5 Common Blocks to Real Forgiveness (and How to Overcome Them)

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A major new study confirms that forgiveness is good for your mental health.

That’s not exactly a shocker for Christians, who have been hearing about the spiritual benefits of forgiveness from Scripture and the saints for two thousand years. But before we yawn and move on, consider how those spiritual benefits cascade into every aspect of our lives.

Led by researchers at Harvard and published in ​npj Mental Health Research, the study tracked more than 200,000 people in 23 countries and found that the real benefits come not from isolated acts of forgiveness, but from what researchers call “dispositional forgivingness” — forgiveness practiced as a habitual way of moving through life. People who forgive that way tend to report meaningfully better well-being across a range of measures, especially in psychological health: happiness, sense of meaning, and reduced depression.

Okay, so just like Jesus said, forgiveness is the way to go. Most Christians get that. Where we run into problems, though, is actually forgiving…much less making forgiveness a life habit.

When we run into roadblocks, how do we overcome them to find real forgiveness?

Forgiveness Roadblocks…and How to Overcome Them

Rachael Isaac is a pastoral counselor at the Pastoral Solutions Institute who regularly helps clients work through their difficulty forgiving others. She identifies five common roadblocks that often get in the way…and the strategies that help people overcome them.

1. When You Believe Forgiving Means Forgetting

By far the most common roadblock to forgiveness, she says, is the widespread belief that forgiveness means moving on as if nothing happened.

“A lot of people think that forgiving someone means forgetting everything that they did — being in a relationship and acting like everything’s fine,” she says.

But there’s a real difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness, she says, “doesn’t mean that I’m forgetting everything that they did and I’m relinquishing all of my boundaries and we’re in relationship again. But it does mean I’m not allowing the hurt, the anger, the resentment to dictate my choices anymore.”

In other words, forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Forgiveness is about getting to a place where you can genuinely wish the other person well — even when you don’t feel like it. Reconciliation, on the other hand, means that the person who hurt you has done the work necessary to be safe around and build a relationship with.

We’ve covered the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation before; you can learn more in our blog archives.

2. When you feel like you need their permission

One of the most subtle and persistent blocks Isaac encounters is what she describes as a felt need for permission — specifically, the sense that you need something from the person who hurt you before you can forgive them. That “something” might be remorse, an apology, or a change of behavior.

“It comes from this place of powerlessness — like, I don’t feel like I have the power to do this on my own,” Isaac says. “I need permission from this other person.”

But when we delay forgiveness until the other person says the right thing or shows the right remorse, we’re really empowering them to control our interior life.

“I’m basing my choices for myself off of my resentment or anger or hurt,” Isaac explains. “I’m letting that other person decide for me rather than me deciding for myself.”

The path forward is recognizing that forgiveness is a choice that belongs entirely to you. Waiting for their “permission” makes you a hostage, emotionally yanked one way or another by the other person’s behavior. Forgiveness, on the other hand, frees you from the emotional control of the other person.

3. When anger feels like you’re doing something

A second block is the unconscious belief that holding on to resentment and anger is getting you somewhere.

“We hold onto anger and resentment because it feels like we’re punishing the other person,” Isaac says. “But really, we’re just punishing ourselves.” Even if the other person is aware of your anger, it almost certainly doesn’t affect them as much as it does you.

And the effect it has on you isn’t good. The Harvard study cited above found that unforgiveness results in higher rates of depression, anxiety, and the negative physical effects of a sustained stress response.

Isaac’s practical tool for cutting through this is a simple self-check: “Is this helping me, or is this hurting me?”

For people who still have difficulty letting go of anger and resentment, she sometimes recommends a “poison pen” exercise — writing a letter to the person who hurt you, saying everything you would want to say, and then destroying it.

“It allows you to process your thoughts and open the drain a little bit on the anger and resentment that’s building up,” she says.

4. When forgiveness feels like surrender

Perhaps the most widespread misunderstanding Isaac encounters is the belief that to forgive is to forget — to lower your guard, drop your limits, and silently signal that what happened was somehow acceptable.

It isn’t. And God himself doesn’t model it that way.

