Interior Integration for Catholics

Episode 30. How Small and Childlike are We Supposed to Be? -- August 24, 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.  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 1. 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 1913 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 S...

Episode 29. Magic Genie Gods and Party-Pooper Gods, August 17, 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 29, released on August 17, 2020 and the title Magic Genie Gods and Party-Pooper Gods.  Hang in there with me today through this episode and at the end, I will be walking you through an exercise to help you identify your God images.   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 problemat...

Episode 28.   Police Detective Gods, Pushy Salesman Gods, and Heartbreaker Gods – August 10, 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 28, released on August 10, 2020 and the title is Salesmen Gods, Police Detective Gods and Heartbreaker Gods. 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. 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 complements my God image in the 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...

Episode 27.   Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods – August 3, 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 27, released on August 3, 2020 and the title is Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods. 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...

Episode 26.  Dictator, Pharisee, and Scrooge God Images – July 27, 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 26,  released on July 27, 2020 and it’s called Dictator Gods, Pharisee Gods, and Scrooge Gods. 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 attent...

Episode 25.  Drill Sergeant Gods, Statue Gods, and Preoccupied Manager Gods, Oh My…July 13, 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 25,  released on July 20, 2020 and it’s called Drill Sergeant Gods, Statue Gods, and Preoccupied Manager Gods, Oh My… 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 GodStatue GodRobber GodVain Pharisee GodElitist aristocrat GodPushy salesman GodMagic Genie GodDemanding drill sergeant GodOuttogetcha Police Detective GodUnjust dictator God Marshmallow GodCritical Scrooge GodParty-pooper GodHeartbreaker 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 enjo...

Episode 24.  God Images and Self ImagesJuly 13, 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 24,  released on July 13, 2020 and it’s called God Images and Self Images.  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.   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.   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 responseo   She didn’t understand the tears in his eyes or why he’d turn away, leave her and watch TV alone in his d...

Episode 23.   Sinning, God Images, and ResilienceJuly 6, 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 23,  released on July 6, 2020 and it’s called Sinning, God Images, and Resilience.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? ...

Episode 22.  The Core of Catholic Resilience June 29, 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 22, and it’s called The Core of Catholic Resilience.  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. PeterCatholic 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 RoleA 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  -- wh...

Episode 21.  Catholic Resilience – Where the Secular Experts Get Resilience Wrong. June 22, 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 21, and it’s called Catholic Resilience – Where the Secular Experts Get Resilience Wrong 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.&...