In the Baby vs. Parent Debate, Catholic Teaching Offers a Balanced Approach

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It’s the baby gift new parents never asked for: unsolicited, often competing, advice about thebest way to raise their little one.

On one side, some people advocate a parent-centered approach. “You can’t take care of baby if you don’t take care of yourself,” these people argue. “Besides, your baby needs to learn she’s not the center of the world!”

On the other side are advocates of a baby-centered approach. “The first three years of your child’s life are the foundation of their future development,” these folks might say. “Now’s the time for parents to go all in.”

Caught in the middle, many new parents rightly feel conflicted, seeing good points on both sides.

But the Catholic tradition offers a good way to balance the needs of babies and their parents, say Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. This approach, outlined in their book Then Comes Baby: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First Three Years of Parenthood, is centered on the principle of the common good. Rather than seeing parenting as a zero-sum competition, this approach to family life seeks the flourishing of everyone—baby, mom, and dad alike.

Before we get to the common good approach, let’s quickly look at the merits of baby-centered parenting and parent-centered parenting.

The Benefits of Baby-Centered Parenting

In Chapter 2 of their book, the Popcaks summarize the strong scientific support behind many baby-centered practices.

Since the 1990s, research in neuroscience, developmental psychology, and attachment theory has consistently affirmed the benefits of responsive, attentive caregiving during infancy. Babies who experience this kind of nurturing develop stronger emotional regulation, more resilient stress responses, and deeper trust in relationships. The practice of responding to an infant’s needs promptly and consistently helps form secure attachments, which in turn support empathy, social development, and mental health throughout life.

These are powerful and well-documented benefits—and they help explain why so many parenting experts emphasize attentiveness to a baby’s cues.

Children raised with less baby-centered approaches may also develop these positive qualities, the Popcaks acknowledge. “But research strongly suggests that children reared by more baby-centered approaches are more likely to have a better-developed capacity for these skills.”

Parents Need to Take Care of Themselves Too

The baby-centered approach has a lot to recommend it. But there’s a caveat. “If parents allow themselves to become burned out by doing baby-centered parenting, it doesn’t work nearly as well,” the Popcaks write.

Burnt-out, exhausted parents don’t connect with their babies very well; they tend to be less animated, and make less eye contact with their children. In fact, this exhaustion-fueled detachment can wipe out the benefits of a baby-centered approach.

Moreover, research shows that “babies do best in homes where Mom and Dad’s relationship is strong and secure,” the Popcaks say, underlining the need for parents to attend to their own relationship, too. This does not mean that “if Mom and Dad are happy, Baby will be happy.” While there is plenty of evidence that poor marital relationships negatively affect children, strong marital relationships don’t cancel out the child’s need for prompt, consistent parental responses to her needs.

In short, a healthy family life requires more than just protecting adult time—it requires an integrated vision that honors every member of the household.

Aiming for the Common Good of the Family

This is where the Catholic social teaching principle of the common good comes into play. This principle suggests that those with the least ability to meet their own needs (like a baby) have a right to have their needs met first. At the same time, it also acknowledges that all people, including parents, have a right to have their own needs met, as long as they do so in a way that respects everyone else

What does this mean in practical terms? The Popcaks suggest that parents follow two principles.

First, “parents should challenge themselves on a regular basis to be as baby-centered as possible while being creative about how to meet their own needs.” The benefits of responding promptly, consistently, and affectionately to a child’s needs are so clear that doing so ought to be a priority. And for Catholics, the practice of this heroic “self-donation” is the way we find not only a happy, joyful life, but also our truest selves.

But balance is key. Parents are embodied human beings, not purely spiritual angels, which means they have very real limits that need to be respected.

“That’s why parents need to constantly seek creative ways to get time for themselves and their marriage,” the Popcaks write. “This takes sensitivity, prayer, communication, and commitment on the part of both parents.”

Nurturing the Routines and Rituals of Healthy Family Life

Exactly how to navigate that balancing act is the subject of the rest of Then Comes Baby, but establishing healthy routines and rituals—a topic the Popcaks frequently emphasize in their work with parents—is key, they say.