“God doesn’t call us to forgive and forget,” she says. “Yes, he calls us to forgiveness — but so that we get unstuck and can move towards meaningfulness and intimacy and virtue.”

This circles back to our earlier discussion of the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is about freeing yourself from your desire to hurt the person who hurt you. That desire for retribution is replaced by a desire for the other person’s well-being.

But here’s the key: wanting the other person to be well doesn’t mean letting them off the hook. Instead, it means helping them, when possible, to take accountability for their actions. That’s the only way they will find healing and wholeness.

5. When the hurt keeps happening

In Matthew 18:21-22, Jesus tells Peter to forgive others not just seven times, but “seventy times seven” (or seventy-seven times, depending on the translation).

This can be misinterpreted, though. Jesus isn’t asking us to give the other person permission to keep hurting us over and over. Remember, forgiveness only requires us to let go of our impulse to hurt the other person back.

“Forgiveness is not wishing that person ill,” Isaac says. “But I’m also not going to let you keep treating me that way.”

That might mean requiring certain conditions for the relationship to continue, significantly reducing contact, or in some cases ending the relationship altogether.

These actions could be retaliatory if your reason for taking them is to punish or hurt the other person. But healthy boundaries are sometimes necessary not only for your own well-being but for the other person’s as well. Placing limits on a relationship in order to prevent the other person from sinning against you is entirely consistent with forgiveness.

Isaac recalls working with a client whose husband was so persistently and intentionally harmful that no amount of good faith or effort on her part could change the dynamic.

“You can’t do anything with that, because he’s not willing to do the work it takes to be in a healthy relationship,” she says. “It’s not on her for walking away from that situation. That’s on him.”

Through all of it, Isaac encourages clients to bring God into the ongoing work of forgiveness — actively, not passively. She suggests praying along these lines: “Lord, what’s going to give me clarity? What’s going to help me move towards the healing that you want for me?”

Getting unstuck

Isaac’s clinical experience backs up the findings of the Harvard research on the benefits of forgiveness. When her clients stop giving resentment power over their choices, she says, real change tends to follow.

“Forgiveness opens that door to healthier relationship,” she says. “Forgiving and saying I’m not going to let this person have power over me and my actions definitely leads towards increased mental health.”

For more help working through the practical and spiritual dimensions of forgiveness, check out Dr. Greg Popcak’s God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! and Rachael Isaac’s digital journal Not Me First, But Me Too — a simple system for honoring your own needs without guilt. And for one-on-one support, reach out to Rachael Isaac or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

When “Fixing” Loved Ones Doesn’t Work, What Next?

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Even professional counselors miss the mark sometimes. For Dr. Greg Popcak, that moment came a few decades ago. After several conversations with a friend who was going through a rough time, his friend finally said, “Greg, you’re making me feel like a project.”

Dr. Popcak thought he was doing everything right: listening carefully, identifying the issues, walking his friend through solutions. But his friend’s words hit home, helping him realize that he had made his friend’s problem the focus of their relationship rather than seeing him as a person, a beloved child of God.

“My intentions were good but, there you go,” Dr. Popcak said on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show. “And I think it happens to all of us where we want to be there for another person, but sometimes the way we’re choosing to be there for them just isn’t landing the way we thought it would.”

If you’ve ever tried to help someone you care about only to watch them push you away, shut down, or accuse you of meddling—well, you’re not the only one. Maybe they deny there’s even a problem. Maybe they listen but never change. Or maybe your efforts to help are keeping you up at night.

Whatever the case might be, when helping hurts more than heals, something needs to change. Here are four principles to follow so that your desire to help produces good fruit for both you and your loved one.

1. Prioritize the Person Over the Problem

As Dr. Popcak learned when he was trying to help his friend, when we make someone’s problem the center of our relationship with them, we’re no longer in communion with them. Instead, we’ve reduced them to a puzzle we need to solve, a broken thing we need to fix. That’s not love—that’s control dressed up in compassionate clothing.

The Theology of the Body helps here. As St. John Paul II wrote in his book Love and Responsibility, loving someone means more than doing nice things for them. It means working for their ultimate good, really helping them become the person God made them to be. Everything we say and do should bring out the best in others.

