprint it. Check that out, it can help you determine your God image, it’s a 28 item questionnaire that reviews these 14 God images.

One more thing is that we are having an RCCD community meeting on Friday, August 7 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern time. and we will be discussing any questions you have about God images and self-images.

And finally, RCCD members now have access to our Mighty Networks app, which allows us to connect much more easily. Community members can email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and we’ll get you set up with that, it’s by invitation.

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Episode 26. Dictator, Pharisee, and Scrooge God Images – July 27, 2020

In the last episode, episode 25, we looked at three different negative God images proposed by Christian psychotherapists Bill and Kristi Gaultiere in their book Mistaken Identities, published in 1989. Last week, I decided to reach out to the Gaultieres and let them know that we were discussing their book on this podcast so I emailed them. Sometimes I do that. I just reach out to people. Who knows what will happen?

And Sue, the representative from their ministry, their ministry is called Soul Shepherding – Sue got back to me – Sue got back to me and said “What a blessing to hear from you and to learn of the good work that you are doing for the Kingdom! It was such an encouragement to hear that you are able to use our resources in your ministry.” Isn’t that cool? I think that’s cool.

But wait, there’s more. I made a request of the Gaultieres and their ministry for something I wanted to give to the member of the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community – I wanted their permission to be able to pass on something special to those of you those of you who have joined the RCCD community and they said yes. At the end of this episode, I will tell you what that something special is, so stay with me until the end, OK?. Oooh, very exciting.

In the last episode, I put the question out to you, my audience members – are you interested in this stuff? Do you want me to cover more of these god images? And if so, which ones? I really want this podcast to be interactive, I want to hear from you.

Jane in Indiana emailed in, “I want you to do all the God images. They are fascinating!” Now that is enthusiasm, thank you Jane. I just love it. I really want this podcast to not just be transformative, not just to make a big difference in your life, but to be interesting, no, not just interesting, but fascinating.

Along with Jane in Indiana, I think this God image stuff is fascinating. It’s also vitally important, not only for our spiritual well-being, but also our psychological well-being. You can’t have abiding peace, a deep joy, or a solid sense of well-being if you are dominated by negative God images. It’s just not possible to give in to wretched God images and be happy. This is so vitally important, people, this God image issue, because how we respond to God images is really going to determine our peace and joy and well-being, both in the natural realm and in the supernatural realm. Will we approach God? Will we flee from Him? Will we fight him? Will we refuse to follow Him or even believe in him?

So we have two ways we can overcome this issue. One is to recognize our negative God images and respond to them in a positive way. And in future episodes we will get into how to respond to negative God images. I promise. So the first way to handle negative God images is to recognize them and respond well. The second way is to resolve them. I mean it. To actually resolve them, to heal them. And we will discuss how to do that in future episode as well, and especially in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community that has grown up around this podcast.

In this episode, we’re going to review three more problematic God images described by Bill and Kristi Gaultiere’s book Mistaken Identities

Brief review: let’s just circle back around and review, what are God images again?

My God image is my emotional and subjective experience of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. This is my experiential sense how my feelings and how my heart interpret God. My God images are heavily influenced by psychological factors, and different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at a given time. God images are always formed experientially. God images flow from our relational experiences and how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young.

My God images can be and usually are radically different than my God concept. God concept is what I profess about God, what I choose to believe about God, what I endorse about God. Intellectual understanding.

Self-images are much more driven, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment. Who I feel myself to be in a given moment, it is who my passions are telling me who I am. Self-images go together with God images – they impact each other.

If you haven’t already listened to episodes 22, 23, and 24 of this podcast, make sure you check them out, because they have lot more conceptual information and definitions of God images.

So I had a question from a listener Martha in Indiana who wondered if it's usual to say 'yes' to many God images? Martha is essentially asking if we can have more than one God image, can we have different God images at different times?

Now much of the God image literature seems to assume that there is one primary God image. And that makes sense, because often we are in our standard mode of operating. However, there is a greater awareness that, because we have multiple modes of operating, we also may have multiple God images. Sometimes we depart from our standard mode of operating. Clinically, I have no doubt that each of us has several or even many God images. So, my dear Martha, I absolutely believe that we have more than one God images.

Over the past several years, I have identified in myself 11 different modes of operating. I have 11 distinct and identifiable ways of being. I think of models of operating as like parts of me. Kind of like in the Pixar movie Inside Out, where the main character Riley has different parts of her, each part having its primary emotion, like the red character was angry, the blue round character was sad and so on..

Each part of me has a mode of operating each part of me has characteristic feelings, desires, impulses, attitudes, and assumptions about the world. And each of my modes of operating has its own God image and its own self-image. So I have 11 God images and 11 self-images.

So do you see what you opened up with your question, Martha? I wasn’t going to go into all of this yet, I wasn’t going to get into all this self-disclosure in this episode, but your question brought it up.

So that’s important to know in and but I’m bringing that up now, because I really do want you to pay attention to God images that may not immediately resonate with you. In this moment, you might not resonate with particular God image, but when you are in one particular dark place, perhaps a kind of dark place that you don’t go very often, but you do go to once in a while, you may find a negative God image that exists in you, but just isn’t activated very often.

All right, so I tallied up all the responses that you listeners texted me or emailed me about which of the remaining 11 negative God images that Bill and Kristi Gaultiere describe in their book you wanted me to cover, and three particular one stood out. These were the unjust dictator God. The Vain Pharisee God and the Critical Scrooge God. So we’re going to dive into those today.

Just a quick comment before we do, and that is that these particular God images, like the unjust dictator God image. These are just templates. Everybody’s got images can be a little different. So were discussing three boilerplate templates of common God images, but there’s nothing that says you have to have this particular God image or not have this particular God image. For example, my 11 God images do not map exactly on to the 14 that Bill and Kristi propose. And when I worked clinically, I am trying to understand what the person’s God image is, not really diagnose them with one of these 14 God images. So I just want to make sure that we are all clear about that.

Unjust Dictator God. In this God image, God is a very powerful, but he is unjust, he is unfair. He seems arbitrary in the way that he blesses and punishes. Good people suffer misfortunes, the innocent are burdened with many problems, trials, traumas and others who seem to make no effort to love God, or follow his will profit. Sometimes, he even seems to shower good things on those who acted badly. He doesn’t seem to punish those who hurt me, those who persecute me.

Bible verse: Psalm 119:81-86 My soul longs for your salvation; I put my hope in your word. My eyes long to see your promise. When will you comfort me? I am like a wineskin shriveled by smoke, but I have not forgotten your statutes. How long can your servant survive? When will your judgment doom my foes? The arrogant have dug pits for me; defying your law... Help me! I am pursued without cause.

Self-image: it feels like I always get a raw deal from God, no matter how hard I try to love and obey him. It must be that I deserve to be punished by God. Maybe I don’t deserve God’s care and protection. I must’ve done something wrong or bad that I don’t know about to justify the maltreatment I’ve had at the hands of others. He loves others, why does he not love me? What is so bad about me?

Attachment History: This unjust dictator God image can emerge when a person has experienced others in authority as capricious, arbitrary, or random in the way he or she was rewarded or punished. This often is expressed in feeling like I was not the favorite child, no matter what I did, my parents preferred my sister or my brother. Some of us are old enough to remember the Smothers Brothers routines, in which Tom Smothers always felt that their Mother always loved his brother Dick Smothers best. They did this as a comedy routine, this “Mom always loved you best” but I always found it a little sad, because I suspect there was a kernel of truth in it somewhere in the Smothers’ family life.

Coronavirus Crisis: the way the virus strikes can seem arbitrary, capricious, and random. Why do some people get to keep their jobs, their incomes, their health, and I suffer consequences. Why are some people careful with masks, social distancing, and other precautions, and they catch the virus, and others seem to be totally immune, no matter what stupid things they do? Where is the justice in that?

Vignette: Brenda is the 32 year old middle child of three sisters. She always saw herself as the “not-pretty one” and the “not smart one” of the family. She always had a sense of not fitting in. Her older sister Victoria’s personality was more like her mom’s and her younger sister Claudia’s personality was more like her dad’s, and she felt like the odd one out, misunderstood. She tried to be as pretty as her older sister and as smart as her younger sister, but neither of her parents seem to understand her. Her achievements always seem to second-best, garnering little praise from her parents. If she couldn’t be pretty and she couldn’t be smart, at least she could be good. She worked hard on growing in virtue, but that didn’t seem to work either. But she has continued to try and hope. Her theme song sometimes feels like Boney Fingers by Hoyt Axton, especially the line – work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Boney Fingers. Boney Fingers.

Brenda sees how her older sister Victoria has a handsome husband and two of the cutest kids on the planet, the whole family looks like models. She married that handsome, stable guy after 10 years of promiscuity with no apparent consequences, and Victoria still looks like a model. Brenda feels that Victoria has always looked down on her for being ugly.

Brenda’s younger sister Claudia has a great academic position and has already published two books and many professional articles, and even Claudia has a bookish boyfriend who dotes on her.

Brenda sees her sisters is getting all the good things from the family. Victoria was able to travel to beauty pageants and have most of mom’s attention. Claudia was valedictorian and even though she was younger than Brenda, Brenda knew that by the time she was 12 and Claudia was 10, Claudia was smarter than she was and there was no looking back. By age 30, was highly respected in her field.

And Brenda herself, well Brenda is single with no romantic prospects, in a dead-end retail job in a department store that is probably going bankrupt because the virus is forcing closures and she sees herself as an old hag, even aging out of the youth group at her parish. She still goes to church, but with bitterness in her heart. She feels she can’t give up being good, because then what would she have left? Why, why O Lord did you leave so little for me? If I had what my sisters had, I would be happy. She feels her prayers are ignored. My virtues are ignored. I am still a virgin, and what has that gotten me? Nothing. No husband, not even a boyfriend. God is powerful, but he is not just, let along merciful or kind.

Vain Pharisee God: God is absorbed in his own might and power, his own goodness and beauty, his own knowledge and strength. He expects me to grovel in front of him, giving him constant praise. He takes the credit for everything. Only goodness comes from him. Only badness comes from me.

Bible verse: Job 10:14-17. If I should sin, you would keep a watch on me, and from my guilt, you would not absolve me. If I should be wicked, alas for me! Even if righteous, I dare not hold up my head, sated with shame, drenched in affliction! Should it lift up, you hunt me like a lion: repeatedly you show your wondrous power against me, you renew your attack upon me, and multiply your harassment of me; in waves your troops come against me.

Self-image: I am expected to humiliate myself before God, in order that his glory be magnified. I’m not worth any esteem from God, he would not praise me. I don’t have any merit or any credit in the eyes of God, I am just dust and ashes, worthless. He’s not that invested in me as a person. I am important to him in how I can give him glory and honor. My function is to praise Him, that’s what he expects from me. But, in relating with God, I always get the short end of the stick. He is always right, I am always wrong. He must always increase, I must always decrease until I perfectly serve him in his needs.

Attachment History: This god image readily forms when the parent uses the child to bolster the parent’s own fragile self esteem, without consideration of the child’s experience. Some parents really look to their children for affirmation, admiration, support, and validation. When the parent has a strong narcissistic streak, it increases the likelihood of a Vain Pharisee God image. The child is constantly trying to meet the unreasonable demands of the parent in the vain hope that child can please the parent. The child doesn’t frequently feel loved or accepted just as he or she is.

Coronavirus Crisis: in this crisis, it’s easy to feel powerless and helpless in the face of the virus and its effects. I might have prayed and prayed and those prayers may seem to be falling on deaf ears and I am deeply troubled by the problems I face because of the virus. I may be trying and trying to admire, praise, and honor God, but He seems to just be letting me twist in the wind as my situation deteriorates with my income reduced, my anxieties unsoothed, my social connections compromised, and now I have to wear a mask everywhere, like I’m not even seen as a person, but just as a potential disease vector. This can activate the Vain Pharisee God image.

Vignette: the story is the 34-year-old oldest sister, and everyone said when she was growing up that she looked like her mom and she acted like her mom. That she was just a chip off of moms block. Her mother was highly respected lady with an aristocratic air, highly self-absorbed. From a young age, Victoria was entered in child beauty pageants, winning some of them, for which her mother took the credit. Her mother saw her as a narcissistic extension of herself, and took it personally if Victoria faltered during the pageants, berating her for minor flaws and imperfections. Victoria, in an attempt to connect with her mother, berated herself in the same way.

When others attributed Victoria’s beauty and success to her mother, her mother seemed to glow. But Victoria felt a great emptiness in the attention her mother showed her, the beautiful clothes that she bought for her, and the trips that they made together, just the two of them, for competitions – the flights, hotels, and perks all seemed empty.

Victoria has little interest in God at this time, seeing him as mighty, powerful, and heavily self-absorbed. She had made a number of men into idols in her 20s – and sacrificed herself to them in the hope of being loved by them in return. She married the least worst of them and is now in a loveless marriage. She feels trapped at home with her cold, arrogant Ken-Doll husband who can’t go in to the office because of the lockdown. She hates always feeling like she is in the wrong, and feels that God wants her to grovel and humiliate herself, which makes it hard for her to repent from real sins and come back to him. She doesn’t pray, sensing that there is no point in it, that God would gloat over her admission of wrongdoing, and she feels that honoring or worshipping God would violate her sense of dignity and integrity. Her children are not baptized.

Critical Scrooge God: this God doesn’t extend himself to help me. Instead, this God is highly critical, and he cuts me down with disparaging remarks, and a condescending tone. He tells me that I won’t make it, I won’t succeed, I just won’t be able to rise to the challenge or even be minimally acceptable to him. God is constantly dissatisfied with me. God never praises me or looks for the good in me. He is cold, and stingy with his graces and his help

Bible verse: Job 19 2-11 How long will you afflict my spirit, grind me down with words? These ten times you have humiliated me, have assailed me without shame! Even if it were true that I am at fault, my fault would remain with me; If truly you exalt yourselves at my expense, and use my shame as an argument against me, Know then that it is God who has dealt unfairly with me, and compassed me round with his net. If I cry out “Violence!” I am not answered. I shout for help, but there is no justice. He has barred my way and I cannot pass; veiled my path in darkness; He has stripped me of my glory, taken the diadem from my brow. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone; he has uprooted my hope like a tree: He has kindled his wrath against me; he counts me one of his enemies.

Self-image: I am never good enough for God, I never satisfy him. I feel like I’m no good. I struggle with shame, feeling so inadequate. I feel like God sits on my shoulder, and sometimes whispers his criticisms in my ear. Sometimes he yells them. God gives me the minimal amount of help so that if I did things just right, I might succeed, but I’m never able to, my efforts are never enough. It feels like he tolerates me and he’s invested in me doing better, but I’m just an unprofitable servant and he never lets me forget that.

Attachment History: Critical parents can foster a Critical Scrooge God image. So can having hands-off parents, leaving the child to come up with his or her own standards, which may be unreasonable, not tempered by maturity and wisdom.

Coronavirus Crisis: The coronavirus crisis is forcing us to have to make difficult decisions with limited , and changing information. Much is in flux, and he can feel very easy to make incorrect decisions, even when we try hard. Stakes also are high, with potential lethal consequences. People can also be more irritable with each other and more critical with each other. When supervisors or other authorities are critical of me, it may activate a Critical Scrooge god image, exacerbating feelings of not being good enough, not being able to satisfy others, including God.

Vignette: Claudia is 30, and extremely self-critical. Academics was the one area in which she felt she might excel, at least where she could get close to excelling. In grade school, she berated herself for anything less than a perfect score on tests. She harbors a deep assumptions that she has to prove God wrong, that she can succeed in spite of his distance and lack of help. Her unconscious anger about this has undermined her relationships with teachers in the past, who experienced her as perfectionistic but also critical of them, and even condescending. Because of her impressive academic successes, and her publishing record, she is one of the youngest assistant professors at her liberal arts college, but she derives little satisfaction from that and the college is now in a precarious financial condition because of the virus. Because she never feels good enough for God, she never feels good enough for herself, and she also feels that others are not good enough for her. When she conveys that others are not good enough for her, this imposes a huge burden for her co-dependent boyfriend Fred, who is trying to do everything he can to please her and she is minimally gratifying in return, just enough to keep him engaged. He’s the one that has the greatest tolerance for the chip on her shoulder, so she keeps him around, but is unlikely to marry him because of the subtle contempt she feels for him.

Claudia is tired of God. She doesn’t pray much either.

So there are the three god images.

Check out the RCCD Community. Contact information. Crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594

One of our RCCD members, Jonathan, seized the day and grabbed the initiative to begin a chart that lays out all of the different God images, their corresponding self-images, the Bible verses, the attachment histories, and the impact that the coronavirus crisis could be having with that particular God image, he took all of this and laid it out in a chart and emailed it to me. I think this is great. And Jonathan and I agreed to work on this chart together, to continue to develop that, adding the different God images as we roll them out over the course of these episodes, collaborating together. Jonathan is taking the information from the podcasts, filling in each of the sections on the chart, and I am checking them over and making minor alterations. That chart is available for our RCCD members, it is now up in the RCCD Exclusive Content Section, and six of the 14 problematic God images are all filled in. As we continue through the rest of the God images, we will continue to fill in the chart. I really appreciate Jonathan’s work on this, it’s a gift to me and to the RCCD members and it’s a great example of how we work together in the RCCD community.

The Zoom meetings from July 22 and July 27 are either up by now, or soon will be and these were the open forums, we can discuss anything related to psychology and Catholicism. Bring your questions. Email me questions if you can’t make it. Time to hang out together and be in community.

Big news: I mentioned at the top of the podcast about big news from Bill and Kristi Gaultiere and their Shepherding Souls ministry. Bill Gaultiere created an instrument, called the God Image Questionnaire that is 28 items long, and helps you determine which of their 14 negative God images may burden you. I have used this in the past and found it helpful. Shepherding Souls has the God Image Questionnaire on their website, but they have agreed to allow me to make it available to members of our RCCD community at Souls and Hearts. We’ve formatted it into an easily printable pdf. The scoring instructions are also up on our website. So look for that in the RCCD Exclusive Content. Take the God Image Questionnaire and let me know what you think! And after we finish all 14 God images in the next three episodes, we will have discussions about them in the RCCD community.

One more things for the community: Non-recorded meeting. Free in the moment. I’m still working on scheduling that. As a way to his result actually result, you’ll discuss the future of his well and we’re going to get into that, especially as

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Episode 25. Drill Sergeant Gods, Statue Gods, and Preoccupied Manager Gods, Oh My…

July 13, 2020

Self-concept: This what we intellectually believe about ourselves, who we profess ourselves to be, what we understand about ourselves, our mental construct of ourselves. The self-concept of a practicing Catholic, for example, may include being a beloved child of God. There’s a link between God concepts and Self-concepts – they go together, they harmonize. Loving Shepherd, little sheep.

Self-images on the other hand, are much more emotionally driven, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment. These go together with God images – they impact each other

My God image is my emotional and subjective experience of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is.

Initially my God images are shaped by the relationship that I have with my parents. This is my experiential sense how my feelings and how my heart interpret God. My God images are heavily influenced by psychological factors, and different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at a given time.

God images are always formed experientially. God images flow from our relational experiences and how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young.

My God images can be and usually are radically different than my God concept.

My God concept What I profess about God. It is my more intellectual understanding of God, based on what one has been taught, but also based on what I have explored through reading. I decide to believe in my God concept. Reflected in the Creed, expanded in the Catechism, formal teaching.

So in the text exchange with a listener who I will call Beth, because that’s her name, Beth told me that she was having a hard time figuring out her own God images. So I thought I would bring in the best resource

Mistaken Identity William and Kristi Gaultiere 1989 Fleming H. Revell -- 3 decades ago.

14 Unloving God images – drawn from I Corinthians 13, 4-7.

Preoccupied manager director God

Statue God

Robber God

Vain Pharisee God

Elitist aristocrat God

Pushy salesman God

Magic Genie God

Demanding drill sergeant God

Outtogetcha Police Detective God

Unjust dictator God

Marshmallow God

Critical Scrooge God

Party-pooper God

Heartbreaker God

Preoccupied Managing Director God: God is busy running the world, but God doesn’t take the initiative, time, or energy to really relate with me, to connect with me. God cares about me, but he is overtaxed. He is impatient, it is hard to get His attention. God may want to give more to everyone, but He has limited resources and has to allocate them carefully, to those who most deserve them. Comfort and help might come if I my situation is desperate enough.

Bible verse: Psalm 13 opening: How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Self-image: I am not important enough, not worthy enough for God’s attention, for his care, for him to be concerned about me. The problems, cares, and concerns of my life are not significant enough to warrant his attention. God can’t be disturbed with my relatively minor concerns and difficulties. God has little bandwidth for me, doesn’t need to be saddled with my petty wishes and desired. Twisting in the wind. I am an unprofitable servant, so God leaves me to my own devices.

Attachment History – over-parentified children of families with harried, distressed parents, often with financial concerns and time pressure. Children with a Preoccupied Managing Director God image learn that they are rewarded for being “low-maintenance” and not adding to their parents’ troubles by voicing their concerns. Praised for how independent, mature, and responsible they are. Anxious-preoccupied attachment style – they want intimacy, connection with God, but they feel that have to go without it, because they just don’t matter enough. They generally don’t feel seen and known, and they don’t believe that God cherishes them – rather God sees them as a burden.

Coronavirus Crisis: Readily activated now – some are not feel much of God’s presence. Lots more responsibilities, lots of decisions, lots of stress. Others, such as supervisors, superiors have more responsibilities, show less patience, more irritability. Aging parents, more self-absorbed. Loss of connection. Responsibilities piling on – decision fatigue – when to wear masks, what activities can we do, conflicting feedback from politicians, medical experts, government leaders. No help in sight. And you can see how

Vignette: Paula – 17 year old, second oldest child of a family of 6, father was preoccupied with his business, not doing well with the coronavirus, Mom is stressed, working a part-time job and still wanting to homeschool, and her father is self-absorbed with some health issues. Her older brother escaped the household by enlisting in the Navy and the third oldest in the family, a 15 year old son, is rebellious, acting out by not completing his schoolwork, announcing that he is an atheist, and experimenting with alcohol. Paula doesn’t feel like she can burden her mother with any of her issues, lest she become impatient and irritable and act in the role of a martyr. The 3 youngest children are emotionally and relationally draining for her mother who is strenuously trying to hold them to high standards. Paula has barely enough time to complete her studies to her mother’s exacting principles, essentially teaching herself from a boxed curriculum. Paula’s is trying to hold her family together, and feels like she is a fish in a puddle that is evaporating. She tries to rely on herself, but is developing and increasingly intense anger toward God and she is not aware of the anger. Prayer – another responsibility, another thing to check off her list, based off a sense of duty. Very dry, uncomfortable, sense of not mattering, not being cared for. Now she has lost some activities she enjoyed (ballroom dance class) because of the coronavirus, and she longs to escape like her older brother did, but she doesn’t feel safe enough to launch into the world. Resilience

Statue God: God seen as distant, remote, unfeeling, disengaged, leaves me to my own devices, doesn’t help me when I am in need. Millions of miles away, on a distant quasar. Is not moved by my cries and pleas. Stony, cold indifference. Unlike the preoccupied managing director God who has limited resources and is overtaxed, this statue God doesn’t care about me and I won’t get his attention no matter what happens to me and no matter what I do.

