Pints With Aquinas - Ask These Therapists ANYTHING!

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

https://www.readytobeknown.com

One. I love it. Have you back on the show, Dr. Matt Bruninger and Isaac Wicker? Yes. Great to have you here. Man. Yeah. Do you say it's great to have me here? No, this is my happy to be happy to be. Oh, OK.

Actually, here's the thought. What if one day I interview you? We just had the script and we just do that. It doesn't have to be me, actually. You should just know you and me and I'll be the therapist. I'll give answers And then you can have three lights green Please nobody listen to that

Have you ever been interviewed Yeah on your own like the to the time that you interview people have you ever been interviewed? I mean not for three hours Yeah, but I tend to I just didn't interview the other day and I found that I was asking questions in the interview because I'm so used to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. But it's great to have you. Where are you from? I'm from Minnesota, so right now I'm in, right outside of St. Paul, Oakdale. And what are you doing in Steubenville? I'm visiting Matt to do some work and visiting you. Yeah. So yeah, we've been partners for over a year now

and building some really cool stuff. And so yeah, we've done most of our work online. And so this is only the third time I've been with him in person that we've been working together for almost over a year. So it's- We met at the Catholic Psychotherapy Association, I guess last year.

And Isaac was there with his wife and his little baby and we're at, we're in the back of a talk together and we ended up getting paired together for like this exercise. And I usually hate that stuff. I just, it's like forced friendship, forced friendship. And I don't like it, but it was really easy to do with Isaac. And then I bumped into him again. He was there to sort of talk about this program he developed. And I was interested in kind of thinking about program development,

but I also tend to be really leery of people who develop programs. And we just got talking and yeah, there was just a genuineness. I think what he had was really great. Isaac has a tremendous, he's really good at coming up with exercises and sort of programs that integrate faith and psychology. And so we got chatting and just the creative, the creative juices started flowing, man.

And I think we've had a lot of fun just talking and pushing each other and how we think about things and conceptualize things, how we bring faith in and to therapy and into programs we develop and it's been, yeah, it's been awesome. It's been really great. Why are you leery of people who create programs? That's interesting.

So for me it's, I think. I think I get it. Yeah, for me, the primary reason is, I think sometimes the desire or pursuit for money can trump quality. That's and so I always want to make sure that the quality is there. And the other thing is sometimes my experience has been a lot of Catholic folks rather than having a really quality program will just take Catholic buzzwords or Catholic sounding words and

present them to people. When it comes to programs that are aimed at helping you change your behaviors or sort of improve your mental health, it can sometimes just be really heavy on sort of Catholic buzzwords and language, but not have depth. And so a Catholic audience feels really safe with that because there are things to worry about, you know, with secular psychology. And so they're hearing these Catholic words. But then when you scratch the surface, I think the program doesn't have,

like it doesn't have depth. It doesn't have like weight. It doesn't have teeth. It doesn't help people change really. And so I've seen that so many times. So like money being the primary motive, and then just sort of a Catholic veneer on a program that doesn't have much weight. And so the analogy I'm thinking of is kind of like a Christian movie may have all of the Christian boxes checked, but it's not a good story. Exactly. Doesn't move anybody. Exactly. And maybe programs can be like that. Exactly. I've heard it said that people go into therapy because they're very aware of their own issues and they're trying to...

That's what I'm throwing you both under the bus. And they're trying to process their own stuff. Is that true? Because I should be a therapist if it is. Yeah. Where's the nearest master's program? I think it's actually honestly more true than it should be. People...

What I've seen and heard from a lot of people is that they've had good therapists in the past, or they've been really helped by therapy in the past, and so then they say, I've experienced people struggling, I've struggled, I really want to help. And then for that reason, they follow in the path of a therapist that's really helped them. So it's coming out of a genuine desire of saying like there's there's real problems out there people really need help and so I'm gonna step in and do that. But then people are often bringing a lot of their own woundedness and a lot of their own stuff into therapy.

And then that can really skew how things go. But I think it would be in some ways, hard to be a therapist without having some experience of struggle, like mental health struggle, which I'm assuming everybody does, but to be able to kind of acknowledge it and reconcile with it and work through it and just feel what that's like. I think it's an important part, but I don't think everybody who's just struggled with mental health and had a good experience with therapy should become a therapist for that reason.

So there's a lot to that question. I had a mentor in grad school who said, she always said, research is me search. And oftentimes what people study, their line of research or the particular thing they're interested in, has some particular weight or value in their life because of a personal experience or struggle, but to Isaac's point, I think you don't always want somebody who's,

I don't want a guru in therapy. I don't want somebody who's a guru. I want somebody who I trust is experienced some struggle and difficulty. And I want somebody who's actually, um, been in the trenches of life. Um, but I don't want them to be a therapist just because they've been in the trenches. I want somebody who's walked through struggle, who's been through pain, who's encountered difficulty and loss and grief

and big feelings, but I want somebody who genuinely feels called as well. I mean, it has to be deeper than just having struggled. I spoke to you about this the other day, and this is something I keep coming back to because I'm trying to understand it And that is like how to reconcile Psychology as it is presented today Yeah in the best possible way with scriptures with your church fathers and what I came up with the other day was

In therapy at least in some circles you hear this talk of what's it called like inner child? Yeah, the inner child. Yes. You get told like loving your inner child. And I'm like, I'm all about that. But then like St. Paul is talking about killing the old man. So like that that kind of sounds like opposite. And I don't think it is opposite. Right.

I think. But so how do you do you encounter that among Catholics? Is the skepticism among this sort of psycho babble, as they might say, yeah. Yeah, I would say that there is a lot of skepticism, but I also feel a change happening within Catholic culture that's accepting more therapy. And I actually think a big revolution in the church will actually come out of Catholic therapy. That the combination of mental health and spirituality is actually really, really powerful,

and that they complement each other really well. And they help bring, like, both are focused on healing and That there's a real true gentleness and power that can come about at the same time with the combination of the two that if if psychology is of informed by a true Catholic anthropology which Teaches you what's a person? What are you doing? Is that a pipe? I'm hearing you whistling over there. Oh it's not coming up in the podcast. Probably.

So I think it makes you keep that in so people can feel sorry. So if I think that one of the biggest things with psychology is to have a A true solid anthropology behind it. Like what is a human? Who's a human? Um, and that if you get that wrong, a lot can go wrong a lot can be distorted But if you get that right psychology builds on that so well with just Good tools that it's really effective. Maybe I just haven't read enough of the patristics, but why? I mean, if they've been inspired by God, how come you don't read them?

And they they sound when you read them, they sound very different often, maybe not very different to the way psychologists sound today. So like, shouldn't should have they got that? So I think they did. They and maybe I'm missing it. I think, I think some of the early church fathers in particular, the desert fathers, I love reading a lot of the desert fathers. I mean, they're, they're psychologists in many ways. I mean, they, if by psychology, I mean on deeply understand the human person, um,

they were interested in the passions. They were interested in paying attention to how their mind moved, how the thoughts change. There was a real watchfulness and self-awareness. And so I think in many ways the church fathers are psychologists and they do some of their prescriptions. If you look at the letters they write, some of the prescriptions are, I mean, they're very sensible. Okay. And they're something that a psychologist

might tell you to do. So I think, I don't see a tremendous tension there. I do think the language has changed. And there are, we've talked about this before, I think there are like 500 different therapies out there. Okay. And so each has sort of a language that they're trying to adopt that maybe resonates with people. Um, and we do this in Catholicism. I mean,

part of, part of what we do is we try to find the language that best fits the story. I mean, there's a reality happening and we're trying to find the words that map on that reality. You know, St. Thomas, when he wants to talk about, um, the Eucharist, he thinks that Aristotle's, you know, language and categories sort of best addresses that, um, reality. But you know, the, the Franciscans don't always,

Bonaventure, SCOTUS, right? They might use slightly different language to map onto those realities that they think better captures that. So I think some of that happens in psychology. We, we're trying to find the, the words and language to map onto reality. And just not, I don't mean to catch off, but I, but I'm just thinking now too, like when you read the scriptures, there's all sorts of different experiences and different expressions. Thank goodness. Like, uh, and then even the saints, I mean Aquinas has those five remedies for sorrow,

and one of them is a long hot bath. So you could just read that and be like, where's this in the church fathers? It's like, okay, but what is he saying? He's saying that we are a body, soul, composite, and what we do with the body isn't inconsequential, therefore we should take care of it. That takes care of us because we are our bodies. A hundred percent. And you'll see stuff in the church fathers, like, I mean, they'll recommend rest or sometimes they'll recommend working a little more, to tire the body out or to distract somebody. Or so I think there's tremendous insights there. I think what we should do is sort of take a, you know,

Ratzinger when he was talking about scripture analysis had this idea of like method C So he said like there's the patristic approach. There's the modern biblical scholarship and he said I want some like third way that Doesn't demystify the scriptures that keeps that patristic The spiritual like this sort of spiritual reading, but isn't afraid of some of the historical stuff in this third way, this method C. And I think we could do something in psychology. I don't think we should get rid of the church fathers. I think they have tremendous insights that are still relevant to us today, but I

think we should be able to take those with some of the genuine insights we've gained from cognitive psychology, from neurobiology, from, and bring them together in a sort of method C of the Catholic psychology world. So I don't know what this course is that you've developed. Yeah, what is it? It's awesome. All right, next question.

It's called, It's called Known, Embraced by the Heart of the Father. So I was originally a's brainchild about healing attachment wounds with God as Father, which I actually wasn't thinking about that much when we first started talking, but then he brought a lot of passion to it and then since have really seen a lot of how there's father wounds that map on to God the Father. Like, so many people who've been really deep into their faith love Jesus when it comes to the Father or actually scared or feel really insecure or feel like God just wants to smash them or that He's gonna betray them. There's so many deep insecurities that have to do with God the Father.

