Pints With Aquinas - Finding Healing in Christ w/ Dr Bob Schuchts

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Get Bob's book, Be Restored here (Free Books are Claimed): https://www.avemariapress.com/products/be-restored Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Bob's Website: https://jpiihealingcenter.org/ Dr. Bob's Podcast: https://www.restoretheglorypodcast.com/

Hey, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like Pints with Aquinas and want to support us, you can do that in one of two ways by supporting us on locals or Patreon. If you go to pintswithaquinas.com slash give it'll let you know there what you get in return. Thanks. And we are live. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas.

Today I'll be interviewing Dr. Bob Schuetz and I want to let everybody know that we are going to be giving a hundred free copies of his brand new book be restored healing our sexual wounds through Jesus's merciful Love I'll be announcing how to get one of those 100 free copies In this episode today, so be sure to be listening There's a link in the description to the website and I'm gonna give you a promo code that will deduct a hundred percent off You just pay the shipping. So it's not an ebook, it's the real thing. So that'll be nice.

Bob, it's lovely to have you. Great to be with you, Matt. You were giving a talk last night at Franciscan. Yeah. Did you get a good showing? Yeah, it was good. The students as part of the healing and worship time, we just started a half hour early,

and it was good, it was very good. And what did you do? Was it just a talk, or was it a prayer experience? Talk and prayer time. We just started a half hour early and it was good, it was very good. And what did you do? Was it just a talk or was it a prayer experience? Yeah, talk and prayer experience. Okay, terrific. So for those who aren't too familiar with you, who are you and tell us about the JP2 Healing Center? Alright, I'm Bob Schuetz. Let me tell you a little more personal than professionally to start with. I was married for 42 years to my wife, Margie, and she died four years ago. So I'm now in a stage of life that's, you know, very different. Uh,

but it's been good. It's been fruitful. Uh, and we had two daughters and 10 grandchildren. So the grandchildren are from 21 down to five. So over range. And we had eight up until recently. My daughter Kristen and son-in-law Stephen just adopted two little girls, nine-year-old and a five-year-old. So it's been very sweet. I just spent Thanksgiving they came. So it's good. So John Paul II Healing Center, I was a therapist for a number of years and a teacher. I taught adjunct courses and then had my own intensive healing process and spiritual renewal probably when I was in my early 30s. And that just changed the way that I saw teaching,

saw therapy. And from that point, began to really study. I didn't have to go looking for it, it just came to me. Just not only through the scriptures, but through just people and books and everything. Just this aspect of spiritual healing, you know, and that psychological healing had value, but the integration of the spiritual

into the psychological healing was just so much more. And so over the years I would begin to do workshops and training and those kinds of things, and eventually it just turned into John Paul II Healing Center, and eventually let go of the practice and teaching to do that full time. So how old were you when you had this spiritual experience and what was that like?

Thirty something you said. Yeah, I was probably 32, 31, 32. And it was a time of struggling in my personal life. I, you know, just some of my back story is grew up in a strong Catholic family, second oldest of seven children. But it wasn't as strong as I thought because it turned out that as I got older my dad was having

an affair and my parents ended up divorcing. So when I was 13 or 14, that happened. And it was doubly difficult because it was not only about your family broken up, and I love my dad having just, you know, to the day he died, which was four years ago also.

But it was just devastating, the man that I looked up to and was a role model in so many ways was my coach, you know, would be out in the backyard playing and just to see the betrayal of my mom, but know, would be out in the backyard playing and just to see the betrayal of my mom, but the betrayal of all of us. And was that clear when you were 13, what had happened exactly with the affair or was it? I think that came out maybe a year or two after that. But I remember the day that my mom came and said that they were getting divorced and I

just sat and just wailed. Oh man. Just my life shattered. So that's kind of the background of where I needed healing, but it was 20 years later before I really realized I needed healing. I just functioned as an athlete and a student and ended up getting married and at the end of college having two girls starting my career. So I was just focused on goal setting and wasn't really

dealing with all of that. And so I was in the middle of that, I started having panic just out of nowhere, you know, just what's going on. Like a panic attack? Yeah, like panic attacks. And it just startled me enough for me to go into therapy. going on and like a panic attack. Yeah. Like panic attacks. Uh, and it, it just startled me enough for me to go into therapy here. I was a therapist,

but it was like, I need, I need help. And thankfully, I had a good therapist, a woman that I knew that was able to go from the symptoms down to the deeper pain that I'd never dealt with. And it was really the, I learned a lot from that, is the anxiety was, you know, anxiety is usually a feeling of threat. But there was no threat visible around me. The threat was coming from inside, and it was the threat of facing that deeper pain.

And so that then led me into really growing spiritually. I was in my faith the whole time, but I'd lost a level of trust because of, my parents were teaching marriage at the time with that. And so it's, here they're teaching marriage in the church and this is happening and it just kind of shatters your vision of reality. So was it in the context of therapy that you had this sort of spiritual awakening?

No, that prepared me. Okay. Yeah, and I think that was really important because up until that point I had not really dealt with any of those things. So I was just living my faith kind of from an intellectual practice standpoint, but my heart kind of in a protected place that I didn't know. And then, uh, it was actually going on a retreat weekend. And it was the second time on a retreat weekend. I just had a very powerful experience with the Holy spirit and, uh,

just, I knew God's love and I felt alive. I went into the weekend really struggling in my own marriage of not being able to love like I wanted to love, not being on the same page. And I had two prayers on the weekend. My one prayer was, God, I need to know you're real in a way that I've never known you before. And the second one was, and I need to know how to love Margie, my wife, because I'm struggling.

You know, I just, I'm really difficult. So the first one was answered on the weekend with this just amazing, powerful experience. And my brother Bart was on that weekend who we do the conferences together. And so that also, he had a really powerful experience and we're now in ministry together. So I think it started there. But when I got home, my heart was so free that I could look at my wife and just have this deep love for her. And it was like this joy.

I started crying and I go up to hug her and she's probably wondering what's going on here. This is not the man who left. And I just had a capacity to love after that experience that I didn't have before it. And so that realization made me realize therapy is great, but there's some other dimension here that's really important in people's healing. And so it's the spiritual

and the psychological healing together that really made a difference. And so I began to integrate that more and more in my teaching and my work. Yeah, I think a lie a lot of Christians believe and have to kind of break free from is this idea that God loves us like a collective blob of humanity and isn't concerned about us individually. And that might have something to do with us anthropomorphizing God. We imagine God however we imagine Him, and it just doesn't seem like He could possibly be interested in me and in my healing. So maybe speak about that. Is it the case that Christ wants our healing, and what does that look like? Because in the scripture, it seems that there are many instances of Christ healing physically. I'm sure we could point to ones that emotional

or psychological healings, but that doesn't seem as obvious. As prominent, yeah. I would say that every time there was a physical healing there was also a spiritual and an emotional healing that took place. But there's some like the woman at the well, where it's not a physical healing, but he brought her back to her past. And not just the past, but where she was living in brokenness in the present. And, you know, I think it was, that's really a pattern for me of

that kind of deeper spiritual, relational, psychological healing, is he first engaged her by coming in humility and asking her, and it was a woman who can't relate to it, Samaritan woman can't relate to a Jewish man, so there's all these cultural barriers, but she also has the shame of the life she's lived and the rejection that she's experienced.