By pursuing the common good, Catholic parents can avoid the pitfalls of both extreme approaches and cultivate a family life that reflects generous love for their child and good stewardship of their own well-being and their marriage.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, check out Then Comes Baby at CatholicCounselors.com. You can also get more personalized parenting advice through the community discussion forums in the CatholicHŌM app.

Extravagant Affection in Marriage

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Guest Post by Jacob Francisco, LMHC, Pastoral Counselor at CatholicCounselors.com

Need To Be Loved 

Every human being has a God-given need to give love and feel loved in return. This desire for unity with another is a primary motivator to find a mate. 

 

If you do not feel united or connected to your spouse, or have the sense that your spouse feels that way, part of the problem could be too little affection.

 

Here are some signs that you might not be sharing enough affection in your marriage: 

-Frequently feeling lonely around your spouse

-Frequently feeling irritable towards your spouse

-Frequent miscommunications or defensiveness about deeper feelings, thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears

-Feeling you cannot share thoughts and feelings for fear of being criticized or shamed

-Often jump to negative conclusions or assumptions about your spouse or their motives 

 

When more than one of the above items is generally true for you and/or your spouse resentment can build and spouses slowly drift away from each other–they become disconnected.

 

Shared affection is one solution to these struggles.

Affection maintains a connection in good times and in bad.

The truth is we are all called to generously give of ourselves to others as Christ did for us. This is exponentially more true in our marriage. 

 

But we all love our comfort too much, and often (even without realizing it) prioritize our own comfort over the call to generously give ourselves.

 

We tend to approach loving others from the direction of how I like to love others, such as service or time together. Ultimately, this is backwards and incomplete. I need to be asking “How does my spouse want to be loved?” 

 

I might not consider myself to be an “affectionate person” or a “touchy-feely” type. But God’s call to generous self-giving outweighs our comfort. 

 

As for receiving love from my spouse, this can be, and often is, difficult when my wounds get in the way. Being receptive to love requires vulnerability and openness.

 

How often do we receive a compliment and immediately dismiss it in our mind, or even out loud? Does your spouse compliment your appearance, or tell you that you look nice, and your first reaction is “No, I don’t feel that way”?

 

If we reject or deflect when someone else expresses affection often enough, chances are they will give up trying. If I stiffen up or cringe when touched, my spouse may eventually get discouraged and stop.

 

The Benefits of Extravagant Affection

Affection establishes a link between myself and the other person on the physical, mental and even spiritual level, beginning with the body. Holding someone in a close embrace allows our heartbeats to sync together.

 

This has a calming effect on the nervous system and fosters a sense of safety and closeness in the relationship.

 

Safety and closeness reduce tension, conflict, negativity, resentment, loneliness, and fear. 

 

How often is “extravagant?”  

 

Marriage research through the Gottman Institute recommends a 20:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.

 

The 20:1 ratio is a helpful way to communicate the general guideline: start with what seems extravagant to you, and then stretch yourself to do a little bit more than that. 

 

Don’t “keep score” on this point. It’s a guideline, not another way to show your spouse how far they fall short. Focus on your own contributions to the ratio. Reject transactional thinking: “If I give her compliments then she should give me a compliment.” 

 

What qualifies as affection? 

There are three important elements: frequent physical contact, warm interactions, and responsiveness.

 

Frequent physical contact includes a wide range of touch: a brief touch on the shoulder, holding hands, or cuddling for long periods of time. 

 

Warm interactions are kindled through non-verbal cues like facial expressions and tone of voice, choice of words, gratitude and affirmations. If it is ‘warm’ it draws you towards the other person and helps you feel connected.

 

Responsiveness is how consistently we return a “bid” for our attention. Affectionate couples make eye contact with one another often when talking and also make an effort to acknowledge when their spouse says something.

 

Do you look up from your phone or the TV when your spouse starts talking to you? Do you demonstrate that you received their message?

 

Practical Tips

Golden Rule: Express affection in ways that your spouse enjoys.