Like I was working with one person who said that her deepest desire, she actually has to keep up on a shelf, way in the back because it's too fragile. Like she cares about it too much, so she can't give it to God because she doesn't trust Him. There must take a lot of insight or personal reflection to figure that out about yourself, that you don't trust God. Yeah, or a lot of therapy. That's a part of our program does, though, is it tries to walk people and create a space and walk people into some of those insights. So create a space where they can be honest with themselves,

where they feel comfortable maybe looking at that. I mean, I just, I met so many people, Matt, who were interested in what should I do? So at the university, Dr. B, what should I do? Career, profession, who should I marry? What's my vocation? What's, and it's, I almost always found that it's the wrong question

because you can't begin to remotely answer those questions until you first are fundamentally convinced that you are a beloved son of the father. Because otherwise, oftentimes you make decisions in those areas that are aimed at trying to get affirmation, trying to get love, trying to get affirmation, trying to get love, trying to avoid criticism. It's a reaction to not feeling beloved.

And so like, I just became just utterly convinced that we need to feel beloved. We need to know that like our dad, our dad is there. Yeah. And then we can move forward. Yeah, because you don't, sorry, you were about to say something. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say that.

And with utterly convinced, it's like in your bones, in your heart. Like you need to wake up, like it's like how you wake up in the morning. Because there's so many people who's like, oh, I know my good theology, but I can't tell God that I'm angry with him. And that comes out of insecurity, where it's just like, well, all that stuff happened to you. Actually, you should be angry with Him. And that comes out of insecurity, where it's just like, well, all that stuff happened to you. Actually, you should be angry with God. You should be yelling at Him. Because that's a relationship. That's like, I bring this to you because I actually trust you. There's safety with you that I can be safe enough to be so angry with you and to ask

really big questions and to be sad and to say like whoa like yeah I didn't want this to happen so like having these really genuine like childlike interactions with the father that come out of a place of felt safety that like convinced in your bones safety to your core intellectual deep and yeah I that to me has just become so... It's obvious. I mean, there's nothing new, but it's so important. And I think unless we go back and make work there and dig in there

and get that foundation and wrestle and... I listened to a talk the other day by John Eldridge, I'm sure you're both familiar with. I had to pull over into a gas station to weep. It was so healing. And one of the things he points out is something you were alluding to is that when we meet most men, what we're meeting isn't them, just a very brilliant, elaborate fig leaf. And the fig leaf hides the nothingness, which we're so afraid that we are. And so that we, as men very rarely engage in activities that we know that we're

going to fail at. We shy away from that. We spend time doing what we know that we can crush and we're just hiding. Dude, I. I said I only love writing like life. It's only if I know that I'm loved, can I let down that fig leaf kind of like I made this point on a recent show that only, like mercy is the off ramp

to someone engaged in serious sin. Like if mercy isn't available, then just double down, just triple down. But if mercy is available, then I can kind of lay down my weapons and admit that I'm wrong and get off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like the love of the father,

the mercy of the father is the only thing that'll allow me to, in the same way, if human relationships, if I don't think you love me, I'm not gonna share my heart with you. To the degree I think you love me, I'll be more willing to do that. Yeah. That is.

And even just like more banal things, the way that we accept our life changes if we're loved. Like if this is a gift, if my life is a gift from somebody who loves me, I'm like eager for it. I'm excited to like, okay, what's in store? And then if something goes wrong, I'm like, oh, why did that happen? Like with a genuine question, like why Lord? Why did you give this gift to me? But it's an entirely different framework for receiving everything. Is this a gift out

of love for me from a Father who knows me, who really knows my heart, knows my desire, knows the way I'm built, and wants everything for me? If that's the way I can receive all of life, that's a fascinating journey. But so much of the time, we're actually closed in in this fear mindset of like, I actually need to protect myself against life, because life is harsh, and life is painful, and life is just going to destroy me if I actually open up. I forget that verse, is it one of the apostles or Jesus, I don't know. I think it was our Lord, yeah, who said, like, something like, don't get weighed down by the anxieties of life. But he, he sounded like he was saying like, I don't have the exact verse and maybe you could look it up Thursday where he talks about drinking and carousing

being the cause of the weighing down of our hearts. As Jesus saying that, so obviously he's right. But for me, it sounds like just like what you were saying. It's like, no, it's precisely because I feel destroyed by life that I now need to hide through numbing, through alcohol, through carousing. Yeah, yeah. So that's interesting. But yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. And then any little thing can go off in my plan. And I'm just like freaked out. Like I'm like up in arms. I'm guarded.

And then that affects everything. That affects the way I engage with my kids. That affects the way I engage with my kids, that affects the way I engage with other people in therapy. Like if I'm trying to protect myself all the time, like I can't meet you well. And then if I'm not meeting you well, like it just can snowball into like how we become isolated and afraid. Whereas the love of the Father is really the opposite. Whereas like, I can come unarmed and just receive you. I think a lot about receiving someone as a therapist because just somebody you don't know is gonna walk into the room and start to open their heart and you need to like receive

them and like honor that gift that they're giving you. But I also think about it now just like walking down the street and like seeing somebody in a way that's receptive to them. Just be like, oh, this is a person. Like, see, you can't have that posture unless you're experiencing the healing and love of the Lord. Yeah. Because if you're not experiencing that, you are defensive. And then you don't see it. I've lived a lot of my life. I don't even look at people. It occurred to me recently, how little I look at my wife. I saw her in this beautiful light one morning and I was just looking at her and I'm like, you are a mystery to me. How many times have we

had coffee together and I haven't even looked at you? Like who are you? Who are you? You know, but so often I'm just, but that beautiful receptivity. Wow. That's the result of the freedom. The Lord begins in us. Doesn't it? Isn't it love with love? Yeah. Did you find that verse by chance? What was it? It's Luke 21, 34, but take heed to yourselves. Lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. And that the day come upon you suddenly like a snare for

it will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth but watch all at all times praying that you may have strength to escape all things all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man thank you but yeah like that dissipation that's what I do because I'm exhausted percent but our Lord says that's an interesting way of looking at it. It's this maybe it's this I don't know. You y'all probably have a better insight than me and I haven't thought about this, but maybe it's when we live our interior life exteriorly

so that we're not there. We're not in ourselves anymore. We just like spread ourselves out into these external things. I don't know that exhausts us maybe because we're not present to ourselves. I don't know, what do you think? I'm grasping here, but I know there's something there. I'm just scratching. And there's something there.

Yeah, I think a couple things happen with exhaustion. So one, just stress is exhausting. So stress is like built to be short-term survival response, which is high intensity. Like it uses your brain, it's emotional. It's like, even if you're sitting here stressed, like that's a whole lot of muscle tension. Your brain's doing all sorts of stuff.

So stress is exhausting, but also stress blocks a lot of the ways that we rest. So it leads to insomnia. It actually causes like digestive problems. If you're stressed, that means danger could be imminent. So you don't relax. You don't actually relax to say like, hey, I'm actually safe here. You need to be safe to rest. So that's one of the big parts with rest. And then I think a lot of another part

has to do with self-image. I need to actually create worth in my life. I need to make myself valuable by doing things. I need to be protecting myself. I need to be busy, constantly busy, because I'm building my worth. And that's another way that we don't rest. That I've been paying a lot of attention to insomnia and it feels like the two reasons for insomnia

are meaninglessness and feeling unsafe. You think if everything say meaningless, you just grab a nap, but the opposite sounds. Well, I think people are using this time of like, I can't go to bed because I don't feel a fulfillment. Like my day doesn't actually feel Fulfilled it doesn't like I've just been running all day and I've had no time for myself I've had no time to do what I actually care about. I have no time to and so I just

Take that as me time because I'm trying to find some sort of purpose some sort of Purpose when you feel like you have a purpose and you've fulfilled a purpose There's a sense of like, you know, you know, you can rest in that Yeah, um real quick because I want to I want I don't want to go too far without people knowing how to access your course I know we haven't really gotten into the nuts and bolts of it, but is there a website or a book? Yeah, so known by the father calm. Okay. Um, I know we'll talk more about it, but I just I want to throw that I known by the father calm. What's the difference between stress and anxiety? Or is one a form of the other?

It's it's how do you want to answer it? I've got I've got my answer, but you have a better Yeah, I tend to think of I tend to think of stress as a short-term response Isaac highlighted it. It's a short-term highly oftentimes highly physiological response It's intended to deal with threat, immediate threat in the present moment. Anxiety tends to be, not always, but tends to be longer term,

often times more cognitive. Now there's still a bodily dimension to anxiety, but it's, stress is like, boom, bomb goes off, boom, bear comes in the room, right? Fight or flight response. Anxiety is like an extended response. It oftentimes more vague too. Sometimes we can pinpoint an anxiety,

but when you think about generalized anxiety disorder, you're talking about not being able to exactly identify the cause of the anxiety, whereas a stressor, you can usually point specifically to a stressor. So I tend to conceptualize it as short-term, immediate perception of threat, versus long-term, more vague, more cognitive. That sort of thing.

Now, if we ever do starter pints with Aquinas Bingo Thursday, this will be on it when I'm about to say, my favorite topic, phones. So I know I I'm about to say, my favorite topic phones. So I know I keep coming back to this. I know people are gonna roll their eyes, but like this thing is the cause and reliever of my anxiety, right?

Like you see that in a line of people waiting for coffee. What are they gonna do? Look at you and talk to you. That's the students. When students come out of class, this is fascinating. Stand outside any of the buildings, like the classrooms. The second students come out of class, this is fascinating. Stand outside any of the building, like the classrooms, the second students come out of class, their phones come out.

I mean, it is like, there's an anxiety. So right there, there's that relief, right? There's that quick relief, but then it's that cause. And I'm wondering how it plays into stress as you've defined it. If all day long, I'm in that responsive mode, like, did I get a text?

Did I get an email? Did somebody just call me? They did just call me. I got to get back to them. That is why in August, usually when I take the month off, that's when I finally feel like I can rest. I'd like to do that more. Yeah.