And just he masterful draws her into conversation and then brings her to acknowledge the truth just by naming it. And immediately she's so taken back. But if I put myself there, I picture the depth of love, the depth of His love as He's saying that to her. He's not shaming her, He's not condemning her, He's not criticizing her, He's not telling her she's unworthy, He's drawing out the place that she feels unworthy.

And I think evidence of that is, if you and I were to sit across the table and you were to bring up things from my past and shame me for them, I would not be running out of this office saying, come and see the man who's told me all the things I ever did. You would not. Yeah.

Yeah. And so it had to be this transformation that took place of I'm loved in this place that I couldn't love myself. I'm loved in this place where no other man has loved me. Yeah. And then you want to tell everybody. Yeah. One of the ways I sort of show myself that Christ is about our emotional and psychological,

however you want to put it, healing is suppose there was an instance in the gospels where a man commits suicide and Jesus heals him. You know, it's not like, what's the suicide going to do? Like, I was just trying to fix this and you've screwed it up. It's like, no, Christ isn't just about the restoration of our body, He wants to heal us personally. So yeah, maybe speak more to that, you know, cause I think it's still something that we find hard to believe.

Maybe Christ has this healing for other people, but not me. I'm too ordinary, boring, you know, I live in the middle of Ohio and I'm, you know, whatever. Yeah. I think first of all, going back to scripture, why did Jesus come? You know, it came to save us, but what is, what is salvation? That word salvation means healing, deliverance, freedom,

restoration, you know, all, all of those things is contained in that word of, and so every interaction he has with every person brings that healing. And you know, you hear about John Paul II, and when he would meet with somebody, what did they say? I felt like I was the only person in the room. Yeah, and so if that's true for John Paul II, how much more true does that have to be with Jesus?

And so we say, well, I can't see Jesus right in front of me. So how do I know that's true for me? Well, one is through the body of Christ. We can experience them through each other. But secondly, in prayer and in the sacraments, we believe as Catholics that those are real encounters. Those aren't imaginary encounters. We're not making something up.

We're not constructing something. And the sacraments are very particular and personal to each individual. Right? They're general, but nobody goes through the sacrament of reconciliation the same way. Right? Every individual person comes with a particular place where they're struggling. That's why it's called a sacrament of healing. And we don't believe that it's the priest who's healing us. It's why it's called a sacrament of healing. And we don't believe that it's the priest who's healing us. We believe this is an encounter with Jesus.

And so just there as an example, it's, it's a general sacrament, but it's very personally applied. And so the same thing in prayer and, uh, you know, you and I have both experienced the reality of how personal he is to all of those areas of our life. And, you know, as we, as we learn to trust that he is interested, I mean, that's part of the wounds that we carry, right? It's he's not interested. I'm not important.

You know, I'm not worth paying attention to. He's not going to, he's not going to be real. You know, this is make believe. And as we experience it in our lives change, like the woman at the well, we begin to say, well, something happened here and I couldn't have made that up myself. What are these wounds that you talk about and how do they sort of prevent our deep relationship with Jesus?

We'll get in the way of it. Yeah, starting, starting with the original sin, there's an original wound, right? The sin is they're listening to the father of lies and the separation, but the wound is, now they're cut off from the relationship that sustained them. They're cut off from that intimacy,

and not only with God, but with each other, right? They begin to cover each other. And so right from the very beginning we hear things like fear and shame, right? They're afraid and they're naked and they were filled with shame. Wow. I never made that connection but yeah. Yeah. And then abandoned, right?

Because they're now cut off from the life, the intimacy and rejection even though God hasn't rejected them, they probably think He's going to reject them, why else are they hiding? Right? That He's coming to look for them, to love them, but they're in a place of shame, so they're feeling rejected. Hopelessness. That's profound.

I mean, what I meant when I said I'd not made that connection is, you know, sometimes you hear this language of wounds getting in the way of our relationship with Christ and you think, well, maybe this is something of a new thing. It was sort of like looking at faith through the lens of psychology and we shouldn't be doing that. But as you say, like right there in the first few chapters, you've got fear, shame, abandonment, loneliness, yeah, hopelessness. Yeah.

And all the way through scripture, even though nobody highlights and says this is a wound, you see it all the way through. I mean, think of Jacob and Esau. Yeah, think of Jacob and think of what we're reading in the daily readings now at Mass and David and his sons and, you know, Absalom and Tamar. I mean, talk about incredible wounds. In fact, I use that story in Be Restored as that interaction between Amnon who raped his sister Tamar. And she had to experience the depths of every one of those wounds. And she speaks about him even in that brief encounter,

but it's all the way through. It's, if you have eyes to see it, it's all the way through. It's in, if you have eyes to see it, it's all the way through the scripture. How does your prayer ministry differ from, say, a secular, psychological, or motivational retreat? Yeah. Jesus is the primary way, and the church is and the sacraments of the church. But I think there's similarities in terms of what I experienced as a therapist and what I experienced in spiritual healing, which is there's still a necessity for people to feel safe enough to begin to share their story and to begin to be willing and able and trusting enough to say, okay, I'm going to look at these areas or face these areas that I don't, I feel out of control in, or I feel

hopeless in, or I feel ashamed in. And so I think that part is common. And like I said, my therapy was very helpful to bring me to a spiritual encounter, but the therapy couldn't bring me there. Right? The therapy could just prepare my heart for that. So I think one of the problems with the church is we go and experience these profound encounters called the sacraments or prayer, but our hearts aren't disposed. And so I think the value of therapy,

the value of even good friendship is to prepare our hearts for that. And the difference then is rather than rely on even good friendship is to prepare our hearts for that and The difference then is rather than rely on What advice I could give for my training or for my past experience my advice is kind of useless That is it's going to come in one ear and out the other now I used to think it was important and I get paid for my advice that's like every therapist, but it was when I began to move from trying to help people to change by just being aware of what they're doing and stop doing it, I realized

that didn't help. But when I began to start praying with people and allowing Jesus to touch those deepest places of their hearts now. You're seeing real substantive change in people. Tell us about some of those experiences with people if you don't mind, and if you can use them without referring to their names obviously. Yeah, some of the ones I talk about in this book. One of the most remarkable, and this, let me just give a trigger warning here, okay? Let me just give a trigger warning here. Yeah.

Okay. Some of these stories can trigger. So just, if they do, just stop, disconnect, pray, take some deep breaths. But they're powerful enough that I wanna illustrate with them. This book is about sexual wounds, healing sexual wounds. And one of the most devastated families I ever met with

was a father who sexually abused his three daughters and four daughters, I think, have in the book. Did he come to you? His wife, his separated wife came to me after she found out these children were all adults. And she was, as you can imagine, not only devastated, but enraged. Uh, and yet she had functioned so long in her family and her marriage in denial that

it was really difficult for her to comprehend and face this. And so it was a combination of her starting to go to mass regularly, communion in the morning, confession regularly, and this kind of prayer and therapy together. And she went from really wanting to kill him to being afraid that he was going to die and go to hell. And so she began, as her healing increased, she began to have compassion for him and began to pray for him, which first miracle in itself. And that required her going into her wounds,

her own shame of this could happen under my home and just devastating at every level. And the pain of her daughters and not being able to protect them, you can imagine how difficult that was. So then they both lived in another state. So she invited him to come and move down for a period of time to take a break from work

and just go into an intense healing process. So he started doing what she had been doing, going to mass and confession. And at first he couldn't receive, it seemed like he couldn't receive any grace. And I talk about this in my book, Be Transformed, this story, but it was that story of the woman caught in adultery,

that the words of Jesus, he who is without sin may throw the first stone, and he was realizing how much he was, in addition to his children and society, how much he was hating himself and condemning himself. And so it began to crack the ice when Jesus says, no one has, has no one condemned you, neither have I condemned you. So we prayed through that together. And there was just this glimmer of light. Had he admitted to you what he had done at this point?