“As my friend reminded me, people aren’t projects, right?” Dr. Greg said. “They’re not fixer-uppers waiting for our renovation plan. And when we treat them that way, even accidentally, we do stop seeing them as persons. True love respects the other person’s freedom and dignity.”

2. Is your relationship deep enough?

One of the core principles the Popcaks emphasize is this: “The relationship has to be deep enough to contain the conversation you want to have.”

“If your relationship is relatively superficial and you’re just talking about current events or what he did this past week, you’re not going to have those deeper discussions about his goals, his life choices, faith, values, those kind of things,” Dr. Greg explained.

The solution isn’t to force deeper conversations. It’s to deepen the relationship first. This means:

  •       spending time together without an agenda
  •       showing up consistently
  •       demonstrating through your actions that you value them as a person

A caller named Valerie shared how she did this with her adult son. Rather than lecturing him about his choices, she focused on practical acts of love. Specifically, she brought him food, cooked for him, or took him out to eat. Those meals became opportunities for real connection.

3. Ask God what he wants from you in this situation

A common pitfall for people of faith, Lisa Popcak said, is rushing into a situation because God has appointed us to help.

While it’s true that God wants us to help those who are struggling, how we do that matters. When we want to help someone—whether it’s a toddler, a friend, or an adult child—it’s important to pause to pray and ponder.

Not every person God brings into your life is someone you’re meant to fix, the Popcaks noted. Sometimes God wants you to simply love them; other times, you’re meant to pray, or to be a good listener. And sometimes you’re meant to let them face the natural consequences of their choices without rescuing them.

Lisa compared our tendency to jump into “helper mode” with St. Francis of Assisi’s initial response when God told him to rebuild his church. Francis started literally rebuilding stone churches, picking up rocks and mortar.

“And God’s like, ‘That’s not what I meant,’” she said. “I need you to rebuild the church with the way I’m teaching you to live and how you’re supposed to reach out to people.”

Before you decide how to help, pause and pray. Ask God what he’s inviting you to do in this situation. What does this person actually need from you? The answer might be very different from what you assume they need.

4. Focus on producing good fruit, not on feeling helpful

Here’s a hard truth: if your efforts aren’t producing good fruit in the other person’s life, you’re not actually helping—no matter how much energy you’re pouring into the situation. Real helpfulness is measured by results, not by effort or intention.

“Sometimes we think being helpful means doing something, right? Fixing problems, giving advice, stepping in,” Dr. Popcak said. “And we tend to tell ourselves that we’re being helpful even when our efforts aren’t producing good fruit.”

In other words, we measure our helpfulness by our intentions rather than by the actual results, focusing on what makes us feel like good helpers instead of what actually serves the other person’s growth.

This requires brutal honesty with ourselves. Are you spending hours worrying about someone but never actually talking to them? Are you giving the same advice over and over while they ignore it? Are you enabling destructive behavior by constantly rescuing them from consequences?

Connect, Show Up, and Trust God

If you’re exhausted from trying to help someone who won’t be helped, or if you’re wondering whether you are actually helping, take a breath: step back and ask God what he’s actually calling you to do in this relationship. Build connection before offering correction, show up consistently without an agenda, and trust that God loves this person even more than you do.

For more advice about helping adult children, consider reading Having Meaningful (Sometimes Difficult) Conversations with Your Adult Sons & Daughters by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. And for more one-on-one guidance on supporting the people you love while maintaining your own peace, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

How the Saints Can Correct Our Idea of What ‘Holiness’ Looks Like

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You wouldn’t think that a 16th-century prankster would have much to contribute to a modern pastoral counseling practice—but St. Philip Neri is one of pastoral counselor Jacob Flores-Popcak’s go-to saints.

Known as the “Apostle of Rome,” Philip Neri was famous for his holiness—and his humor. Once, he even showed up to a banquet held in his honor with all the hair on one side of his head shaved clean off (eyebrows and beard, too!), smiling and chatting all evening as if nothing were unusual.

For Flores-Popcak, this story captures an often-overlooked truth about emotional and spiritual growth: humility and silliness often go hand in hand. Flores-Popcak often uses Philip Neri’s example in therapy sessions to help clients see how pride can quietly sabotage relationships.