So like what you're talking about with this, it's the cause of the stress and the reliever of stress. Like that's classic addiction. That's actually like how addiction cycles keep going is that you have the stress and then you do the addictive activity and that relieves stress, but then the predictive activity actually causes more stress. And so then you have to do it more to relieve that stress. And so you're really stuck. It's a cycle that you're stuck in. And I've been just thinking about phone use for years. And I switched to the light phone, so that non-smart phone, two and a half years ago.

And I felt like before that I didn't use my phone much and had deleted tons of apps. I didn't have any social media. As soon as I went on a non-smart phone, within probably 48 hours, I noticed my brain functioning differently. Like it felt like there was a claw on my brain that let go. And I was just like,

I didn't think I was that attached to my phone, but it's been a huge change in how I think and how my heart works and how my body works. It's like just a difference in that. It's very impressive you've made it two years. With the light phone? Yeah, because I think a lot of people, including myself, I go through spurts where I'm like,

I just can't do this anymore. I need this other thing. And then- Have you had it? Have you had a light phone? Yeah, I've had all of them. Yeah, I just can't do this anymore. I need this other thing. And then have you had light phone? Yeah, I've had all of them. Yeah. I've done it. I like the light phone a lot.

Yeah, it's actually a great way to get people to stop texting you is if you just call them every time they text you. And that's what I have to do. I know it has voice to text, right? But it was still too annoying. Yeah. So someone would text me, I just call them back.

That's awesome. I love it. When I first got the light phone, the way it transitioned with Verizon, I didn't get texting for the first month. And just, I loved it. I'm sure everybody desperately trying to get a hold of you. I'm not that popular, so I probably didn't get to text.

There was like three that came in after the month. But it just like trained me and everybody who regularly contacted me that I was gonna talk on the phone. And I actually really love talking on the phone. I know some people are anxious about it, but I love it. And that just like really was a great formation period for me to have the phone of just like,

yep, this is an entirely different lifestyle, entirely different way of thinking about communication, of interacting with the world that I'm in right now, that I'm present to, and then being able to arrange with other people to be present with them. Yeah. One of the most difficult things for me is fearing that people think I'm ignoring them. I'm just fine with that. And it's because I am.

I guess because I... I think we're perception now though with phones, because I know you carry yours on you, you know I carry mine. We sort of feel like we should have access to people whenever we want. When we had the corded phone, you didn't feel like you had access to people at any time. But now if you're driving, I know you have your phone. I still expect some sort of response. It creates a sort of expectation and sense of like, but

but we are kind of talking about this, like what what you train, you can train people on how to interact with you. And so I don't think many people expect me to text back immediately because I just don't. And and then I will call them and we will have a good interaction. I don't think many people expect me to text back immediately because I just don't. And then I will call them and we will have a good interaction. And it's so they're like, our relationship is secure. And like they know that I really care about them.

Even if they feel frustrated, if they might need to get a hold of you quickly. Yeah, I tell people if they need to get a hold of me quickly, call me, my ringer's on. Call my wife. But like my texts, I don't have any ring notification related to texts, so I actually, even if I have my phone in my pocket, will frequently go several hours without checking my text messages and just be like, oh, okay, I've got texts.

And people really need to get a hold of me, they call me. So I guess the question I wanted to get to is, as therapists, do you think that the phone is the cause of much of the anxiety that we're all talking about today? Or is it other things as a traffic? Is it the breakdown of the mess? All of it? But yeah, do you think the phone is a big component or am I just a huge component? But there's so much. Yeah, it's like, I mean, so to that point, it's there are multiple right. There's multiple fact. Very rarely can you think of something at least psychologically that is sort of are multiple, right? There's multiple facts. Very rarely can you think of something, at least psychologically, that is sort of one factor, right? Multiple factors. The phone, though, is certainly a major contributor. Part of it is, too, that Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford. He's really into dopamine. He has a great podcast on dopamine and technology. But part of what the phone does is it rewards you. I mean, you get these dopamine spikes when you open your phone and you get a text or there's a.

I hear that because it's similar to like playing the pokies. You say pokies in American? No poker machine slots slots. Yeah. Right. Because it's like you don't always get it. Sometimes you do. And it's like that you're a fresh remount. Nothing. Sometimes you do. Yeah. Intermittent reinforcement like that.

Yeah, that's what it's incredibly popular. Right. So thank you. You get this like dopamine. It's like force when you sum it up in two words. Yeah. We get it. Would you get this spike? So now you're always sort of, and that's related to the addiction cycle is that you're getting these little spikes in dopamine. But part of the stress that's caused is your dopamine levels are coming down. You're sort of artificially spiking them

Mmm Shit comes down and there's this tension as it's coming down and you want to spike it again And so you can constantly go back looking for reinforcement did what about Instagram? What about Facebook? What about you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I actually still feel like a craving in a way for that Mm-hmm to be like, I wish, sometimes I wish I just had apps to check and then I don't. And only because I don't,

I'm able to go through that period, that discomfort without doing anything about it. But it's only because I had to like make the lifestyle choice that makes it really difficult. Yeah. I mean, wise phone isn't paying me to do this, but I do recommend if people are like listening to us today and they're thinking, all right, like I might want to make wise phones a great option. I don't know if you ever got that, but is that what you got? No. So I have a wise phone.

This is a smartphone, but it has no app store and all the apps are blocked. So it it it's kind of like a dumb, or it's like a moderately intelligent phone. But the Wyse phone is pretty great because it looks like a smartphone. So it's got a big screen. You can text, you can take photos, you can do group chat. It has Google, it's not Google Maps, but it has maps on it, which is just as effective as Google. And they've just added music.

But the way to put music, I know looking at it like it's Wyse phone music but the way to put music I know looking at it like it's wise fun but the way to put music on it is you have to like plug a cord from your computer and then drag it which makes it really intentional so and they're a they're a Christian company so why is fun if people are interested they just sent me a new phone to check out that's all they had some bugs which they've worked through so So certainly, yeah. Dude, there's even like research out there on your ability to focus and pay attention when your phone is in within eyesight.

So if you put the phone on the table. I feel anxious just looking at it. Yeah. It's your phone, I feel anxious. We're more. Sometimes I'll be chatting with my wife and I'll just like turn her phone over, which I'm sure is like a controller.

People do that though, right? I'm sure is like a controller Yeah phones, I think yeah, I've heard research that Along that lines if you have your phone on the table face down like it makes your kids more anxious. Hmm Like because they know that it's affecting your ability to pay attention Seamless tie-in back to known Seamless tie-in back to known. So is that? Seamless tie-in back to the known program. Okay. When your friend is like paying attention to your children.

Feeling loved. Get your phone out of the day one. I'll take my phone off the day one. What is the known program? Is it like a weekly thing? Is it a book? So it's 12 weeks. We're doing it as a cohort model.

So everybody signs up and then we run it together. We have a prayer journal that has exercises for each of the 12 weeks. And so then it's one call a week, which we do live and people join live. And it's just actually really beautiful what people are sharing. Cause people, it's the point where people are really honest, but also the point where miracles are happening because the father is showing up.

And so it's like such an amazing, beautiful dynamic. But then all the calls are also recorded. So we just understand it's not gonna fit everybody's lifestyle to be on Monday at noon central time and then so you can watch those recordings and that's where we intro the week process the last week and and really like how big of the groups when you meet so this last one we had about 10 12 people on live regularly and then we had 33 people signed up And just got I mean really it was crazy. I just for me

When someone something goes beyond what you could anticipate you know when people are giving you you asked for like hey What could we do better give us? You know the ways that this could be improved. What are the ways that it worked? The feedback was, people's minds and hearts were being transformed. It was really beautiful. It was one of those experiences where the program worked so well, it was actually humbling.

Instead of being like, oh yeah, I did a program that worked so well. It was like, I didn't do that. It was so clearly, like, miraculous. And I was just, like, in awe of what the father did. So part of it is we think that we distract ourselves in all sorts of ways. Actually, I'm going to use that, the Ellinger quote

about the elaborate fig leaf. We have all these elaborate fig leaves, right? And so part of what we try to do is, in the program, three nights a week, you have a tech fast and We ask you to get rid of artificial light. So you go you do like a candlelight mode And there's something that happens when you're doing candlelight you don't have any technology It's like uncomfortable at first right? Yeah, you're it there's craving craving arises. Like I Like I want something. I want to distract myself. I want to, but over time, and if you do some of these exercises in that time period,

it's a real fertile time for insights into how you're honestly feeling about your relationship with the Father. Ins insights about how you view God, honest conversations with the Father. But I think a part of why it was effective is because we ask people to actually create that space and remove the distraction. And that creates some, it creates space, it creates time, but it also creates a sort of tension and desire

and craving that I think. Because in that space, that's where your heart shows up. And most people are afraid of their own hearts, their hearts with all the questions and all the pain and all the desire that's there. Like create, like that's often, I think why we distract ourselves is we're actually afraid to be with our own hearts.

And so then we create that space and your heart shows up with all that stuff that's been ignored and been pushed down for so long. And so at first it's actually kind of a painful process, but by the end it's the place of real beautiful intimacy because your heart shows up and you're allowing it to show up and then the father's heart shows up and so by the end of the program

It's actually like the safest best most delightful part So this is obviously I mean the reason it's effective is because I suppose you're marrying sound theology with sound psychological insights and explanations, because it's, you know, you could have sound theological insights by saying like, God loves you. That's course one. So tomorrow we're going to talk about how even though you sin, God loves you. And we just say that.

So like how how is it sort of like psychologically rigorous and not just sort of theologically accurate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the exercise or the routine, we call it the silent night routine, our living silence routine, we call it a few different things actually. That's actually already like pretty psychologically sound.

It's just like being able to take space makes a huge difference. But then we have exercises that build across all 12 weeks. So the first exercise takes three weeks to do and it's all about being honest with your relationship with the father. And so it's actually an exercise I've developed over the last maybe seven years, eight years, but started out with a psychological exercise for like, how do you define yourself day to day and how do you want to see yourself?

And then kind of like how you can use your imagination to start shifting into that. So then taking that and applying it to like, what honestly is, how do you honestly feel in your relationship with the father and how does the father honestly seem? And it might be like, I actually feel small and insignificant and the father seems distant and harsh. And just stating that is really powerful.