He told me. Okay. By that time it was out, it was public. Okay. It's public shame. Life was devastated. But they didn't press charges. It was many years over time.

And so he, yeah, he came a very broken man. I mean, when I saw him, just his brokenness was incredible. Sorry, I cut you off. You said it was a glimmer. Glimmer of hope inside of him that maybe Jesus didn't see him as the monster that he saw himself as. Uh, his favorite scripture was, uh, take a millstone, you know, if you hurt one of these little ones, better if you had a millstone to around your neck. He says, that's what I deserve. So that's what I deserve. So he does.

It's the thing. And so when he started to encounter his wife's mercy, where she had hated him and then Jesus's mercy through me to the priests that were ministering to him. And then in the scriptures there was just this little crack to the point where he had said, I cannot forgive myself until my children and my wife forgive me. And I said, if you wait till then, you're not going to be strong enough to be able to minister to them. I said, if you wait till then, you're not going to be strong enough to be able to minister to them. I said, if you want to be a father and a husband to them, you have to get to a place where your healing starts first and then you can move

back. So we, we spent a lot of time in deep prayer, reliving those memories and just over and over and over again, Jesus didn't back away from telling them how awful it was, what damage he'd caused. I mean, he really deeply faced the truth of what had happened, but then also Jesus had mercy for him. And you know, when you see a situation like that, you realize there's nothing outside of his mercy. And that's why the subtitles through Jesus' merciful love,

you know, healing our sexual wounds through Jesus' merciful love. And to see his mercy in a situation like this and the transformation that took place, because nothing would have helped this man except for God's mercy. I mean, nothing. It was, you know, all of society says it's beyond hope. The marriage is beyond hope.

Everything's beyond hope. And to watch literally, not just through the therapy and the prayer, but the spiritual ministry of the church and also this wife, he became a redeemed man. And he was then ready in his wife to invite his children to share their hatred to share their rage to share their pain to share their and How did they how was that facilitated or just sitting in my office? Okay, they were all living out of and they all came the three daughters in them and two of them came to me

Yeah, and they were living out of state and they had all kind of stuff I mean they had all kind of addictions and same-sex attraction all kind of stuff that they used as a way of coping with yeah pain you know just couldn't trust themselves to a man and and numbing the pain and food addictions and drug addictions and all kind of stuff. And so what did you, how did you facilitate this interaction then? They're all in your office. What did you?

Yeah, one at a time. One daughter with her parents. Okay. And just inviting them just to share, just the daughter to share. What it was like? Yeah. And first of all, the parents shared about where they were. You know, at first the daughters were outraged that the mother was being merciful to their

dad, but then they began to see the changes in both their parents. And, uh, and so just hearing what had been happening and they couldn't trust it, but at least they could begin to entertain that this wasn't the same man who had abused them. And then just slowly and then deeply letting out the pain and talking about the consequences. Do you know what happened because of what you did? And that man just sat there and took it? He just sat there and took it.

Bless him. Yeah, and the wife too, because they were angry at the mother too, right? And they both sat there because of their own healing. It wasn't easy, you can imagine. But because of the healing that they both had gone through, they were more concerned about their daughter, which they had always been concerned about,

but had never been able to affect in any kind of way. And just to see as they poured out their pain and they began to enter into real conversations about it and the father wasn't defensive, the mother wasn't defensive, they just acknowledged it, they acknowledged the truth of it, they received it. It was incredible humility. And without Jesus in that picture, none of that would have happened. What I think is going to be so powerful about that story for so many people is that we sometimes and hear about the healing people undergo. Perhaps they were abused in their childhood

or they were hurt in some way and they found a good degree of healing that enabled them to not just function but to thrive. And we resonate with that. But all of us in some capacity, perhaps not to the same degree as this man, have caused harm to others. And that's a very difficult thing to deal with. When Sister Miriam James was here and vulnerably shared about the young man who sexually abused her as a girl,

and she talks about how she came through it, I can't help but wanna both punch that man in the throat. But then also, I'm sure Sister Miriam would join me in wanting to proclaim the mercy of Christ that's available to him too. Yeah, and she does. Whenever I hear her talk about it, I always hear her talk about it. I want him to be in heaven with me. Indeed.

Yeah. And that's what this wife, I want my husband, who I have hated hated to be in heaven with us. Yeah. So how do you think this book be restored by the way to those watching live we're going to be giving a hundred free copies of this book away. It looks like we're already hit the hundred. The links not giving the discount anymore. No, but they don't have the discount.

Okay. I haven't given him a discount yet. Yeah. Yeah. So those who are watching, I haven't given you a discount. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So those who are watching, I haven't given you a discount yet. You got to stick around with me. You got to listen to this episode.

You don't get this for free. All right. So I'll give that out later. But, you know, I guess. Well, I want to ask you, I suppose, like my experience has been and continues to be in some regard that if I just intellectually begin to fathom the evil of, say, pornography or fornication or adultery or what have you, that somehow that intellectual recognition that I didn't have when I was away from Christ

will sort of get me through those yearnings for sin you know those passions to indecent things but that isn't the case is it it has to go deeper so talk talk to that and how this book response to that. Yeah first of all I would say that that's an extreme example but everyone of us have been sexually wounded. but every one of us have been sexually wounded. We typically think of all those people who have been sexually abused or sexually wounded, and they are, truly are, but every one of us has been sexually abused. Just want to push back on that. How is that not just an arm?

What do you say? How does that not just turn us all into victims who go, oh yeah, well look, I've had it hard, look, I've been sexually abused, when it's like they really haven't had any serious sexual abuse. Well, what is serious? And again, I acknowledge there's this whole range of things. Yeah, spectrum. But how what percentage of people would you say have been exposed to images? All right fair enough. On television, on the internet, on billboards, on magazines. Yeah. At young ages. Yeah and is that not

sexual abuse? It's more like we've been so calloused by the society in which we live that we've redefined sexual abuse to mean something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how many young teenage girls have read romance novels with racy sexual scenes that gets in their imagination and they begin to fantasize about having this kind of relationship. And isn't that in some sense an abuse of their faculty of mental and emotional and spiritual sexual intimacy. Okay. Alright, so I don't say that to be dramatic. I literally believe when I was in graduate school we got no training in this area but person after person that came in

there was some aspect of their sexuality that had been violated or abused or they lost their innocence person that came in, there was some aspect of their sexuality that had been violated or abused or they'd lost their innocence. And there are all kinds of different situations, you know, from being humiliated as a teenage boy in the locker room, that's sexual abuse, right? To... Yeah, okay. Right?

It's an abuse that gets internalized as something in me as deficient as a... That's tied to me, which is my sexuality. My sexuality, yeah. And if you think about it, you know, what's the most powerful gift in the world is our sexuality for God's purposes. And so where does the enemy want to target? Okay. And our sexuality. So whether it's the example, you know, yeah, I would say now I wouldn't have said it for many years, but I would say now that my dad committing adultery with my mother, sexually abused, not only my mother and himself, but all of us children.