Bible Verse: Job 30:20 I cry to you, but you do not answer me; I stand, but you take no notice.

Heresy: Deism is the belief in God’s existence, but sees God only in the role of Creator who does not intervene in the world. Sometimes referred to as a watchmaker God, who set the universe in motion and then lets it run on its own.

Image of Self: I won’t be helped. God doesn’t help me and doesn’t want to help me. I have to manage on my own, my wants and needs are not important to him. He just doesn’t care about me, he’s not engaged. I’m not going to try to engage emotionally with God, because that would be fruitless. That would be pointless.

Attachment History –children of parents who are so self-absorbed and wrapped up in their own concerns that they consistently offer little to their sons and daughters. Young children with a Statue God image know that they need their parents, but also know at some level that they will not have their needs met by their parents. As they grow older, they may reject their parents emotionally, and distance from them. They often have a dismissive-avoidant attachment style – desiring not to have to depend on anyone, and not have anyone depend on them either. They don’t feel seen and known.

Coronavirus Crisis: God is distant from all of us, and people need to pull together to create a good society. People with Statue God images are particularly concerned about societal norms breaking down. Seeing presumably holy people start to become unglued.

Vignette: 45 year old Daryl – Paula’s Father of six kids, ruggedly independent, priding himself on his individualism, his self-sufficiency. Wife is finding him more and more unavailable, and he is generally intolerant of the natural needs of his children, because those normal needs activate his own unmet needs for safety, security and dependency. Being a beloved child of God is an alien concept for Daryl. He is a man’s man, and his particular creed is that God helps those who help themselves. By which he really means you have to be your own God and help yourself. He engages in very little meditative or personal prayer because what is the point? God is so distant, and he doesn’t expect there to be much relations or emotional engagement with a Statue God. He prays the family Rosary daily and goes to Sunday Mass because he believes it is a good example for his children, and that they need strong moral education to become good citizens in the world. He secretly believes those that claim deep, emotional connection with God are deceiving themselves, and he is particularly contemptuous of Charismatic Catholics. Health issues now Crohn’s disease, really dragging him down – physical limitations, worrying him and puncturing his self-sufficient image and now his business isn’t making enough to support the family. If he stays on this unbending course, he will break. You can see how this Statue God image doesn’t allow for resilience.

Demanding Drill Sergeant God: the demanding drill sergeant God image always wants more and more from me. I never give him enough, and he is never satisfied with me. If I don’t meet his expectations, he becomes frustrated and punitive. He has no tolerance for errors, weakness, or failures. He lacks mercy, gentleness, understanding, compassion. High standards.

Heresy: Pelagianism Belief that our will can overcome the effects of original sin and still choose good without God’s help. I can earn the love of God. I can perfect myself, I can make myself worthy of the love of God, I can earn my salvation, if I just try hard enough.

Bible verse: Psalm 77 Will the Lord spurn for ever, and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love for ever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”

And I say, “It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

Self-image: always a sense of inadequacy, shame, a sense of being defective and unable to earn God’s love and respect. I must achieve, I must always be at my best, I can’t make mistakes, if I take a break, a fall behind, I have to volunteer, I have to die to myself

Attachment History – Parents who were attentive to the child, noticed the child, observe the child closely, and were invested in the child. These parents had very high standards for children’s behavior. They were exacting with discipline, usually well-intentioned. The children saw such parents as right, and tried hard to please them, believing it to be the right thing to do. Child’s attachment style was generally anxious-avoidant – working really hard to please the parent. Sometime the parents could be pleased, but there was a sense that this was temporary. There was little sense of being loved or valued simply because one was the parent’s son or daughter. Sometimes, the parents unreasonably high expectations and standards are driven by the parents’ own insecurities and sense of inadequacy.

Coronavirus Crisis: people with this kind of God image particularly struggle when situational stresses rise. They already had a sense of struggling in failing when times were not as difficult. Their self-imposed standards don’t readily yield, even when external factors make their achievement goals much more difficult, or even impossible to achieve. Thus, there likely to experience a greater sense of failure, and even despair at not measuring up to what they believe the expectations of God are. They also may look down on others who they don’t believe are struggling as hard as they are to achieve.

Vignette: Paula’s 42 year old mother, Virginia.

Left an accounting firm after marriage

to be a model wife and mother, had six children,

because she was open to life, that’s what God wanted, as many children as she could have, homeschooling, volunteering because that’s what God wants,

if someone in the parish asks her to do something, that’s God asking her to do it,

can’t say no, difficult with limits and boundaries,

God is unreasonably demanding.

And now her husband is not feeling well, she knows it, even though he’s trying to hide it. He is so irritable and unpleasant. And she is so tired. Now considering part time work.

She has to do it, she has to earn the love of God. Focused parents, driven for her to succeed.

Exercise: Think of someone close to you – spouse, child, sibling, friend, coworker. Someone important to you. Think of that loved one in a dark place – when that person goes to his or her dark place. Consider – what God image is activated for your loved one then, in that dark place. What self-image is activated in that dark place.

Put this possible God image for your loved one into words. Put the self – image of your loved one into words. Write it down, speak it aloud. Work with it. So when your loved one is in that dark place you can be an example that doesn’t reinforce the negative God or self images, but rather gently challenges those heretical images. You can better be light and salt for your loved ones, if you can enter into their inner worlds and understand how they see God and see themselves when they are in their dark places. This is great practice for loving.

Let me know how it goes: Crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594 or if you are in the RCCD community, post it in the forums.

Question for you – do you want more of these God images. Which ones?

Robber God

Vain Pharisee God

Elitist aristocrat God

Pushy salesman God

Magic Genie God

Outtogetcha Police Detective God

Unjust dictator God

Marshmallow God

Critical Scrooge God

Party-pooper God

Heartbreaker God

Crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594

Check out the RCCD Community. Contact information. Crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594

Big news: Open Zoom meeting Wednesday, July 22 at 8:15 PM Eastern time – Wednesday Evening. Community Members. A second one on Monday, July 27 9:30 AM – in the morning – Eastern time. Open forum, we can discuss anything related to psychology and Catholicism. Bring your questions. Email me questions if you can’t make it. Time to hang out together and be in community.

Patron and Patronness.

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Episode 24. God Images and Self Images

July 13, 2020

Today we’re going to consolidate some of our learning to date, spiraling back to a few key concepts and then bringing those key concepts to life in a story. You may remember Richard and Susan from Episodes 17 and 19 when we were doing a three-episode series on grief – you long-time listeners that were with us six to eight weeks ago may remember. And you may have forgotten. No worries. Don’t worry if you don’t remember. We are going to review all the key concepts briefly here and I’ll catch you all up on the doings of Susan and Richard, as we begin this fifth installment on Catholic resilience. We’re also going to take a close, in-depth look at the negative God images that Richard and Susan struggle with, and how those God images impact how they feel about themselves and each other. Now if you are just joining us, Richard and Susan are made up – I created these characters to illustrate the concepts we’re discussing, buy they are realistic, and have issues common in our lives.

I said were going to review what a God image is, so let’s just go over that again briefly.

My God image is my emotional and subjective experience of God, who I feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is.

God images are always formed experientially. God images flow from our relational experiences and how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young.

My God images can be and usually are radically different than my God concept.

This distinction between God image and God concept is so critical, I really want you to grip onto it, to really understand it a deep level. I hope you can really digest to the difference, not just at a conceptual level, but at a much deeper level in you, and hang onto it for the rest of your lives. I mean that. Remember the causal chain that we discussed last time?

Letting ourselves be taken in by our bad God images leads us to lose confidence in God, which in turn causes us to become much less resilient.

Allowing our problematic, heretical God images to dominate us, to exert influence on us in subtle but powerful ways. In the last episode, Episode 23, we discussed how the greatest sin against the First Commandment among us serious Catholics is defaulting to our negative God images, and letting them rule us, not resisting their pull on us, letting them draw us away from God.

The more we give into our negative, heretical God images, the more they color our God concepts, leading us to entertain doubts in our intellect about God’s love, his power, his mercy, his goodness. And once we abandon our God concept to the notions of our heretical God images, we are headed for major trouble.

Richard and Susan from Episodes 17 and 19 on Grief. We’re going to take a close look at Susan’s God images throughout her life to date in more detail, and in order to do that, we have to go back 100 years, and some generations.

Susan’s father Pawel-- Born 1919 in Pittsburgh to Polish immigrant parents, Pawel’s mother died shortly after he was born from Spanish influenza. Youngest of three brothers. Grew up in the 1920s with his father and two older brothers. No sisters, no experience of mother, no stepmother – some extended family but not really close. Pawel’s father (Susan’s grandfather) was a wheelwright, making wagon wheels. At age 10, Al experienced the stock market crash and the Great Depression, hard times, unemployment, and a rough house, with some alcoholism. So Pawel grew up in difficult economic circumstances, completed 8th grade, went to work as a printer’s apprentice and then to war in 1942 and fought in the American infantry in France under Pershing.

In 1945, return with some shellshock, not able to talk about war experiences. In 1951 six years after the war ended, 32 year old Pawel married Maja, an 18 year old Polish immigrant who had US shortly after WWII ended. He had known Maja’s family.

Maja was devoted to Pawel, very social, very outgoing, but with a history of unresolved war trauma from the German invasion of Poland when she was a little girl in the late 1930’s. Pawel and Maja had four children, three boys and then Zuzanna – which is Polish for Susan -- Zuzanna was the youngest of the four, born in 1960. Life was good for the family in the 1950s and 1960s.

Susan:

§ Susan’s Father the good days

· Worked in a printing shop, a master printer, first shift

· High school education, funny, affectionate, a great story teller

· Susan was the youngest, and the only girl, three older brothers, everyone said she was her mother’s daughter, similar to Mom Maja in so many ways, both physically and in her personality

· Dad gave her lots of warmth and affection as a baby and toddler and little girl, all through grade school – he read to her and was like the coolest dad, because he would come to her tea parties with her dolls –

§ God image – Susan found it easy to pray – first communion, first confession. Warmth toward God, sunny days. Felt beloved.

§ Susan’s Father – the difficult days

· But when she turned 14, in 1974, it became a difficult relationship – she and her father did not see eye to eye.

o When Susan reached puberty, Dad withdrew emotionally – seemed to reject her hugs and kisses, told her those were “things little girls did” and “Susan, you’re a big girl now”

o She told him he had always said she’d be his little girl and didn’t understand when he said nothing in response

o She didn’t understand the tears in his eyes or why he’d turn away, leave her and watch TV alone in his den

o her heart ached for him. She tried to reconnect, but he seemed cold and distant, She tried for four years, all through high school – she’d look at the photo albums of how happy Dad was when he was with her – beaming, smiling, throwing her in the air and catching her. Up until 14. Maja didn’t really seem to notice how difficult the relationship was.

o Then in college, she rejected him, and went her own way, looking for the love from older boyfriends who were physically affectionate.

· Died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack in 40 years ago in 1980, at age 61. Susan Susan was 20, in college and it broke her heart. Grief. Guilt over rejecting him, guilt over the conflicts she had had with him, over her coldness and rejection of him.

· God image – felt abandoned, alone, God so distant. She must have done something wrong. And she had sexual partners.

· At Present:

o 60 years old

o Extroverted, very emotionally expressive

o Raised Catholic, drifted away in adolescence and young adulthood

o Reinvested in the faith about 27 years ago in 1993 with the birth of her first son, very conflicted about the miscarriage.

o Never really addressed the miscarriage of her baby daughter 20 years ago, whom she desperately wanted.

o Wide circle of friends and acquaintances, close friend Valerie

o Professional translator in Spanish and Italian

o Scare with breast cancer five years ago

o Mother Maja has recently died at age 87 in the nursing home from the coronavirus

Richard:

· 61 years old

· Emotionally reserved, doesn’t talk about his feelings easily, has trouble naming them

· Cradle Catholic who attends Sunday Mass, not really that invested in religion.

· Engineer, had made it into middle management, but lost his position when his whole division was shut down due to some internal issues in his company

· Considering retirement, not sure what to do with himself

· Day trades stocks – has a system, has made some income from that

· Porn use

The Couple

· Married in 1992. 28 years ago.

· Three sons aged 27, 25 (John) and 23 years old

· Susan troubled by emotional and physical distance in the marriage, over the last 25 years

· Susan very upset about discovering her husband’s porn use

Where they are right now. July 2020 – we’re picking up the story again. Will

· Fair degree of conflict right now – over the porn use

o Susan taking it hard – had assumed that her husband just wasn’t very interested in physical intimacy

§ Maybe low testosterone

§ Maybe focused on work, other things

§ Maybe a health issue – Richard hated going to the doctor, might have prostate trouble, won’t get it checked out.

§ Self image, body image issues. “He doesn’t want me.” “He hasn’t wanted me for 25 years now”

o He doesn’t want me

§ Activating some psychological issues with her Father

§ Never knew why…

So now let’s move into some new concepts: Self-concept and self-image -- Parallel to the God concept and God image

Self concepts and God concepts interact, there reciprocal causal effects. Makes sense

Self-images can flow from God images, they conform to God images. God is the reference point, not us. In spite of the Enlightenment’s attempts to make the individual human being the measure of all things, we still look outside of ourselves to define ourselves. But self-images can also impact God images.

Examples of Susan’s self-concept

Exercise God image in your dark place. Now look at your self image that corresponds .

Last Friday, July 10, Zoom meeting for RCCD community members to hang out and discuss together God images, and that is now up.

Bonding, really becoming the community. Connecting. Yearning to connect. 4 elements. Do not have to be anything like perfect – we are all wounded in various ways, we all have our struggles. Being real about God images, real about self-images, in the messiness, untidiness of these real issues. Because we want real healing.

Check it out. Contact information.

Patron and Patronness.

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Episode 23. Sinning, God Images, and Resilience

July 6, 2020

I am really excited to be with you today, we have a great episode coming up, where we will be bringing together all the conceptual information from the last three sessions and seeing how it all works together in real life, in real situations, real adversity and real hardship, all from a Catholic worldview.

Let’s start with a brief review, spiraling back to the critical concepts that we have been studying about resilience from a Catholic perspective. If you are new to the podcast, first of all welcome, I’m glad you’re here. All you need to know conceptually we will cover in the next few minutes or so. You can review the last three episodes, episodes 20, 21 and 22 if you want to get into more detail about the concepts in this brief review.

Let’s start with the definition of Catholic resilience – you will see how it is really different from secular understandings of resilience. For our purposes, I’m defining Catholic resilience as “the process of accepting and embracing adversity, trials, stresses and suffering as crosses. Catholic resilience sees these crosses as gifts from our loving, attuned God, gifts to transform us, to make us holy, to help us be better able to love and to be loved than we ever were before, and to ultimately bring us into loving union with Him.

That is what I want for you. For you to transform your suffering into a means of making you holier, more peaceful, and more joyful. Not to take away any necessary suffering from you – not to take away the crosses God has given you. I am here to help you reduce, to eliminate your psychological impediments to not only accepting those crosses but embracing them, and transforming your suffering into the means of your salvation. You have to be resilient to do that, and not as the world sees resilience, but resilience firmly grounded in a Catholic understanding.

Remember how we need a deep and abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providence in order to be resilient? That resilience is an effect – it’s a consequence of the deep, abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providential care and love for us. If you have the deep, abiding confidence in God and His providential love for you, you specifically, you will be resilient. Repeat.

Remember also how the main psychological reason why we don’t have that deep abiding confidence in God is because we don’t know him as He truly is. We have problematic God images. Our God images fluctuate, they can be as unstable as water. These are the subjective, emotionally-driven ways we construe God in the moment. These are automatic, spontaneously emerging, and they are not necessary consented to by the will.

These God images stand in contrast to our God concept, which is the representation of God that we profess, that we intellectually endorse, that we have come to believe intellectually through reading, studying, discerning. It is the representation of God that we endorse and describe when others ask us who God is.

When our problematic, inaccurate, heretical God images get activated, they compromise our whatever confidence have in God, whatever childlike trust we have in God. So here’s the key causal chain:

Bad God images lead to lack of confidence in God, which leads to a loss of resilience.

And psychological factors contribute to these bad God images. Here’s the idea. Think about al little child. 12 months old or 18 months old, looking at his father. To that toddler, his father seems like a God – really huge – probably 10 times his weight, more than twice his height, so much stronger than he is, able to do so much more in the world. That toddler, as he comes into awareness about God, is going to transfer his experience of his parents and other caregivers into his God images.

Here’s an important point for you to know as you wrap your mind around God images. God images are always formed experientially. God images flow from our relational experiences and how we construe and make sense of those images when we are very young. And that’s critical – we shape our first God images in the first two years of our lives. Those first two years of life have huge impact on the formation of our initial God images. And that makes sense, because our first two years of life have a huge impact on how we experience and understand relationships generally. Our experience of other important caregivers, especially parents, but also grandparents and others shape our psychological expectations of what God is like. And often we are not aware of those expectations. Our assumptions may be unknown to our intellects, to our conscious minds. Simply put, our God images are often unconscious. Our God images may be unconscious, but they still affect us, they still impact us and exercise influences on us. We can choose to accept that we have these problematic God images and deal with them directly, or we can deny that they exist and try to shove them away, ignore them, suppress them, and drive them into the unconscious.

Ok, now for a little speculative Malinoski theology. Bur first, you need to know that I could be wrong about some of these concepts that I am discussing. Now I’m really serious about this. As a professional who has teaches publicly and speculates publicly about the intersection of psychological and Catholicism, I am acutely aware that I can be wrong about things. If any of you listeners, particularly those who are well formed theologically and philosophically, detect that I am ever teaching anything that contradicts the Faith, I want you to tell me. This is really pioneering work we are doing together. For more than a decade, I didn’t teach this kind of thing publically. I wasn’t sure about getting into God images and God concepts, for example. What if I was wrong? What if I started leading people astray? How can I be sure that don’t make mistakes? And then I realized I was making the bigger mistake of burying my talent, the mistake of omission. I needed to become more resilient. To become more resilient, I needed to have a deeper and more abiding confidence in God. I need to know at a deep level that whatever public teaching I did wasn’t happening in a vacuum, with God millions of miles away, leaving me to my own devices, letting me persist in my errors. No. God is near. God is minding me, minding this store. And if I fell down, if I went astray, He would come looking for me, like the shepherd who lost one of 100 sheep and left the 99 behind to find the stray one.

So here’s the thing. We hear about the First Commandment still from time to time, right? You know, the first Commandment, the first one from the Ten Commandments. I am the Lord thy God and Thou Shalt have no strange Gods before me. You might recall from Exodus 32 that Moses brought the that as Moses was bringing the Ten Commandments, newly inscribed in stone tablets by the finger God, the Israelites were dancing around the golden calf. Bad news. Truly terrible. OK. So we know that God really doesn’t like the worship of idols.

But now I have to say, I have never been tempted to melt my wife’s jewelry and make a golden calf and dance around it. No, I mean it, I’ve struggles with a lot of temptations in my life, had my ups and downs, but this calf making business – in all seriousness, calf-making and the dancing and all that has never been on my radar. I listen to people a lot and this whole crafting and worshiping molten idols doesn’t seem to come up much nowadays in Catholic circles, it’s just not a thing, nowadays. Not many confessions lead off with “Forgive me Father for I have sinned, it’s been two weeks since my last confession, and I did it again, I stole some of my Father’s bling, including his favorite gold Saturday Night Fever medallion and some cuff links and stuff and melted them into a calf and I was glorifying it, I was dancing around it again… Did it two times, last Thursday and last Sunday.

So what are the false gods, the idols that we practicing Catholics struggle with in the present age? It’s common in Catholic circles to hear about how money could be our god, or fame, power, career success… Popularity may be our god, or our carefully curated images on social media, or physical health, or a sense of security, or a mansion in Martha’s Vineyard. Yeah. Ok. I get it. These are things that people can pursue with an intensity of religious fervor. But do they really mistake them for God? Really? Like the Israelites did with their calf idol? Let’s go back to Exodus 32. The Israelites were saying to each other “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” So now really. Does anyone say that about money, power, health, social image, security or a mansion in Martha’s Vineyard? No.

Now I’m going to share with you what I think is the number one most prevalent modern day offense that Catholics commit against the first commandment, against the great commandment.

The number one most prevalent sin against the First Commandment that we serious, practicing Catholics commit is….

Allowing our problematic, heretical God images to dominate us, to exert influence on us in subtle but powerful ways. The most prevalent sin against the First Commandment among us serious Catholics is defaulting to our negative God images, and letting them rule us, not resisting their pull on us, letting them draw us away from God.

What I’m saying is that it really harms our relationship with God when we give in to those problematic god images, and when we don’t resolve these problematic God images to reduce their pull on us. It’s not that we create a physical idol and worship our God images directly, usually, but we let them hang around. We give them space and time, we don’t seek to resolve them. We might not even know about God images, we may not think about them or we may try to ignore them, or we just chalk them up to being temptations, or we think just deny or suppress them. So how does that happen?

So let’s say your dark place is feeling alone and abandoned by other people and your mood is depressed. In this dark place you don’t feel like anyone understands you, that no one cares about you. And subtly you generalize this feeling to God. Your Deistic god image is activated, your image of a god that is distant, uncaring, a God who made the world, but then left all of us to our own devices. And now let’s say that you give this Deistic god image some room and space to grow. Since you’re feeling that God is distant, uncaring, unkind, disinterested, not connected, you go with your this feeling, this God image, rather than your God concept, the knowing that God is loving, caring. You let your distant, uncaring, Deistic God image drive your behavior, you don’t resist it. And you know what? You begin to drift away from God. You don’t pray any more, because what’s the point? It feels like God just isn’t listening. You roll with your feelings, let that apathy get a tighter grip. And now things seem even worse. You ask yourself, see how God doesn’t love me? See my sorry plight? But you may not be giving God a chance to reach you. You might not be letting him find you.