“A lot of the time relationship problems come down to wanting so badly to save face and to be taken seriously,” Flores-Popcak said. “Then I fall into the sin of pride and end up kind of shutting out my capacity for empathy or compassion.”

True humility, he explains, doesn’t mean putting ourselves down; it means being willing to let go of control—even to risk looking foolish for the sake of love. Embracing the role of Neri’s “holy fool” frees up our mind and heart to feel empathy for the other person’s situation. “And that’s going to make me a more effective communicator—and ironically, make sure that I am understood.”

Why the Saints Belong in Pastoral Counseling

A few years ago, Flores-Popcak did a deep dive into the writings of the saints about issues that often come up in pastoral counseling. He found a treasure trove of insights that resonate with the best evidence-based practices of 21st century counselors.

“Let’s recognize that mental health isn’t a new thing,” he said. “Humans have always had brains and relationships. So if someone is sincerely trying to love and serve Christ—which are really the same thing—they’re naturally going to have some good advice about how to live and relate well.

He eventually boiled his project down into twenty quotes that he turned into social media posts. Here’s a sampling:

  • St. Thomas Aquinas: “…a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up… when a man sees others saddened by his own sorrow, it seems as though others were bearing the burden with him, striving, as it were, to lessen its weight” (Summa Theologica, Quaestio 38).
  • St. Peter Damian: “But if I were to tell you of all the graces conferred by tears, the day would be at an end before I had finished… Tears bring forth joy from sadness. When they spring from the eyes… they raise us up to the hope of eternal blessedness.”
  • St. Catherine of Siena: “What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and He might weep when they are gone” (The Dialogue, 96)
  • St. Philip Neri: “…Let us aim for joy, rather than respectability. Let us make fools of ourselves from time to time, and thus see ourselves, for a moment, as the all-wise God sees us.”
  • St. Ignatius of Loyola: “It is not the soul alone that should be healthy; if the mind is healthy in a healthy body, all will be healthy and much better prepared to give God greater service.”
  • St. Teresa of Avila: “It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us, so that we may learn to know ourselves… As a rule, all our anxieties and troubles come from misunderstanding our own nature.”

The quote that elicited the largest response on social media was the one from St. Peter Damien about the value of tears.

“We had people sharing vulnerably about how their parents had screamed at them or even hit them for crying, telling them to ‘offer it up.’ And then here’s a Doctor of the Church talking about the importance of letting yourself cry—both psychologically and spiritually,” Flores-Popcak said. “For a lot of people, it was eye-opening to realize that maybe their parents were wrong—that the Church actually values tears as something holy and healing.”

The Saints Didn’t Have It Easy

Flores-Popcak is not the only pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com who brings the saints into their counseling sessions. Often, counselors will bring up the lives of the saints to offer their clients encouragement.

“We think of saints as being these perfect people with perfect faith, but they were truly people who had difficulties in their life,” says pastoral counselor Rachael Isaac. “It wasn’t about being perfect or not struggling with things, but the conviction to continue to turn to God and not let struggles define them that made them the saints we know.”

Another pastoral counselor, Grant Freeman, challenges clients to think about where Mary’s deep peace came from. It would be simplistic to think that being “full of grace” meant that she had it easy. But if you think about it, he said, the Joyful Mysteries could really be dubbed the “Nightmare Mysteries.”

“The Annunciation: Unmarried pregnancy that will likely be perceived negatively. The Visitation: 90-mile journey with morning sickness,” he said. “Christmas: Not necessarily a cakewalk; also, slaughter of the innocents. Presentation: Simeon and Anna aren’t necessarily harbingers of joy. Finding in the temple? In the modern era, a CPS incident.”

His point is that Mary’s peace was really grounded in deep trust in the Lord’s providence.

Counselor Andy Proctor said he often points clients to saints who overcame painful family histories. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Martin de Porres are favorite examples; both of them experienced instability and rejection early in life yet grew into people of deep compassion. Their stories, he says, offer hope to anyone still healing from their past: your history may shape you, but it doesn’t have to define you. Grace can transform even the hardest beginnings into holiness.

