The Lila Rose Show E261: The Psychology of Raising Emotionally Healthy Kids w/Dr Suzanne Baars | Lila Rose Show
Oct 28, 2025
Dr. Suzanne Baars, an experienced marriage and family therapist, shares insights from her father's groundbreaking work in Affirmation Therapy. They discuss how modern culture swings between emotional excess and repression, advocating for a balanced approach. Dr. Baars emphasizes emotions as vital signals that guide moral actions. She offers practical strategies for parents to affirm their children while fostering emotional maturity. The conversation touches on understanding anger, cultivating healthy family rhythms, and the threats of technology to emotional development.
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Soul Has Three Parts: Reason, Will, Passion
- St. Thomas frames the psyche as intellect, will, and passions where reason should guide emotions without dismissing them.
- Dr. Suzanne Baars emphasizes accepting emotions as signals that reason then evaluates for right action.
Love Completes Moral Action
- Loving the good makes virtuous acts fuller because feelings join will and reason in the action.
- Baars contrasts Kantian duty-only morality with Thomistic integration of affect and will for human flourishing.
One Emotion Can Repress Another
- Baars and Dr. Anna Terruwe found one emotion can repress another, unlike Freud's moral-busting interpretation of repression.
- Repression creates chronic tension that eventually erupts or calcifies into neurosis.