God isn’t separating from you – the opposite is true. You are separating from God – it wasn’t primarily your negative God image that separated you from God – it was your response, your giving in to your Deistic God image – buy not seeking God, by acting as though he were indeed uncaring, distant, and uninterested in you, you distanced yourself from him. You treated him, you gave him the worship that was due him if he was indeed and uncaring, distant god.

Here’s the kicker. The more we give into our negative, heretical God images, the more they color our God concepts, leading us to entertain doubts in our intellect about God’s love, his power, his mercy, his goodness. And once we abandon our God concept to the notions of our heretical God images, look out! We are headed for blasphemy.

Let’s go back to Genesis 3 – we started that story last time, let’s pick up where we left off.

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened. But those opened eyes were still not seeing God accurately. Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be dominated by their problematic God images – we are not absolutely certain, but perhaps they had images of a wrathful god, a god seeking vengeance. This was not who they had known God to be in their original God concept and God image. After the fall, Adam and Eve let their fear drive their behavior – God was looking for them, looking to reconnect with them, reaching out to them, letting them know he was coming so as not to surprise them… think of the tenderness and consideration in that… And they hid. They hid from God. God reached out to them as a tender, loving, firm Father and they hid from Him, they wanted to get away, to flee, to try to “save” themselves.

Now those God images that trouble us usually correspond to the difficulties we have with relational bonds with other people, in our attachment style. Our attachment style is basically how we relate, and connect in close relationships with other people, and there are a variety of psychological factors that impact it. Brown and Elliot describe five conditions for secure attachment and secure relating. I’ve modified these to describe the issues that people experience in negative God images. If there is a problem with a God image, it always is because one or more of following conditions for a secure relationship with God are not met.

Feeling seen and known by God
Feeling safe and secure with God
A sense of being comforted and reassured by God
Having a sense the God cherishes you, rejoices in you, and delights in you.
Knowing at a deep level that God wills what is best for you.

Note that these do not include the dimensions that are spiritual, this isn’t including the theological virtue of faith. But the grace of faith is still going to perfect nature, it is still going to work with your nature, so even though these psychological factors are obviously not the whole story, they are still important, they still exert an effect.

Now is the last episode, you did a dark place exercise, where you reflected on your God image when you are in one of your own particular dark places. Now you can go back to that God image from that dark place or another one. Get descriptive about how you feel God to be in that place. You can expand your description, maybe include a drawing if you are inclined, but really get back into seeking out that God image, not to give into it, of course, but to identify it.

Now let’s go through the five conditions for secure psychological attachment to God to see which ones you struggle with. Write them down. And now you may be able to reach out relationally to God in the specific ways you need, in order to develop that secure attachment. So if you are hiding like Adam and Eve in the bushes, you can come out and experience being seen and known by God.

Sometimes it’s too much for people to start with God. We might start with Mary. Or St. Joseph. Or a guardian angel.

If you join the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, put it up on the discussion board there – that’s private only for the community members. You can also email it to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or leave me a voicemail at 317.567.9594 – if you call, be warned that sometimes I pick up the phone and answer, just saying…

And here’s the next big thing. Friday, July 10, 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time, I am hosting a Zoom meeting for RCCD community members to hang out and discuss together this podcast episode and the next one, Episodes 22 and 23. So put that on your calendars, register in the Zoom meeting section of the RCCD community discussion boards. It’s going to be great. Friday, July 10, 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM Eastern time. And pray for me, I’m praying for you.

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Episode 22. The Core of Catholic Resilience

June 29, 2020

Today we are going to the core of Catholic resilience, we are going to discover what drives resilience in the saints. We are discussing the one central theme that is absolutely essential for the kind of resilience that transcends this natural world, that incorporates not just our natural gifts, but grace as well. The saints are the most resilient people who ever walked the face of the earth. What is the secret of the resilience of the saints? That’s the question we are focusing on today. What is the secret of the super resilience of the saints, the secret that allows them to rise up again when they fall under the weight of adversity, of persecution, of their own failings, weakness and sins? We are getting to that in just a moment.

I am a believer in spiral learning, especially for this podcast and for the online learning at Souls and Hearts. So what is spiral learning? Guess what! It’s definition time with Dr. Peter. [cue sound effect]

In a spiral learning approach, the basic facts of a subject are learned, without worrying much about the details. Just the main, plain concept. As learning progresses, more and more details are introduced. These new details are related to the basic concepts which are reemphasized many times to help enter them into long-term memory.

Repeat. That’s spiral learning. Homeschoolers might recognize that from the way Saxon math works or the way some other programs teach.

Why spiral learning. I really want you to integrate what you learn in these podcasts into the whole of your being – not just have them go in one ear and out the other, but for you to really grip on to them, really hold them, even when times are tough, even when you are in a dark place, even when emotions run high.

My self-defense instructor James Yeager, in a fighting pistol course I took several years ago taught the class that “The only things you really possess are those things you can carry with you at a dead run.” He was referring to gear, including weapons mindset – he is really big on mindset, having your head right in crisis situations, and worked with his students to integrate his teachings throughout their whole beings, to have the right responses come up habitually, automatically, reflexively. I want that for you. So in these podcasts, we’re nourishing the mind, we’re focusing on the concepts, we’re starting there. The experiential work will help with the rest of the integration into your heartset, your soulset and your bodyset.

Since we are already on a hard road together in the Christian life. I want to make the learning about Catholic resilience and growing in resilience as easy as possible for you.

So we will spiral upward, coming back to the main themes in the podcast over and over again with new details, new data points, lots of examples, and of course, stories. As a psychologist and educator, I want this to be really easy for you to take in. Another benefit of that approach is that each podcast episode can stand alone – you can just pick this up the middle of this series on resilience can get the background you need for the topic of the episode. I’m really thinking about you when I put these together.

So let’s briefly review what we’ve learned in this series on Catholic resilience.

In episode 20, two weeks ago, we discussed the 10 factors of resilience offered by the secular experts. These were the ten essential aspects of resilience as summarized by Southwick and Charney, two writer for a general audience on resilience whom I respect. In episode 21 last week we got into the three major ways that secular understandings of resilience are lacking from a Catholic perspective, three important mistakes that secular professionals make in understanding resilience, the things that they miss because of their non-Catholic worldviews. If you have the time, you can check those two episodes out if you haven’t already, they help to put today’s episode into context, but suffice it to say for today, that Catholic resilience is very different than a secular understanding of resilience.

In the last episode, I offered a definition of Catholic resilience, comparing secular understandings of resilience to a Catholic understanding of resilience. So now, just to get us all up to speed, let’s review that definition of Catholic resilience. It’s definition time with Dr. Peter

Catholic resilience “the process of accepting and embracing adversity, trauma, trials, stresses and suffering as crosses. Catholic resilience sees these crosses as gifts from our loving, attuned God, gifts to transform us, to make us holy, to help us be better able to love and to be loved than we ever were before, and to ultimately bring us into loving union with Him.

Today we are making a deep dive into the one essential requirement, the one prerequisite, the one necessary quality you have to have to be resilient as a Catholic. All the other factors of Catholic resilience flow from this core, this central principle.

Now you are asking, Dr. Peter, what is this core of resilience, this central principle of Catholic resilience? I am glad you asked. The core of Catholic resilience, the kind of holy resilience of the saint is…

Drum Role

A deep and abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providence.

What I am saying is that resilience is an effect – it’s a consequence of the deep, abiding confidence in God, especially in God’s Providential care and love for us. . Resilience flows from that confidence in God – confidence in God’s care and love for me, specifically. So resilience is an effect of the spiritual life.

OK. Let’s break this down, to make sure we’re on the same page. What do I mean by confidence in God?

St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as confidence in God as “a hope, fortified by solid conviction.” So confidence in God is Hope, but it is a hope fortified, not just an ordinary hope, which could be lost. It is a higher level of hope, a hope fortified by solid conviction. The difference between hope and confidence is only a matter of degree – they are the same, but confidence, because it is fortified by solid conviction, is hope supercharged, a super hope, as King David sang in Psalm 119 (118). “In verba tua supersperavi” read the Latin. Speravi is I have hoped – Supersperavi – I have hope to the highest level. Typical translation “I have hoped in thy word.”

Let’s look at solid conviction. So solid. What does that mean? Firm, grounded, immovable, consistent. Conviction -- what is that? Certainty, certitude, calm assurance, not a shadow of a doubt. So the confidence in God – a hope, fortified by solid conviction – a supercharged hope, solidified by calm assurance, without wavering, without doubting, not subject to the ups and downs of life.

What I am saying is if we have that kind of confidence in God, and especially in his providential love and care – and that’s important. It can’t just be that God exists. Deists believe that God exists, but that he is distant, remote, disengaged. A belief in a God like that is not going to help resilience. It’s not just that God exists, but that He cares for us, in big things and little things, and that we are his beloved daughters and sons. If we have that kind of confidence in God and it is deep, penetrating all of who we are. That confidence has to be integrated throughout all of us – mind, heart, soul, and body. And it has to be abiding. What does that mean, abiding? That means that our confidence in God has to persist, it has to remain in us in times of trouble. There has to be a constancy, a permanence to our confidence in God, it’s not with us one moment and gone the next.

So here is the key idea: [cue sound effect]

So if you have the deep, abiding confidence in God and His providential love for you, you specifically, you will be resilient. Repeat.

Because if you are sheltering under the wing of a God like that – who can harm you? What can separate you from Him? What else matters? What could ever take your peace away or cause you to fall and not get back up?

Now that level of confidence in God is rare, it’s a quality of sanctity, of holiness, it flows from and is a result of a deep, mutual relationship with God as He really is. And lest you believe that I am somehow speaking down to you from some lofty pinnacle of human experience, lest you believe that I somehow have risen up to a perfect, deep abiding confidence in God…. let me tell you. It isn’t so. This is a process. I lose my confidence in God sometimes (it’s not always abiding) and that confidence is not as deep as it could be – I have zones of me, parts of me that do not yet have that kind of confidence in God.

All right, so let’s review: We want to have a Catholic resilience, the capacity to accept and embrace adversity, trials, suffering, our crosses as gifts from God to transform us, to make us holy, and to ultimately bring us to heaven. We want that resilience. Where does it flow from? It flows from a deep, abiding confidence in God, especially in His providential love and care for me, particularly, me, specifically.

So you might ask, Dr. Peter, from a psychological perspective, what gets in the way of that deep, abiding confidence in God? What psychological factors keep us from having that confidence that we so need in order to be resilient Catholics? That is a great question. Now remember that question focuses on the psychological factors that prevent us, that hinder us from a deep, abiding confidence in God. There are other factors that I don’t spend as much time on in these episodes. There are spiritual factors. There are moral factors. I claim no special qualifications to discuss those matters. I’m not a priest, I’m not a confessor, I am not a moral theologian. I’m a psychologist. So I am focusing the on the psychological aspects here and how they relate to the spiritual realm.

The main psychological reason why we don’t have that deep abiding confidence in God is because we don’t know him as He truly is. We don’t understand him as He truly is. We misunderstand him, we don’t get Him. We have all kinds of assumptions about Him that are false. The false assumptions about God are generated from how we misconstrue our experiences. The ways we misunderstand God psychologically stem from misinterpretations of our experiences.

Now I need to introduce two key ideas, two new definitions. The distinction I am about to make is really foundational, really critical, but don’t worry if you don’t get this right away, we will be coming back to these two definitions over and over again.

God concept [cue sound]

What we profess about God.

is a more intellectual understanding of God

based on what one has been taught.

but also based on what one has explored through reading, studying , discerning and deciding to believe

Reflected in the Creed, expanded in the Catechism, formal teaching.

God image [cue sound] is the emotional and subjective experience of God

What we know in our bones. Who we feel God to be in the moment. May or may not correspond to who God really is.

Initially this image is shaped by the relationship that we have with our parents. This is our experiential sense how our feelings, our heart interpret God Those God images can be radically different than our God concepts. This is heavily influenced by psychological factors, and varies a lot.

Repeat the definitions

We often suppress these God images and force them into the unconcsious. Frightened of them, ashamed of them.

So many orthodox practicing Catholics in my office struggle with God images – we call have images of God that do not reflect who God really is. We might feel that God is distant, unengaged, that God is disgusted with me, wants to punish me or is even out to get me. Some may feel in their bones that God is not very powerful, not very wise, or not very good, or not aware of what is going on in the world.

All right, now we have a new little segment that may come up from time to time in these podcasts. Sharing time. Sharing time is when I get a little more personal about my experience. So I thought I would share with you one of my problematic God images, what sometimes I feel in my bones about God in this very first segment of “Sharing Time, with Dr. Peter.”

Cue Sharing time Music

When I go down the rabbit hole of internet bloggers on the Catholic Church and read about all the scandals and coverups and the general incompetence and malice and criminal behavior of Church leaders, or when I get all wrapped up in how bishops have not really pursued creative solutions to provide the sacraments – confession, the Eucharist, when I indulge in very critical thoughts about bishops, and how they can seem much more concerned about my body than my soul, or more concerned about their bodies rather than my soul, I lose my recollection, when I lose my resilience, when I lose my confidence in God, I have parts of me that want to scream at God “Why isn’t anyone minding the store, God? Why are there no consequences for the evildoers and the incompetent in the Church? Where in Hades are you, God?” Except I don’t say Hades. This is a clean, family-oriented podcast, doncha know, we’re keeping it clean. Now, I know this image of God isn’t true. I don’t endorse it, I don’t profess it, it is not what I believe about God, it’s not my God concept. But man, when I am in that place, does it feel that way. And I can also become very unfair and unjust in my thinking about Church leaders and bishops in those moments.

You know what I am talking about? How God can seem in your bones, in your dark moments, maybe a lot of the time, not to fit the loving, caring, compassionate image that we receive from the Scripture, from our Tradition. Near the end of this podcast, we’ll do a little exercise to help you get in touch with your God image.

So to spiral back, we have the God concept – that is what we know to be true about God conceptually, intellectually, it’s what we profess. For us orthodox Catholics, it’s summarized in the Nicene Creed and expanded in the Catechism. And we have the God images, which are who we feel God to be in our bones in the moment, our gut sense of God, what our intuition tells us.

One more example. Orthodox, faithful Catholic experiencing all kinds of anxiety about contracting the coronavirus. Real health concerns. How in touch is that person with God as expressed in Psalm 23.

So here’s one more key idea. As Catholics, it is our God images that contribute so much to our lack of confidence in God. We have problematic God images. These problematic God images get activated, and they affect us heavily and they undermine our deep and abiding confidence in God. Our negative God images compromise our capacity for childlike trust in God, we either lose it or we can’t grow in trust. And when we are compromised in our deep and abiding confidence in God, we lose our resilience. See the causal chain here? Bad God images lead to lack of confidence in God, which leads to a loss of resilience. Boom. There it is. where I wanted us to reach today. Now let’s solidify this. Let’s drive it home. How can we make these concepts stick with us. Hmmm. [Ding] Ah ha, an idea! Let’s have a story, an old one, and a not very good one. It’s Story time, with Dr. Peter: [cue music]

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

Satan here – Focused on the God image of Adam and Eve. He wants to corrupt the God image, change their feelings about God, set their hearts against God.

Fifth of the five attachment related tasks from last episode, Episode 21:

Knowing at a deep level that God wills what is best for you.

We know that grace perfects nature – St. Thomas Aquinas, grace perfects nature, it doesn’t destroy it. Satan wants to corrupt our nature – he works on a human, natural level. He wants to sow seeds of doubt about God’s benevolence, about how God wills what is best for us. He wants us to doubt that, and he’s going to use things in the natural world, he’s going to try to capitalize on our psychological deficiencies, our wounds, our imperfections. He wants to capitalize on our problematic God images, exacerbate them, get us to endorse them, succumb to them so that we will lose our deep and abiding confidence in God which leads to our resilience collapsing. And if he can get us far enough down that road, we will be lost.

I’m going to talk much more about the 5 attachment related tasks and how they connect to God images in future episodes, don’t worry. And I am going to dive deeper into the relationship between temptation, our human imperfections, and resilience as well. We’re going to talk about how to heal our God images. There is so much in store for you in upcoming episodes in this sequence on reliance.

Dark place exercise.

Write it down. If you join the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, put it up on the discussion board there – that’s private only for the community members. You can also email it to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or leave me a voicemail at 317.567.9594 – if you call, be warned that sometimes I pick up the phone and answer, just saying…

Discern about making this podcast a regular part of your week. Not all called to it, but this is designed as a program. Can you commit to the 30 minutes per week to listen and the five minutes per day to do the exercises to work on your human formation. Super excited about next week – major story time next week, I will be in rare form for a long, long story in which we are going to pull together the conceptual work we’ve been doing in the this episode and the last episode. It will be great, I am really excited.

Also we just had our first organization meeting for the RCCD community on June 27, last Saturday and it was “invigorating.” We are coming together in the community. The video from that with the ideas and sharing from that meeting will be up in the RCCD Exclusive Content area, along with the videos from the Grief Workshop and the Stress Management Workshop until July 8.

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Episode 21. Catholic Resilience – Where the Secular Experts Get Resilience Wrong.

June 22, 2020

In our last episode, we started a deep dive into resilience by looking at secular conceptualizations of resilience. We discussed how in the secular world resilience is about adapting yourself to life’s demands, it’s about handling the challenges and curve balls that life throws at you with poise and confidence. It’s about getting back to previous levels of functioning and adaptation. It’s about getting up as many times as you are knocked down by dangers and misfortunes, it’s about journeying on under the load of troubles and difficulties that life brings us. It’s about not succumbing to failure, not collapsing under stress, not being destabilized by hardships and tough situations.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress— such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.” You know, like a racquetball that gets hit, squashed, and then regains its shape. {insert sound}

Seems reasonable enough, right? I mean, it’s the American Psychological Association, you know, the professionals speaking here. And in fact there’s a lot of good in that definition that we can draw from. In considering resilience, though, we as believing, practicing Catholics need to rework the secular notions ingrained in us by our culture. And that’s what I am here to help you do. I am here to challenge notions commonly held by Catholics that are actually not grounded in Catholicism.

There are three major problems with the secular definition of resilience.

First problem: Secular mental health professionals look to at their clients’ personal resources, their talents, their skills, their gifts. The secular clinicians will work with primarily with those asset and strengths. These clinicians think about how their clients can have greater autonomy, greater agency, be better able to access their assets and strengths to better adapt to the world. Most of them will also assess the social support that their clients can access from their close relationships. Nothing wrong with that, insofar as it goes. Insofar as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. As Catholics, we’re not supposed to rely primarily on ourselves, we’re not supposed to be independent, rugged individualists. And we’re not supposed to rely primarily on our close relationships either, because all other people have their flaws and they will disappoint us. We’re supposed to rely primarily on God – on His love, His mercy, His power, His constancy. And while more and more secular clinicians are open to bringing in their clients’ spirituality to help their clients become resilient, it’s not the top thing on the list. Spiritual resources made Southwick and Charney’s top ten list of resilience factors, but not until number 4 and a little bit in number 10. From a Catholic perspective, God is absolutely primary in resilience. And this is the biggest problem of secular-based psychologies in general, not just with regard to resiliency.

We need to not only understand with our minds who we are and who God is – we also need to involve our souls, our hearts, our bodies. This is not easy. There are lots and lots and lots of psychological obstacles to seeing God as He really is. And I am here to help you do that. We will go through this process together, harmonizing the best of psychology with a Catholic worldview as we go through all the factors of resilience. That is what is unique about this podcast. That is what is unique about Souls and Hearts. We ground psychology in an authentic Catholic anthropology, an authentic Catholic worldview. Now today we’re not going into all the solutions for Catholics to become more resilient. Be patient, I promise you that is coming up in future episodes and especially in the workshops and experiential work that we do in the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community. I want you to become much more resilient, and we’re starting with understanding the conceptual landscape first. All right, so that covers the first problem that secular clinicians have with guiding others to resiliency – not giving God His primary role.

Here’s the second problem of secular approaches to resilience. Most mental health professionals work to minimize suffering and maximize one’s enjoyment of life. They misunderstand suffering. Most assume either consciously or unconsciously that suffering is to be avoided, minimized, that it is bad. They want their clients to feel better, to enjoy life more, to avoid getting hurt, to be able to pursue their own dreams and follow their own paths, to be able to make their own meaning out of life. They don’t use this word, but which philosophical system argues for maximizing enjoyment and minimizing suffering as the best way? Well, dear listeners, the word for the belief system that emphasizes maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain is hedonism. Hedonism. And hedonism has always been really popular because in our fallen human conditions, hedonism makes sense to our passions – we naturally want to avoid pain and we naturally want to pursue pleasure. It’s a very worldly way of looking at meaning and purpose in life.

Most mental health professionals don’t understand the meaning of the cross. They don’t understand the importance of redemptive suffering. And hey, it’s not easy to grasp deeply the meaning of the cross. There’s a lot of ways that people, even Catholics, even faithful devout Catholics get the meaning of the Cross wrong. The meaning of the cross is not intuitive to the vast majority of us, it’s not available to unaided human reason. We need divine revelation to understand the meaning of the cross and why the cross is a gift that almost everybody rejects. Remember that the cross is a stumbling block and a folly – Christ’s cross was seen by the Jews of his day as disgraceful, shameful, a sign that he was cursed by God. To the Greeks of the day, focused the cycles of time, on order, on harmony, on beauty, the crucifixion was jarring, discordant event, and the resurrection hard to believe.

But all things work together for good for those who love the Lord – Romans 8:28. All things. Therefore all things can be gifts. If we are loving the Lord, we can receive our sufferings, as gifts, as our crosses that will bring us to salvation, to the joys of eternal life. Now this can be extremely difficult to do. Without grace, it is impossible to deeply understand, accept, and embrace our sufferings as gifts. We are going to suffer, one way or another. We can suffer as stoics, or we can suffer as rebels, or we can suffer as Christians. The choice is difficult, but we can choose to bring the redemption into suffering. And I am going to help you with that in future episodes and workshops. For now, we are outlining the conceptual base. So the second mistake that secular mental health professionals make about resilience is understanding suffering wrongly.

As we go through the next several episodes on different aspects of resilience, we are going to look at suffering from a Catholic perspective. We’re going to value the redemptive aspect of suffering, we going to pick up our crosses. We are not going to be naïve about suffering though – we’re not minimizing suffering or denying it. If you are a faithful practicing Catholic, you are on a hard road. We have the straight from our Lord Jesus Christ. We are on a hard road.