St. Maximilian Kolbe: Choosing the Adult Mindset

Of course, the saints also provide a model navigating those difficulties. For Ron LaGro, St. Maximilian Kolbe is the ultimate example of emotional maturity—what therapists call an adult mindset.

Kolbe’s calm courage in Auschwitz showed that he refused to let emotions or circumstances dictate his choices. Even in a starvation bunker, he remained centered and purposeful, leading other prisoners in hymns as they died together.

LaGro contrasts this with what he calls the child mindset—blaming others or situations for one’s actions. “People say, ‘I’d do the right thing, but my spouse…’ or ‘but my situation…’ That’s the misery-making mindset,” he said. “Kolbe shows what it looks like to stay centered, responsible, and free—even in the darkest places.”

The Saints Show Us the Way

From Philip Neri’s playful humility to Mary’s steadfast trust and Kolbe’s self-possession, the saints model the kind of emotional and spiritual maturity that leads to lasting peace. They show us that holiness and wholeness are two sides of the same coin—each born from grace cooperating with human effort.

This All Saints Day, consider which saint speaks to your own struggles right now. What lesson might God be offering you through their story?

And if you’d like help applying that wisdom in your own life, reach out to a Catholic pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com. 

Instead of Settling, Become Who You Are

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“That’s just not me.” How many times have you said—or thought—that phrase?

We humans have a natural tendency to define ourselves by our limitations. We create identity statements that box us in: “I’m just not an affectionate person,” “I don’t like praying out loud in a group,” or “I’m not comfortable with emotional vulnerability.”

We all have limits, preferences, and patterns we fall back on. Maybe you’ve even named your particular set of strengths and weaknesses with the help of a personality inventory.

But as Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak explained in a recent episode of the CatholicHOM podcast, these identity statements are only a starting point, not our final destination. They are helpful to the extent that they point us in the direction of growth.

And that means stepping out of the comfort of our self-defined identity to become the people God calls us to be.

‘Become Who You Are’

“Become who you are.” This simple four-word exhortation of St. John Paul II may seem cryptic at first. How do we “become” who we “are”? A seed might “become” a tree, but a tree doesn’t “become” a tree, after all. But, Dr. Popcak says, St. John Paul II is hinting at a deeper reality.

Whatever we may think of ourselves right now, we are called to become saints—that is, people fully caught up in the love of the Holy Trinity.

“The fact is, we already are those (saints) that we’re trying to become. Theologians like to talk about God as the ‘ground of our being,’” Dr. Popcak explains. “What that phrase means is that the closer we draw to God, the more we become who we really are, because the saints that we are destined to be already exist in God. And the more we draw closer to him, the more that true self, who we really are, is revealed.”

So, while personality inventories or self-reflection might help us understand our identity right now, we are called to move beyond our present selves to claim our true identity, which is already present in God’s heart.

“Our job is to stop settling for what we see when we look in the mirror and instead lean into the person God sees when he looks at us, because that’s who we really are,” Dr. Popcak says.

Everyday Opportunities for Growth

Many of our self-defined limitations stem from past experiences, the Popcaks suggest, often rooted in spiritual or emotional injury. These don’t have to be major traumas—they might be as simple as how we were raised, experiences in school, or even a lack of certain experiences that makes something feel foreign or “not me.”

When we recognize that our limitations often come from wounds or gaps rather than our true nature, we can approach them with greater compassion and curiosity. Instead of defending them as immutable aspects of our identity, we can ask: “What might be possible if I were willing to grow beyond this boundary?”

It is our closest relationships—with spouses, children, siblings, friends—that often present the most powerful invitations to grow beyond our limits, the Popcaks say.

God put these people in our lives, Lisa Popcak says, and it is by responding to their needs that we grow into our true identity. “It is about everything in the household, all of the people trying their best to meet the needs of the other, even when it causes us to stretch and grow,” she says.