Just being like, yep, that's an honest thing my heart can say. And you're giving it words. Like giving it words and allowing your imagination to be part of it is really powerful in psychology. And then we transition it into another long exercise that actually goes across four weeks that gets into defining experiences.

How many people quit within the first week? I'm pretty sure I would. Not because it's not an excellent program, but because I'm flighty. It's so hard. It's hard. Yeah, like especially these online things where there's not the same kind of accountability as if you were meeting in the local Denny's or church basement. I've sort of thought about that.

Is there a way like, part of what I think happened or emerged unexpectedly was that the group developed a certain cohesion that I wasn't anticipating. I thought the cause would be sort of us being very didactic and psychoeducational and, but they started sharing, people started sharing these experiences and being vulnerable and crying and, and nobody's forced to share.

Nobody has to, you can sit and listen quietly. You don't have to have your camera on. You can be totally anonymous, but people started sharing. And I think the group started to feel close to one another. They started to look forward to seeing one another. They started wanting to support and be with and hear the insights of, and see what the Lord was doing in each other's lives. Yeah. I, yeah, I, I spoke to my spiritual father recently, and I think it just right out of the gate. I was just like gushing and just like, I think I was

crying and I was just sharing something very intimate and I just paused and I, cause I felt very insecure and aware of what I was doing. And I'm like, this must be, I said to him, this must be exhausting for you. Like you meet so many people doing this. And I just was aware and kind of a bit embarrassed. What did he say? And he said, Matthew, there is nothing so beautiful and delightful as vulnerability. Dude, this is like the ugliest human trait is pride. You know, when someone tries to like explain things to you and like you like, how you doing? And they just like rationalize it. It's exhausting. I know. But as soon as they just like let that, you know, analytical part go and bleed before you.

That's like that's a great way of thinking about therapy. Like so much of what I do is trying to help people realize they can let go of whatever you want to call it, like the defenses, the right, you know, the fig leaves that you have to just get in touch with their heart, share their heart, be open and vulnerable to me and allow them to have that experience of being loved, like of being seen, known, and loved. It's kind of like when a child, like when one of my child children, like, might cry, right?

In a way, they're trusting me to have it all together for them, so I'm gonna interpret the situation. They don't have to. Can you hold this? So they can let that go, yeah, but I can, I can see the parameters. I can see what's happening and I'm the safe, you know, and it feels like only in that kind of relationship can I have the courage to let go. Cause I don't just want to be like a swamp.

Yes. Yeah. Cause the, some of the language and psychology for that is a holding environment. Parents provide a holding environment, but that means that you're able to take big, seemingly chaotic and scary and unwieldy emotions, and you're able to give them sort of parameters. This won't get, it sort of won't unleash itself in such a way that it will overwhelm me.

You're putting parameters on it, you're making it ordered, coherent, and what's ordered and coherent can be dealt with. And parents in that holding environment take big feelings of children and give them space and help them become ordered and coherent. And this is what we're trying to do with with the Gnome program. Because I've created a few other programs in the past, but this one, what's unique about it, was we both really emphasized that what we're doing is creating the space

and like the means for the Father to enter. We're not the healers in this. It's not like Matt and Isaac's, you know, it's not even like our interventions are the healing interventions. I think they create space, they create an environment where you all of a sudden can see the Father more clearly or the Father as a holding environment, but it's God the Father who shows up and does the work, like 100%. Yeah, and that's where it's like really blowing us away

is that he's showing up and he's like so gentle and patient. Which shows our own, I mean, the irony here, right, is it shows our own, this works. Yeah, right? But it also should, like, everything that I think about the Father, right? Yeah. Like, what good Father wouldn't show up?

There's a line in the Catechism, it's like 397, it says something like, it's talking about the fall of Adam and Eve, and it says, all subsequent sin would be disobedience and a lack of trust in God's goodness And so if you asked me about that, I'd be like, yeah, no like I Think God is good. I try, you know, yeah, but even in developing this program we start to go into it That's fine. And I realized that some part of me is like, I don't know Like if anything we often think our lack of trust in God's goodness is either prudence or the right way to think

Yeah, I heard about the sin against hope recently okay but how many of us confess that you know we just think no it's like I am a hopeless case and everything is going from bad to worse sorrow is my final abode here I am yeah to repent of that is an interesting idea for many Catholics yeah and to feel love man I don't know just for me the idea of like young men in today's culture, Jordan Peterson, this is fascinating, right? Like why the culturally, why, why did he take off? I mean, there's probably again, a whole bunch of reasons why he rode that wave and why that

wave was ready for him. But at least one of the reasons is that young modern men Don't feel like They've got like a father figure who's safe Who can who not only can challenge them, but also Peters is interesting in and I'm not like a Peterson acolyte But he's interesting in that he'll challenge people. He'll push people he'll But you'll also see him cry. It's not just like a hard, rigid exterior.

There is a tenderness too, and I think a lot of these guys look up to him as like a pseudo father figure. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the YouTube comments under all of his videos, I don't think there's a Jordan Peterson video out there that doesn't have at least one comment under them that says, the father I never had.

Dude, I mean, that like, and that is, we're all yearning for that on some level. And then I think that just points to more deeply, this like deep desire we have to be loved by the father. And I think that if to help people experience that touch that and to journey more deeply into it myself Like I'm not there. This is holy. Like the holiness is unfolding this again. I'm not your guru. There's a great YouTube Tony Robbins, there's a documentary. I'm not your guru. Is it any good? No, I don't know. I mean, okay, I think I Think he is there like I think I don't know. he strikes me as trying to be somebody's guru, but but

Like in this program, we're not with like we're journeying along with people and I'm growing and I'm changing and I'm Realizing parts of myself that are still like keeping the father at bay Because like what if you saw that part would you be embarrassed would you be? Can I be vulnerable and still be a man? Can I, like, what are the parts of my own self that I'm sort of sectioning off or alienating from my relationship? It's funny, right, because like hearing you say that,

I think to myself, like if we were in the right environment and you shared your deepest fears and embarrassments, it would only make me love you 100%. And I'm sure you're not the same way. Absolutely. Those things to me are what I hate about myself. I know. And I'm convinced that if they came out, yeah, I think we got

all, I assume I'm not special. I assume that we all are dealing with. Yeah, no, 100%. And that's, that is exactly how I feel. And I feel most close. Yeah. Time and again, I feel most close to people when I, when I see their heart, like, you know, that line, Benedict's papal model, core and core loquits or heart

speaking to heart. When I get to see the entirety of it and you don't have to cut parts of your heart off to be in relationship with me, I feel like so often we're like, we're cutting parts of ourself off or hiding parts of ourself in order to stay in relationship with people. Because I don't quite trust that if you saw me, if you knew me, you could still love me.

And that's a lot of why I love being a therapist. I was working with somebody recently who even in our intake, was just talking about how she always feels like she needs to keep control of her environment, and that she's really afraid of that lack of control, of being weak. And she's telling me that along with some other things. And I just stopped her and I said,

how was this to share that with me? She was like, oh, it was so relieving. It was so good. And then I pointed that out to her. I was like, you say that you will need control all the time, but just now you were showing the parts of me that were weak and coming into this environment that's out of control, like not in your control,

and you actually found relief that it was a joy for you to be in a state of weakness. And then later in another session, we were talking about how she has all these places of shame and was able to share them with me. And again, we went through that same process of like, how was it to share that with me? And she's like, so relieving, I felt so seen and loved and like, it just opened up a lot

for me. And again, that pattern of the place where you're most ashamed, where you close it down the most actually can be like a site of like a place of deep intimacy and joy and delight. And I think that's what the Father wants for us, is these places where it's like, He doesn't want us to just be better at controlling things and be like better at not being ashamed about these things. But He's like, I actually want to go

and let you know that where you're weak and where your shame is, like I want to bring delight there, I want to bring delight there. I want to bring peace there. I want to bring relief there. I want to be there so that you can be there and be totally free. So sometimes I feel like the healing journey can seem so exhausting because like anybody you talked to is like, I'm not there yet. I'm like, Oh God, then can we just ignore it and just be wherever we are and not have to strive anymore because it's so painful to heal.

So often I system Miriam made the analogy of going out into the cold, freezing cold. You come back in and you put your hands by the fire and it feels like they're burning. But what's happening is this, they're defrosting and our hearts defrosting can be painful. And so I get the temptation to be like, ah, the hell with it. Just shut up. Like, so I can't, all this therapy stuff is just for people with like super big wounds and stuff, but like, that's not me. And, but it's like, it's the only way through it. The only way to go through it, isn't it? Except for some kind of... I think there is, like when we're dealing with,

when you're dealing with people's wounds, you really have to be gentle and respectful. That I actually focus on exhaustion a lot as a therapist. And that some people come in with a lot of wounds they need to work on, but they're too exhausted to go there. That's like, it is a hard work. And so if you're taking an exhausted person who's been struggling for a long time and saying like, let's go deep into your past and fix things.

Like I, as a therapist feel like that's the right move because like I can, like I know all the therapisty things, but if I, if I'm a human and I'm just like, ah, you're hurt. You're so tired. And I wanna like take care of you. Like if you think of Jesus, what was the parable? The Good Samaritan, where he's like, the first thing he does is just bind the wounds and like he like carries him.

That's what we do our kids, right? We don't just go like, down. Yeah turn the light on Yeah, here's the yeah, I get to put on it like we were gentle. We're tender. Yeah, so like it's often So that catch up is it's often You know if you've got kids it really is you notice that it's really the affection that you show towards them that heals everything It's the boo-boo. It's just a little boo-boo and then nothing else has to be done, but you might go through the ritual anyway Yeah, yes. Yeah, like one of my clients for an entire month It's just a kiss the little boo boo. And then nothing else has to be done, but you might go through the ritual anyway. Yes.

Yeah. Like one of my clients for an entire month, we just worked on napping. I wish she was my thing. Do you have any openings? And after, like, cause- The kind of crap I make my clients do. You see what I like, dude?