Matthew 7:14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. It’s a hard road, there is suffering on it, but there is also deep, abiding peace and joy along with the suffering. Catholic Saints are no strangers to suffering. They don’t avoid it. They embrace it because they recognize the cross. So this issue of understanding suffering properly is really, really important in discussing resilience from a Catholic perspective.

Here’s the third problem. Secular approaches to resilience focus on returning to previous levels of functioning. Bouncing back, like that racquetball, to the previous state of being before we were struck. Getting back to where we were before the trouble began.

For a Catholic, that’s not good enough. I don’t want you to merely get back to previous levels of functioning. I want you to go way beyond them. The cross isn’t about just getting back to the old status quo. It’s about breaking through to a whole new way of being. A whole new way of loving and being loved. While secular approaches recognize the value of being challenged in order to grow, for the Catholic, the trials, the adversities, the traumas, the tragedies of this life are gifts to help us not just get back to where we were, but to bring us to a new plane of existence, to sanctity, to holiness. There is no holiness in this life without suffering. That why in the lead in to these episode, I talk about going “beyond mere resilience,” rising up “and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.”

So in summary, from a Catholic perspective, there are three major problems with the ways that secular clinicians approach resilience. The first problem is that secular clinicians focus on the client, relying on the client’s own resources primarily and then on his or her close relationships secondarily. Not on God. Our all-loving, all-powerful God is left out of that primary role. Our loving Father is shuffled off to the periphery, vaguely included somehow in the functionality of spirituality for the client. In secular approaches to resilience Quote Spirituality End quote is useful in helping the client pursue his or her own agenda to becoming self-actualized, but it’s very unclear as to how that works, because who knows what spirituality the client may have?

The second problem is that secular clinicians misunderstand suffering. Without Divine Revelation, there is no way to understand the redemptive value of suffering or know that the cross is our way to heaven.

Third problem. Secular clinicians focus on bouncing back to previous levels of functioning, These clinicians focus on restoring the client to how he or she was before the adversity. But Catholics don’t go up on the cross of suffering just to come back down again and be as we were before. We are to be transformed by the cross, and break through to a whole new way of being, to holiness, to sanctity.

All right, you may be asking so, Dr. Peter, give us a definition of Catholic resilience. All right, since you asked, here we go. It’s definition time, with Dr. Peter {cue sound effect}

Repeat the definition.

All right, so one more thing here. The way you develop resilience depends on where you are in our human formation, and where you are in the spiritual life. Growing in Catholic resilience is not a one-size-fits-all process. It really has to be tailored to the human and spiritual formation that you already have. I don’t know how many clients I have had through the years who have imitated saints’ penances and their ascetical practices in the hope of growing. They weren’t ready for those practices. It was like trying to do trigonometry without understanding arithmetic. That’s another why it’s not easy to just pick up a book on resilience and follow the instructions and have it work. You seed a lot of used books on resilience on the internet.

And that makes sense. You wouldn’t just go and pick out a suit randomly from a rack and try to wear it – we need a program of growing in resilience that fits us. We need that tailoring. So as we move forward, we’re going to consider where in the spiritual life you are, using the seven Mansions of the Interior Castle as laid out of St. Teresa of Avila, with a special emphasis on the first three mansions, which correspond to the purgative way, where the vast majority of Catholics are (if they are in the mansions at all). We will also address the kinds of practices that foster resilience in the rest of the mansions, corresponding to the illuminative and unitive ways as well.

We’re also going to look at what psychological tasks remain incomplete for you in your attachment to God. These are vitally important. We’re going to look at five attachment-related tasks and really dive into these in future episodes, because there is no Catholic resiliency without them. The five attachment tasks are:

Feeling seen and known by God
Feeling safe and secure with God
A sense of being comforted and reassured by God
Having a sense the God cherishes you, rejoices in you, and delights in you.
Knowing at a deep level that God wills what is best for you.

I am working really hard to put a whole program on Catholic resilience together for you. I will lay out the conceptual and intellectual aspects in these podcast episodes, free for all of you. I will also bring in some experiential exercises into these episodes, so they are designed for you to be able to benefit from the podcasts alone. We’re going to be weaving in a lot of stories to help illustrate in detail all the concepts as well, to make them much easier to understand and to relate to, to connect with.

For those that want to go deeper, I’m also putting together a series of workshops for the RCCD community for small group work on increasing Catholic resilience, focusing on both the natural and the spiritual growth and formation. Here we have the time and space to do a lot more experiential work, including

increasing insight and awareness to underlying psychological obstacles to resilience
trying out various exercises and techniques in real time to see which are most helpful
Sharing experiences and support with other like-minded Catholics who on also on this quest for greater resiliency.

I am also gathering together the best current measures of psychological resilience and working on developing one to assess the factors of Catholic resilience for those who would like to so some self-assessment, or who may even want some professional resilience coaching in a small group or even individually. All that will be coming up in the next weeks and months but you have to be a part of the RCCD community to take advantage of those benefits. It’s free for the first 30 days and $25 per month after that, which is really a bargain for all that we offer you there. You can see our previous workshops on grief and on stress management there now. Check it out, it’s the way you can support this podcast, which survives by our Lady’s intercession, and by the grace of God, but also by your prayers and your membership. Memberships are the only financial means of support this podcast has right now, so if you see value in what I’m offering you, I need your help. Go to soulsandhearts.com and register for the RCCD community. Check us out here, go to soulsandhearts.com and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community, there no risk and no obligation, so if it’s not for you, you haven’t lost anything but a little time and effort. And I want to thank the seventeem members who have registered for our community. Kathleen, Jonathan, Jane, Bridget, Joyce, Diane, Jeff, our two Elizabeths, John, Joni, Margaret, Sylvia, Pansorn, Julie, Martha, and Karen. Thank you. You are courageous people on this journey with me. I am very proud of you and glad to be getting to know you.

On Saturday, June 27 at 11:00 AM Eastern time, I will be hosting a listening meeting for RCCD members. I want to listen to what you need from this podcast and from the workshops, the assessment measures, small group coaching meeting and individual resilience coaching, all solidly grounded in Catholicism. I working to tailor this whole program to your needs as we do this pioneering work together. So I hope you’ll join us. Souls and hearts.com.

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Episode 20. Resilience: Ten Factors

June 15, 2020

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resiliency, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 20, where we are starting a multi-episode deep dive into resilience and discuss 10 elements that constitute resilience as defined by the general literature. Today we are going to define resilience and cover 10 primary resilience factors – from a secular perspective. This is episode 20 entitled Resilience: Ten Factors and it is released on June 15, 2020. In the next episodes were are going to get much more into how to develop greater resilience. In the next episode, we are also going to get into a Catholic understanding of resilience that incorporates what we know to be true by our faith.

But for today, we are starting with how secular psychology defines resilience. We are looking at the elements that secular psychology states are the factors of resilience. We want a solid conceptual base, we are being catholic with a small c here, meaning universal. I’m drawing from many sources here, but there’s one book that stands out, one book that I’m using in particular for this episode, because of how it’s based in research and its simple, effective organization. It includes insights from neuroscience research, and it has great illustrative stories, so it’s more than readable, it’s engaging. The book is “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges by Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney. The book is now in its second edition and I like their structure and their emphasis on looking for research-based evidence, not just their personal experience.

So what is resilience? What does secular psychology mean by resilience? Let’s define resilience. It’s definition time. [Cue sound effect]

Let’s break that down. In the secular world, resilience is about adapting yourself to life’s demands, it’s about handling the challenges and curve balls that life throws at you with poise. It’s about recovering previous levels. It’s about getting up as many times as you are knocked down by dangers and misfortunes, it’s about journeying on under the load of troubles and difficulties that life brings us. It’s about not succumbing to failure, not collapsing under stress, not being destabilized by hardships and tough situations.

The word resilience derives from the present participle of the Latin verb resilire, meaning "to jump back" or "to recoil."

The concept of psychological resilience draws from physics. In physics, resilience is the ability of an elastic material (such as rubber) to absorb energy when it is deformed by some agent and release that energy as it springs back to its original shape.

Imagine a racquetball flying back to the player, [cue sound] who strikes the ball with the racquet, squeezing the ball, flattening the rubber. The ball absorbs the energy of the swing and then in its resilience, it launches off the racquet, discharging all that energy as it flies away.

What resilience is not: Misconceptions that people have. Being resilient does not mean you won’t struggle, suffer or experience adversity. It also doesn’t mean that hardships and challenges don’t affect you. It’s not stoicism and it’s not being numb or nonreactive. It’s not about not having needs.

Resilience is adapting well, regaining your shape after you’ve been knocked hard, just like that racquetball springing back into shape. It’s not a fixed trait – it is something that can be learned, practiced, improved. And that is what this series on resilience is all about – it’s about helping you become more resilient in the face of this coronavirus crisis, so you can be loved and you can love God and others.

So what are the 10 factors of resilience, according to Southwick and Charney? Let’s just list them, and then we will go into more depth on each one. Remember, I am using their language here and keeping their focus on a general audience. In future episodes, we are going to ground the concept of resilience in a Catholic worldview and we are going to really tweak these. These will be in the show notes on our website, so you can find them there, no need to take notes. Really listen in, take these in. In future episodes in this sequence, we will get much more into how do you cultivate these factors, how do you bring them together. Right now, we are pursuing understanding.

Optimism: The Belief in a brighter future – that things will turn out well. With enough hard work, I will succeed. Can’t be a blind optimism – not a naïve optimism. Looking on the bright side of life. Dwell on the positive. Glass half empty vs. half full.
Facing Fear: Not avoiding fear. Southwick and Charney are really talking about courage here. Not just giving into fear. Courage is not the absence of fear – it’s overcoming fear, it’s not letting fear master you. But it’s not just the development of virtue. There are test techniques that help with this and we will get into those techniques. Facing fear with friends, colleagues and with spiritual support – general audience, but here is the spiritual entering in.
A Moral Compass, Ethics, and Altruism: Doing What is Right -- Southwick and Charney don’t have much patience or acceptance for moral relativism. They advise having a moral compass and consulting it. Getting outside yourself, not being self-absorbed. Here they focus in on courage again. Having a backbone. They discuss how sometimes the choices are extremely difficult.
Religion and Spirituality: Drawing on Faith – really interesting in a book for general audience. Especially helpful in fearing death. – This is not the end.
Social Support -- can’t be isolated, can’t be alone. We need to reach out. Social support protects against physical and mental illness. Social neuroscience.
Role Models: We all need them. We can’t raise ourselves. We need mentor, guides to help us find our way. Parents, other relatives, teachers, coaches, friends, colleagues, even children – our own or others. People that show us the way. Breaking out from the effects of negative role models, not imitating our parents or others close to us in their negative aspects. And becoming a resilient role model.
Training Physical Fitness and Strengthening – Here Southwick and Charney bring in the body. Really critical to do that. Benefits of physical training.
Brain Fitness: Challenge Your Mind and Heart -- gets into neuroscience – Brain plasticity. We can, through our internal and external behaviors, rewire our brains. Trauma therapy researchers have been focused on that for the last 20 years and more.
Cognitive and Emotional Flexibility – Accepting reality. Things as they are. Resonates with me. Reappraising. Gratitude. Reevaluating Failure. Seeing humor in situations.
Meaning Purpose and Growth. – Making small differences. Growing through and after trauman

That’s a summary of the concepts provided by the best of the resilience literature

Review

In the next episode, we’re going to get into more examples of resilience and we will be grounding these factors of resilience in a Catholic worldview. We’re going to baptize these factors, and bring in the beauty, the truth, and the power of our Faith in a really direct way. We’ll be asking and answering the question of what is a Catholic resilience, fully informed by our Faith? What are the common misconceptions, false ideas and traps that Catholics fall into when they think about resilience.

So stay tuned for that.

Action item: There is no better time for you to register for the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here at Souls and Hearts. We just posted two one-hour exclusive RCCD content videos in community – you now can have access to our workshop on unacknowledged grief, where we do some experiential exercises to tap into grief that you might not realize you have, but that is driving your behavior in ways you recognize but do not understand. You also can have access to our workshop on stress management, where I teach RCCD community members breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation grounded in a Catholic worldview.

More workshops are in the planning stages, focusing on increasing resilience, as a complement to this podcast. We are in the process of scheduling a meeting to discuss what our RCCD community members need and want.

The RCCD community subscription is free for the first 30 days so there is no risk to try it out and see the solid, helpful resources we have for you. After that, it’s only $25 per month, which is a real deal for the kinds of experiential learning you will receive. The community is the number one place in the whole virtual world for people like you – people who really want to grow both spiritually and psychologically, and shed off psychological barriers to loving God and neighbor better. And not just so we can feel better, but so we can be better instruments in the hand of our Lord. So come join forces with us, get active in our discussion, check us out at soulsandhearts.com.

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Episode 19: Healing from Losses, Healing with Grief

June 8, 2020

Story Time

Remember the story of Richard and Susan from Episode 17? Let’s catch up with them and see how they are doing. Now Richard and Susan have been married 28 years, and their three sons are 27, 25, and 23 years old, and all have moved out of the home and are very busy with their lives.

Richard is 61 years old and is somewhat emotionally reserved – he was introverted, and didn’t talk a lot about feelings. He is not that interested in religion, but usually attends Sunday Mass with Susan. He had risen in management at his international engineering firm, eventually leading a team of six in joint venture in artificial intelligence with a foreign company. When that joint venture ended abruptly due to the other firm stealing intellectual property, and the coronavirus lockdowns happened, Richard was laid off. With the worsening economic environment, it’s unlikely he will return to that position. He is struggling with identity issues now, as he has been so invested in his work for so many years. After the layoff he initially kept himself busy with home projects and tinkering with go karts, but lately he has been much more withdrawn and spent much more time distracting himself on the internet, and also experimenting with day-trading stocks.

Susan is 60, she is more extroverted, much more emotionally expressive with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Susan is eagerly awaiting grandchildren now that her oldest son has married. She had been hoping that with her husband home from work and their sons moved out, they would renew their relationship, but there is more distance than ever. Susan has been troubled by the emotional distance in her marriage for the last 25 years, and doesn’t know what to do about it, and for several years there has been almost no physical closeness. This is more acute for her now, that her social activities and connections have been curtailed by the social distancing restrictions.

Twenty years ago, Susan experienced a real deepening of her faith and she began to practice it more seriously, with a regular prayer life an occasional daily Mass and regular confession. She had a scare with breast cancer five years ago from which she recovered. She continues to be in high demand as a professional translator in Spanish and Italian. She has been deeply worried upon finding out two weeks that the first case of the coronavirus has been confirmed at her mother’s assisted living facility. Now her 87 year old mother has shortness of breath, a fever, fatigue and a cough. Now her mother’s health is failing rapidly as they wait for the results of a COVID-19 test. Susan also recently discovered a pornographic pop up window on her husband’s home office desktop. She asked her husband about it, but he said it was nothing.

Quick review from episode 17, where we made clear some definitions.

Loss: deprived of a real, tangible good. Something good is taken from us – it can be the loss of an actual good, or a potential good.

Grief is our individual experience of loss –Grief is our reaction to the loss. It’s our experience of the loss. Psychological, physical, behavioral, emotional.

Mourning is a public expression of our grief, it’s what we show to others. Mourning is how we show our grief.

For Richard

Loss – loss of job, loss of income, loss of identity, confronting aging and physical decline (no more go-karting, too hard on the body)

Grief – Six stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, Making Meaning

expressed through increased activity initially, seeking distractions through focusing attention (excitement of day trading), seeking comfort in increased pornography use, emotional and physical withdrawal, numbing negative emotions

Mourning – façade of being unaffected, brushing off attempts at connection, consolation

For Susan:

Loss – Loss of mother, loss of trust in her husband, loss of illusions about marriage

Grief – Six stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, Making Meaning

crying, sadness, anger at husband (sense of betrayal), body image issues (sexually undesirable) regret over lost time, “wasting her life” in the marriage, accepting her husband as he is and loving him anyway. Concentration difficulties.

Mourning – sharing with friends, bereavement group, letter to Mom, writing poetry, prayer, reading,

Helpful tips

Remember that any loss that God permit is a gift. He only permits losses to provide a greater good to the one who grieves. We may not see that – we may only see it in a conceptual, intellectual way, and not feel it. But our feelings do not dictate reality, and they don’t always reflect reality. Romans 8:28. All things work together for good, for those who love the Lord. If we can conceptualize losses as gifts, we can look for the gift in spite of the grief, in spite of the pain.
Feel the pain of the grief. Allow yourself to feel it. Accept your emotions, whatever they are. Don’t pack it away in amber. This is what Richard originally tried to do – just wanted to move on with life, considered retirement, porn use to help him feel better, have a sense of control.

a. Allow the time for grief – packed schedule -- Susan cut back her work schedule.

b. Allow for not understanding – when you are grieving you may not understand and that’s ok. – relief comes not from understanding and knowing, but from confidence, trust, and relational connection. Think of little kids.

Share the grief with someone you trust– a friend, friend, family member, counselor, confessor – talk about the losses. Susan’s friend Valerie – listened to her.

a. Particularly important to share this grief in prayer. With God. With Mary, or with another saint. Guardian angel. Share it and listen.

b. Providential view. We may not understand why. It’s not in knowledge or understanding that we find security – proxy for control but in confidence and trust in God.

If you are a more private person, keep a journal – putting internal experiences into words. Helpful to articulate, to put into words our experience, so we can use our intellect and will better.
Letters are another way – After her mother died, Susan wrote her a long letter – it went over all the things she wanted to say to her mother but never did, things she wanted her mother to understand. Can also write letters to God or to Mary
Take care of your body – eating well, exercise, rest. Not abusing alcohol, drugs
Crying can provide a release – Susan and Valerie could cry together
Being out in nature – sunny day,
Maintaining a sense of gratitude – focus on appreciation of very little things. This helps ward off anhedonia
Maintain a routine
Bereavement group or therapy

Things to avoid

Avoid seeking relief through alcohol, smoking, medications, or drugs – or pornography

Lots of activity – can be a way of avoiding grief -- Richard on all the home projects, then daytrading.

Resenting others

Losing a sense of gratitude

How Can I Help Others through Their Grief?

The bereaved are often alone and isolated because we fear doing or saying the wrong thing. Do not let that happen. How can you help?

Prepare yourself. Someone with their own unresolved grief will have a very difficult time comforting a grieving person because their own grief is likely to get activated. Remember Susans’ mother and miscarriages? Her mother couldn’t help her much with that because of her own unresolved grief.

Be you. Be really you. You don’t have to be perfect. Willingness goes a long way

Be willing to talk about the loss – you don’t have to say much, you can mostly listen. You don’t have to know what to say.

Have patience with the grieving person. It takes time. Let the person with the grief set the pace. Valerie – Just sitting with Susan.

Do not deny or minimize the loss; avoid pat answers and easy clichés and platitudes, keep your chin up, this too shall pass.

Acknowledge your limitations.

Take action (for example, call, send a card, help with practical matters).

Be available after everyone else gets back to their regularly scheduled lives

Talk about the deceased – refer to him or her by name.

Guilt is common and often does not have a factual foundation. If someone wants to talk about, encourage that, and do not attempt to stifle or explain guilt away.

Rachel Remen and Michael Rabow (summarized by Lynn Barkley Burnett) present other approaches that have proven helpful to people coping with loss, along with those that are unhelpful.

What helped

Let me talk about it as long as I wanted to

Told me everything I was feeling was normal

Let me cry

Cried with me

Hugged me

Sat with me and listened

Called me back again

Was physically and emotionally present in the moment Richard and Susan’s second son John sat with Richard. Brought a photo album of go karts and went over the memories. Affectionate toward Dad.

Held my hand -- Valerie caught her hand, in spite of the social distancing. Held it.

Said "I am sorry" and meant it

Said " I am here for you"

Talked to me the same way after my loss as before

Made food for me

Listened and listened

Brought their dog – John brought the dog, walked with him.

What does not help

Tried to problem solve

Changed the subject

Gave advice before they knew the whole story

Talked about themselves and their losses

Said "call me if you need anything"

Got me to take care of their feelings about my loss

Didn' t acknowledge my perspective

Explained how I caused the loss

Told others about our conversation without asking me

Said this will be a great learning experience

Gave advice without being asked

Told me "don't cry"

Action item: If you really like these podcasts, I want you to register for the private Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here. In this community, we go deeper into the topics from this podcast, for even better resiliency, even more rising up and taking on the challenges of these troubled time, even more transformation, even more growth in the psychological and spiritual realms. In the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community, I work directly with you in small and large groups, Free for the first 30 days, after that only $25 per month, which is a real deal for the kinds of experiential learning you will receive. You can quit anytime. We’re starting to build up our archive of resources. For example, we are posting the video and audio recordings from the two Zoom community meetings we recently had – one on working through grief, especially unacknowledged grief and one in which I teach two stress management techniques to community members, all grounded in a solidly Catholic worldview. There’s also discussion boards and messaging among community members – it is the very best place in the whole virtual world for people like you – people who really want to grow both spiritually and psychologically, and shed off psychological barriers to loving God and neighbor better. So come join us, check us out at soulsandhearts.com.

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Episode 18: Grief vs. Depression

Grief:

Ok, so I know we’re now into some really heavy, difficult times in our country and in our world. There’s lots of things going on – we have the pandemic, we have partial lockdowns and closures, we have major unemployment issues, nearly half of small businesses are in danger of shutting down permanently. We have escalating tensions with Xi Jinping’s government in China and the possibility of the cold war with China turning hot. We now have riots and looting over the tragic death of George Floyd while under arrest by a Minneapolis police officer, we have very flawed and contentious politicians battling with each other in petty ways in an election year, we have growing revelations of corruption by current and former government officials and bureaucrats. There is a growing lack of confidence in our government, our news media and in our secular and religious institutions.

None of these factors changes the basic Gospel message. None of them. None of them can keep us from psychological and spiritual growth, unless we let ourselves be kept down. We need to rise up, we need to go beyond mere resiliency, to become even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.

I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 18, entitled “Grief vs. Depression” released on June 1, 2020.

Today, we’re going to really dive into the difference between grief and depression, and to illustrate the difference between grief and depression, we’ll be looking at five people from the Scriptures.

First, though, I want to offer a big Thank you to all the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem community members who came to our first ever Zoom meeting last Friday evening. We had a great conversation on unacknowledged or hidden grief. It was very good for us to get to know each other better and for us to connect and to be in relationship with one another. Thank you for praying for me, and know that I am praying for you.