 

Love list: This exercise is for both spouses. Each spouse writes a list of 25 ways that they want to be shown love in non-sexual terms. About 20 of them should be small and simple. The other 5 can be bigger or more complex. Small things might be: kiss my forehead, rub my feet, tell me “I adore you,” bring me a drink. Bigger things could be: organize a date, give me a massage, buy me a gift. After both spouses finish, exchange lists. Try to do 2-3 things on your spouse’s list daily. 

 

6 Second Rule: Once a day, when you hug or kiss your spouse, linger in it for 6+ seconds. This gives you both enough time to slow down, sync up, and melt into the affection.

 

Compliment Catch: Take turns giving each other compliments and affirmations. Be genuine, thoughtful, and sincere. Continue the activity at least until both spouses are laughing and smiling. This is a good activity for dates, during time together, or after a conflict.

 

If you would like to talk with a Pastoral Counselor, or learn more about Jacob Francisco, LMHC visit CatholicCounselors.com

Feeling Safe: More Than Stepping Out of Your Shell

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Do you ever feel like you’re just scuttling through life, always on the lookout for ways to protect yourself from disappointment, criticism, disaster, or failure?

We humans have an innate desire to feel safe, says Jacob Flores-Popcak, a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com. We want to feel physically safe, of course, but we also crave a sense that, whatever life throws at us emotionally, physically, or spiritually, we’ll be able to meet—and survive—the challenge.

This desire is natural and good, but sometimes people try to secure that sense of “existential safety,” as Flores-Popcak puts it, in ways that backfire. To help clients understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy ways of coping, he asks them an amusing question: Are you living more like a hermit crab or a sea turtle?

Let’s take a closer look at what he means by that—and why it matters.

The Hermit Crab Mentality

Hermit crabs are small creatures with soft, vulnerable abdomens that protect themselves by living in discarded sea snail shells. As they grow, they must find progressively larger shells, meaning that they’re constantly on the lookout for a more suitable shell their entire lives.

Many people approach life in a similar way, Flores-Popcak says.

“We scuttle along the beach of life, searching for a shell to protect us from threats,” he says. This “shell” is a strategy or ritual that can take many different forms: obsessive behaviors, scrupulous rule-following, or withdrawing from society, for instance.

But even if we find a “shell” that calms our fear for a while, we eventually “outgrow” it and need an even bigger, more complicated behavior or habit to restore that feeling of control.

“For example, a socially anxious person might at first avoid some large gatherings to feel safe,” Flores-Popcak explains. “But over time, as the anxiety worsens, the person may widen the scope of social situations they avoid. Eventually, they may feel it is better to avoid social contact altogether.”

Similarly, someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies might begin with small rituals, like checking the stove once before leaving the house.

“Soon,” Flores-Popcak says, “that ritual might take hours, because as the anxiety grows, the need for bigger and bigger ‘shells’ keeps growing too.”

The problem isn’t the desire for safety itself—it’s the belief that safety is something external, something we need to find or control outside of ourselves. This mindset leaves us perpetually anxious and reactive, searching for the next thing to make us feel secure.

The Freedom of the Sea Turtle

The alternative, Flores-Popcak says, is to understand that God did not make us to be hermit crabs, scuttling along the beach of life in constant search for a big enough shell.

Instead, we need to understand that God made us to be like sea turtles. Unlike the hermit crab, whose shell is external, the sea turtle’s shell is part of its body.

“Sea turtles aren’t compelled to run around in a panic, constantly looking for an adequate shell.” Flores-Popcak continues. “They sense threats, of course, but aren’t controlled by them. They can take risks. They move slowly and assuredly, knowing they’re already protected. Most importantly, their sense of safety grows with them. Likewise, our sense of safety is meant to be an integral part of who we are, not something we have to find outside ourselves. An internal grounding that leaves us open to meaningful relationships and experiences.”

Living like a sea turtle means embracing the truth that your safety comes from within. For Christians, this safety is rooted in the knowledge that God’s love and grace are always with us.

“Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection consecrated us to himself,” Popcak-Flores says. “Our safety isn’t found in external rituals or achievements—it’s found in him, dwelling within us.”