You might want to, I need you maybe to kind of help us understand the delineation there because they're clearly not the same thing. Are they in some sense? It's not the same as physical sexual abuse, but it's psychological sexual abuse. Okay. Uh, you know, what's going on right now in the culture, all of the, all the redefinition of sexuality is a massive sexual abuse of our identity as male and female is our identity as, identity is what God intended for marriage.

And so abuse is anything that violates the order that God created. That's what I was about to ask you. Okay. Right? And I think we've... And that's not in any way to minimize somebody who's been physically sexually abused and how horrible that is and how deep that goes. But I would say all of it goes pretty deep in our imagination and our psyche. And those are hard things to heal.

I mean, as a third grader, I was exposed to Playboy magazine. Yeah, me too. I used to laugh about it. I don't laugh about it anymore cause I realize the imprinting that that did, you know, that sexual abuse isn't just about our bodies. It's about our mind. It's about our spirits. And so that's why I say we're all sexually wounded. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And again, not to minimize persons experience of sexual abuse. There are certainly degrees of it. And you know,

I've worked with the worst degrees I've worked with. People were brought up in Satanism and the sexual abuse and that is horrific beyond any imagination. So I won't even mention any of that, but it's horrific. And so I have seen the worst kinds of sexual abuse. Right. So, so we, we exist here with these wounds from the sexual abuse to whatever degree we

experienced and the intellectual recognition that porn is bad or fornication is bad, isn't enough. What is, I've rarely seen anybody get free from pornography just by recognizing that it's sin. Yeah. I mean, going to confession is the beginning of bringing it out into the light, but it's not the end of the healing process for most people. For most people who've in any way struggled, there's a healing process that gets down to the deep places of shame.

One of the things I talk about in the book that we talk about a lot in our courses is behind every disorder desire Which every kind of sexual sin starts with a disorder desire. Mm-hmm. There's a holy desire right, there's there's something that somebody's desiring mm-hmm that God is implanted in their heart and we get stuck in the shame of our disordered desires rather than in the truth of our heart, what our heart's really longing for. But there's also layers of unmet needs and unhealed wounds and then deep hidden patterns of sin, you know, like just even sins of

hiding or sins of resentment or sins of bitterness, you know, sins of hiding or sins of resentment or sins of bitterness. You know, very few people, uh, engage in sexual sin without those other areas of their heart being underneath it. So all of that needs to be healed. And so confession starts to break the shame and it's real power, real grace to begin to bring all that into the light. But there's often for most people just a repetitive confession unless the deeper deeper errors are being healed.

And sometimes you'll see people cling to say a particular spiritual regiment that they've set themselves but that's not working I mean, sometimes it might, but a lot of the time it doesn't. Yeah. It certainly may be giving grace, but it's not giving freedom. And at that point the person thinks, well, I guess God isn't powerful enough or I'm so bad that he's not interested in me. Yeah. Uh, or this doesn't, this isn't real. Yeah. Whatever this supposed grace is this isn't real. Yeah. Whatever this supposed grace is, isn't real. So then, so then how, how then do people take the next step then? Because I think that is a lot of Catholics today. They go on a confession,

they're praying the daily Rosary, they're fasting, they're doing the things, you know, and what's tough though, is if you're doing a spiritual regiment like that, you, you feel bad questioning is there, should there be more because then someone who probably themselves have, hasn't experienced a good degree of healing says, are you distrusting God or the power of the rosary? Like, wear the brown scapular or something. And not to discredit the grace that these sacramentals can give and the blessing that they are, but the idea that it's somehow a substitute to

the inner work of healing that Christ may want us to go through, I think is usually false. Yeah, and you think about, let's just take Peter, Saint Peter. You remember when he first met Jesus, and the catch of fish, he says, as soon as he sees the miracle, all of a sudden he realizes who he is, he wants to back away, get away from me, I'm a sinful man. And I think that's our first tendency when we come face to face with Jesus in any kind of intimate way. So we want to back away in our

shame. But where does Peter end up? He ends up after denying Jesus, looking at him face to face, and now he's ready to face his shame. Right? And so, Jesus, I imagine, is looking at him with just complete love and understanding. And Peter is living in this complete horror of what did I just do? When Jesus, he first sees Jesus again in the upper room, Jesus gives him the sacrament of reconciliation as a gift to give to others, but he gave it to them first, which is peace, shalom,

you're forgiven. But he then took Peter individually and had him relive. He brought him by a charcoal fire, right? And then he had him relive the three denials with three affirmations. So was Jesus forgiveness not real? No, it was real. Did Peter receive it? I think he did. Enough to go to the next place, which is to revisit those places in his heart that he couldn't get past, is what I imagine.

Can you share with us an experience of somebody experiencing the love of Christ in the way you're talking about it that led to them living a life free of whatever sin they were engaged in? Yeah. And while you do that, I'm going to look up this promo code, I wrote a story about John. And John was, had a very severe long addiction to pornography, masturbation, fantasy. And he had gone through a spiritual renewal and was very on fire for Christ, but kept falling every three weeks at the longest. I mean, before that it would be every day,

but he'd make it three weeks and then he'd fall. And he went to a spiritual director, he was going to confession. When he was in a state of grace, he'd go to mass daily. I mean, he was praying rosary, he was doing everything, and it was helping a lot. But he still couldn't get free of this every three weeks. And, um, so his pastor and spiritual director sent him for therapy and prayer.

And, uh, as we started to talk, I couldn't recommend anything else that he would do. I mean, everything that he was doing, it was like, you know, you're doing everything I know how to do. And I was ready to say, I can't help you. And at the very end I said, how about let's just go the next couple weeks and we're going to pray and fast and both of us and see what the Lord says. And then we'll meet and go from there. So we both did. And we came back with the same exact answer, which was an impossible answer. Cause I would have never thought of this clinically. Uh, he had read it in a book and he says,

you've got to go into your fantasy life and expose the shame of your fantasy life and the desires in your fantasy life. And I had gotten the same thing in prayer thinking about another person who had gotten free through that way. And so we came and compared notes and was like, oh here we go and Both of us were not looking forward to this at all. You know, that's that's a very private Intimate place of a person's mind and there's a lot of shame around it when there's a sexual compulsion. And so as we Started to pray and I won't go into any details here, but as we started to pray,

he came to a place in his fantasy life that I sensed the Holy Spirit saying, let's stop, uh, just stop right there. And Jesus will you show where this is rooted? And immediately he was brought back to being a young child watching his sister breastfeed with his mother. Now this example horrifies mothers, but this isn't about what the mother did wrong. This is about a place in the child's heart. So he's watching his mother breastfeed his sister and hating his mother and

hating his sister as a young child, two years old, hating them and take and took a vow, I will never need anything from them again. Because he felt neglected and was envious of that? Yeah, I didn't know the rest of the story, but he's bawling his eyes out. I'd never seen him cry before. He's bawling his eyes out as he's reliving this memory. What I later understood was there's deep abandonment pain that didn't come out until several years later. But even in this memory, there was a lot of healing because what happened is in his sanctified imagination, and this is something that people just have to experience to know that it's not

just make believe in a sanctified imagination. This little boy is standing there crying, hating his mom and his sister, and we pray and Jesus reveals himself in the imagery, picks him up as a little boy, brings him to Blessed Mother, and in this imagery the Blessed Mother is nursing him. That's beautiful. And in this imagery, the blessed mother is nursing him. And he went from sobbing in the depths of him to this joy on his face that for the next three times we met over a period of a couple months didn't stop and he didn't act out anymore.