So some of you may be asking, Dr. Peter, why, why is it important to know the difference between grief and depression – both of them feel bad, and we want to feel better. So why bother with the difference?

Normal Grief

Waves or intense pages of painful emotion associated with the loss, which gradually soften and diminish over time.
Emptiness and loss – something is missing -- but also there are moments of happiness, joy.
Self-esteem generally remains intact. If there is self-criticism, it tends to be focused on perceived shortcomings about the loss (I should have visited my Mom more often before she died, I should have told her I loved her).
Relational connections remain intact. Able to give and receive in relationships, and can be consoled.
Ruminating on what or who was lost; Hope remains. Since of life going on.
Thoughts of death and dying focused on the lost person and perhaps reconnecting with the loved one in heaven. Some loss of desire to live on, but not overt wishes or impulses toward suicide.
Distress, sadness activated by memories or reminders of the loss.

Clinical Depression

Sadness, distress experienced continually over time
Ongoing depressed mood with anhedonia – unable to enjoy good things
Feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, with self-criticism. Critical toward self, feelings of worthlessness, and self-loathing. This is much more general. May involve significant shame.
Emotional withdrawal from others – perhaps with avoidance. Could be a physical withdrawal as well. Difficulty being consoled
Self-critical or pessimistic thoughts; tendency toward a loss of hope.
Suicidal thoughts related to feelings of being unworthy of life, or of not wanting to live anymore. Suicide considered an escape from unbearable pain with no other answers.
Depressed mood is not tied to specific thoughts or preoccupations

Let's flesh this out with examples of grief vs. clinical depression from Scripture:

Abraham’s Grief

Genesis 23: Sarah’s Death and Burial

23 Sarah lived one hundred twenty-seven years; this was the length of Sarah’s life. 2 And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. 3 Abraham rose up from beside his dead, and said to the Hittites, 4 “I am a stranger and an alien residing among you; give me property among you for a burying place, so that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

David is one of the most expressive men in the Bible.

David’s Grief:

2 Samuel 1

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.

24 O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

25 How the mighty have fallen
in the midst of the battle!

Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,

David’s Depression

Psalm 38

O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger,
nor chasten me in thy wrath!
2 For thy arrows have sunk into me,
and thy hand has come down on me.

3 There is no soundness in my flesh
because of thy indignation;
there is no health in my bones
because of my sin.
4 For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

5 My wounds grow foul and fester
because of my foolishness,
6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;
all the day I go about mourning.
7 For my loins are filled with burning,
and there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am utterly spent and crushed;
I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

13 But I am like a deaf man, I do not hear,
like a dumb man who does not open his mouth.
14 Yea, I am like a man who does not hear,
and in whose mouth are no rebukes..

21 Do not forsake me, O Lord!
O my God, be not far from me!
22 Make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation!

Elijah

Elijah God’s judgments and warnings to several Israelite kings, including the despotic Ahab and his formidable wife, Jezebel..

Here, Elijah had a great victory over 450 of Baal's prophets on Mt. Carmel, however, he remained fearful of Jezebel's revenge. He proved not only the power of God but the utter lack of power of the hundreds of pagan prophets. It seems Elijah should have been on top of the world, but he soon sank into the depths of depression after being threatened by Jezebel.

Elijah Flees from Jezebel

1 Kings 19 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3 Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep.

Jeremiah: Jeremiah wrestled with great loneliness, feelings of defeat, and insecurity.

The ministry God called Jeremiah to was a difficult one. Nicknamed the “weeping prophet,” Jeremiah was often the bearer of bad news. He was rejected, despised, and punished by the people he was sent to minister to. He remained faithful to God and resilient in the face of ridicule, but he felt the pain of loneliness deeply. His words in Jeremiah 20:14, 18, will resonate with anyone who has struggled with depression:

Also known as the weeping prophet, Jeremiah suffered from constant rejection by the people he loved and reached out to. He lived alone, he ministered alone, he was poor, ridiculed, and rejected by his people. In the midst of it, he displayed great spiritual faith and strength, and yet we also see his honesty as he wrestled with despair and a great sense of failure:

Jeremiah 20

Cursed be the day
on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me,
let it not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man
who brought the news to my father, saying,
“A child is born to you, a son,”
making him very glad.
16 Let that man be like the cities
that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning
and an alarm at noon,
17 because he did not kill me in the womb;
so my mother would have been my grave,
and her womb forever great.
18 Why did I come forth from the womb
to see toil and sorrow,
and spend my days in shame?

Paul:

Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Mourning is the expression of grief – natural healthy process. We can and should experience grief over loss.

“ . . .we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again”
(2 Corinthians 1:8–10).

Grief turning into depression but then resolution.

Naomi

Naomi and her husband and two sons were from Bethlehem. When famine struck and starvation was on the horizon, they moved to Moab, a neighboring country which had been spared from famine. While they were there, Naomi’s husband died, and her two sons married Moabite women, and died within 10 years. Naomi’s future looked dismal. Her husband had died. Her two sons had also died, leaving her destitute, with no one to provide for her. She was a stranger in a strange land with no prospects of how she was going to make it, how she would live on.

Naomi and her daughters-in-law heard the famine had lifted in Bethlehem, and Naomi decided to return to her homeland. Her daughter-in-law Ruth insisted on going with Naomi.

So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women said, “Is this Naomi?” 20 She said to them,

“Call me no longer Naomi [Pleasant]
call me Mara,[bitter]
for the Almighty[c] has dealt bitterly with me.
21 I went away full,
but the Lord has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
when the Lord has dealt harshly with[d] me,
and the Almighty[e] has brought calamity upon me?”

Ruth met Boaz. And this blessing redeemed both her and her mother-in-law Naomi. In the end, Naomi gains a son, and through her line, the Savior of the world redeems mankind.

Contrast

Despair: Cain and Judas

11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! 14 Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so![c] Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod,[d] east of Eden.

Matthew 27 3 When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus[a] was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent[b] blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.

Resiliency – depends on God image. Resiliency depends on how well we can hold a providential God image.

In the next episode, we will go over so many ways to help ourselves and other move through the grieving process – that is in episode 20, you won’t want to miss that, comes out next Monday.

Action item: Register for the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here. Free for the first 30 days, after that $25 per month. The subscriptions are what funds this podcast, we don’t have other sources of revenue at this time, and we’re still trying to figure out how to pay for it all, so your subscription really helps us with the expenses and with setting aside time to keep the podcast and the community going strong.

We have discussion boards and special zoom meetings among other benefits for community members. The recording of our first small group meeting on grief is going up in the community space, so you can access it. Our next small group meeting is on Saturday, June 6 at 5:00 PM Eastern, we have an experiential workshop on stress management and there is one seat left in that one. In that we are going to be practicing stress management techniques grounded in a Catholic worldview to help you through these difficult times.

We are real Catholics overcoming real issues with real transformation and real growth. Come join us at Souls and Hearts.com and you can also reach out to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594 with questions about the community.

Patronness and Patron.

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Episode 17: Loss, Grief, Mourning and Resilience – How do They Go Together?

Some of you have been in touch with me and asked for work on Grief, which we touched on in Episode 3 with the loss of the sacraments in the lockdown. There’s been conversation about grief on the discussion boards in the Resilient Catholic: Carpe Diem Community space in Souls and Hearts, and now we are going to dive deep into this whole area of grief. We are going to do two podcast episodes on grief and the coronavirus, and I will be doing one Zoom meeting for our members. Seating is very limited for that, I’m only taking on 12 for that meeting at 7:30 PM eastern time on Friday, May 29, I saw one or maybe two open seats left, so check that out at Souls and Hearts. Joining the community is free for the first 30 days, so come check it out at Souls and Hearts.com.

Our thinking can be heavily impacted when we are experience intense emotions, so let’s really get some clarity, let’s shine some light on things now. The first thing, really quickly, is to define a few terms around grief, loss, and mourning. Let’s get our vocabulary straight, because that really helps our thinking.

We’re going to start with the concept of loss, loss – and that’s because loss comes before grief. Loss always comes before grief. Loss precedes grief. So we’re going in order here, and starting with loss.

There are two kinds of loss: Actual Loss and what I call the Loss of Potential. Actual loss and the loss of potential.

Actual loss is the loss of a real, tangible good. Something good is taken from us. It could be death of a loved one, when we lose the relationship, with its intimacy, connection, the love. It can also mean the actual loss of some part of us – our sense of hearing for example, or the

Loss of Potential – this is the loss of possibilities that we hoped for – something anticipated in the future. a wedding that will never happen, children that will never be born, a promotion that will not come now, etc. It also includes words that were never said, words that were never heard, stories that will never be finished. Grieving at a funeral of family members – not of the actual loss of the abusive, alcoholic, philandering husband – not for the loss of the actual person. But for the symbolic loss – no longer married, no longer the possibility of living happily ever after.

Grief is our individual experience of loss – so remember, the loss is the good we no longer have. Grief is our reaction to the loss. It’s our experience of the loss. And that experience is emotional – sadness, anxiety, irritability we may feel mood swings -- or we may feel nothing apathy

Psychological – disbelief, impaired concentration and attention, flashbacks, ruminations, going over and over some memory of the person.

Grief is also physical – for example when the tears flow, have intense fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping. Grief is also expressed through behavior – the heavy sigh, when put our hands to our heads and groan or when we withdraw and sit alone in a dark room.

The experience of grief varies a lot from person to person, situation to situation. It can be painful, sometime exquisitely painful, horrendously painful, it may seem intolerable. Sometimes it’s much more quiet. It may also be bittersweet, or even have a sense of peace in it, such as when a loved one suffering from a terminal illness dies well. There are different kinds of grief, and we’re going to get into that later in this podcast, but for now, let’s understand that grief is our individual experience of loss.

And with grief comes mourning.

Mourning is a public expression of our grief, it’s what we show to others. Mourning is how we show our grief. How we share our grief with others. How we connect in grief. Some of this is conditioned by our culture – 3 rifle volleys salutes for deceased veterans, funerals, eulogies, the chicken dinner in the parish hall after the Mass, tossing a handful of dirt on the grave.

Review the above:

Actual Loss

Loss of potential

Grief

Mourning

So how can we really solidify our understanding of these definitions? How can we make these concepts come alive? Hmmm. Let me think. [Ding] I’ve got it! How about a story, to make all this come together for us? I think that’s a great idea. So it’s story time with Dr. Peter.

Story Time:

Richard and Susan (not an actual case). We’re going back in time 20 years, back to the early 2000s. At that point, Richard and Susan had been married for eight years. He was an engineer with an excellent job, highly successful and creative at work. He really loved their three young sons, aged seven, five and three. Susan was a professional translator in Spanish and Italian. She had travelled and lived abroad before her marriage at age 32. They had met through mutual friends, and both were nominally Catholic, attended Mass on Sundays and their sons were baptized, but it was not a central part of their lives. Richard was somewhat emotionally reserved and kind of introverted didn’t talk a lot about feelings, and had always been into racing go-karts. Now he was getting the oldest son into the hobby in a mini go kart and really enjoying that together. Susan was more extroverted, and maintained a lot of connections with her professional women friends, many of whom were younger than her and unmarried and still living in Italy and Spain.

Susan really wanted a daughter, and had been going through some recent fertility issues, there were medical complication. Richard felt he had enough kids, at least in his opinion. But at age 40, after a deepening of her prayer life – she began to take her faith more seriously -- she conceived again, and the ultrasound indicated the baby was a girl. She was so excited, and at 22 weeks everything was going well. And then complications with the placenta started, and by 24 weeks the baby had died. Susan miscarried her baby daughter and because of medical complications, also wound up with a hysterectomy.

All right. So we have the story or at least the beginning of the story. Let’s work with the story.

So what was the actual loss – remember the actual loss is the loss of a real, tangible good. Know what it is? Right. The loss of the baby herself, the death of the little one.

What was the loss of potential? Ok, so the loss of potential is is the loss of possibilities that we hoped for – something anticipated in the future. So in this case, Susan’s loss of potential was seeing her baby daughter grow up, her first words, her first steps, first day of school, ballet classes, report cards, prom, her wedding to a handsome young man in Susan’s own wedding dress, grandchildren…. You see that, you get that. But also, there was another loss of potential. Remember the hysterectomy. It was like a criminal sentence to Susan. No more children. No more chance of a daughter, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh.

All right, so we have an understanding of loss. The loss is a cold hard reality. That reality of loss exists outside of Susan’s reaction or experience. The loss just is.

Let’s go to grief now. Remember, grief is the individual experience of loss, with all its physical, emotional, psychological and behavioral aspects. Now let’s dive into grief in a lot more detail.

More than two decades ago, University of Chicago psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD, identified various stages that people who are dying may experience.

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

David Kessler: Sixth Stage of grief – finding meaning in the loss. Integrating it into the narrative of life in a coherent way.

Four variations of Grief.

Anticipatory grief

Luke 19: 41 And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. 43 For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, 44 and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.”[

Disenfranchised grief

Complicated grief

Unacknowledged Grief – suppressed. Acted out by being intensely busy. Manic episodes in bipolar disorder are the photographic negative of grief. High energy levels, elevated mood, lots of goal directed activity – last ditch effort to becoming overwhelmed by grief. Numbing out in denial.

Spiritual Bypassing of Grief: "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks". The term was introduced in the early 1980s by John Welwood, I know she’s in heaven, he is in a much better place, I’m happy for her. This is just my cross to bear.

In the next two episodes, we will go further into Grief and Mourning – now that we know more about what grief. We will discuss the difference between grief and depression. We will continue with the lives of Richard and Susan, bringing them up to the present day. We will discuss factors that interfere with the normal resolution and passing of grief, and also the things we can do to help ourselves and others through grief, bringing in both psychological resources and also the gifts of the Catholic Faith. All that is coming up.

Action item: Register for the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here. Free for the first 30 days, after that $25 per month. There are all kinds of extra goodies there, connected with this podcast. On Wednesday May 27 I’m going to be putting up a running list of the things Catholics often grieve – some of them may be unexpected, and I’m inviting community members to add to that list. On Friday May 29, we have our first small group meeting, one or two seats may still be open for that, at 7:30 PM, where I will make a brief presentation, but then answer questions and facilitate a discussion of what causes you grief in the present day, in these troubled times. We will post the recording of that in our member space, too, so you don’t want to miss it. We are real Catholics overcoming real issues with real transformation and real growth. Come join us at Souls and Hearts.com and you can also reach out to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com with questions about the community.

Patronness and Patron.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Episode 16: Who Am I, Really? Identity and Resiliency

May 18, 2020

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resiliency, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 16, released on May 18, 2020 entitled Who Am I, Really? Identity and Resiliency

In the last episode, we discussed the main sign of psychological health. I asked you to send in your thoughts about what is that main sign. In the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community space at Souls and Hearts, which we launched a week ago, I was having a great exchange with Kathleen which spurred me on to some further consideration about integration, resiliency and especially identity. Really want to thank you, Kathleen.

Alright, I want to take you back with, way back to the beginning human history, come on with me to Genesis 3. We’re picking it up in the middle of the story. Adam and Eve have fallen to Satan’s temptation and eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let’s listen to the story but be thinking about the theme of identity – Who Adam and Eve were, and how they saw themselves. That’s what I want you to keep in mind. So put your listening ears on, and get ready -- It’s story time with Dr. Peter.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

Here we see a radical shift in both who Adam and Eve really were – they had been in a state of grace and now they have fallen into sin. Also, though, you have a radical shift in how Adam and Eve see themselves. They hear God walking in the garden, gently calling out to them – and God, being all know, He knew exactly where they were. In his gentleness, in His consideration for them, he didn’t want to startle them or disconcert them any more than they already were. He was calling out to let them know He was coming.

And their response – to be afraid, to hide from him. Their identities were devastated. Think about what just happened.

Very difficult to underestimate the catastrophic psychological effects of the fall. We get the physical effects of the fall, the effects of the fall on our bodies --

Subjective identity includes the experiences (and how we recall those experiences), the close relationships, and values that come together to form one’s subjective sense of self. You might say subjective identity is who we feel ourselves to be, in the given moment. For some that sense of identity is more consistent and stable, and for others, it may vary more from day to day.

Conscious Subjective Identity Who we profess ourselves to be.

Unconscious Subjective Identity – Parts of us that hold assumptions about us that are not available in conscious awareness. There are moments when these unconscious assumptions break into conscious awareness – particularly when we are stressed, tired, overwhelmed. These moments are when our regular defenses open up and some of what we keep out of awareness starts bubbling up.

Example: Remember the Boasting Traveler from Aesop’s fable in the last episode - episode 15- you know, the one how bragged about how he made the most prodigious leap in the city of Rhodes? That traveler was troubled with narcissism – deep sense of sense of inferiority, weakness, shame, and inadequacy. These were not in conscious awareness – but those unconscious beliefs existed and they influenced and motivated his behavior to try to impress others. But then the bystander punctured his puffed up presentation – challenged his boast and may have deflated him, brought him into contact with his own inadequacy, both real and felt.

Another example of unconscious subjective assumptions about ourselves. Let’s look at dependency. Dependent people may not be in touch with their deep unconscious beliefs that they will only have their needs met if they are subordinated to more powerful others – they need the powerful other person to make them whole or complete.

Every personality style every personality disorder has implications for our conscious and unconscious assessments of ourselves. In a word, every personality style reflects assumptions about our identity.

So let’s break this concept of identity down into a more fine-grained analysis. Come on with me as we go deeper into this.

Objective identity is who we actually are. How God knows us to be. The reality of who we are. This doesn’t depend at all on our opinion of ourselves. This isn’t as much in fashion these days, the concept of objective reality. Divine revelation, which doesn’t care much about current fads and fashions in secular psychology, though, Divine revelation teaches us a lot about who we are as human beings – objective reality from the One who is Truth.

Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth. My truth. You have your truth and I have my truth. And there is no objective truth.

But reality has a way of hanging around – even in secular psychology. So we still have the concepts of delusions and hallucinations—characteristic of departing from reality, breaking with reality.

So those three elements –

Who we really are in the mind of God (objective reality)
Who we profess ourselves to be
What we unconsciously assume ourselves to be

Relate these back to Adam and Eve

Triangle of Pathology – 1: who we really on in God’s eyes 2: Who we believe ourselves to be in our conscious awareness – this is who we profess ourselves to be – “I am a beloved child of God”. 3: The unconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves those that are outside of conscious awareness, but that still impact us.

When those three points come together into a single point, we are grounded in reality. The size and the shape of the triangle tell us something about how well adjusted we are.

Exercise – go back and remember how you thought about yourself when you were in your dark place. What kinds of assumptions came bubbling up. This may not be hard for some of you, because you may be in your dark place right now. But if you’re not in your dark, hard place remember back to it. There are clues to what you may unconscious think and feel about yourself. If you can begin to work on those assumptions in both the natural realm and in the spiritual realm you may not have to go back to that dark place as much. Or it may not be as intense.

Review the points made.

I am listening to you! I’ve had multiple requests on the topic of grief and resiliency so be with us in the next episode, coming out on Memorial Day, May 25 where we will get into that in depth. What you say really matters to me, and it helps me tailor this podcast to what you need. Keep the suggestions coming in! We have a

Action item: Register for the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here. Working on growing the community and becoming more connected. To that end, here are two opportunities. We’re a small community, so let’s take advantage of that. Let’s really get to know each other.

Zoom meeting On Friday, May 29 at 7:30 PM Eastern time. 6-12 of the community members and me, and I’ll make a brief presentation on the special topic of Grief, Loss and Resilience. I will also present some exercises you can do on your own after the meeting. Zoom meeting, register in the community space, starting on Wednesday, May 20. Seating is limited. Last one hour. Very interactive. Since we’re working with such small groups, we are doing a Zoom meeting rather than a webinar.

Zoom meeting: On Saturday, June 6, 5:00 PM Eastern time This one will be much more experiential and it will be about Managing Your Stress. Lots of tips, pointers and recommendations about stress management during the time of the coronavirus. That one will also last for 60 minutes.

Dr. Peter, Dr. Peter, I can’t make those times? Can I still watch? Absolutely, we don’t want to leave anyone behind. Yes, we will record both the meetings for later viewing for those who are in the community.

Register for the community – I get on the discussion boards several times a week, and I respond more quickly to the conversations on those discussion board than I can to my email.

No one left behind because of financial need. If the $25 per month is too much, then contact me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com Dr. Gerry and I don’t want financial concerns to ever keep anyone away from benefitting from what Souls and Hearts has to offer. To register, login to Souls and hearts.com and go to the home page, scroll down and you’ll see the “Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem) right in the middle.

All right, the most important thing – prayer and sacrifice. Please pray for Souls and Hearts. Please pray for me and for our community and for this podcast, that it be what God our Father and Mary our Mother want it to be. Thank you for all the prayers.

And that’s a wrap for today. And in closing, Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Episode 15: The Main Sign of Psychological Health

May 11, 2020

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resiliency, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 15, released on May 11, 2020 entitled The Main Sign of Psychological Health.

In the previous 11 episodes, we have described and discussed the four pillars of resilience: Mindset, Heartset, Bodyset and Soulset. Now, we are getting to the really fascinating exploration of how these four pillars interact. We’re diving into our internal psychological lives to see how our psychological strengths and weaknesses impact our resiliency but also how they affect our spiritual lives. Because as a Catholic psychologist, I’m really focused on how psychological factors, our psychological structures, our psychological functioning, our entire psychological lives impact how we accept love from God and how we love God in return. It all boils down to that. If what I do as Catholic psychologist doesn’t at least help others to accept God’s love and to love God in return – then I am missing the point of the greatest commandment.

So what is the main sign of psychological health? What is it? Take a minute and consider it. What do you think the main distinguishing characteristic of mental health is? Let’s struggle with this a bit. In fact, some of you gutsier types might even be willing to stop this podcast for a few minutes and write down your ideas before you listen further. Write them down, email them to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or text them to me at 317.567.9594 – let me know before you continue on. Let me know what you are thinking! I want to hear from you. The answer to the question of what is the main sign of psychological health may not be what you think. Let’s explore this together

I promise that I will tell you what this central, essential psychological characteristic is. Not only that, today, I’m going to go over with you the disadvantages of not having that essential quality. I’m also going to give you a bunch of examples of why this particular quality matters so much and I’m also going to give you some guidance in how to overcome the deficits you have in that area. All today, all for you. So hang in there with me.

We are going to start with a story, with a fable by Aesop which will help to illustrate the point. I really want this to stick with you. So it’s storytime with Dr. Peter.