Moving Toward Emotional Safety

If you find yourself stuck in the hermit crab mentality, take heart: change is possible. The first step is to pause and ask yourself a simple question: What would I do if I already knew I was safe?

Flores-Popcak elaborates: “What would it look like for me to approach this if I already knew I was safe? How would I approach this thing I’m about to do differently if doing that thing wasn’t what made me safe, but instead I was already safe—and that safety rested within me?”

The first time you try it, you might feel uneasy because your old way feels so ingrained, he says. “That first step is always going to be the hardest, because you will be taking a risk—a gamble, as it were—on the possibility that you’re safe. You won’t believe it until after you’ve already done it.”

But, he continues, “even if you don’t fully believe it yet, imagining what it would look like to act from a place of safety – what you’d allow yourself to do if you already felt that safe feeling – can give you a vision for a different way of life.”

Start with something small, he says. “You don’t have to dive headfirst into something that feels terrifying. Take one tiny step. For instance, if you’re socially anxious, maybe you text a friend instead of avoiding contact altogether. If you’re struggling with obsessive-compulsive behaviors, try waiting a few minutes before allowing yourself to act on a ritual.”

Over time, these small risks can build confidence and reinforce the truth that your safety isn’t dependent on external circumstances.

“When you act from a place of safety, even in small ways, you start to internalize the truth that God has made you whole and capable,” Flores-Popcak says.

For those who struggle to feel this safety, seeking support can make all the difference. If you’re ready to move from anxiety and control to confidence and freedom, consider reaching out to a Catholic pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

The Many Benefits of ‘Extravagant’ Affection

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After winning the last game of his high school football career, the young man rushed over to his mother, and the two embraced in a big hug.

“He still fits in his mother’s arms!” his father wrote when he posted a photo of the moment on social media.

The family are friends of Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, founders of the Pastoral Solutions Institute and hosts of the CatholicHOM podcast.

It was a beautiful moment, Lisa Popcak said on an episode of the podcast dedicated to nurturing affection between parents and their kids. Moments like these underscore how the daily practice of showing affection creates lasting connections that children carry into adulthood. But the moment didn’t just happen; rather, it was the culmination of an “affection connection” the boy and his parents had intentionally nurtured throughout his life.

Happy moments like this are not the only benefit of making intentional, affectionate connections with your kids (and spouse!) every day. Affection builds trust and resilience in families, making family life easier and more pleasant, even when things get tough. And giving kids plenty of affection helps them grow up to be more confident, resilient, and satisfied as adults.

Why is affection (or the lack of it) such a powerful force in the development of children? The Popcaks point to decades’ worth of research for an explanation.

The Science Behind Affection

For many decades now, research has increasingly clarified the important role that affection plays in the development of happy, healthy adults.

In the mid-20th century, for instance, studies of infants raised in orphanages with minimal physical contact revealed alarming rates of failure to thrive. These infants often exhibited stunted growth, delayed development, and emotional difficulties.

“Biologically, neurologically, we were created to need touch, to crave affection even more than food,” Dr. Popcak said. As the Church teaches, God made us to be in relationship with one another (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1890 – 1891), and affection helps strengthen those relationships.

But the impact of affection on human development goes way beyond the quality of our relationships. A landmark 2010 Duke University study of about 500 individuals found that those who received “extravagant” levels of affection from their mothers at eight months were more likely to grow up to be happier, more resilient, and less anxious adults in their thirties. The researchers described “extravagant affection,” displayed by about 6 percent of the mothers, as involving frequent physical contact, warm interactions, and responsive caregiving.

Other studies show the profound physiological impact of affection. When parents and children share moments of touch—whether it’s a hug, holding hands, or sitting close together—their bodies “sync up,” the Popcaks said. Heart rates slow, breathing becomes calmer, and stress diminishes.

“Our bodies actually sync up with each other,” Dr. Popcak said. “The slower heart rate of the person giving another person a hug slows down the heart rate of the person receiving the hug.”