I'm like, the client's running way up on us. I want you to stand in traffic and say, I am safe. I like that guy more. Like holding spiders, you know? And he's like, just rest. Because like one of the ways into depression is just exhaustion. Like you have this burnout that's like,

I'm actually too exhausted. Stress has, like this stress cycle is repeated so often that I'm just emotionally worn out. I'm disconnecting worn out I'm Disconnecting from life. Sorry holding spiders. I'm still gonna take a water gun image 100% just exhausted And so we worked for a month on napping which actually like brought up a lot of like Like ideas of worth and like a lot around productivity.

But then when we actually got to working on her marriage, which was her primary concern, like she was actually in a place where she was emotionally able to be available to her husband again, because she wasn't just drained all the time. I felt like that when I used to go to therapy, probably should go back. Like I would leave and it would feel like the static in my head died down and I had room for other people I didn't even know what happened. It was different. It is sharing with a friend over a beer. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. I

think I'm just so convinced that you were talking about sort of and so in some ways, I think There's many people in the church who might not have big, like we don't have to go looking for wounds either. Part of it is I think God, God and His mercy and His love, when it's time and when it's the right time and place, He'll make certain things more salient for us. And so we don't need to go out looking and navel gazing all the time God isn't right like remember it's so important. God is in charge of our holiness

God is in charge of the movements through the purgative the Illuminative the unit way. He draws us It's his work And so he will make things of it's it really isn't us as much as we're like, no, it's me. It's not It's really not and he'll make things known to us When and if they need to be known? And so we don't have to go looking for wounds just for the sake of looking for wounds And I think there are plenty of Catholics who might not have big wounds. They might not But I think there is almost always Even if you haven't had big psychological wounds, there is something since the fall about our relationship with God the Father.

Like, even if you've had great parents, you've had great, you have no anxiety, no depression, no... that relationship can always be, always be deepened and healed and, um, and sort of solidified. You can surrender into his love more and more and more. I'm glad you brought that up because I know that's been one of my concerns I'm sure it's the concerns of people listening right now where they're tempted to downplay their stuff. Mm-hmm They're like, well, it's not I wasn't great. Yeah, I wasn't like my dad wasn't an alcoholic Like what right do I have they're gonna feel guilty? Yeah for looking at like, you know

Suzy rejected me in third grade and people saw it or you know, yeah Speak to that name was Jennifer Speak to that like Howard Because I think there's also this legitimate fear of like I don't want to be a victim like I'm gonna play the victim here I don't go looking for daddy wounds when there aren't any And isn't that just what you're asking me to do? And isn't that what you're doing by telling everybody they have these wounds?

Yeah. So a couple of things. One is like, it can even be, I got rejected from this college. That was my favorite college and I had to go to this other college that was also great. Like that can, like it's, it's meaning that we make from it, right? To say like, God, like I wanted that so badly and I prayed for it and the Father doesn't actually care about what I desire. He doesn't actually want like the great life I had envisioned for myself. Like that actually is a really deep wound even though it can be for something that seems very superficial and minor, because it's a meaning that we've made about a fundamental relationship with God. I'm just like, that's actually coming into developing known, really discovered that in

myself, is I had this fear that if I really wanted something, that the Father would actually make sure it didn't really happen because He was teaching me a lesson, because He was making me holier, because He was like doing all the good things for me, but it was like He would see my deep desire and be like, hey, you're not wanting heaven right now, like I'm gonna step on that. And that that was actually a real fear in me that was keeping me from the Father. So it's not like we're looking at wounds just to look at wounds. We're looking at wounds because the relationship with the Father is so essential for us being us, for us being ourselves, for us being free. Maybe wounds is a really, I mean,

I can ask what word did we use before we were using words. Yeah, right. I mean, you could say, I think you could use other words that are like, But honestly, what was the word like 20, 30, 50 years ago? What was psychologists referring to wounds as issues or psychopathology issues? Um, neuroses was the big word like coming out of the psychoanalytic tradition. We had neuroses and we had, um, and so you wanted to get in and look at these like deep conflicts or neuroses. Um, I think those were the original words and clinical psych, but I think we can, I mean, even with, when it's relational, like when my, you know,

if my wife come in, I'm starting to tell her about my day and she seems distracted doing something else. There might be a little hurt there, a little sling, a little arrow. Like is it a wound? Maybe wound is really strong. Some people are like, it's too strong of a word for something like that. It's like a little relational rupture.

And we have those in our relationship with God the Father, these little ruptures, right? That's what we wanna look, even if you don't think like it's a wound, there's these little ruptures. And often we don't feel them. We don't allow ourselves the time to feel them. Like you said, minimize. What I do is I'll say something like, I know I shouldn't feel this way because God is perfect and God loves me. So anything that happens, I should only

have the reaction of. You're all will be done. Right. And so like, and look, that might be true by the time God gets me to the unit of way. Yeah, but that is a process. You don't. You don't will that. That's the point. I don't just will that today. It's like our theology gets in the way. Yeah, like I had someone the other day talk about the importance of forgiving God. And as soon as you hear that you're like, whoa, break.

That's awful. I kind of like it. Yeah, I do like it. I think there's something to it. So the guy who was leading us, he's like, I know that sounds weird. Don't you feel like just trust me here. You can't be close to somebody that you don't trust. And so we're not making the claim, you know, but the problem is we start with that theological knowledge instead of arriving at it. Yeah. And you think about, I like to think about it developmentally,

like right now we're at various places because I'm a spiritual child and God's gonna draw me through spiritual childhood and spiritual adolescence and spiritual adulthood and but part of that means my My little kids will often times look at me when I don't give them a cookie or when I don't let them have ice cream for breakfast and She'll say like daddy. I'm so mad at you Right, and I want to hear that. I don't want I'm so mad at you right and I want to hear that I don't want to be a cut dare you right yeah I'm bigger than that like I don't not offended right and if you were what does that say right and then

I'm also but if she's like daddy it's okay I forgive you okay that's not cute like it's kind of cute and it's what her little heart needs in order to and that's how she's expressing what she's really saying is, I know you love me. Exactly. Yeah. And I think about that when I'm thinking about our relationship with a father, we'll get to the point where it's just pure,

our will be done, but we'll get there by developing and allowing God to draw us through spiritual infancy into spiritual adolescence. And they have their state, there's, like I think God wants to know when I'm angry, even when it's unjustified, even when I'm wrong. And I'm relative to God, like I'm always wrong, right? But he wants me to be honest and to say,

like, God, I just feel so frustrated that you didn't, because he wants my heart. He wants a heart to heart relationship. He doesn't just want my intellect. I wonder, I love your opinion as psychologists as to like how to kind of interpret some of the good. I know there's some bad and some wacky because some of the good that came

into the charismatic renewal. Like, because this feels like some of the stuff we're circling around, right? Where it's like get the intellect out of the way and just react. Now I'm not saying that's always a good thing, but I don't know if you look at it from a strictly human point of view, it's probably a good thing sometimes to just, like we've already said, to kind of feel things and not be super analytical over everything. What's your opinions on that?

I've also thought about it. your opinions on that? I've also thought. I think so going back to your point I think it connects is that like everything in us is made to be relational that we often think oh this is like the me part and like oh I've got to figure this out but that actually the way the Father wants to relate to us is like everything is relational the faster we can make it relational, the better with God. It's like, I'm anxious about this. I'm scared about this. I'm angry at you. And that like, because it's in the relationship with the father that we're made whole. It's like we don't make ourselves whole and like fix ourselves. And then like, we want to fix ourselves up like with the fig leaves and then present ourselves to God.

But that the faster we can make it relational, that's what confession is. I sinned. Make that relational. I'm going to tell you about it and ask your forgiveness. And so I think when we're getting the intellect out of the way, the intellect is a tool that's made to serve. It's made to serve love. It's made to serve, it's made to serve love, it's made to serve God.

And that like our hearts actually are drawn, like just on their own, like God draws our hearts. And so there's something really beautiful about just like letting that be raw and childlike and being like, ah, like I want this person to be healed. Like I'm going to go pray for it. Like, make that relational. And that the more often we can do that and get in the habit of doing that. Like, that's a beautiful way of relating to ourselves

and letting ourselves relate to the Father. But then the Father always responds. He's always relational to us. And so that's where we can like also begin to listen and like He can correct us. Like one of the philosophies I've had for discernment is like, I'm going to go in the direction I think is right and let God be all-powerful. Like let Him actually change my direction if He wants, make Himself clear. That like that's a way I can trust Him is by saying like,

hey, I don't actually have to sit here closed up and figure it out until I know. But I'm going to be like, ah, like I want to do this like and move with that. But letting the Father be the Father and letting him be powerful and watching for where he's relational towards me, where he's speaking to me.

And I think the more my heart speaks to the father, the more I can actually hear him speaking in my heart and that there's like a dialogue that goes on. Yeah, I want to get your opinion, but a real quick take is to kind of make this analogy to marriage. And maybe it's like if my wife is trying to express something to me that's difficult for her to express and I can tell she's overthinking how to articulate it. I'm like, please just just just say it. You know, and so what we're not saying it's good to be irrational, but what we're saying is there's this kind of analytical defensive part of us that we just do. We just need to

put aside. And and and I think that's kind of sometimes what you see in these beautiful charismatic settings where people who are are gonna pray more expressively. Yeah, I mean, I think what the charismatic movement has got right is they've brought back the deeply relational dimension. And there can be an authenticity to that. When you feel, I want a genuine relationship, which means that sometimes I get really in my head

about what are you gonna think about this, and how is your response going to then dictate how I should. And there's something beautiful in the charismatic movement about when I feel moved by love. It's like, I mean, another analogy to marriage or like real life examples with marriages, if I feel moved by love for my wife, sometimes I want to run up and throw my arms around or I wanna swing around in the kitchen or I wanna,

like there's a movement or an impulse that I wanna, I'll just start singing to her or there's some, right? But then I can become self-conscious. Yeah. And I might hold that back or, and then I'm not allowing the love that I have to sort of find free expression. Um, no, I think we, I think there's reasonable debates I had about to have about whether or not,

um, charismatic element should be in the liturgy or whether, but as a, as a sort of movement of prayer, I think in some ways we've sort of artificially fragment. I think the great saints, many of them them not all of them, but many of them And maybe I want to say all of them It's a bogged-down word, isn't it? Like just like a traditional Catholic today, right wouldn't appreciate a quietness being called a trad, right? You know, we look because it's like no he's just he's a Catholic who is traditional charismatic in the set if charismatic

I was like has that you allow the Holy Spirit to move your yeah you in love toward the father That is charismatic. Yeah, but we've we've like done trad Charismatic with these like really distinct terms and I think a holy person is actually they're kind of reacting against each other I mean, it's like the more tried you get the more charismatic I get and the more weird that looks the trailer You're I'm gonna get but you don't want to like rip the heart You shouldn't rip the heart out of traditionalism and we shouldn't rip structure and beauty out of- That's nice.