A man who had traveled in foreign lands boasted very much, on returning to his own country, of the many wonderful and heroic feats he had performed in the different places he had visited. Among other tales, he told his listeners that when he was at Rhodes, he had leaped to such a distance that no man of his day could leap anywhere near him as to that. The traveler claimed there were in Rhodes many persons who saw his prodigious leap, and he could call them in as his witnesses. The traveler firmly believed his own tale and was adamant about his abilities, and was convincing many of his listeners. One bystander, though, interrupted him, and said: "Now, my good man, if this be all true we have no need of witnesses in Rhodes. Let’s pretend that we are in Rhodes. Let us see you leap! Jump for us!"

What kind of personality does the boasting traveler demonstrate in this little vignette? What do you think? Dependent, Schizoid, Obsessive, Paranoid, Self-defeating, hysterical, psychopathic, narcissistic, depressive, dissociative -- what do you think.

One might argue that you can’t definitively assign a personality style to an imagined character – Oh, but I can. And I am going to do it, right now.

I see this character, the boasting traveler as narcissistic. Many of you may have guessed that. People with narcissistic styles work hard to maintain a very fragile sense of self-worth by getting affirmation from outside themselves. Something very important is missing – they don’t have deep sense of essential goodness – that they are good because they exist and are made in the image and likeness of God. At a deep level, often in their unconscious, they feel loveless and fraudulent and are very frightened of their inner sense of inferiority, weakness, shame, and inadequacy. They work really hard to keep this out of awareness by focusing on the admiration and complements of others. But their efforts so often backfire and they wind up exactly where they don’t want to be – exposed, ashamed, rejected, despised, alienated from others – like the boasting traveler in the vignette.

Whenever there is psychological disorder, there are disconnects in the internal working of the person. In the case of the traveler, with his narcissism, his idealized image of himself as a great jumper is disconnected from his actual ability. He is also disconnected from his deep needs and his deep desires, which are buried in his unconscious. So where there is psychological disorder and distress there are disconnects from reality, internal psychological elements are no longer interconnected, they are split off and fractured, and we break down.

We all have what I call gut-level or intuitive of what it means to be psychological healthy. You hear this in casual language. When we describe in casual language someone who is nosediving in his psychological functioning, we say that “He is breaking down.” “He is falling apart.” He is losing it.

On the other hand, Someone we see as psychologically well-adjusted – we say that person has got it all together. He has his act together. He has all his ducks in a row.

This brings us back to the question: What is the main sign of psychological health? The main sign of psychological health is

Integration. The main sign of psychological health is internal integration. Integration. Having it all together.

So let’s go deeper into that – what does being integrated look like? It means accepting things in us that we might not like. We’re not endorsing them or embracing them, but we accept that they exists in us.

Being integrated means that you are aware and accept our emotions, even the ones we don’t like.

For example anger and hatred. Anger at our parents, our spouses, our children, our God. Or deep disappointment. Knowing our heartset.

Being integrated means that you are aware and accept our thoughts, even the ones we don’t like.

Not dwelling on them. Knowing our mindset

Being integrated means that you are aware and accept our attitudes toward ourselves, even the ones we don’t like.

E.g. that we are worthless, or that we are no good, or that we are unlovable. I totally get why we suppress or repress

Being integrated means that you are aware and accept our impulses, even the ones we don’t like

E.g. impulses toward violence. Sexual impulses. Impulses toward blasphemy. We tend to shut these down, get rid of them, but we are just pushing them into the unconscious.

Being integrated means that you are aware and accept our body sensations, even the ones we don’t like. Sexual responses – I’m not physically attracted to that person

Percentage that is suppressed is a measure of how much disorder there is.

Becoming integrated: taking disowned, rejected, unconscious, or conflicted aspects of the self and making them part of a cohesive sense of self

reducing the use of rigid coping mechanisms

increase spontaneity and flexibility and creativity

It is the process of making whole. Christ was perfectly integrated. So was our Blessed Mother. Integration is a critical part of their perfection.

Saints. Wretchedness. Relying on God’s mercy.

We can be with ourselves and in ourselves as we are. Accepting ourselves as we are, even if other in our past did not. If the boasting traveler could accept himself as he is, he wouldn’t have to puff himself up and put himself at the mercy of the approval of the crowds.

Every personality disorder reflects a lack of integration. The way that the person’s system keeps the integration from happening changes from disorder to disorder. One of the ways to differential among personality styles is to look at the defense mechanisms. These are the coping strategies that people use to keep unpleasant realities out of awareness. Part of us is saying like Jack Nicholson to Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” You can’t handle the truth!

We want to bring together of the emotional aspects, the thoughts, the desires, the body sensations, the attitudes, impulses, desire, all the psychological and physiological systems within a person to work in harmony, under the intellect in the will. St. Thomas Aquinas referred to this as governing the passions. That is integration. You can’t govern a passion by trying to banish it out of conscious awareness.

An integrated man knows who he is. An integrated woman knows who she is.

Many reasons why we are not integrated. Happened with the fall – psychological disorder came along with the rest of the disorder in the natural realm.

What it means to be not integrated.

Exercise: Reflecting on a quality you really hate in someone else.

Finger pointing 3 pointing back.

Action item: Register for the Resilient Catholics: Carpe Diem! Community here.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Episode 14: Soulset: The core of us

May 4, 2020

Screwtape letters: From the experienced demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood – Screwtape is teaching Wormwood the ins and outs of tempting men, trying to drag their souls to hell. When Screwtape refers to the Enemy he means God.

“Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Cue music

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me.

Soul CCC: The spiritual principle of human beings. The soul is the subject of human consciousness and freedom; soul and body together form one unique human nature. Each human soul is individual and immortal, immediately created by God.

Soulset. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul, how we orient our governing spiritual principle. Soulset is the core of a man or woman or child. It can and does operate independently of mindset and heartset, both of which are bound up in the body. Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us.

Consider the man that Screwtape was describing. A man who has lost his desire for God, who experiences God as vanished, gone, who feels forsaken, alone. Heartset. Mindset. Bodyset curling up.

But he still intends to do the will of God. In spite of all that his wounded, heart is telling him, all that his confused mind is telling him, all that his aching body is telling him, he still – that man still intends to do the will of God. That is an admirable man.

The way I’m describing soulset includes our conscience,

The council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) defines conscience "as man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths. By conscience, in a wonderful way, that law is made known which is fulfilled in the love of God and one's neighbor" (16).

And I love the idealism and I believe every word of this definition. It was extremely helpful to me when I was experiencing an existential crisis at age 22. This paragraph was precious to me, in its idealism and its beauty and the way it shows the dignity of men and women and children.

But. Here’s the But. but I’m a psychologist, I work with people in messy, painful situations with raw emotions and excruciating, unresolved experiences. I don’t have the luxury of just retreating and staying in the realm of ideas like philosophers or theologians can. I’m down here in the trenches often with people who are desperate and frantic, whose lives are chaotic, and you know what? They hardly experience the voice of a loving God echoing in their depths. They are not experiencing, in this wonderful way that Vatican II describes, God’s law being fulfilled in the love of God and neighbor.

In their distress, they do not seek out a philosopher or a theologian. Who does that? Would you do that? When you are suffering, do you go to internet or pick up the yellow pages and look up philosophers and theologians in your area? Why not? Because we need to nourish and heal not only the mind, but the heart, and the body and the soul, the whole person. In an integrated way.

When people are suffering this can just seem like words words words, blah blah blah, it just doesn’t seem to stick. Haven’t all of you experienced that? How many sermons have you heard that might be speaking to your mind, but not the rest of you? This intellectualized sermons that speak not to your heart, not to your body.

Or it can happen the opposite way – a charismatic sermon that speaks to the heart, it really pulls on the heartstrings but it speaks to the heart only, not the mind or soul or body. How many of you have heard really emotionally moving sermons that were quite confusing or unclear or even heretical in their actual content.

And let’s also just say it like it is. Some sermons don’t seem to move the heart or the mind or the body or the soul at all. Just meh. Dry. Boring. Distant. And then they can start to feel irrelevant, unattuned. It’s amazing how mediocre some sermons really can be. It’s not that they are evil or anything. They just aren’t very human.

Dietrich von Hildebrand:

God has called us to become new men in Christ…This new life is not destined merely to repose as a secret in the hidden depths of our souls; rather it should work out in a transformation of our entire personality.

Our entire personality. All facets of our psychic life. And I am going to go farther than that statement. Not just our entire personality but our entire personhood, all of us. Every aspect of us.

That’s what we do here. Souls and Hearts.

Alice von Hildebrand: How difficult it is for us fallen men to will what God wills, for as much as we believe we love God, we are tempted to love our own will even more.

Our soulset very much depends on our level of security in our relationship with God.

Let’s be clear. Soulset does not have to be about feelings. It’s not driven my emotional states. For example, in a period of desolation, one can have a very open soul, and be growing spiritually by leaps and bounds, very open to the working of the Holy Spirit – but have no consoling feelings and few or no great spiritual insights. So it can operate very independently from mindset as well.

Importance of integration of heart, soul, mind, body.

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Episode 13: Bodyset: Loving and Reverencing Our Bodies – With Dr. Andrew Sodergren

John Paul II, in Theology of the Body. The body is the sacrament of the person – there is a certain sacramentality of the body. A sacrament makes something present, manifest in a concrete way. The Body reveals the personhood.

The body is essential for human beings in order to relate. The body is essential for prayer.

Some heresies devalue the body (e.g. Manicheanism).

God in his infinite holiness took on our human flesh. This elevated the dignity of the human body.

Our bodies are designed for a sacred purpose, like the sacred vessels for the liturgy. Like we care for the sacred vessels, we need to care for our bodies.

The way we dress can adorn the body or debase the body.

It is valuable to reflect on how I have fallen short of honoring my body and those of others.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Episode 12: Bodyset: Accepting our Bodies – with Dr. Andrew Sodergren

Show Notes

To accept the body, we need to accept the body as a gift.

Obstacles to receiving our bodies as a gift:

Our bodies are imperfect and we are very aware of things we don’t like about our bodies, that fall short of the ideals that we have for our bodies. Can be superficial issues, or more major issues such as disabilities and major medical problems. Shame is often body-related. Body as an obstacle to my self-perfection. Our body and identity are given to us, not as blank slates. There is meaning, order, and purpose already built in to our bodies, we discover those, we don’t create or command the meaning, order and purpose of our bodies. Times when our bodies let us down, not strong enough.
We associate the body with sin or sinfulness. We can blame the body for sinfulness and hold the body in distrust.
Our bodies link us to other people, especially in our families of origin. My body reminds me of my past, my family.
How other people have treated our bodies. How people react to our bodies. We can despise our bodies because of what our bodies have elicited from others in the past.

There is always a coherent story about why we might have feelings of hatred toward our bodies. We want to get to the wound, pain, and the story behind the feelings of hatred for the body.

The feelings toward the body and body sensations can point us toward deeper issues and realities.

Hating our bodies means that we are hating ourselves.

Guided reflection on noticing what is going on in your body and receiving it as a gift.

Dr. Andrew and Dr. Peter discuss the need to resolve correctable disorder in the body and about the body either in this life or in Purgatory before entering in to heaven.

Get in touch at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594. Register at soulsandhearts.com for the podcast as well.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Title: JR’s Story: What Happens When You Listen to Your Body

Episode 11: April 24, 2020

Welcome to our podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem. Let us seize this day! This twice-weekly podcast helps us rise up. It helps us embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis. And our podcast does this through being thoroughly grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. It is great to be together with you, thank you for tuning in.

This is Episode 11 and its April 24, 2020. This one is called JR’s Story: What Happens When You Listen to Your Body. I am super excited about this episode, because we’re going to do a deep dive into the experience of JR, who is one of us in this podcast community, and what he discovered about himself in doing the guided reflection in the last episode. But first, a quick review:

We have been discussing our Catholic bodies in times of crisis, and how we can increase resilience through a better bodyset. Remember that when I use the term bodyset, I’m referring to how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations. We are embodied beings, composites of body and soul. Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us. The state of our body, our relationship with our body, that’s bodyset.

So as I discussed with you last time, the main message about bodyset is that we need to listen to our bodies and respond in love to our bodies. Last episode we focused on listening to our bodies and at the end, we did an experiential exercise where we did some really focused listening, to hear the messages from our bodies that we may otherwise be ignoring. And that brought in some great responses from some of you, our podcast community members. Nothing brings me as much satisfaction as hearing you really engaging with this podcast, taking in the information, doing the exercises, discovering new things about yourselves, and growing. That is what this is all about.

So before I share these emails, I’m going to suggest that if you have the time and the inclination, go back to the last episode, episode 10 titled Your Catholic Body and this Crisis: Bodyset and listen if you haven’t done so already. Go back to the last episode and really experience that exercise, truly listen in to your body with our guided reflection together. Then come back and listen to the story of JR in Indiana, and what he experienced as he did the exercise from the last episode.

Whenever I share these kinds of stories on this podcast, because they are so deep, and meaningful and personal, I always ask for permission from the person, out of respect. If the person is not willing to allow me to share it on the air, that is totally understandable. I really value your privacy. These stories, though, illustrate the experiences that I so much want all of you to have, they show the possibilities of what you can learn and how you can change by deeply engaging with this podcast and with our community.

This is also a clear example of what this podcast community is all about. It’s not about me, lecturing to a microphone off in my makeshift studio far away, and you, just listening alone, a passive recipient. No. This podcast is about engagement, it’s about relationship, it’s about connection, it’s about community and it’s about being pilgrims together in these hard times, in this valley of the shadow of death, Yes. Be we are also together on the road to salvation. I have responded to every one of you that has reached out by phone or by email, we’re a small enough community that we can do that together and that is a top priority for me.

So I want to start by thanking JR in Indiana for his openness and his willingness to share his experience from the last episode with all of you. Thank you, JR. I am going to read this as JR wrote it, because he expresses himself so well in his own words. He emails me last Monday, four days ago:

My back is physically out of shape due to lack of exercise (and I was diagnosed with some arthritis in my lower back a couple of years ago). Also, I have had to perform some physical home chores recently that I thought might be the cause of the pain.

I have been working hard at self-care: stretching, walking, a lot of time on my back with my legs elevated. Usually, this self-care would have worked by now; but not this time. I can move; but, not without pain.

This morning I followed your guided meditation and asked my back pain what it wanted to tell me. It said, “Slow down.”

I replied, “SLOW DOWN? I am on my fricking back and can’t move—I can’t go any slower. I am isolated—i can’t go any slower. I can’t find meaningful work—I can’t go any slower. I can’t engage with the Body of Christ—I can’t go any slower!

I have no idea what “slow down” means; but, I will take the suggestion to prayer and further meditation.

I write to him:

I suspect that the pain has some deeper meaning. I definitely think you are on the right track with taking the message to prayer and further meditation. I also would check in with your pain again. See what more it has to tell you. You can do that on your own, or it might be helpful to play the relevant section in today's podcast over again if you want a little guidance on checking in. But approach that pain and its message of "slow down" with curiosity, openness, acceptance if you can. I get that part of you is frustrated with all the inconvenience of the pain. See if that part can give you a little room to understand what's going on with the part that is in pain.

Dr. Peter,

Over the past twenty-four hours since my first meditation which gave me the words “slow down”. I have done meditation two more times--late last night and this morning.

The following may be more than you expected; but here goes:.

1) Here is what I think I learned after the first meditation:

My unconscious, in the form of the little child in me, was saying slow down. The little child, still wounded, was trying to stop my chronological age by slowing me down physically. It would take me longer to reach old age (death); If I couldn’t move as fast. With the slowing down, then I would have more time for things to occur; i.e., healing, etc. (and I wouldn’t die!).

Let’s stop for a second here. This is a great realization. This is an example of how unconscious parts of us can work. JR has identified a part of himself that was connected to his back pain. When he focused in on that pain during the guided reflection, he discovered a part of himself that seems like a little child. This is so common. I firmly believe that we all have these parts of ourselves, parts that are young and often neglected or exiled. These parts of us get trapped in the past, and they think and feel like children do. Sometimes we condemn these parts of us as “irrational” but I’m going to tell you something. It’s really important. I wouldn’t say this part of JR is irrational. This little part of him is trying to protect him from death, trying to help him in the ways it knows. But it’s not integrated into the rest of him, it has been disconnected somehow. And the beautiful thing is that JR is now reconnecting with that part of himself, he’s becoming more integrated as he relates with this part of himself.

What is making my unconscious feel threatened about lack of time (or my death)

[Deaths of people close to him, a history of health issues, fears of coronavirus]

My little child has not yet heard the voice of God the Father say. "You are my beloved son in whom I well pleased."

In addition to stalling death, I think my unconscious also wants to give me more time to accomplish my purpose in life. The past six weeks are forcing me to reassess that purpose. I have no idea today how that reassessment will end and until then I have no end in mind

2) During the second mediation:

I heard the little child say “I am scared.” I held him, reassured him and we prayed the Our Father at the end. (Providence occurred during this meditation because at the point in time of the podcast when you asked us to listen to our body; Safari on my iPhone crashed, unbeknownst to me, and I was able to sit in silence for a lot longer than if the mediation had continued and the podcast ended in an orderly manner.)

3) During the third meditation:

I heard the voice say: “I want to be understood” and “I want to have purpose for my life”. I am still thinking through the second and third meditations.

I will continue to mediate on my bodyset and to pray about what I am learning/discovering.

Side note: In re-reading this I thought it was interesting that I always mentioned my death in parentheses!

Thanks again for responding to God's call to develop these podcasts!

Blessings,

JR from Indiana

We’re going to continue with Bodyset for a little while longer. I asked a close psychologist friend of mine, Dr. Andrew Sodergren of Cincinnati to listen to the last episode. Dr. Sodergren is an expert on the psychological aspects of the Theology of the Body, and he and I have been discussing via email some of his key ideas in this area, so I am very much looking forward to sharing those insights with you. Dr. Sodergren and I are focusing very much on what it means to love yourself through loving your body in an ordered way. We’re addressing the psychological obstacles that get in the way of loving your body, and those are really common. I am really wanting to get him on this podcast with me as a special guest, so keep that intention in your prayers that we can work out the timing and details. I’m so excited to be able to share his insights with you.

I was kind of hedging my bets in my own insecurity when I started this podcast. There was part of me who was fearing failure, fearing that this whole thing would flop and just be lame, this part of me was questioning whether I could actually pull this off, and that part influenced me to tie this podcast to the pandemic. If the podcast fails, I can just shut it down when the pandemic ends.

And another, very self-confident part of me was totally sure that I could do this, that that with enough effort and savvy, I could make this podcast a success. And you know what? Both parts were wrong. This podcast is a great success, it is starting to change lives and help people along the road to salvation by shoring up the natural foundations for the spiritual life. So my insecure part was wrong about this. And it’s not a success because of my efforts or talents or savvy – I can’t do this on my own. It’s a success because, first and foremost of the grace of God, and because this podcast is entrusted to Our Lady and her intercession, and because of the prayers and sacrifices you are making for it. I keep asking you to pray and you keep praying and it’s working out! And it’s a success because JR is engaged and he’s doing his work, he is loving this little part of himself that doesn’t want to die, approaching that part of him with love and appreciation rather than contempt.

Feedback: People not wanting to hear any more about the coronavirus crisis. I’m not sure I want to hear more about it. This whole podcast and our whole community is actually not primarily about the coronavirus crisis. It’s about resilience – resilience on the natural levels and also spiritual resilience. Psychological, physical, emotional, cognitive, relational realms. How can we stay integrated, or get more integrated within ourselves, like JR was doing.

And I have been fumbling around trying to get my footing, there’s been a very steep learning curve for me on this. As I was considering this and praying about it, and thinking about all of you – two words keep coming back to me. Two words. Catholics and Resilience. And I was thinking about who we are, especially who we are together in community. And who will we be when this whole coronavirus crisis has passed into history, and the current name of the podcast no longer applies. I really want our community to go on. We don’t have to end this when the pandemic ends.

So what do you all think about changing the name of the podcast? Again, I don’t this of this as my podcast. It’s our podcast, God’s, Mary’s, yours, and mine, all together. I want to hear your ideas. If you are really attached to the current name, let me know that. If you want a new name, let me know that. If you have a new name idea, let me know. I have a possibility for a short name that might capture the essence of the podcast and the essence of us as a community, but I’m not great at picking names. But I’m going to throw this out there – How about the name “Resilient Catholics” “Resilient Catholics. OK. Get engaged. Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com, call me at 317.567.9594 and talk to me or leave a voicemail. Or text me – you can text at that number too. Let me know what you think about the whole name situation. Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem is the current name.

Also register for the podcast so you can get the Wednesday emails and so we can keep you updated on all the exciting things we have in store. I am right now gathering together the best instruments to measure resiliency in crisis. I just got permission to use Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale which has been around since 2003 and has the best psychometric properties – reliability, validity. I’m working on getting the Resilience Scale for Adults, which is also one of the top three resilience scales according to a 2011 meta analytic review. These are not just available – I’m having to explain what we’re doing and get permission to use them. I’ve just begun working on creating a measure of psychospiritual resilience as well that brings in our Catholic the Catholic worldview. So soon, I will be making these available to those in our podcast community so you can receive your scores and see your own pattern of relative strengths and weaknesses in resiliency. We are then going to have a live webinar where I walk through the instruments and the meaning of the scores, and take questions. All that, plus a discussion forum will be available to podcast members who are registered. I will be charge a fee for all of that to help support Souls and Hearts’ work. So get registered so we can keep you in the loop. This is separate from being registered with Souls and Hearts, if you’re not getting the Wednesday email, you’re not registered. If you’re not sure if you’re registered, email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or text or call at 317.567.9594. Don’t forget to be in touch about the name of the podcast as well also how this podcast is impacting you. We’re looking for constructive criticism too. Many of the best fraternal corrections I’ve ever gotten have been from my clients, so bring the criticism as well.

And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Title: Your Catholic Body and this Crisis: Bodyset

Episode 10: April 20, 2020

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem. Seize the day! This twice-weekly podcast helps us rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. It is great to be here with you.

This is Episode 10 and its April 20, 2020, entitled Your Catholic Body and this Crisis: Bodyset. Today we are focusing on the body. Your Catholic body. Does that sound weird to you? That your body is Catholic? I bet it does. Why? Is your body not Catholic? We’re going to get ito all at that body stuff in today’s episode.

[cue music]

Review

We’re in the middle of a program about building resilience in this crisis, so that we are ready to take advantage of the opportunities God is giving us to grow, to grow spiritually of course, but also to grow psychologically, to grow in faith, but also to grow in our human formation, in the natural realms.