She points to the example of St. Joseph, a godly man who listened to God even in his sleep and responded with courage to the needs of the people entrusted to his care. We might not be called to marry an already-pregnant woman, raise the Son of God, or flee to another country to protect our family. But like Joseph, responding to the needs of the people in our life with generosity and good cheer may take us well outside our comfort zone. It might mean being more physically affectionate (even though we weren’t raised that way), drawing healthy boundaries instead of giving in to a friend’s self-destructive behavior, or spending less time at work to spend more time with our family. It might mean trying a support group despite our deep discomfort or working hard to curb our habit of starting the day with a negative attitude. The possibilities are boundless!

It’s a Mutual Thing

The concept of mutuality plays an important role here, the Popcaks say. Within a family, for instance, each person is called to give their whole selves to the others, but at the same time, the other members of the family are called to give their whole selves to that person.

While “mutual self-donation” is the goal, the Popcaks are careful to distinguish between healthy growth and unhealthy accommodation. They offer two important qualifiers.

First, this approach doesn’t apply to requests that are immoral or demeaning. Authentic growth never requires compromising your values or dignity.

And second, responding to others’ needs doesn’t mean abandoning your own. The goal is mutual thriving, not one-sided sacrifice. The key is distinguishing between needs (what enables a person to thrive) and wants (preferences about how and when those needs are met). While we should be open to meeting others’ legitimate needs, we can negotiate the specifics in ways that respect our own needs too.

A Balanced Approach

In the end, becoming who we are isn’t about denying our present limitations; rather, we can acknowledge our current limitations while also being open to growth.

Let’s say, for instance, that your spouse asks whether you could curb your habit of sighing and rolling your eyes when family needs call you away from your favorite pastime. Lisa Popcak suggests that it is perfectly appropriate to say, “That doesn’t come naturally to me, and it will be challenging. I’ll need your patience. But because I love you and want to be the person I’m called to be, I’m going to work on stretching in that way.”

This approach acknowledges both your current limitations and your commitment to growth beyond them. It invites partnership in the process rather than pretending change is easy or instantaneous.

Becoming the saints we were created to be is not about trying harder on our own but growing in relationship. “God wants us to learn to love each other more than we love our comfort zones,” Greg says.

And in that stretching, in that mutual gift of self, we discover the people we were meant to be all along.

You can hear the entire podcast episode (Episode 83, “Become Who You Are”) exclusively on the CatholicHOM app, where you can also discuss family life issues with trained pastoral counselors. And for more individualized help with personal growth, reach out to a pastoral counselor at catholiccounselors.com.

Loving Difficult People: A Catholic Approach to Annoying Behavior

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Take a moment to make a mental list of people who drive you nuts: the roommate who is always badgering you to do this or that but who never pitches in herself; the coworker who overshares about her personal life; the adult sibling who won’t stop inserting his politics into your relationship; or the parish administrator whose negative assessment of every proposal is a roadblock to needed change.

How do you deal with such people, especially if you count yourself a follower of Jesus?

St. Augustine advised that we “love the sinner, hate the sin,” but in practice, many people either hate the sinner and the sin—or they love the sin in the name of loving the sinner.

These responses might be attractive due to their simplicity—but they don’t fulfill our calling as Christians, says Dr. Greg Popcak in his book, God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts. The problem is, many Christians don’t know how to love the sinner while hating the sin.

If we want to change the way we interact with difficult people, Popcak suggests, we have to start by understanding them. That doesn’t mean ignoring bad behavior—it means digging deeper to uncover the intention behind it.

Looking through a Loving Lens

Every annoying behavior, Popcak writes, is an attempt—however flawed—to meet a legitimate need or pursue a positive goal. In psychological terms, it’s called “secondary gain”: a hidden benefit someone receives from their actions, even if those actions are unhealthy or counterproductive.

For example, maybe your demanding roommate is driven by anxiety and needs things to feel “just right” to calm her inner world. Maybe your co-worker is an extrovert who needs to process the drama in her life out loud in order to make sense of it. Maybe your brother’s attempts to get you to validate his political views is all about shoring up his sense of security. And maybe the parish administrator had a bad experience in the past that has left her super cautious about change.

When we pause to consider these possibilities, our reactions to the annoying or offensive behavior shifts. Instead of retaliating or shutting down, we can choose curiosity, compassion, and even love.