You shouldn't- Let's say it. I can say it better than that. We don't wanna rip the- I give myself a- We don't wanna rip the heart out of traditionalism or the brain out of- The charismatic movement. Exactly, yeah. That's really good. So if you haven't yet got the brain out of, you know, the carismatic movement. Exactly. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah.

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This is gonna be tough because I'm... Oh gosh. What was that? I don't know, you just prefaced that really strongly. Well, it's gonna be tough because, you know, whenever you're getting asked a question from an anonymous person, you don't know all the details. So you can't give a specific answer.

You also can't devote the kind of time you'd like to when we've got this many questions. So with that caveat, we have a question here from Moe Drash who says, how would a Catholic psychologist treat something like bipolar disorder compared to the secular psychologist? What would St. Thomas say? I've heard a prominent exorcist make a general statement that most bipolar cases are demonic obsession. Okay. Would love your comments on that. Yeah.

We all heard you say, Oh gosh, under your breath. So you may as well go for it. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I would say this, I would say with, with the severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar, um, look generally, um, sometimes you can see sort of strange or bizarre abnormal behavior associated with those disorders, especially the, the severe mental illnesses. Um, you know, before you perform an exorcist or do any of that sort of stuff,

it's always good to have sight. So legitimate exorcists and exorcist teams always have a psychologist who does psych testing to make sure it's not a mental health issue before they actually do the right of exorcism and so I think it's important to just make sure that You're not treating something as demonic that isn't and oftentimes look we we love to put the thing that's happening in front of us On our terms and in our turf and so when I see something I tend to see something psychological I need to be aware of that bias when exorcists see something. I And so when I see something, I tend to see something psychological. I need to be aware of that bias.

When exorcists see something, I think they tend to see something demonic. And I think we need to be mindful of our preferences and biases. But that being said, I think with something like the severe mental illnesses, like bipolar schizophrenia, the treatments are almost exactly the same,

secular versus Catholic. Like with bipolar, it's going to be some sort of medication management very often. Something like lithium is common. What you might get from a good Catholic psychiatrist and then a good Catholic psychologist is maybe they'll help you couch the struggles in the context of your spiritual development and the cross But the actual treatment is going to be medication management for the severe mental illnesses

Feel free we take this one at a time or if you have something you'd like to feel free to jump in As a psychologist, how does he? Reconcile where therapy ends and spiritual direction begins? Why not both? Maybe, huh? Yeah. Um, okay. So where therapy ends and spiritual direction begins.

Where do you make that distinction? Yeah. Um, I don't know if I have a good answer. I think what's funny is, etymologically, the word psychology means the study of the soul, doesn't it? Yeah. So we shouldn't be surprised if there's overlap. Yeah.

So one of the ways I approach therapy is I really have it in mind that this isn't long-term. Like I'm your therapist as long as you need it. But my goal is actually to make you stop seeing me eventually, not make you, but like get to a point where you are on your own. And you're not just dependent. Yeah. So the focus is like healing. And so I, and with me as a therapist, I don't see it as like, oh, wait until all the problems are gone

and then you're free. But to say, do you have the skills and the confidence to do this on your own? And so then pushing that direction of saying, I'm here, I do most of the work at the beginning, but then you do most of the work at the end and then you're off. Like that's actually a really important part for confidence.

Whereas I think spiritual direction is like a lifelong journey where it's not just when you have problems, it's that check-in that's like, where's your soul at? And then guiding that whichever part of life you're in. So I see therapy more as like a short term and it can take a while with deeper wounds but like a confined term of service aimed specifically at healing wounds and then you move on.

I think one of the confusions to that, I think often of the reason people ask that question is because At least the way some of us do psychology is we're concerned with the relational elements so depending on what sort of therapeutic modality you practice from One of the the things that I tend to focus on is how you are in relationships What are your interpersonal patterns and dynamics? And because God is a person, that can come up in therapy. I'm interested in how you relate, not only to your spouse, to others, how your parents related to you,

how that shapes how you relate to others, how you relate to emotions in the context of relationships. But because God's a person, now all of a sudden, God matters here because how do you relate to God? How do you now all of a sudden, God matters here, because how do you relate to God? How do you perceive Him relating to you, given your past? So now we've brought God into the picture with this relational framework, and so I think that's why it feels tricky to people.

Part of what I would say to sort of qualify that as well is that I think of spiritual direction as understanding the movements of grace in the soul. And so I think that takes sort of extra, it's beyond just clearing away or understanding relational dynamics. It's really understanding how God, maybe you say psychology is thinking about how man relates to God,

where spiritual direction is a deep understanding about how man relates to God, where spiritual direction is a deep understanding of how God relates to man and how the movements of grace should shape man. And so you can be knowledgeable of it. I think it's helpful to have some knowledge of it, but what your focus is, whether it's man relating to God or God relating to man, might help distinguish it further. Punk Magician, probably not his real name, says, I've learned some different coping methods on my own and with counseling to do with anxiety.

The problem is that after a while, I feel like I'm trapped in a constant process of trying to use these methods and it feels so mentally draining that I then quit using them and begin self-destructing by drinking more, smoking cigarettes, snacking more on the urge to masturbate. How do I overcome the mental fatigue and keep from self-destructing? Those are just, those are coping mechanisms as well. They're just unhealthy ones, right? But I do think the coping language, I think coping can be exhausting. Um, in some ways I think of coping as short-term

sort of band-aids to things. I don't know this guy's situation, I don't know. But my guess is if you work with a really good psychologist, a really good counselor, you can try to get at the root of the anxiety. There's some sort of thing that is causing the anxiety. I know how I tend to think about, I tend to take an interpersonal or attachment approach

to these sorts of things. Whatever the approach is, I would to take an interpersonal or attachment approach these sorts of things Whatever the approach is I Would say like it is exhausting unless we get down to the root How do we know when something's a coping mechanism because I would imagine that if us three fellas here chose to eat every second Day, we'd be just fine and we'd probably be healthier, but we don't do that So is the bagel I had this morning was that a coping mechanism? When I went home and said to my wife he gives a hug, was that a coping mechanism? And if it was what's the difference between that and negative coping mechanisms? Yeah. Yeah I think a lot of it comes down to the meaning of it. Like why did you do that? Which is a big question when you're

a therapist. It's like why? The why? What were you hoping for? And what was pushing that? And so then being able to understand that is actually a really beautiful process. I do a lot of work with clients on values and often, like, so anxiety and all of these like anger, they have to do with values on some level, like values that you're trying to protect, like a protective response has to do with values. And so then coping usually is like, we have all this distress connected to our values and then we're trying to deal with the distress.

That's the way I think of coping, is you're dealing with the distress. You're not dealing with the wound, you're not dealing with the values, you're trying to deal with the distress because the distress can hurt, it can be destructive. And so then negative coping mechanisms are mechanisms that actually destroy you more. It can be destructive. And so then negative coping mechanisms are

Mechanisms that actually destroy you more that that that hurt you more But it's a lot like at the time it feels like a lesser hurt than the distress you're feeling and so Yeah, you you use it and that hurts you but it's like but that doesn't hurt as much as what? What what it feels like inside? So you have people who like self harm cutting, like often that has to do with like this pain I can control. And this pain doesn't hurt as much as just my life being out of control and being like all this other pain that I'm feeling.

So I'm using this pain to just like to take my mind away from all this pain And I can control that I can control when this happens how much it happens And so it's a coping mechanism that's That's used because you're desperate to get away from here But it it's physically destroying you. It's hurting you. That's like the best explanation I think I've ever heard on that, because I've often gap often try to figure out like how do I know what I'm coping?

And that was I'll have to reflect upon that. I'll have to watch that a bunch. Thank you. Let's see here. There's so many questions and some of them are quite long. Any dissonance says Aaron between EMDR techniques and Christianity. Hmm. I just got a, what does EMDR for those at home? Yeah. I movement, um, desensitization and reprocessing. It's a trauma therapy or it was, it was, it was originally developed as a trauma therapy.

And it's funny, I just got a question about this in my own inbox, somebody asking about whether EMDR was sort of contrary to Catholicism in principle. So the idea with EMDR is that a quick and dirty sketch of it is that it was developed by this woman named Francine Shapiro. She had all this trauma. She's walking through a park one day and she has this big breakthrough and she reflects back on what was I doing when I had that breakthrough and she realized

she was looking back and forth, you know, at the trees on the side of the path. So she sort of developed this theory where she thought the reason we've experienced distress with trauma is that we're not allowing the entirety of our brain to process it. So your brain has two hemispheres. There's something called like a lateralization, which is that the idea that one hemisphere tends to do one thing, the other hemisphere tends to do the other thing. The truth is the brain tends to sort of holistically process things but her thought was that trauma sort of gets trapped in one hemisphere of the

brain and it's not allowing it to be bilaterally processed in a holistic way and what she thought was that if you move your eyes back and forth you're activating both hemispheres of the brain. And so you're then allowing that memory, if you talk about the memory while you're doing this eye movement, this bilateral eye movement, you're activating the entirety of the brain

while this memory is being talked about and allows the memory to be processed more holistically by the entirety of the brain. I don't think there's anything in principle that I'm aware of. I'm certainly not an expert in EMDR. It's not the trauma therapy that I've received like training or certification in,

but there's nothing I'm aware of that isn't principle contrary to Catholic teaching. Yeah, I'm not sure either. And I want to just mention what you said about processing because that word is a very therapisty word, but it's like, especially in EMDR means something really specific. So what happens with trauma is that often,

like in a way gets stuck feeling like it's present. Like this really terrible thing happened to me five years ago. My body actually still feels in danger. My emotions still feel in danger. I still feel like I am in danger because of that event that happened five years ago. So that event, that trauma has a way of being present.