Episode 4 – the Four Pillars of Resilience Mindset, Heartset, Bodyset, Soulset. That episode introduced the four major domains, the four major parts of us. Mind, Heart, Body, Soul. We need these four areas of our lives ordered so that we can be resilient and adapt well in a crisis. If you’re new to the podcast, you can listen to each episode in its own, it can stand alone, but remember they all hang together into a program to strengthen your resilience to live out our duties of state, to live our your vocation. So if you have the time and interest, it’s great to go back to episode 4 and work your way up to this one.

In Episodes 5 and 6 we got into mindset. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we habitually apply reason to our situation, to our experiences.

In Episode 7 we moved into heartset. Our heartset consists of the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart. We discussed the huge mistake of neglecting our emotions, the costs of that neglect, and how to get in touch with our emotions again.

In Episode 8 we had a brief detour and we discussed reconciling psychology and Catholicism, and I shared the story of how I got into the field of psychology.

In Episode 9 we got back into heartset, with another huge issue, the issue of being overwhelmed by emotion, and how to prevent that and with that we wrapped up our initial look at heartset.

So now we’re continuing and we’re working with a new pillar – our bodies. How do our bodies impact our capacity to cope in a crisis. That’s the deep dive for us today. So just a review from Episode 4 – what is bodyset again, Dr. Peter? Glad you asked.

Bodyset is how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations. We are embodied beings, composites of body and soul. Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us. The state of our body, our relationship with our body, that’s bodyset.

Here is the main message: We need to listen to our bodies and respond in love to them. What does that mean, Dr. Peter? We need to listen to our bodies? Aren’t we supposed to subjugate our bodies? Aren’t we supposed to control them, keep them from leading us into sin?

Are not our bodies the “flesh” that St. Paul condemns so often in his letters?

And this business of loving our bodies? What does that mean? Sounds fishy. Sounds dangerous.

So let me back up a bit and tell you how I as a psychologist got interested in the body.

Episode 8 – told you a bit of my story. Pretty unimpressed with the clinical training I was getting, really uncertain about how to ground psychotherapy in a Catholic worldview. And that was so central to me. I never wanted to lead anyone astray morally or spiritually Program not helpful at all. I also was far from convinced that psychotherapy was really effective. So I clinically I got into health and rehabilitation psychology -- I could see the benefit in that. Pain control, helping people stop smoking, weight loss stuff. Helping people sleep better, helping people recover and cope with traumatic bodily injuries. But it was all about symptom management and habit control.

And I was interested in the meaning of the bodily symptoms and the body habits that troubled people. Nailbiting Symbolic meaning. Anger. 8 months.

Here is the main message: We need to listen to our bodies and respond in love to them. Why. Because our bodies are us. My body is a part of me.

Because we tend to be down on the body. Lots of people hate their bodies. Body getting a bad rap – the flesh. Jansenism, Manicheanism The good part is the soul (which is composed of light) and the bad part is the body (composed of dark earth). JPII Theology of the Body

There are many references to “the flesh” in the New Testament, especially in the letters of St. Paul. The phrase is confusing to those who think it synonymous with the physical body. While Scripture many times uses the word “flesh” to refer to the physical body, when it is preceded by the definite article, it usually means something more. Only rarely does the biblical phrase “the flesh” refer only to the physical body (e.g., John 6:53, Phil 3:2, 1 John 4:2).

From Mgsr. Charles Pope: What, then, is meant by the term “the flesh”? Most plainly, it refers to the part of us that is alienated from God. It is the rebellious, unruly, and obstinate part of our inner self that is always operative. It is the part of us that does not want to be told what to do. It is stubborn, refuses correction, and does not want to have anything to do with God. It bristles at limits and rules. It recoils at anything that might cause one to be diminished or something less than the center of the universe. The flesh hates to be under authority or to yield to anything other than its own wishes and desires. It often wants something simply because it is forbidden.

OK Dr. Peter, so I have the distinction between the flesh and the body. St. Paul was not condemning our physical bodies when he discusses the flesh. We need to listen to our bodies?

And this business of loving our bodies? What does that mean? Sounds fishy. Sounds dangerous.

Recognize what my body is saying.

Poker Tells (my knee, jaw clench, high neck pain, low back pain) GI problems, headache, yoke pattern on neck and shoulders. Symbolism. Psychodynamic work.

Caring for your body. Neglecting it. Not showering, fuzzy bunny slippers, shaving. Personal hygiene. Being good to the body.

Somatic therapy— Diane from Maryland who emailed me. Internal Family Systems, EMDR

Exercise to listen in:

If that body part could speak, what would it tell you. What does it want you to know.

Not listening is much more dangerous. Holds experiences.

Caring for the body Shoulder. Promise. Update in Wednesday email.

Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or call at 317.567.9594. Tell me what you came up with.

And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Title: The Flip Side of the Huge Mistake We Make with our Emotions in a Crisis

Episode 9: April 17, 2020

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me.

This is Episode 9 and its April 17, 2020, entitled The Flip Side of the Huge Mistake We Make with our Emotions in a Crisis. In Episode 7, last week, we discussed how some of us make the huge mistake of neglecting our emotions, disregarding them, disconnecting from them. We discussed the costs of that neglect.

Today, we discuss the flip side of that mistake – the mistake of being dominated by our emotions. Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart. Heartset is essential our emotional state and the positions we take because of our feelings. One of the four pillars of psychological resilience, Episode 4 -- introduced all of them.

Emotions are not morally right or wrong. We often believe they are – we don’t always say it that way. My sadness is sinful.

We have an innate sense of right and wrong. But we also learn what is right and wrong by what our parents reward and punish. And frankly, parent like pleasant feelings in their children and the don’t like unpleasant feelings.

So anger, disappointment, sadness, fear – parents sometimes don’t tolerate these emotions well in their children. Anger as an example. A lot of parents do not allow their children to express anger in any way. No expression of anger is well tolerated. IF you’re a kid an every time you are angry, you get punished no matter what you do, it’s very easy to assume that the anger is wrong.

Let’s face it: Kids are not very nuanced. I hate you mommy you’re a bad mommy.

So the child learns not to express anger in any way. Anger is dangerous. Keep it inside. Deal with it silently. So it wells up and explodes.

Some parents can’t handle children’s anger well – they fear their own anger coming up. So it’s somewhat protective. You parents know this. Sometimes it feels like you just can’t take the kids’ fighting any more, the arguing and bickering in anger, and you drop the hammer. There are no people on earth better able to confront parents with their inadequacies than their children. So kids bury them. And they ping pong back and forth. Beach ball under water. Emotions can come rushing back. That’s why we want our emotions integrated.

Banning words like hate. Because we don’t like the thought that hate is there. Such a strong word. But there are strong emotions. Burning the map doesn’t destroy the territory. How I learned not to ban words. Telling a story Big brown eyes. Banning the word Stupid.

Children have a way of really getting under parents’ skin in ways no one else ever can. I have seven children. Oldest was about 8. Calling each other stupid. Like kids do.

Another way. Or parents may simply allow all kinds of emotional expression. In this very laid back acceptance of all emotions, the child learns to accept all his emotions, all the emotions are validated, so they all must reflect truth.

Temperaments of children matter, too. This stuff is really complex.

Two ways to be dominated by our emotions:

To be overwhelmed by them, to be driven by our passions, to lash out in anger or to flee in fear when we shouldn’t
To give them too much weight in our thinking – for example consider how you might hold a grudge against someone – harboring resentment. Interpret that person’s behavior through that lens of bitterness. We’re not overwhelmed with emotion.

When we allow ourselves to be dominated by emotions and when we assume that our emotions just reflect reality, our heartset leads us to a mindset of subjectivism. My subjective experience is what matters. If I feel it, it must be true. I have my truth, you have your truth, and they can contradict each other.

So we want emotions integrated and we want them regulated.

Breathe, Holy Names, Confide, Listen. Four-step plan to calm emotions down.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

So about this podcast. I way underestimated how much work this is. And I was very optimistic.

Building an ark. Not working out the way I expected. Very optimistic. Yeb dub dah. Flfalg. Very used to talking with people – presented for years, but I could always watch the reactions. Is this any good? Not much response. Can’t go with what is gratifying. Turning away potential clients. Worried. Does anybody even care. Some days March 14 no one listens.

Started asking – brilliant.

Connections with you: Worried initially.

Calls coming in

Letter writing

Now super excited. Big ideas about how to bring people together. I am now convinced we have a core. Looking at RSS feeds. We’re just going to do what needs to be done. And I’m not alone. You are with me.

Prayers are flowing in. We are coming together.

Working on a forum for how we can connect. Send me ideas. Not a huge fan of FaceBook privacy issues. Working on a forum for our website. Private or Public

Also working on setting up groups that can connect around this podcast and within Souls and Hearts.

Champions – Committed people. Volunteering.

Call to Arms 4 qualities.

Devoutly embrace Catholic Faith – Life of prayer and sacrifice.
Convinced of the important of psychology – not just dabblers, not just interested in it, but see it as essential in this day and age. Human formation, not just spiritual formation.
Willingness to change to grow – to apply these things. Not just some lecture, some dry information. Yes, some conceptual learning Experiential learning.
Willing and able to use technology and our online platform. Engage remotely.

Too many of you have been siloed – isolated from others that meet these four requirements.

Christine, Jane, Sylvia, Bridget, Joyce, Diane, Julie, Hrvoje and more that have come in, thank you! Thank your for telling me your stories and what

Thank you for the appreciation. Like building an ark. My heart – not feeling it. Do it. But not a lot of consolations in the first few episode. Floundering around. Doing a podcast is much more difficult than I imagined. Given lots of talks before, I can handle this. Yeah right. Humbling. I’m reading and studying and floundering around. So I appreciate you bearing with me.

Feedback is going to make this so much better. Not me pontificating in an empty room to a mic. I am seeing you in my minds eye, Christine or Elizabeth

Sign up. Even if you’re already signed up for something else on Souls and Hearts. Sign up for this podcast. Don’t forget that you can come to soulsandhearts.com and you can find the show notes for this episode.

And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Dr. Peter discusses some of his journey to harmonize psychology with Catholicism and invites listeners to get in touch with him as we form a community of Catholics who are committed to both human and spiritual formation and who are willing to put in the work to grow, even in this time of crisis and especially in this time of crisis.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

The huge mistake we make with our emotions in a crisis

Episode 7: April 10, 2020

Let’s get right to it. Today we are discussing the one huge mistake that we human beings tend to make with our emotions when we are in a drawn-out crisis situation. One major mistake that we all are prone to make when we are stressed.

And we’re going to also not just discuss the remedy to that huge common mistake – but also we are going to practice that remedy. I will walk you through an experiential exercise to help you rise above that common mistake and help you know yourself better. So stay with me, here we go…

Cue music

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth during this pandemic, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts. Thank you for being here.

So what is the great mistake that many of us make with our intense emotions in a crisis? In one word the answer is: Neglect. We neglect them. We disregard them. We don’t pay attention to them. We avoid them. We defend against them so that in an emergency they don’t keep us from being able to act. And that is helpful in the short run.

Imagine firefight on a battlefield where a soldier’s legs are wounded by shrapnel and he can’t move. His buddy moves quickly and efficiently to stop the bleeding and is carrying him back to the medic for care. It would not help his buddy to get overwhelmed with emotion, fear, or a sense of loss, or to remember in that moment all the good times they had together on base. Temporarily, his buddy can keep out of conscious awareness all those memories and all that emotion to be able to focus on the demands of the moment. And that is a gift from God.

We naturally have defenses that keep some of our internal experience out of conscious awareness so we can function under stress. We call them defenses because they defend us, they protect us against internal experiences that otherwise would overwhelm us, swamp us with their intensity. Some clinicians call these defenses coping mechanisms.

So what are these defenses? You’ve heard of many of them – denial, repression, avoidance, dissociation – I have a list of about 50 of them that I consider when I’m doing psychological evaluations. The function of all of these defenses is to protect us from being overwhelmed by our experience, particularly intense emotional experiences. The problem is that over time, these defenses all have costs. There is a price to pay for using a defense. The costs is often part of the defense itself – for example, getting hung over after drinking too much.

But a cost common to all defenses is that are not as in touch with our emotions. In general, people only deal with what they consciously experience and they assume that this is all that there is. If I don’t feel it, it’s not there. If a defense is working effectively, it keeps all or at least part of an emotion out of our awareness. And when we don’t know what we are feeling we are at a disadvantage. For example, we can’t share those experiences with other people or bring them to God in prayer. We are not integrated, connected with emotion.

Let me make comparison to the body. There are some people with rare genetic condition who cannot feel physical pain. It’s called congenital analgesia And it’s thought to be related to a genetic mutation that interrupts the normal functioning of pain messages in the central nervous system. They don’t feel it when they burn their mouth with hot coffee, they don’t feel pain when they injure themselves in any way. Some people might wish to have this condition – to live a pain free life! But they tend to have short lives. They don’t have the warning system to protect themselves.

So an example. Let’s say that you are angry with your spouse, but you have defended against that anger. It’s likely to come out in your behavior, in ways that you intellect and will can’t address as effectively. We call that enactment or acting out. It’s a way of discharging some unconscious emotion through action. Have you ever had the experience where you where pretty sure someone felt something toward you, but they weren’t aware of it? Or how about the guy who insists in a frustrated, angry tone, that he is not angry. “I’m not angry, why do you keep telling me I’m angry?!” Often people believe what they are saying in those moments. They are not in touch with their experience. . Floyd at the work. He’s the last one – never complained. He’s enacting.

So now we are weeks into this crisis. It’s dragging on. We’ve had time to build up emotions about it. The problem is not that we have some temporary disconnect from intense emotion. But when we don’t seek to understand ourselves, when we stay unaware of what we are feeling – then problems come in.

How can my emotions influence my actions when I am not feeling them? Emotions signal important things going on within us. They inform us about our experience. And when they are kept out of awareness by defenses, there is a God-given pull for the trouble to come to the surface. The more we repress and refuse to acknowledge an emotion, the more that emotion tries to get to the surface. It’s like trying to keep a beach ball under the water.

Or think about it this way. Have you ever been in the presence of compassionate person and then all of sudden had an insight about what you’re really struggling with – a realization. The love of the other helps the defenses to relax so the problem can come to the surface without overwhelming you.

Remedy: Experiential exercise. Not therapy. Sounds really simple

Importance of Gentleness with self.

A very important aspect of heartset: Willingness to look inside and own what is there. Seek and ye shall find. Slow down.

You can find out. Create the conditions.

Mindset of acceptance of all your internal experience. Be willing to own your emotions. If we are, we are going to see things we don’t want to see. Impulses, desires, attitudes, but also emotions. Shame, grief, anger, First and second moral acts. Saints: Discuss wretchedness not their wonderfulness?

Set aside

Time to feel.

Space to feel.

Relationship to feel

Note your reactions.

Drawing or doodling. Writing down in a journal – putting thoughts and feelings into words allows us to engaging the will and the intellect.

Let me know how this exercise goes for you.

Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com Let’s stay connected. If you sign up at soulsandhearts.com for this podcast you will get the Wednesday morning email with extra tips and insider information, including sneak peaks. For example, I will send you a list of the names of 50 or so defenses that I consider in evaluating clients in next week’s email.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

A Call To Arms: Rise Up, Red-Blooded Catholics

Episode 6: April 6, 2020

Look, I’m going to get right down to it. We are in a real crisis with this virus. You’ve seen the news – New York City’s hospitals are overwhelmed and infections and deaths are accelerating exponentially. We’re facing shortages of some basic items and supply chains are breaking down. We’ve never experienced anything like this. And I believe we are in it for the long haul.

The bottom line is this: The Catholic Church now, more than ever needs heroes to rise up. The Church needs you to be an unsung hero in your vocation, in your duties of state. Other souls need you to be clearheaded, calm, effective, thoughtful, patient, generous, and resilient. They don’t just need you to be a holy man or woman. They need you to be well-formed on a human level, well integrated, soul, heart, body and mind. Other souls are looking to you for safety, security, guidance, direction. Are you up for that yet? Are you equipped to handle whatever may come?

Cue music

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. This is Episode 6 and its April 6, 2020, entitled A Call To Arms: Rise Up, Red-Blooded Catholics. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me.

The stakes are high. Yes, there is life and death on the line. But there is more than just life and death. There is salvation and damnation for souls on the line. Our parishes are shuttered, we’ve lost the Mass and many of us have lost access to confession unless we are in danger of death. We’ve lost access to the Eucharist. Now is the time – now is the time for red-blooded Catholic men and women, drinking deeply of God’s grace, to rise to the challenges of these wild times. There has never been a better time for you to rise up and seize the day.

If you are willing to take on this mission, this mission of rising up and shining like a beacon for others, I am here to guide you, step by step and this podcast is for you. I’m here to be with you and walk you through an entire program of human psychological formation to help you triumph in the challenges you are facing, the stresses that confront you. I am looking for probably less than 1% of Catholics, those that really get that grace builds on nature, the supernatural builds on the natural, and that know they have to work not just on their spiritual life, but also their psychological life. I’m looking for just a few Catholics, maybe 100 committed souls, maybe more, who want to join me in our online community where we can mutually support each other in becoming unsung heroes in our daily lives.

I’m looking for red-blooded Catholics who want to feast on the nourishing Word of the Gospel as it is, and live it out to the max. I am looking for Catholics who are tired of the limp-wristed, narrow, timid, lukewarm, worldly approach to our Faith we see all around us.

I am looking for Catholics who are tired of spineless, risk-averse approaches to the faith, masquerading as prudence. I want Catholics to join me who are ready to be creative, think way outside the box, to find real solutions to real problems, who are willing to make great and small sacrifices, but who just need some guidance, who are looking for some guidance grounded in the perennial teachings of our beloved Church. And not because we’re great – we’re not great -- but because we want our Lord to live and act through us.

If you engage seriously with what I offer you, my bet is that many of you will grow much more resilient and much better equipped to carry out your mission to answer God’s call for you.

So you might ask:

Who are you, Dr. Peter, to volunteer to lead us and why should we follow?

My whole career has been focused on bringing people closer to God and Mary through shoring up the natural foundation. I almost left the field in grad school because I was struggling with how to ground the practice of psychology in an authentic Catholic worldview. I have decades of experience working with clients, helping them through crises of various kinds. And I have a wealth of information to share with you. My spirituality is essentially Carmelite and I’m focused on removing psychological barriers to contemplative union with God. You can look up my bio on Soulsandhearts.com but this is not really about me. It’s about you. If you really engage with what I have to offer you, you’ll know by the fruits you see if this is helpful or not.

So if I commit, how does this work – how are you going to guide us?

So we have this podcast, which is twice per week, Mondays and Fridays. Every week. You know, a lot of Catholic websites have shut down or reduced the frequency of their offerings. We’re ramping up and adding resources four or five days per week at Soulsandhearts.com.

In each episode, I’ll share some inside information, the same kinds of information that has been helpful to me in and helpful to my clients and friends. We don’t do psychotherapy.in this podcast or in any of our offerings at Souls and Hearts, but we do share much of the same information. So there is a teaching element.

Often in the podcasts, there will be an experiential part – where I guide you through a process to understand yourself better. We did one in the last episode, Episode 5 on discovering more about your mindset when you were in your dark place. The experiential exercises in this podcast are where we learn by doing.

So we have the educational information, we have the experiential exercises – what else? We will discuss specific challenges that many people face in resiliency in crisis, in seizing the day. And I will give you specific guidance on how to overcome those challenges. You see that at the end of this podcast.

If you register for this podcast on the Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem page at Souls and Hearts.com you will get a bonus email on Wednesday with some insider tips, sneak peeks at what’s coming up and other resources. It’s really worth getting that email.

Once we get enough people registered, I will be offering webinars for the registered listeners in our community, in which we have time to go into much more depth into a particular area.

I will make recommendations for reading from time to time – nothing lengthy or academic – no, usually short passages. We keep it really clear and to the point.

I’m also working on a self-assessment instrument for you to help you identify your relative strengths and weakness is facing crises, and I’m planning to be able to give tailored recommendations as your guide (again it’s not psychotherapy) for how best to change and grow.

We are also working on community resources on our webpages – getting the discussion boards up so we can communicate and connect with each other.

So we are have been discussing a healthy Catholic mindset – if you are just joining us, make sure to check our Episodes 4 where I discuss the four pillars of psychological resilience for Catholics in a Crisis, and Episode 5, where I dive deeper into mindset. We’re running close to then end of our time today, so I’m going to cut to recommendations for improving mindset.

Get rid of video games. No Fortnite. No Minecraft. No Angry Birds – I mean it. Cut that way back cut that out. If you are filling your sensory channels with lots of video games, you’re not going to find a deep union with God. Period. Full stop. And those of you that are honest about it will know that there’s unlikely to be great Catholic heroes that rise up in crises that also play a lot of video games. Not gonna happen. And you know it.
No binging on TV – catching up on three seasons of the Office or Downton Abbey. It’s the same thing as video games. What Catholic hero spends an hour or two per day watching TV or cat videos on YouTube? That stuff is just going to drag you down and clog your mind. TV and video games are incompatible with a deep contemplative life and recollection during a crisis.

Those are the two recommendations. But Dr. Peter, Dr. Peter, I connect with my family and friends over video games and TV – that what we do, that’s what we talk about. Find a different way. Get creative. Look for other ways to connect with your family and friends. And if video games and TV are the only link you have with your friends, then ask yourself if you might not need new friends. No video games – No TV.

One idea is to replace them with reading. I’m reading the Ralph Moody series out loud to my children and Pam, my wife. Little Britches. I do different voices for each of the characters. In times of crisis it’s helpful to read epic adventures – it doesn’t have to be Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey (those are great) that that’s not your style. Discuss the books with others if you can.

Sign up. Even if you’re already signed up for something else on Souls and Hearts. Sign up for this podcast. And let others know about this. Don’t forget that you can come to soulsandhearts.com and you can find the show notes for this episode.

And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Your Catholic Mind and Resilience in Crisis

Episode 5: April 3, 2020

Mindset.

What is a mindset and how can I understand my mindset? These are the questions we will be addressing in depth in this episode.

And to help us, I’m inviting in Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, in his moment of crisis. Here you go, you Lord of the Rings fans.

In the Return of the King, the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series, Denethor is in an extremely difficult position He is the leader of the kingdom of Gondor. And Gondor is one of the few kingdoms left standing against the evil Sauron his army of Mordor.