From Conflict to Connection

That shift definitely does not mean we excuse bad behavior. Popcak is clear: loving someone doesn’t mean letting hurtful patterns go unchallenged. But when we understand that a person’s action might be a clumsy way of pursuing something good—like connection, respect, or affirmation—we open the door to genuine change.

Take the story of Ralph, a father whose harsh parenting methods drove his children away. Ralph believed he was doing the right thing by “toughening them up,” “preparing them for the real world.” His intentions were rooted in love, but his methods were flawed and painful. Only when someone took the time to understand why he acted the way he did—and showed him a better way—did Ralph begin to see how things might have been different.

“Understanding is merely the starting point for respectful change,” Popcak writes. “We cannot hope to create change in our relationships if people experience us as their adversaries. So to build the rapport needed for respectful change to happen, we must challenge our initial inclinations to lash out and instead seek understanding of the true intention behind another’s offensive behavior. It helps us meet others not as adversaries, but as people trying—and often failing—to get something good in the only way they know how.”

A Practical Exercise: Rewriting the Script

Take a moment to try this shift yourself. Thinking about someone whose behavior irritates you, walk through these three simple but powerful steps:

1. Name your reaction: How do you feel? Angry? Hurt? Dismissed? Misunderstood? This step is important—acknowledge your emotional truth before trying to move into understanding. Denying your feelings won’t help you respond more lovingly; naming them will.

 

2. Imagine the intention: Ask yourself, “If this person had a good reason for acting this way—even if it’s not obvious to me—what might it be?” This step is where empathy begins. Could they be overwhelmed? Feeling disrespected? Trying to regain control? Needing comfort or connection? Try to identify at least one possible positive intention, even if their method of expressing it is deeply flawed.

 

3. Choose a new response: Now, imagine responding from a place of compassion. What might you say or do differently if you believed that the other person’s behavior was actually a cry for help, a bid for love, or an attempt to feel safe or heard? Maybe instead of snapping back, you ask a curious question. Maybe instead of withdrawing, you offer support or set a firm but kind boundary. You don’t have to excuse the behavior, but you can approach it in a way that creates connection instead of conflict.

Try practicing this with small situations first—a curt text, an impatient tone, a forgotten task—and work your way up to more challenging scenarios. The more you practice, the more natural it becomes to respond with grace, understanding, and love.

Doing the Hard Work of Love

At the heart of the Christian life is the call to love others—even when they’re difficult, Popcak says. That doesn’t mean being a doormat. It means doing the hard work of trying to understand the hearts behind the actions.

As Popcak points out, sin isn’t always about malicious intent—it’s often just a misguided way of reaching for something good. And when we can see that, we’re more likely to respond in a way that actually helps others grow into the people God created them to be.

Understanding the intent behind offensive behavior is just the beginning of the process. For more advice on dealing with annoying or offensive behavior in a loving way, pick up a copy of God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! Or, for more one-on-one help, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

How ‘Virtue Discovery’ Can Change Your Life

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When a client first meets with Grant Freeman, LMHC, they’re usually very focused on the problem for which they sought counseling. After an initial assessment, though, Freeman pivots the conversation in a surprising direction: “Tell me about some things you think you do well.”

His clients often resist this new direction—they keep wanting to circle back to the problem, but Freeman keeps redirecting them toward developing a list of things they do “well.” Not perfectly, necessarily, but passably—things like getting up in the morning, getting dressed, helping someone out.

Ultimately, the goal is to discover the virtues that the client already possesses, even if they are only as small as a seed, so that he or she can use those virtues to help solve their problem.

“You don’t talk about your problems, and they go away,” Freeman said in a recent interview. “You have to do something different.” Virtues are, in a nutshell, “behaving effectively” in a given situation, he said. “And if we behave effectively, then we solve our problems.”

For example, let’s say that you are at your wits’ end with your thirteen-year-old child; she doesn’t follow through on what you ask her to do, she’s argumentative and sassy, and lately, you’ve been getting in lots of fights.

Freeman might help you develop a plan for improving your child’s behavior, but in order to implement that plan, you are going to need to change your own behavior—namely, the way you typically respond to her provocations.