It was like, okay, what just happened here? Something was real, you know, however you want to explain it, something was really real here. So I didn't see him again and I was getting ready to write about it and be healed. And I said, I'd really like to get in touch with this guy. I call him John in the book and out of the blue after 10 years, he calls me. And I'm just shocked. I said, I've been feeling like I need to get in touch with you, I had no idea where you lived,

what city, anything else. And he wanted to tell me the rest of the story. He was free for three years, and then he went back. And he fell into deep despair because I thought I was free and I'm not. And what happened is he found people to pray with him in the same way and there was a part of the memory that he wasn't ready to share that was too painful and it was six months before this event.

So he was a year and a half rather than two years old. And so in this second prayer experience that he's telling me about, the Lord brought him back to a point when he's a year and a half and his mom's, I think pre pregnant with his sister or maybe the pregnant with his sister, her sister wasn't born yet. And her mother died in another country. pregnant with his sister or maybe pregnant with his sister, her sister wasn't born yet. And her mother died in another country. And so she left this little boy, weaned him instantly and didn't see him for six weeks.

And what, what happened in this memory is he realized that all the pain of seeing his sister nurse was bringing up the pain of his totally unconscious, the pain of his being abandoned at that. Is this something that he, as a man, what could have remembered and told you apart from this pair of experience? Like I got this memory from when I was one and a half. Nope, but he validated it afterwards. Oh, so he then asked his mom about it and that was valid. Everything was valid,

but this was totally revelation. So as a therapist, we could have never gotten there. Yeah. But it was the Holy Spirit that brought him not just with me, but to validate it with somebody completely different, the same experience. And in this situation, he is in touch with his deep pain of abandonment and this rage as his mom's leaving. And in this prayer experience and how he knew it was so real is he would have never constructed this. Jesus went to his mother and he said the look of Jesus, compassion for his mother, recognizing what his mother was going through and Jesus touching his mother's

shoulder with that compassion. He said, in that moment, my one and a half year old self could forgive my mother just like that. And he said, from that point forward, And he said from that point forward, he said I'd had hatred towards my mother and my sister from the time I was little and didn't understand why till now and it was gone. And he then developed a relationship with his mother, developed a relationship with his sister,

got married, had little girls, and was free of pornography. He said he fell four times over three years, just out of habit, but it had no drive to it. It had no compulsion to it. So to me, that's a good example. Again, I use these as stories because they illustrate something that's in principle,

that's really hard to, you know, make up. But it's an example of areas of freedom that we can't save ourselves from. Therapy can't save us from. Therapy can help us get there, but it's really when Jesus says I've come to save and to seek what is lost, I've come to restore what's broken, you know, I've come to heal the broken hearts. To me, that's a very literal statement, not just back then, but now. Yeah, yeah. So I've experienced this sort of prayer myself, and it's as real to me as my experience of gravity. So I'm not calling it into question. But for those who are watching this and they're new to this idea, I think they want to know where is this language in the Fathers? Where

is this in the mystics? This sounds relatively new, and because of that I'm a bit suspicious. Just hold that thought for one moment, because I have another thought, which is it seems that Catholics are all too ready to believe the accounts of saints or those who have been beatified or those who have been who have been deceased and lived holy lives. If we read about their accounts with the with the Lord, we just we almost of course, we just accept them without really kind of offering any kind of pushback. So that that that's interesting. interesting. What do you think about them

is so different to you? I mean, that guy was probably a knucklehead to some degree, as you are, just as ordinary as you are. Anyway, so. Yeah, if you think about how is the scripture written? The scripture is written out of people's experiences with God. Some of them face to face with Jesus, but in the Old Testament, like with Ezekiel and Jeremiah, I mean, were they face to face? No. Or did they work through, when it talks about spiritual eyes and spiritual senses, did they work in their, some of them could be external visions, but some of them could be these internal prayer experiences. And you see that all the way through history.

I mean, these encounters that the saints have, they're real encounters. And some of them happened in person, some of them happened in apparition, some of them happened in prayer, some of them happened through scripture. And you think about Saint Ignatius and some of the saints who have used this kind of method

of praying with Lectio Divina and entering into the scriptures. And like the man I said who had sexually abused his daughters was just praying that way in the scriptures that he could encounter the truth in Jesus in that way. And so there's lots of different ways that he meets us, but it's personal, it's not global. It's global too, but it's personal. It's not global. It's global too, but it's personal.

What about this imaginative prayer perhaps in the saints and doctors of the church? Should we see it there? Yeah, again, Ignatius would be an example. Teresa of Avila. Teresa of Avila, she used a lot of imaginative prayer. There are others, but I couldn't rattle off right now. Is it that the language we use today is

sort of synonymous for words Say the ancients or the medieval's use we use things like wounds or I don't know things like that Whereas that would I don't know if there was much use of the words wounds in the psychological sense in the yeah I don't know, you know, you have to think psychology is only a science in the last hundred fifty years. So you think about the development of doctrine, you know, like the development of philosophy. Yes, yes. Like philosophy doesn't replace the scriptures, but philosophy helps us understand... Well, that's good, yeah. What's happening. Same thing with every field, you know, what we understand now about creation, right?

Excellent. Yeah. It's not the same. The fathers wouldn't have come to those conclusions. Spoken about botany in the same way we would or astronomy or... Yeah, but there's nothing contrary, you know, and so it's Newman's idea of the development of doctrine. This isn't even doctrine, but the development of integration of our faith into every aspect of life. And it's really why Thomas Aquinas started, you know, back in that area, why they started the university system, right? Is to bring the whole universe together. And so I think it's a byproduct of that kind of integration of every aspect of life. That's a really helpful answer. All right,

so we're about to give away a hundred copies of Bob's book, Be Restored. I'm gonna give you the promo code right now. You wanna click the link in the description below. It'll take you over to the publisher. You wanna put it into your cart, and then at checkout, put this promo code in, and it'll leave you only with shipping. I'm gonna pay the 17.95 or whatever it is.

So click the link, and then use the promo code freebook100, all one word, free F-R-E-E, book100. If you could put that in the, probably it'll be gone by the time the live chat's over. So at least put it in the live chat, freebook100, and you'll get a free copy of this excellent book by Bob. Only one per customer. And I would ask too, you know, like if the hundred run out

in the next little bit, just buy the bloody thing. You know, it's, I would highly recommend it and think it'll be tremendous help to you. So there's that. So that they go on our website and then go to the store. Well, no, this link will take them directly to where this book is, be restored. Yeah, yeah.

So that's great. Thank you. Yeah, any thoughts on this or the book you wanna sum up before we take some questions? No, I mean, we talked a lot about the different aspects, but you know, psychosexual development is also very important. It's how we develop as male and female.

So we didn't touch that whole area, but you know, right now that's a, that's a raging concern right now. I know we have some questions about that. So that might give you an opportunity to speak about it. Okay. So we're going to take questions from those who support us on locals and Patreon. I'm going to be very careful not to use people's names because I understand the nature of some of these things are going to be difficult. I apologize in advance for probably not being

able to get to all of these questions because we had a ton in them But certainly the book be restored and then what is the link to your website? John Paul the second healing center, so it's JP II healing said you want putting that in the description below So we can check that out if they want to learn more dot org. Yeah. Yeah Okay Let's see This person says I don't know if this sounds too empiric empiricalist or even impossible, but for those of us with decadent pasts, is it possible to literally forget these sins?