And like my body is still fixed on it. Like I don't know if this is done yet. I don't know if this trauma event is done yet. And so processing is, especially with EMDR, is a way of saying like, you work through it to the point where that past event happened and it was really terrible, but it's done. Like it happened five years ago, it happened then. It's not a fact now. I'm actually safe now. You're saying that this is kind of like the gist of trauma therapy?

Yeah. Could you go into that a bit more? What is trauma therapy other than what you've just said? So I think a big part of it is to be- You're talking EMDR or trauma therapy at large? Well, there's a lot of different trauma therapies. I'm having to move into just trauma therapy. Specifically EMDR, like that's the focus.

But I think that it happens with a lot of trauma therapies. Like there's this great book by Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, which is like actually emotions and danger shows up in the body. Wow. Like I was working with somebody who her mom committed suicide when she was young and we were processing it 20 years later and she's like, I still haven't cried the tears that I was supposed to cry at her funeral.

Like she, like when we were able to access it, there was still physically this sense of like a placeholder for the tears she was supposed to cry, that sadness that was there, that is actually physically places in our bodies that hold emotion and can hold them for years. And so then being able to process allows those emotions to flow. And so it can be really intense for that reason. But then when they flow, they're done. They're not like still they're holding on present. There's something that happened. There's something that are a part of your story, but aren't still like actively defining

and ruling your story right now. They're a past part and now you're safe. Now you move on, now you can receive. Because when there's all this stuff, it's really hard to receive like we talked about earlier because I'm still scared. I'm still like affected by this every day. But like that-

So when it says the body keeps the score, other than just kind of emotionally holding on to baggage that you need to let go of how is the body involved? And it's actually really amazing in all sorts of ways like even your heart rate like even years later can be higher. Your digestive system a lot of people who've had trauma have digestive issues because one of the fear responses like one of your one of your stress responses is to take blood away from your digestive system

and get it ready for intense physical action, because I need to survive. But if you're doing that across years, actually you have a lot of digestive issues. And then it really affects like cognition, it affects the way you focus, because you're not taking in all the information that you're getting you're taking in the information that you think is

Relevant for you. And if you're focused on survival the information you're taking in and processing is survival related, which means it's threat related So it's the way you're processing your environment like your heart rate your your lungs your breathings your like your heart rate, your lungs, your breathings, your... Chronic cortisol and adrenaline release, so you tend to have inflammation throughout the body, which can have all sorts of negative physiological effects, right? So, it's... My first work that I did for five years was with low-income adults who've had more severe mental health issues. And there's just a lot of chaos there, but I loved it.

And what you find is that people who have often had the most trauma also have the most physical health issues. And it's like a really, it's a terrible pairing, but it's like, I've been in survival mode this long, my body just starts breaking down. Because survival mode is like- It's not just cognitive.

Survival mode is your body releasing a whole host of hormones and neurotransmitters that have a cascading effect on the body to prepare you to fight or run or flee. And so it has a real physical dimension to it, right? It's funny how people get kind of skeptical about this sort of thing. Like when you just notice how remarkable the body is at a physical level,

it should make all the more sense that something more complex, I suppose, like our brains and emotions and will. I mean, I just burnt myself the other day and my body's healing itself. I didn't tell it to do that. Just started doing it. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. And if you know what it's doing, if you don't know why I'm getting nose hairs growing at an alarmingly fast rate, I want to trust my body that it knows what it's doing, but I don't know. Yeah, and another thing is pain sensitivity. So initially with the like a stress response, your pain sensitivity goes down because you're expecting to get hurt and you're preparing

against that. But over time your pain sensitivity actually up. And so you have a lot of people with chronic pain that's like, that can actually, even chronic pain that has nothing to do with where you were traumatized can be related to having trauma. So just slow down here so I can understand. So you're saying that if someone's experienced a great degree of trauma, they might have a higher tolerance

for pain in the beginning. Initially. Initially. But then they might have a higher tolerance for pain in the beginning. Initially, initially, but then they might experience more pain, but that pain might not be in relation to the physical pain they're experiencing. Now it could be, you know, does that make sense? Like, if you've experienced trauma, you're saying that you might begin with a high tolerance of pain. So you can deal with a lot of whatever. That's initial short-term.

That's little things like maybe you get surgery and you don't need to be put under because you can deal with it. Maybe, I'm not saying in every case, I know someone like this. And this person would say that they're struggling with a lot of trauma. And this person has a high tolerance for pain

and it's kind of remarkable. But then this person has all these other kind of peripheral problems that are very severe. And this person's beginning to wonder if it has to do with trauma. Yeah, I mean, trauma, especially, like if you haven't dealt with trauma, like it continues to affect you.

And one of the biggest ways isn't necessarily the traumatic event, but it's your ongoing like crisis survival mode that's continually active, which it's meant to be short term survival. And then you get back to being healthy. Like if you think of like in our bodies, we have this dichotomy between survival and health and that survival trumps health. But then you

survive and then you get back to being healthy, like you get back to all your healthy functions and your healthy relationships and all your healthy interactions and thinking. But if you're constantly in survival, it's constantly in a way trumping health. And so like you're in a way destroys you. And I, I, I've been thinking about this a lot, actually between like the stress, trauma response and depression is like, it just,

like it's destroying you, exhausting you. And then your body, like in a desperate attempt to stop that stress, the stress cycle actually like shuts down. And then like you're, you're in a depressive state. And there's some growing evidence out there too that yeah, that depression is, depression may be a stress response, a long-term stress response. Just sort of shutting down. Yeah, it can be adaptive. Depression can tell you something. And something I also was thinking about with that is, so our protective response, this is kind of the way I think about it, is connected to our values.

Because we value something, we wanna protect it. And so it's originally, its impetus is protection of what we value. So it shows that we care about something. But then our protective response is focused on threats. So it actually kind of forgets about what we care about because it's focused on surviving, it's focused on protecting it.

And so it's like a bodyguard at a party where it's just like, it's, it's, it's the bodyguard at the party is not going to have any fun. Like, right. It's just like, that's actually just a stressful situation where all the problems are showing. Yes, I see. Even though he laughed at you, I get it. I got the bodyguard that We've been to different parties. Yeah.

But you're like, there's a lot of things that could come out. Yeah. You know, this guy I'm supposed to be protecting. And it's like, everything's a threat. Yeah. Yeah, that does sound exhausting. And so this is kind of my own personal theory is that the way depression works is to shut down this threat response that's constantly being activated.

It cuts off the connection to the values. So the values that are continually being like, I need to be protected. We just like it cuts off that connection to the values and says, I don't care anymore. I don't care about you. I don't care about anything. I don't care. I just don't care. And that's the way that it can actually shut down the stress response. It's like a disconnection from what we value in the first place, out of desperation to stop this crazy threat cycle. Wow.

Thank you. Eduardo says, is it just me? Yes, next question. Is it just me or is it common for Christian therapists to use Christianity as just a therapeutic healing technique? If so, why? I'm not really sure. I'm gonna get to that. I think I get it in different ways. But if I'm, if I'm hearing what he's saying, um, well, so two things about that, that I would say initially is one is that, um, Christianity is, Christianity is There's a great quote by Benedict Thursday. Could you pull it out?

There's a quote by Benedict where he says the essence of Christianity in some ways can be boiled down to healing It is a religion of healing and he says understood properly That is the essence of our of like the salvific Mission is to heal. So in some sense, Christianity is intended to be used as healing. It is a healing. Christ is the healer. He comes, he conquers sin and death. So he kept us free. Right. Which Benedict? The 16th. The 16th, yeah, the Pope. And so on one hand it's like, can we use Christianity to heal? Yeah, we can. And we should because it's intended to heal. Um, on the other hand,

part of what I do and I view my job as is to translate certain psychological things into Christian or Catholic language that makes it more amenable to people where it works. Some things can't be translated. They don't fit. Um, they shouldn't fit. Um, there's not adequate sort of... Like a bodyguard at a party. That's right, that's right. That was so good. So good. I got it.

Okay. Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christian faith in general. It can even be said that Christianity is a quote, therapeutic religion, a religion of healing when understood at sufficiently deep level. This expresses the entire content of redemption. Yeah. I mean, and again, there's like some qualifications that, but yeah, but he really is. And so, yeah, do we use Christianity? Good job finding that. That was great. Well done. Like, do we use use it? Yeah we use it to heal. Yeah. But also part of what I

do is I take things and I put it in Christian language because it's like when I you know it's like when I cover a dog's pill in peanut butter or something like that you know it it makes it able to land and resonate with the person more genuinely and authentically and so I don't see any problem with that. Yeah, I actually really like this question. So I've worked entirely in secular agencies and settings. So I haven't often overtly talked about faith with clients, but I know that my faith,

like interacts with everything that I do. Because we talked about anthropology earlier, it informs the way I see you, and then I want to, through grace, can love you more, and I see you and love you. And because of that, I want to do really good psychology work. I want to be a really you and love you. And because of that, I wanna do really good psychology work. I wanna be a really good therapist for you. And I talked about earlier that I started working with low income populations. A lot of them had been in therapy

or in mental health world for 20 plus years and people had given up on them, they're stuck. They're like, they think they're stuck. And I was like, I'm not accepting that. And so that's when I actually started developing theory and different exercises and models based on psychology that's rooted in a faith that knows who a person is and loves the person as that way. And then. Like that's like, I want to deliver really good psychology work for you because I I see you and I love

you. I want to grow together. Yeah, yeah. I want to apologize to everyone who's putting questions here on logos because we're not going to be able to get to the mall. This person says a friend of mine tragically found her dead boyfriend.