· Gondor in a strategic position to defend against Mordor. But now the vast, powerful army of Mordor laying siege to the gates of Denethor’s castle and the situation looks very grim.

· But let’s rewind just a bit. Who is Denethor? And what was his mindset?

Denethor is

· Hardheaded, traditional, old-fashioned

· a grim political realist – pessimistic

· lonely – his wife has long since died

· Self-reliant -- Denethor relies on his own resources to resist the powerful evil ruler Sauron. .

· Denethor is a father of two sons.

· Beloved Elder son Boromir has died

o This increasing his distance, bitterness and detachment

· secretly uses a the seeing stone – the palantir -- to gather information,

· Seeing stone or palantir is a ball of indestructible crystal, used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world, events from the past or future. Some might describe it as a crystal ball.

· Denethor believed he that he could control the seeing stone

o The seeing stone could only show him things that were true – real object or events, but

o The seeing stone is not a reliable guide to action – it’s unclear whether events shown are in the past or in the future, and it doesn’t show everything.

o Sauron biased what the seeing stone showed Denethor, selectively choosing real events and positioning the presentation to convey a lie.

In the moment of crisis, the vast, evil horde of Mordor is arrayed outside the castle walls, and Denethor’s younger son Faramir is brought in on a stretcher – Faramir is pierced with arrows and looks like death.

In the darkness of his hopelessness, Denethor says this to Gandalf:

“I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labor in healing! Go forth and fight. Vanity. For a little while you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that rises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. Even now the wind of they hope cheats thee and wafts up the Anduin a fleet of black sails. The West has failed. It is time to depart for all you would not be slaves.”

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.

I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me.

This is episode 5: Your Catholic Mind and Resilience in Crisis and it is Friday, April 3, 2020. We are one week away from Good Friday.

Mindset is one of the four pillars of resilience in crisis for Catholics, and this episode builds on the last one, in which I introduced you to the four pillars of resilience. These four pillars are critical for you being able to not just survive, but to thrive in times of crisis like this moment we find ourselves in now.

Now we are going much more in depth on mindset.

So what is mindset?

Our mindset is the general position or attitude of our intellect.

Mindset captures how we habitually apply our thinking to the situations we face. It’s the soil in which our cognitive processes grow. Mindset is not our thinking per se – it’s the mental attitude from which our thinking flows.

So here’s a simple example to clarify. A person with a pessimistic and bitter mindset looks at a glass, sees it as half-empty and considers how he doesn’t really want water. He wants iced tea. With a twist of lemon. He thinks about how he never gets what he wants. A person with a providential mindset recognizes that four ounces of water is what he needs right now, and gives thanks to God for the gift of water.

You can think of mindset as filter through which we perceive our situations, other people, and ourselves. Our mindsets can range all over in terms of the accuracy of their perceptions and the quality of the thinking they produce. Think about it. You’ve seen this in others, when they totally misunderstand you in a situation. And if you’re honest with yourself, you can probably remember times when your perceptions of situations have been really misguided by your mindset.

And reminder of what we discussed in the last episode, our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking but also our behavior.

It’s much easier to act well when we have a healthy mindset

So now, back to Denethor. Let’s discuss his mindset. What was Denethor’s mindset? Think about it for just a second. Was it despair? Well, he did move to mindset of despair but only at the very end. Remember that mindsets can change and flux.

Denethor was in trouble with his mindset long before the host of Mordor gathered at his doorstep, long before the battered body of his son Faramir was hauled back to him in the castle. So what was the original problem with Denethor’s mindset? It was this:

Denethor believed that he needed only to rely on himself.

He was a man of great capacity, many talents and strong will.

He pursued the good as he understood it to the limits of his strength.

But was self-reliant.

He tried to carry out his mission alone and isolated. And that mission was greater than any one man could face alone.

None of us has the strength in our own will and in our own character to face our challenges without help.

Relying on our own strength is a prescription for disaster.

I empathize with Denethor – parts of me really want to be self reliant as well, want to be independent, not rely on anyone else. That resonates with some of you as well. So I get Denethor’s mindset, and the temptations he faced.

There was another problem with his mindset.

Denethor assumed he could master the palantir, the seeing stone.

He presumed he could and Suaron’s attempts to control him though the stone.

He lacked intellectual humility in his quest for clarity about the future.

He was driven by fear and uncertainty – he had to know the future. So relied on the palantir and succumbed to its misleading guidance.

Denethor wildly distorts the visuals he sees in the stone and assumes the horde of Mordor outside his castle walls means doom. And so he despairs, ending his life by burning himself to death.

Gandalf says this of Denethor: 'But his wisdom failed; and I fear that as the peril of his realm grew he looked in the Stone and was deceived: far too often, I guess, since Boromir departed. He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things which that Power permitted him to see. The knowledge that he obtained was, doubtless, often of service to him; yet the vision of the great might of Mordor that was shown to him fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.'

The overthrowing of mind that Gandalf refers to is the shifting of Denethor’s mindset from self-reliance to the broken depth of despair. Denethor’s mindset finally broke his will, strong as his will had been.

What do we know of mindsets from our Catholic Faith? Let’s listen what God in Sacred Scripture has to tell us about our mindsets:

From Isaiah 55 – we will hear this in the upcoming Easter Vigil readings. This is where God tells you and me: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Denethor’s thought were not God’s thoughts. Denethor’s suicide flowed from his distorted, confused mindset. Caught in his false certainty of doom fueled by his relational isolation, his pride, and his lack of any alternative frame of reference, Denethor ruined himself in his moment of crisis and abandoned his duties to his family and his people.

So we can see how mindsets can shift. Now, we’re moving to the action item for this episode. I want you to recall a dark time in your life. It could be during this current time of crisis, or some other difficult and dark time for you. Be specific about the time and place.

Write down what your thoughts and assumptions are when you are in your dark place? Let’s get a good picture of your mindset when you are in a dark, problematic mode of operating. What negative beliefs about yourself, about others, about God, about the future do you default to when you are afraid, depressed, or angry. Or maybe your dark place is when you feel abandoned or lost, or unloved. Whatever your dark place is write down your beliefs. When I am in my dark place, I assume that ______________________. When I am in my dark place, I believe ___________ about myself and about God.

Let’s get these beliefs into words. When you put them into words, when you speak these beliefs, they become much clearer, the come up out of your preconscious and into conscious awareness. Then your intellect and will can work with them much more easily.

Now some may raise an objection – but these beliefs are heretical, they aren’t true, I need to resist them! Ok, I get it. But the fact is that they exist in you. They exist in you. We all have beliefs and assumptions that are untrue, in our fallen state, in our fallen world. And if we repress, suppress or deny them, then then those false beliefs can work on us in ways in ways that we can’t see.

It’s much better to acknowledge in humility that we have these beliefs when we are in our dark places. It takes humility to accept that we do have this mindset when we are in the dark place.

Keep that handy, because in the next episode, we are getting into how to become much more resilient and health in your mindset.

In the next episode, on Monday, I’m going to walk you through very practical ways to improve your mindset, to help you get it much more ordered toward the Good, the True and the Beautiful. This is where the rubber really meets the road. Don’t miss that. It’s a great opportunity for you to learn critical information about yourself.

We are also going to start exploring how mindset relates with the other pillars: heartset, bodyset and soulset – our emotions, our bodies and our spiritual lives. So don’t miss that. That will come out on Monday, April 6, early in the morning on the east coast of the US.

Here’s a shout out and a big thank you to Fr. Don Kania, who has put this podcast, Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem on LectioTube – thank you Fr. Kania. Check out lectiotube.com for the best of Catholic podcasts, shows, and other media brought to you in one place from all over the web.

Now I’m working really hard to get this podcast out twice per week, every Monday and Friday. If I am supported by your prayers and the grace of God, I can do it. So pray for me. I’m praying for you.

But I need something else from you, in addition to your prayers, a way you can really help me. I never imagined how difficult it would be for this podcast to rise above the noise of the internet and be noticed. If you find this podcast worthy, I need you to get the word out. Let your people know about this podcast – your friends and family. Put it on the Catholic listserves, email your parish priest and office staff, sharing it with your colleagues. I need you to help spread me the word. I need you to help me spread the word so that others can benefit from what we have here together at soulsandhearts.com. You know somebody or a lot of somebodies that could benefit from this. So thank you for that.

Don’t forget that you can come to soulsandhearts.com and you can find the show notes for this episode.

And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and patron: Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

The Four Pillars of Psychological Resilience for Catholics

Episode 4:

It’s the late 7th century BC in Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed by the dominant Assyrians, 200 years ago. The whole northern kingdom lost forever, 10 tribes gone, utterly ruined. The little southern kingdom of Judah survived, two tribes left, Judah and Benjamin, but those two tribes are surrounded by powerful enemies, idolatrous nations running rampant.

The ruling Assyrians are brutal, even by the standards of the day. But by this time Assyria is in a late-stage empire collapse. Assyrian nobles are jockeying for power and position, with palace intrigues and dirty dealing. Betrayals and internal power plays are the name of the game. Insurrections are on the rise, civil disturbances are breaking out as factions consolidate under rival warlords. The political situation was very dangerous and rapidly changing.

The conquered peoples under the Assyrian’s harsh rule – the Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Cimmerians became increasingly restive and hostile. These subjected nations, all much more powerful than little Judah smelled the Assyrians’ weakness like blood in the water. They sharpened their swords and were bided their time for payback. And little Judah, powerless, weak, vulnerable -- little Judah finds itself riding a red tricycle in a demolition derby. And in 616 BC it happened, like rolling thunder, real rebellions break out from the simmering tensions.

By 613 BC, the Babylonian army has broken free and with a vengeance is headed for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the biggest, most powerful city of the world. The Medes, Persians, Cimmerians and Scythians all join in with the Babylonians and pile on. It’s payback time for the brutal years of subjection. The Assyrians have ruled for centuries and they are not rolling over. It was a clash of titans. The battle for Nineveh lasted months, with hand-to-hand fighting from street to street and house to house. The city finally falls in 612 BC and the victorious armies sack, loot and burn Nineveh.

Now we have a huge power vacuum. The political and military situation was highly fluid, very unpredictable and really dangerous the cars crashed and burned in the derby and little Judah rode on.

Cue the Prophet Habakkuk:

I hear, and my body trembles,

my lips quiver at the sound;

rottenness enters into my bones,

my steps totter beneath me.

I will quietly wait for the day of trouble

to come upon people who invade us

So why am I sharing with you the story of the fall of Nineveh and the words of Habakkuk? Because the book of Habakkuk is all about a wild, tumultuous time, and there is great psychological wisdom in it. Those wild, unpredictable and dangerous days are also a great rea-life historical backdrop to this five episode series on resiliency. In the next five episodes I am giving you a mini-course on psychological and spiritual resilience in our own current crisis.

I’m sharing with you the four pillars of internal, personal resilience in the face of crisis. These are the four critical elements that distinguish among those that thrive in hard times, from those that survive, from those that don’t make it and fall into despair. I call these mindset, heartset, soulset and bodyset. I draw from the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview. And I also draw in references from CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

So four pillars of resilience. What are these four pillars? Mindset, Heartset, Soulset, Bodyset.

I’m going to start with the most important pillar – guess which one it is. Mindset, Heartset, Soulset and Bodyset.

All of you who guessed Soulset – you’re right! Soulset is Pillar 1. But were are not starting with Pillar 1. We’re starting with Pillar 3. Yeah. Pillar 3 is Mindset. Because people are more familiar with mindset.

Pillar Three: Mindset is essentially a frame of mind. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we apply reason to our situation and our experiences. For example, a person could have a pessimistic mindset or an optimistic mindset. That person filters the perception of the world and our thinking through that mindset. More intellectual, analytical people weigh mindset much more heavily in their decision making. A classic example is Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series, or the character of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here’s the thing – our mindset is dynamic and changes – we can have a very positive outlook at one point in time and a very negative one at another point in time and look at the same set of circumstances. Our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking but also our behavior. If we give free rein to our behavior, it will partially flow from our mindset. It’s much easier to act well when we have a good mindset. And one more thing – our mindsets can range all over in terms of their accuracy of perception and the quality of the thinking they produce.

Pillar Two: Heartset. Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart. Heartset and Mindset can be in opposition. For example, if a mother can have a solid mindset to go forward with cleaning the gravel out of her son’s skinned knee, while her heart breaks for him and doesn’t want to cause him pain. St. Therese of Lisieux in correcting the novices under her charge felt great pain in her heart about reproving them in her heartset. But she knew in a deep and clear way that this was right and true in her mind, her mindset. Mary Magdalene was heavily influenced by her heartset in how she loved God with deep emotion.. Dr. Bones McCoy of Star Trek also was very influenced by his heartset, which was part of the conflict he had with Mr. Spock, who was moved much more by his mindset.

Heartset is even more dynamic and changeable for many people than mindset. And it very much influences our mindset – makes sense right, that our emotional states influence how we think.

Pillar One: Soulset. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul. It is the disposition of our spirit, or how our souls is oriented. Our attitude of soul. It can operate independently of mindset and heartset.

Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us. Our soulset very much depends on our level of security in our relationship with God.

Now here’s the kicker – our soulset is also very dynamic. It changes too, often rapidly for some of us. Think about the orientation of your soul when you were in a spiritual high – how confident your soul was in those moments, the deep and abiding sense of well-being in God’s grace. Now think about your soulset when you are in you are in a bad spiritual place. How your soul is closed up and has moved away.

Let’s go back to Habbakuk: He struggles with God concerning God’s wisdom and righteousness of God’s providence in current events and the safety and security of Judah. How can your ways be just or Lord? The chaos and the danger of the world around him seem unexplainable and irreconcilable with God’s justice, let alone his love. Habakkuk sees violence and injustice the prophet sees all around him. God tell Habakkuk that he is going to use the Babylonians to come and destroy the evildoers. Why is God using the Babylonians to scourge Israel? An even more wicked people? How can God’s holiness, omnipotence, omniscience be squared with all the suffering, pain, danger and calamity?

Do any of those questions sound familiar. Have you heard yourself echoing any of them as we face the virus crisis?

Habakuk is not seeing God’s mercy, love, and justice in his current environment. Those things are not prominent in his mindset – he can’t get there from what he is seeing. Habakkuk is also not feeling God’s mercy, love, and justice. His heartset is not revealing mercy, love and justice to him. But Habakkuk believes the word of the Lord. He distrusts his own powers of mindset and his own intense heartset. He relies on his soulset. And what does he say at the end of his book? He says this:

Though the fig tree do not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like hinds’ feet,
he makes me tread upon my high places.

This is a great example of an ordered soulset – Habakkuk believes without seeing and without feeling what the Lord has told him.

Fourth, we have bodyset. – this is basically how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations. We are embodied beings, body and soul composites. Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us. So our bodyset is the impact of our bodily states on us. For example, if we are exhausted from a lack of sleep – that has an impact on us. Obviously our bodyset is dynamic and can change as well.

So we have these four pillars. Soulset, Heartset, Mindset and Bodyset. But the funny thing about these pillars is that they are they are dynamic and can change. That is what leads us to feel a lack of stability in our lives. We’ll talk more about that in our upcoming episodes.

Check out the show notes for this episode if you want to review the four pillars of resiliency. In the next four episodes, we are going to go through each one, one per episode with lots of examples. Please pray for me and I will pray for you. And also share with other what you think they might need from this podcast and from Soulsandhearts.com. Think of who might benefit from hearing this episode. Really, I mean it. You know somebody. Send them the link. Share this with them. Thank you again for being here. Let’s invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. St. John the Baptist pray for us.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Grief over the Loss of the Eucharist

Episode 3

March 27, 2020

Mary Magdalene saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” John 20.

Who resonates with Mary Magdalene’s lament? They have taken away my Lord

The reactions of faithful Catholics to our churches being shuttered are not getting much press. But grief comes up a lot, a lot in conversations, with tears: Committed Catholics are grieving the loss of access to Our Lord in the Eucharist. And there are many other emotions as well.

So we know the reasons that are offered for the closing of the parishes.

On March 16, the White House guidance to avoid gatherings larger than 10 people.

In response, almost all dioceses closed the churches and cancelled public masses and gatherings of all kinds. Even confessions are to be postponed unless there is risk of death.

No reasonable person wants to arbitrarily increase the death count from the virus.

What has gotten much less attention is the real pain and loss of those of us dedicated and devoted to the Eucharist. The impact of that loss.

And this is a place where we can acknowledge that pain and the weirdness of it all. It is weird to watch Mass on TV or a computer monitor on Sunday morning.

Mary Magdalene yearning for Jesus outside the tomb would not have been satisfied by watching a video of Jesus on the angel’s iPhone.

Remember, this podcast is all about embracing the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this virus crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.

We are always embracing the situations we find ourselves in and the people we find ourselves with, in deep confidence that all things work together for the good for those who love the Lord. All things. All things. Including our losses of access to the Eucharist.

So ask the question: How in God’s Providence can this situation be good for my spiritual life right now?

It’s really important to ask the question. Many people won’t seek the answer, and won’t find it.

Some Catholics will cover their grief with anger, and rail against the present circumstances, suffering like rebels.

Others will endure their grief without imbuing it with spiritual meaning, suffering like Stoics.

We have another option.

Action item for this episode. Ask the question: How is this loss of the Eucharist best for me? How is it best for me, right now, that I’ve lost access to the Blessed Sacrament, the Mass, Eucharistic adoration, Confession?

It’s vital that each of you who is struggling with the loss ask that question, and not just accept answers from other people, including me. And you need to turn it into a prayer, not just asking yourself, but asking God. Because there are reasons for the loss. God allowed it out of His love for you.. And those reasons vary from person to person, depending on our needs.

I want to give some possible answers, not so you can just accept them, because they may not fit you and your needs right now, but to serve as examples.

One possible answer for some is to increase our thirst for the Eucharist. Maybe you’ve stared to take our Lord’s presence in the Eurcharist for granted. Psychologically, we tend to desire things more once we are deprived of them. So if this is going on for you, you can ask for the love for Our Lord in the Eucharist to increase
The loss of the Eucharist may help you to become in touch with some experience of abandonment or betrayal from your past. There is a psychological technique called an affect bridge – that is where you work to remember when in the past you felt the same way you do now. For many of you, grief or anger over the loss of the Eucharist may tap into some other unresolved loss in your life. You can check that out. In your prayer, your quiet time, go back through your life to the times when you have felt the same way as you do now about the loss of the Eucharist. Is there something there, unresolved that you should know about? Something that God is allowing to surface in you now, so that you can take it to him for healing?
For me, I’m finding out how dependent I have been on my routine. I rely on my routines. For me this is about not relying on my spiritual plan of life and my regular spiritual routine. It’s about relying on God moment to moments and maintaining the Presence of God, recollection, rather than just during my prayer time. It’s about coming back to deepening the relationship, and embracing my dependency. I don’t need daily Mass or an hour of Eucharistic adoration to do that. In this situation, I can embrace the idea that it’s better that I don’t have them. As hard as it is for me to say that. I need God, and He is not bound by my lack of access the Eucharist.

Again, it’s important that you for yourself ask how this loss of the Eucharist is best for you. And if you are so moved, share it – let me know. Get in touch with me, Send me an email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. And if you want to learn more about your personal psychological reactions in this crisis and how they interfere with your spiritual life, I am developing a short assessment and some limited-space webinars now. Sign up on our website at soulsandhearts.com on the coronavirus crisis: Carpe Diem page if you want to be notified when they are available.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Our Stress Responses: Discovering, Understanding and Improving Them

Episode 2

March 25, 2020

Introduction:

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.

Today we’re going to talk about how our stress responses give us very valuable information about ourselves, our psychological functioning and also our spiritual development.

So stress responses are the things we habitually do when we are stressed. They are ways of coping, ways of trying to adapt to the situation.

You may know your stress responses or you might not know them. Here are some examples of stress resposnes:

· Raiding the Fridge (chocolate)

· Biting nails

· Caught up in video games solitaire

· Online shopping

· Obsessive exercise

· Staring into space

· Starting arguments with the spouse

· Cleaning

· Baking

· Viewing pornography online

So now we’re going to explore our stress responses? Why do that? Why should we care? Because they tell us what we need, or at least what we assume we need at some level. And when those stress responses are maladaptive, we can fight them head on and sometimes we have to. But if we can find the underlying need, we can address it in an entirely new and healthy way.

My stress response is __________________

Next, let’s ask, “What does your stress response do for you?” How is that response trying to meet an assumed or real need?

If you listen in, you might find the answer.

You may already think you know the answer, and you may be right.

But let’s go deeper together.

Let’s have an open mind and an open heart toward ourselves on this one. We may have an insight if we are open to it.

The big theme: Our stress responses show us our growing edges, the areas in which we need to receive grace and help.

OK, so here’s the final part. Let’s bring those needs into the spiritual life.

In a crisis like this, the need often has to do with being secure or having a sense of safety.

As Catholics, our need for security and for safety can’t be met by maladaptive stress responses.

They don’t work. Chocolate can’t really make you safer. Nailbiting can only temporarily cover stress, not resolve it.

So to recap: First, Let’s recognize which of our behaviors are stress responses. Let’s name them and acknowledge them, own them, be real about them. So for me, that stress response is way too much internet surfing and study both of the economic and political news.

Second, Let’s then reflect and be open to the needs or assumed needs we have that drive them. In my case, an assumed need to predict what is happening and to control it. My real need though, is for a sense of safety and security.

Third, taking those assumed needs and real needs into the spiritual life in some way that is helpful to you. In my case, bring the need for safety and security to God the Father and to Mary.

Ok, so we are winding it up for today.

Subscribe to this podcast and become a regular listener.

Email me at Crisis@Soulsandhearts.com and let me know what was helpful and what was not.

Sign up for our upcoming assessment and limited-space webinars that will help you learn more about your reactions in a crisis at https://www.soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis.

Let me know what you need from this podcast.

Check out Soulsandhearts.com .

Dr. Gerry has just launched his course for married couples who are recovering from the discovery of porn use – porn use is a stress response for many people.

Let’s pray for each other. Our Lady, Untier of Knots: Pray for Us. St. John the Baptist Pray for us.

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Sign up for our upcoming assessment and limited-space webinars that will help you learn more about your reactions in a crisis at https://www.soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis.

Interior Integration for Catholics: Recent Episodes

Peter T. Malinoski, Ph.D.

1 Loneliness -- needing maternal and paternal care

3 -- Going it alone

1 Loneliness, lack of relational connection

3 Cry for help (single symptom presentation)

4 Anger at God

5 Regulating distance from God -- preventing enmeshment

1 Masturbation as the primary problem