Although being repentant and forgiven by Christ, the memories haunt me. Yeah, we don't forget every every memory is stored in us, but we're not conscious of most of our memories. And I love what Jesus says, which is the Holy Spirit will bring to mind what we're ready for, bring to truth, you know, progressively. And so, yes, is it possible to get to a place of peace with those things that haunt you? Absolutely. Is it possible to get to a place of peace with those things that haunt you? Absolutely. Is it possible to forget them? No.

But what happens is the memories transform from a place of shame and fear and self-hatred to a place of peace and gratitude. And sometimes it takes a while to get from here to there. Yeah, yeah. Anything short of a frontal lobotomy or something is probably not going to erase these images. And even in heaven, you know, it's not as if the Lord's going to do some neurological work on us so that we forget what we existed through. But as you say, it'll be sort of redeemed. Yeah. Okay. Eric asks, Hey, Dr. Shoots,

how would you advise a happily married father of five who struggles with impatience? Me can be quick to get frustrated or even angry while also homeschooling kids, all under 10 and runs his two businesses from home. It's really hard. Good days, bad days and sometimes just difficult to get stuff done. I find myself wanting to leave the house and even question if I should get an office outside the home to just get away sometimes asking for a friend. Wink. So I guess that is me.

Yeah. So this is a question from me. I also identify as Eric. You know, but he that broader question is struggling with impatience, frustration, anger, I know the times that I've gotten angry at my kids or my wife, you know, and I'll I'll almost notice a child like I act like a child and I'm so embarrassed by it that it kind of makes me either get angrier or I just want to abandon the whole situation altogether. Anyway, it's not about me. It's about Eric. So what do you think? Well, I think the first of all is the awareness. So it's the beginning, right? Is the awareness of this is what I do. And then the second is, how do you relate to yourself when you become aware?

And my guess is from the question, it's an increasing frustration, it's an increasing shame and self-criticism in the middle of it. And so it's becoming aware, then becoming aware of how you relate to yourself in it, and then begin to explore. Okay, let me look at the situations.

Some of it's just common sense of, yeah, there's probably needs to be better boundaries between trying to do work. Run two businesses. And homeschool all at the same time. Yeah. You know, so part of it's just practical, but other parts of it, what I'm hearing in that

are shame and powerlessness. You know, oftentimes our frustration comes out of a feeling of powerlessness, feeling of being overwhelmed, feeling of, I want to do something and I can't do it. And whether that's parent well, or whether it's be attentive here and be attentive here and accomplish this. And you know,

so I would pay attention to what's underneath the anger and the frustration, but particularly from a place of compassion for yourself and exploration, you know, as Sister Miriam talks about, you know, with kindness and compassion and curiosity, right? Yes. And not with self-condemnation and just self-hatred. Yes, yes. You know, Saint Francis de Sables is great on this point in the introduction to the devout life. He's talking about how we fall and then we become angry that we've fallen and how this says way more about our pride than it does about the situation and about God's attitude towards us and that our attitude should be to pick ourselves up, to go to the Lord and say, �Here I am again,

fallen back into the sin I said I wouldn't fall into, but I love you and I know you love me.� Like that sort of tremendous confidence, you know, it's also self-defeating to get angry when you're angry Yeah, it's difficult increases it. I just aggravate is it an aspire? Anonymous asks when do you tell if you are facing a spiritual issue instead of just mental health when it comes to things like trauma? I have been finding most mental health treatments ineffective but praying the Saint Michael the Archangel and the Rosary to be much more helpful. Yeah tough question. It's a discernment question in the individual circumstances but I would say that most trauma that I run into has both a psychological and a spiritual element to it and the way that I have

come to understand that over the years is if you think about the event itself and then the belief that gets attached to the event. Okay, so there's some trauma and let's say it's a trauma of rejection. Well, what gets internalized into the heart of the person who feels rejected? A lot of beliefs and we call them identity lies and those identity lies didn't come out of nowhere they're lies they're they're coming out of the father of lies now whether or not there's an active participation of evil there or just the the thoughts that are evil my experience is that they kind of come together.

That when we have ways of thinking, we can then invite spiritual influences into those places. Just like when we're praying, we can invite the Holy Spirit. When we're hating ourselves, we can invite spiritual realities into that. It doesn't mean they live inside of us, but they're, they're influencing us. They may be obsessive thoughts or something. So I don't separate the two automatically. It's a discernment about how do we deal with each? Uh, so both therapy and St.

Michael prayer and some deliverance prayer, some renouncing prayer can be helpful. Thanks. Uh, Maggie has a question about personality disorders, in particular BPD, bipolar disorder, I think. And NPD, I don't know what that is. I have BPD and I'm currently in, this might not help if you don't know what these are, DBT, but I cannot stop finding contradictions to my Catholic faith in the program. Mostly in the mindfulness my counselors are teaching me. I have not participated in some that make me very uncomfortable. I am also curious about narcissism.

My ex-husband, old friends, family members, and various other people in my lives have these traits. I understand the borderline attract these kinds of people. And I am wondering how I can change this my ex husband was diagnosed officially in his therapist told me he was malignant I have PTSD and often have authority sorry auditory hallucinations of his abusive words and realizing that this is very long so long story short how do you recommend healing in a Catholic perspective for a borderline.

There's a lot there and I'm probably gonna be inadequate in the answer but first is just a compassion for the. Maggie for Maggie for the struggle that that is you know just not only into inner internally but interpersonal with husband so we just offer a little bit of redefinition. I like to think of even though there's some genetic components and some of those. So let me just offer a little bit of redefinition. I like to think of, even though there's some genetic components in some of those, I like to think of those relationally rather than diagnostically. Okay, so what is narcissism? Yeah, that's a good question because it's a buzzword today and I sometimes wonder if we're just throwing it around when we just mean that guy sucks. Yeah. He's a jerk or something.

Yeah. Doc, uh, Stating Nations talks about all of us are narcissists. Hmm. Does he use the word? Uh, at least in the interpretation that I read. Yeah. And, and so what is narcissism? Narcissism is being focused so much in me and self-centeredness

that I'm oblivious to the needs of those around me and so I'm gonna manipulate and use people to get what I need. Well, there's also an element of immaturity in that. There's also not growing out of two-year-old stage and not growing out of adolescence. And so I like to look beyond the diagnosis to the person and what's the person suffering there.

And the same thing with bipolar. Again, recognizing there's a genetic and biochemical aspect of it. But most of the people that I've worked with who've had those kinds of diagnoses, they're early attachment problems. You know, places where there wasn't security, there wasn't this sense of I can rest in being loved and being taken care of. There's this erratic sometimes I can sometimes I can't, which you know has that quality in

the bipolar of this and that. And again, I'm not dismissing that there can be biochemical and genetic factors in that, but just to be able to, again, see yourselves through the eyes of Jesus and see the people around you with the eyes of Jesus, it's rather than standing in judgment towards yourself and standing in judgment towards others, starting to look at each other with love and good boundaries, which is what neither one of those, neither narcissism or bipolar have good boundaries.

So it's learning how to exercise really good healthy boundaries and pay attention to the anxiety that comes when you have boundaries because there's this push and pull between separation and connection. And so it's more at that level that I would explore. She mentioned the cognitive behavioral therapy, I think. That's just dealing with the thoughts. And to me, the thoughts are deeper than just our cognitive awareness. They're also emotional thoughts. They're also thoughts that come from the heart. You let me know love if you need to go on a do you need the kids or it's fine if you want to walk past the camera any point my wife see you ladies and gentlemen.