The virtue discovery process might help you identify virtues you’re already practicing in other contexts that would be useful to apply to this particular problem: restraint, perseverance, and gentle-firmness, for example.

But virtues do much more than help people solve problems, Freeman said; they are also the key to living a joyful, fulfilled life.

 

A Life Devoted to Virtue

You might call Freeman a “virtue evangelist.” Shortly after graduating from college, he gave up a promising career in an import/export business so that he could devote his life to sharing the joys of the virtuous life.

It was the all-boys Catholic boarding school that he attended in high school that first introduced him to that way of life. He and his classmates didn’t have CD players, television, or even radio—but they had lots of fun.

“They let us play very wildly and run rambunctiously,” he said. “We got to have a lot of fun, but it was governed. You didn’t have too many opportunities for getting way off the rails.”

After a few twists and turns in his life, he eventually decided to make it his life mission to share the “gift” he had received from his boarding school. That’s when he traded his role at the import/export company for a new role as a religion teacher at a Catholic high school.

To his delight, his students were very receptive to his message “that the good life, the beautiful life, is the life that is the most ethical, and that any fun that wasn’t virtuous was missing the mark of genuine fun.”

Eventually, he wound up at the Pastoral Solutions Institute, where he leads clients through the virtue discovery process—not only to help solve their problems, but to help them live a more joyful, satisfying life.

 

Discovering and Nurturing Your Virtues

The virtue discovery process isn’t difficult or complicated, Freeman said.

A good place to start is to realize that, as someone made in the image of God, you already possess the seed of all the virtues. All you need to grow them is the light of the Holy Spirit and some good soil—preferably, some rich rotted manure, which Freeman equates with the challenges and hardships we face on a daily basis.

“The virtues are all in there, because we’re made in the image and likeness of God,” Freeman said. “And they grow because of God’s grace, but also because they’re demanded of us. Whatever situations we’re in, we’re invited to grow in them. Now, to begin with, we perform poorly, and we will need to do some corrective work, but by hook or by crook, virtues can take root.”

To help identify and reinforce those virtues, Freeman advises clients to engage in a daily virtue inventory. The process resembles a simplified version of the Ignatian Examen. Here are the steps:

  1. Ask for the Help of the Holy Spirit: “This is not a ‘pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps’ sort of process,” Freeman said. “We can’t do anything without grace.”

Your prayer may be very simple: “Lord, show me myself. When you look at me, what do you see? Tell me about myself. You know me better than I know me, so reveal me to myself.”

  1. Review the Day: Take a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on what went well. Ideally, write it down in a journal. If you can’t think of anything, ask your spouse or children or a friend who has your best interests at heart.

 “Your children might say, ‘You made us a sandwich,’ or your spouse might say, ‘I’m really grateful that you went to work today and came home on time ready for dinner.’ It’s as simple as that.”

  1. Identify the Virtue: Name the virtue that enabled you to do well in those situations. For example, if you helped a colleague with a difficult task, recognize the virtue of generosity or friendliness. It’s not crucial that you identify the traditional name of the virtue, Freeman said. 
  2. Look Ahead: Consider the challenges you might face the next day and determine which virtues you will need to employ to navigate those challenges effectively.

    “Once you’ve identified the virtues, then you take a little look into tomorrow and see where you might intentionally use one of those virtues in a particular place, with a particular person, in a small way, so as to become more and more familiar with that virtue,” Freeman said. “So, I exercised restraint with my kids when they were annoying me today. Now, where am I going to use that tomorrow?”

Practicing this daily virtue discovery process helps to make you familiar with the tools at your disposal to best navigate life’s challenges and opportunities.

In college, Freeman wrestled with how hard it can be to live a virtuous life, and he is still working on it. While acknowledging that reality, he advises clients that it is well worth the effort.

“The Lord tells us that if you found a sturdy friend, if you found a treasure, do everything within your power to preserve it or possess it,” Freeman said. “And virtue— your own possession of the image and likeness of God—is the greatest treasure you could possibly ever fathom. So take care of it, strengthen it, shine it up, work it out. You know, don’t leave it in the garage; take it out for a spin.”

For personalized help with the virtue discovery process, reach out to Freeman or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.