After having committed suicide, her world crumpled around her, and now she's going to a therapist that is suggesting hypnosis and probably several other new age hoopla ceremonies that masks the problem only for it to resurface later. How would I begin to express my concern while offering real help without discounting whatever real help she has received thus far? She trusts the therapist but I really don't trust what her therapist is suggesting. Is there any reason to be skeptical entirely of hypnosis? It sounds like this person is saying that that's, I don't know enough about it.

I mean, I'd know what magicians do. There's one, there's like one Vatican document that came out in maybe the 1800s, late 1800s that early 1900s that references that hypnosis should only be used for legitimate and genuine sort of medical purposes and only by professional and shouldn't be. The idea there is that it sort of turns on this notion that you're quieting rationality in order to, and that can maybe make people more susceptible to sort of suggestion and these sorts of things.

So it shouldn't be done lightly. I don't think, that being said, I don't think there's, it's certainly not an across the board, um, condemnation of it, but it can it be used wrongly? Yeah. And do I think there's other treatments that are more effective? Yeah. Um, but I think the part that stood out to me, and I'd be curious what you think Isaac, but the part that stood out to me is she trusts her therapist.

It's really hard to underestimate. I mean, we've circled the drain on this a little bit this episode, but human beings, we use this language all the time. We're relational beings. Human beings are fundamentally and foundationally relational. It's stamped into the very core of us. And part of what we do is like we take ourselves

out of our natural context. And it's like taking a fish out of water and then saying like, why is it flopping around like that? Because it doesn't belong out of water. Human beings are made to be in relationship deeply. And there's something about when she says she trusts her therapist, it's hard to underestimate how significant it is when you have the trust of somebody, um,

because we're so relational. And when you're in your deepest darkest pain and you've witnessed something like that, and you come to trust somebody cause they can see it, they can hear it, they can hold it, that becomes a really powerful and potent experience. So I might say something like, I don't know, look, there's more effective, there's a lot of effective trauma treatments out there. What she went through is traumatic.

It is a trauma. There's more effective, there's well-researched trauma treatments out there. EMDR, prolonged exposure, CBT for trauma, CPT. There's a myriad of trauma therapies out there. You might say, look, the evidence for using hypnosis for trauma is really thin. I know you love this therapist. I wonder if you'd be willing to ask her if she'd be willing to look at one of

the more evidence-based treatments, but I know you care about her. I know she's been so helpful to you and I know you feel seen by her. You have to validate that part, but it sounds like you might be saying that it could be quack. I mean the problem with it is the problem with some of these things, like all psychotherapy in some ways is you don't know whether the person using it is an absolute hack and quack or if they're prudential. Some people use hypnosis for everything. She'll use it for trauma. She'll use it for smoking cessation. She'll use it for anxiety.

And you're like, so I'd be, I'd be interested to see, does she have, I don't know, clinical acumen, but how do you do that as a friend? Yeah. I mean, that's really tough. Yeah. I'm going to give a pretty indirect answer. I think more often than we think, the answer is really love God more, love the person more. And that like the way that you as a friend just accompany them while loving God and witnessing to God, like that actually, that is healing.

Like you don't necessarily need to get involved in how they're doing therapy and like your personal thoughts on their therapist like if you Think that their soul is in danger continue to witness to them love them Love God and I know that's our people in comment sections hate that They'll be like, yeah Question about I got a question last time about the trans child. How do you talk to the yeah and like people you're not Putting it to them strong enough, you're not nailing them to the wall, you're not...

And it's like there's a time for that and there's a time for speaking the truth and like using prudence and judgment. And I'll kind of derail is on that your heart, like it's on desire being built for God and it's on big questions. So that God is the response to our desire and that God is the answer to our questions. And so we don't have to be afraid of desire and questions,

we actually have to deepen into it because at like the root of like true desire and true questions, like we are going towards God. And so, Father Giussani emphasizes the importance of being able to trust a person's heart. And like that in loving them and in showing them something beautiful and good, like that their heart, like you can magnetize their heart. Does he talk about, that's not, I actually, I love that, but I wonder, what about like the fact that our heart,

our intellect gets darkened because of original sin and we can't always see accurately and the desires can become twisted or disordered? Does he like, does he have a place for the fall, for concupiscence? Like how we can be deceived? That the heart can deceive? Yeah. Is that?

But I think there's a greater emphasis on that God, that Jesus is incarnate, that he's continually pursuing us and pursuing our hearts, and that intimacy is ultimately an exchange of hearts like we like that kind of Reflects back to what we were talking about earlier is like being able to like open up that your heart to the Father to Jesus and And so that we need to be formed. We need to be educated

We need to be within solid community of people who know our hearts. Because he often talks about, uses the phrase, love, to be a friend is to love somebody's destiny, which is like to love where they're supposed to go, because you know their heart, because you know that hearts are built for the one who made them. And so he really emphasizes being able to draw out desire and questions because we don't need to be afraid that like we don't need to exile them, we don't need to condemn them, but we like draw them out

and then bring them into relationship. So that was a long way of saying, again, with this person, being able to love and witness is really powerful for keeping, to help somebody stay faithful instead of just chiding them like, hey, don't do that therapist, don't do this. Like kind of that fear-based where it's like, ah, this could be bad for you, this could be bad for you.

Stay away from all these things to to to keep somebody on the right path, but that like In a way like make their hearts so alive and desirous that that the the path towards God is the only one that's really attractive Yeah, I don't know if any of that makes sense Yeah, I'll't know if any of that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, yeah. I've got one more question, but before we get to that, I want to ask you just to kind of give one more plug for this program before we wrap up.

Yeah. Again, it's just so beautiful. And like... It's an online course. It's online, 12 weeks. There's a really beautiful workbook. It's really respectful and gentle of the path that you need to walk.

It's not rigid. The point isn't to finish the course. The point isn't to check all the boxes and do all the exercises. The point is to really take intentional time with other people and journey with the Father. It's like both communal and so intimate at the same time. And it respects where you're at.

So my mom did it and it took her a year to finish, but that was like the year she needed. And like it's actually been beautiful the way, like she, she like glows in a different way. It's, it's actually really cool. Um, and my mom, like I've always considered my mom a very holy person who loves Jesus. And then like, but this work has, has like done like a new level. We're at the website one more time. knownbythefather.com knownbythefather.com

I do want to say this. We, we have a price point on itown by the father.com. No, I'm by the father. I don't want to say this. We, we have a price point on it and it's a price point just because, um, we've taken our time and our expertise and, um, it takes us away from our families to do it, but we never want money. And this is something I really admire about Isaac and has been important in our relationship is we never want money to be an impediment to people doing the program. So we have a policy that is if you feel like you're supposed to do this program, if you feel called to do it, and money is an impediment, you tell

us how big of a discount you need. Do you need 25%? Do you need 50? Do you need 75%? Or do you need it free? You tell us. And we're not going to interrogate you. We're not the Gestapo. You tell us what level of discount you need. No questions asked. You do it. That's fantastic. And it's again that point, like I receive and respond to these emails and it's the vulnerability of people sending me emails being like, hey, I need help. That's actually really beautiful.

I'd say in this cohort, 80% of people got discounts and maybe 40% people got 100% discount. Like you say, I need help. I tell you, I say, do you want a 25% discount, 50% discount, 75% discount or 100% discount? Because it enables people to still give what they can and still take ownership of it. Sometimes we just give things to people for free. We don't appreciate them.

All right, gotta get to this last question. If we can try to be somewhat brief, that would be great because I gotta get to Holy Mass. Jules says, short version, how do you determine what's fruitful suffering versus destructive suffering? Longer version. We recently took in two foster children. One of them has much deeper problems than we were told about.

Our four biological children are having a very hard time living with this child and so are we. How do we weigh serving this child versus serving our family? Yeah. Gosh. I mean, this is, this is that overlap between psychology and spiritual direction, right? I mean, it's hard to know. I don't, I don't know the particulars of your family. I don't, there's so many concrete situational factors that would go into the discernment of this, right? How much of a threat is this child to those children? I mean, is there a threat of physical harm and physical violence? Is it just

some difficulty in adapting? Has there been past sexual abuse? And are you worried that that could be perpetuated on your children? I mean, there's a whole bunch of concrete questions that would go into the discernment. What's your financial situation? Is this a short-term foster care situation or a long-term foster care situation? What's the prognosis on this child? Does it seem like this child could receive therapy in the right sort of environment?

There's a great book, This Sort of Stuff. I always recommend a woman named Karen Purvis. She has a book called The Connected Child. She did a lot of work with people in the foster care system and saw great results. But does the child just need like good therapy, a loving environment, they're going to be better in three to six months? I mean, there's a lot of concrete factors, but I always think like what's in front of me right now is God has given me my family,

the people in front of me, like here's my primary vocation and it's okay to stretch them. It's okay for us to all be challenged and to be a little uncomfortable in the service of growing in love. But when there's a potential of real threat or danger, specifically the young kids who can't consent to it and where there could be harm done to them that could be potentially long lasting and could have real effects on the parent-child relationship too, I feel leery.

And if there are other foster parents out there who don't have any children, who have the time and the space, who have the resources to give that child more direct care, more focused care, then that may be the case. But that's so tough because there's so many concrete elements that we don't know about. But I do want my kids to be always safe, emotionally, physically, spiritually safe. We can challenge them. I can stretch them, but I don't know. I'm curious what you think. I also think probably too that the parents shouldn't second guess their intuitions and their discernment too much.

Like in a way these, these parents are the people who know what's best for them and their family more than any other person. So even though someone might have a degree or they might be the clergy, like you trust that God has, trust that God has given you what you need to make this decision. I suppose you do it sincerely. If you do it with sincerity and goodwill and, and genuineness and you trust, God will bless what you do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's a great answer. Thank you Isaac for coming on the show. Thanks.

Thank you guys so much.