Okay so I wanted to point out to people and to Maggie about hello because hello is a sponsor of the show so I'm kind of bound contractually to promote them but I really think they're terrific. My wife and I were just watch going through the app last night. We were so impressed. And the reason I bring it up is because you and Sister Miriam have a whole series on this that Maggie and others could find helpful. Could you tell us about that?

Yeah. Hello invited us to lead people through a series of meditations and prayers around the seven deadly wounds. Wow. And so Sister Miriam's lovely voice is on halo. And your lovely voice. And mine, yeah. And it's just meant to help people at all ages, you know, probably down to about 10

years old, all ages, just to be able to pray through and meditate through different areas. Yeah. So people can go to hello, HALLOW.com slash Matt Fradd, and when they sign up online, they get at least one month free to the entirety of the app. If you just download the app, you'll get access to some things. You'll see how great it is. But you have to pay to have access to it. If you go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd,

link in the description below, it'll give you at least one month free. So even if you can't afford this, or if you don't like it after a month, you just cancel it, you won't be charged a cent. But I would highly recommend that people check that out because that could be the beginning of some significant healing for folks there.

So they could, yeah. Yeah, the link is in the description there. And it looks like we crashed the Ave Maria. Yes. Take that Ave Maria. I told them I warned three times. I said we will crash your website. And they said, no, we're pretty sure we're good. We have everything ready.

I knew you wouldn't. I warned you three times. This is not my fault. All right. But so since if you can't access that right now, a trick is go to the Halo link and that will not be as easily crashable. And then you can get Halo and go get Halo first. Worry about that. And then when this thing comes back, I wonder if they've sold a hundred yet or not.

You know, they also have a thing on meditation that maybe goes. Yeah, yeah. This was recommending her do, but these are Catholic meditation. Yeah, my wife just suggested the beautiful meditations on this. Hello after this Maggie could benefit from MB. We won't say the person's name because I'd like to remain anonymous, but she says, please, please pass along my tremendous. Thanks to Bob.

His book be restored has brought healing. I never I have never known despite years of conventional and ED a MDR therapy every word of chapter six spoke to me appendix for contemplative prayer open something I can't even describe I'm not even done with the book yet I got it last week when you mentioned it on one of the I mentioned it in one of the podcasts also thank you Matt your work has been more of a blessing to me than you know. So perhaps, yeah, what is for those who aren't aware EMDR?

EMDR is a method of dealing with trauma that a lot of good Catholic therapists will use. And many of them use it with prayer. So kind of what we were talking about before, the EMDR brings up the trauma and, and helps kind of by moving both sides of the brain, uh, activate the emotions with the trauma and gets to the belief systems that, you know, that are kind of embedded in the trauma and then, uh, allows that to dissipate. Uh, so again,

that's an example of combining the psychological and the spiritual together. You wanna say goodbye to Bob? Bye! Bye, love you. Sorry everyone for seeing my head. Let's say lovely head. Just don't knock that camera or else it'll be extra awkward. Love you darling.

Yeah, yeah, see you. Julia, well, let's just say Julia. Again, I want to be careful of people's anonymity here. She's a patron. Big thanks. She says, how does one keep hope alive during the healing process? Feels like I'm job. Just I'm just stuck in the pain and grief and it's hard to believe that healing is for

me too. That's a great question because often when we hear these stories of healing, we usually hear it from the final thing that happened that led to healing. And what we don't realize is it's a bloody slog. In some sense, it might be easier to not even undertake the healing process in the short term. And if you agree, you can explain what I mean by that. Yeah, but also hopelessness is a wound, right? It's a work of the enemy to get us to shut down,

to close off, to quit. And so, yes, there can be hopelessness that comes off in discouragement, but I would pray in that specifically. I would pray and really acknowledge the hopelessness. This is never gonna change. I'm never gonna get any better. None of this helps me.

It's gonna go on and on and on and on, I'll never, just naming those beliefs and we call them identity lives because they may be true to experience but they're not true to the gospel. Right? They're not, you know, Jesus said the one I began a good work and you I'll bring it to completion. Right? Keep your hope fixed on me and you'll never be disappointed. So there's scriptural truth that's contradictory to our experience. So we don't deny our experience, we name our experience, but then we let and invite the Holy Spirit to speak to those places of belief. This is why I'm such a fan of my sort of more charismatic brothers and sisters, because

I think it's a really great idea before prayer to tell God who he is and To tell yourself who you are in his eyes, you know, you are beautiful. You are good. You are trustworthy I am your son you have redeemed me Etc because we're so we're so quick to believe the opposite of those things. This is so natural Yeah, I would encourage people to do that Be weird. It's okay, you know, spend, spend some time telling God who He is. Colossians has a beautiful, I think it's chapter one or chapter two, where it almost sounds like a charismatic praying spontaneously, you know. You've, you've made a spectacle of the principalities. You have transferred us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom

of light with the saints and woof. I remember being really confused. Once I'm hearing in mass, you know, blessing God, the idea of blessing God, we bless yoga. Yeah, yeah. But I think that that's what that is. Yeah, it is. And it's in the Catechism. Yeah.

It says there's two movements of blessing. God blesses us and we bless him. Yeah, tell him who he is. This person says, what is your advice for someone struggling with scrupulosity? Does it normally have origins in one's personal history and wounds? How can someone heal and recover from this? Good again, individual circumstances. So this is general not may not apply to everybody who has scrupulosity, but typically scrupulosity is a combination of two wounds, shame and fear.

And usually there's rejection underneath it. So that if I don't perform well, I'll be rejected. So I'm afraid if I don't do everything right, I'm going to end up feeling shame, feeling, hating myself. Okay. So a lot of it is healed slowly by beginning to trust the way that God sees us, the way that God sees our mistakes, the way that God sees our failures. But it's usually tightly wound and it usually has an early origin. You know, it's usually in the first several years of life where that gets formed. And so if there's any kind of trauma in those first couple of years, it's really tightly wild.

So sometimes you have to go back to that earlier trauma where the fear and the shame and the rejection, uh, all started. So that's general. I don't know in this particular particular situation, speaking of praising God, there's that lovely Hill song song that says I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. So this idea of this is how I feel, but I am who you say I am, not who I say I am. Yeah, I was thinking a lot even last night with the students, some of the songs they were singing

as you were talking about just reaffirming who God is and who we are. This person says I work extensively in marriage preparation ministries. What are the most important messages to get to these couples with regard to wounds and families of origin? Okay. Let me recommend my book be devoted because I spend a whole chapter on that and also our unveiled conferences. But, uh, one is we were just, uh, actually doing a recording this morning and, um,

with Dr Scott Hahn said, uh, something from Kimberly that really stuck with me. He said, marriage doesn't just heal our wounds. It exposes our wounds. It does it right away. And most couples are afraid of that. Most couples are afraid of getting to that place. I don't that long. Take long. But yeah, why is that? Because not because marriage is difficult, but because

not only because you can't hide, but because there's a level of security now. It's like here is somebody that I love and that loves me and we're not going anywhere, at least at first. And so, there are inevitably all those deeper places where our heart's going to come up. What you said earlier about experiencing the mercy and love of Christ through the church is true of what I've experienced through Cameron, my wife. We've been married 15 years now and I can safely say she has seen me at my worst.

And to see her love me in that has just been terribly healing that is incredible I almost want to say do you not understand what I am yeah oh you do yeah and yet you're not leaving yeah if your marriage was like mine she'd probably help bring those wounds to the surface first and then showed you God's mercy do you mean through like not gaslighting that might be a negative way of putting it? No, just by interacting, just by day to day interacting. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. You go like just being in relationship with somebody who you care about is going to bring up all kind of stuff. It's also well, I was taking it perhaps more of in a negative sense, which I also think is true. My wife and I will sometimes say when we get into a fight like our wounds are rubbing up against each other Like we're just like triggering each other back and forth Yeah, and the rest of the rest of married couples true to yeah, but speak what is gaslighting? I mean, I've heard this and learned this term several years ago, but it is you don't think it's a helpful I don't know. I okay. It's a relatively new term, and it's used in every different way.

It comes from a movie which I've forgotten the name of. Maybe you can see what it is. But I guess this guy was trying to drive his wife insane. I think it was so that she would kill herself. So he would keep adjusting the light, and she would acknowledge it, and he would say, no, no, there's nothing change. It's you.

You're the problem. I think that's where the term has come from. See Catholic Jamie got it. It's called gaslight. 19 what? 1944. So I don't know if we fully answered that woman's question about marriage prep, but the book will be a start. Yeah. And, and also the conferences we do for premarital couples also. OK, good to know. And again, people can learn more about that at the JP to Healing Center. The link is in the description below.

Stacey says, Can Dr. Bob comment on the current crisis regarding gender identity, practical steps for Catholic families that have one young children at home and or two young adult children that live outside of the home when they declare their new names, pronouns and identity. Yeah, we're stepping into difficult territory right there in this culture. First of all, I'd say it's a part of a real issue that's been there for a while, but has

gotten so blown up that it's created a whole nother issue. And we used to call it gender identity confusion, then gender dysphoria, and then all kind of gender ideology. But I would say first of all, that we need to make the distinction between objective reality and subjective reality. And we all have that difference.

We all, every man and woman subjectively and subjective reality and we all have that difference. Every man and woman subjectively lives their masculinity and femininity differently. So masculinity being associated with a man, a male, and femininity with a female. So what happens with a child who has some kind of trauma or difficulty identification or difficulty accepting their own gender.

This isn't inborn, contrary to the public record, but it is early developmentally. And so I talk about some of this in Be Restored as the developmental, and I use the story of a man who was a transgender, was a man who became a woman who then became a man again. And so I illustrate through that story. So that might be helpful, that chapter. But, you know, for all of us, there's always a gap between the objective reality of who God says we are

and our own experience. We were talking about that before in terms of being lovable, right? There's an objective reality that God created us in his image and he loves us. And there's a subjective experience of all the things that I've internalized in my life that say I'm not lovable or I'm not good or I'm not wanted. So now just apply that to our sexuality. You know, maybe a parent said, I wanted a boy rather than a girl. Or maybe there was a sexual abuse early on and a rejection of femininity or masculinity or confusion about that. Or maybe there was a girl who's athletic

and she liked playing with the boys better. And so all of that's within the realm of normal development and wounds that happen in development. What makes that extreme in the situation in the book that I talk about is his grandmother at four, and four and five is a real critical age, his grandmother dressed him in dresses. And then when his uncle find out about him,

he sexually abused him at 12. And all of that created this hatred and confusion. I have people email me now telling me that they were a transgender man and now back to being a woman that was very unsatisfactory. So what we're doing as a culture to champion that in terms of pronouns and everything, I think is very unhealthy. I think you need to respect the person,

but not agree with the lie because you know, as science and DNA and everything else says, uh, no matter what a transgender person thinks they are, they're still not that reality. So we wouldn't say to, uh, you who are Australian and want to be a Haitian that, you know, I'm going to call you a Haitian. That would be to enter into the disturbance of your own self identity. And so there is a disturbance in self identity.

It usually children grow out of it, but now in our culture, now we're fastening onto it and inflating it and creating so much worse of a problem. We're gonna see, and we already are seeing, for example, the suicide rate, people say you need to treat them this way, otherwise they'll commit suicide. The suicide rate is 19 times higher for people who transition after a period of time

than ones who don't. And so it's not a solution. transition after a period of time than ones who don't. And so it's not a solution. Mutilating somebody's body is not a solution. Treating them with hormones and interfering with their development is not a solution. It just doubles down on the trauma. Just doubles down on the trauma. Yeah.

And what are some good resources in the United States? Cause I think in Canada, it's illegal to speak truth regarding this in therapy sessions, if I'm not mistaken. So there's a book when Harry became Sally. Yeah, not available on Amazon anymore since they they blocked it. Wow. Yeah. Wow. A free speech and all that. Interesting.

It's an excellent book. When Harry became Sally. I forget the fellow's name, but I would highly encourage that. Yeah. And there's a reference in this book to a couple of different resources too. I can't think of them right now. Okay. All right, we got a long one here. Okay. We'll see how we can do. Ready?

All right. This person says, maybe this isn't the right place to ask this. And I'm not sure what my question is exactly, but like you, I'm from a big family of eight kids and I'm the oldest. When I was 17, my mother told me that she was leaving and taking all of us with her We were going to leave while dad was at a men's retreat while that sounds bad

And it was my dad was an evil man He was abusive physically to my mother and myself and sexually abusive to my sisters and he didn't discriminate based on age It was horrific But I panicked and instead of supporting my mother as she did this desperate thing to save herself and her children, I ran away. Now 18 years later, our whole family is suffering in different ways. I still carry the guilt of abandoning my mother. She forgave me, but I don't think I forgive myself. I have forgiven my father many years ago and we have a stable relationship, but I'm the only one. He still struggles with addiction, but I try to honor him as my father and love him.

My family truly hates him and shows it different ways. I've shared my abuse with them, how I forgave him and how this has freed me, not healed me, but freed me. They can't or won't let go of it. It's affecting their families now. It's like a virus. What do I do? Is this even my issue to address with them? Well, this is a female. This is a male. And I believe I mean, the question perhaps was partly alluded to

in your discussion earlier about that man who abused his children. But yeah, yeah, I don't know that I'm going to answer that adequately, but. Praise God for your journey of healing and forgiveness and beginning to do that. I don't think you can get your family to change. I write about this in some of my stories about my family. In fact, in chapter seven, I talk about the process in my family.

And what I find is when you move into truth and move into forgiveness and move into trusting Jesus, it becomes first of all healing for you, but then healing for your relationships. And so it's not something you can force on anybody else in the family, but it's something that becomes contagious in a sense. And I hear the guilt of the abandonment, but I think that's, I would encourage you to deal with your own feelings of abandonment during that time, even though you're the one that ran away. Just, you know, that's a very tender age to go through separation without really choosing it. And you're not responsible for your mother's well-being, even though you're the oldest you felt responsible.

I took that on and it's an unhealthy place to take on that responsibility. Well thank you so much Bob for being on the show. Again people can click the link below to check out your ministry they can get your book What i'd like to do for our supporters who are watching is do maybe just a quick A private video for them So where I want to share with you what it was like a little bit going on their retreat because I went on this healing Retreat of yours and it was life-changing for me And so I firsthand would recommend that everyone do it but that will only be available to locals and patron supporters and get that video up shortly but anything else you want to leave people with before we wrap up.

No I just appreciate I've watched your shows a lot of your shows with Christopher and system area and so many others and just that you're going to these places that are really important so thank you thank you. Great.