This physiological alignment fosters a sense of safety and connection that strengthens relationships on a deep, almost instinctive level.

How Affection Supports Healthier Relationships

Extravagant affection also helps kids form and maintain healthy relationships outside of the family, both growing up and later on as adults.

“Healthy, appropriate, extravagant affection in the home teaches kids how to get their need for affection met in healthy and appropriate and holy ways,” Dr. Popcak said.

“This is very important,” Lisa Popcak agreed, “because when (kids) have the experience with mom and dad of having healthy, extravagant affection, they get filled up and they get a sense in their very bones of what is true and healthy affection and what is false affection.”

In other words, kids who receive all the affection they need from their parents are less likely to seek it elsewhere in inappropriate ways. And kids who grow up in an affectionate family have a “standard model” to measure other relationships against as they move into the teen and young adult years.

Parents who practice extravagant affection also reap the benefits of a stronger, more resilient relationship with their child. Not only do the parents get more affection in return (and parents need affection, too, Lisa Popcak says), but it becomes easier for parents to teach kids how to be good and responsible people.

“When I have a strong affection connection with my kids, my kids are more likely to give me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the rules that I’m laying down, because they understand on even a physical level that I’m working for their good, that I really do love them,” Dr. Popcak said. “They feel that love and they understand that the rules that I’m laying down are coming from a healthier place.”

On the other hand, Dr. Popcak said, the popular parenting maxim “rules without rapport lead to rebellion” is more likely to hold true when affection has been lacking in the relationship.

“And so the defensiveness, that pushing back on rules or eye rolling is one of the earliest signs that maybe the affection connection isn’t what it should be,” he said, adding that this is not always the reason for that behavior.

Not Just ‘Nice to Do’

Extravagant affection is not just a feel-good practice; it’s a powerful tool for nurturing trust, resilience, and connection within families. Whether it’s a hug, a kind word, or simply being physically present, these intentional acts of love create a foundation for healthier relationships, stronger family bonds, and a more peaceful home life. As the research shows, affection positively shapes children’s emotional and relational development, while also making the job of parenting easier and more rewarding. By embracing this approach, parents can help their kids grow into confident, secure, and loving adults.

This is the first part of our two-part article about the importance of extravagant affection. In part two, we’ll look at some common questions that parents ask: How much affection is enough? What does that look like? When in a child’s development is affection important? And what if I’m not naturally an affectionate person?

In the meantime, if you want more tips for building strong, loving relationships in your family, join the CatholicHOM community for daily support and encouragement. Once you’re there, you can listen to the full podcast that was the basis for this article by looking up Episode 17 in the CatholicHOM podcast section.

How Practicing Healthy Gratitude Can Help You Navigate Life’s Challenges

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“Just be grateful.” It seems like everyone is touting gratitude lately: Kelly Clarkson is “Thankful,” medical researchers say it’s good for you, and even the makers of home décor want us to be “Grateful,” in loopy, cursive writing. Later this month, most Catholics will undoubtedly hear a sermon on gratitude connected to the celebration of Thanksgiving.

But what if you aren’t feeling grateful? What if, in fact, you feel like you’re struggling to keep your head above the waves?

Gratitude Isn’t About Denying Real Problems

Rachael Isaac, a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com, runs into this a lot.

“One of the common misconceptions that I come across is, ‘Oh, I should just be grateful,’ meaning I should just be grateful and ignore my struggles,” Isaac explains. “But gratitude is not meant to invalidate our struggles. It’s a way to help us gain a better perspective on them.”

Rather than viewing gratitude as an either/or proposition—either we’re grateful or we’re acknowledging difficulties—Isaac advocates for a both/and approach.

“We have to acknowledge when bad things are bad,” she says. “That’s okay. We can acknowledge when hard things are hard. But then we can say, ‘Okay, what is also true? What also exists? What are the good things that are also happening in my life?’”

This balanced approach serves a practical purpose beyond mere positive thinking. As Isaac points out, “it allows me to break out of that all-or-nothing thinking, it allows me to see something other than the anxiety that I am experiencing due to the challenges that I’m facing.”

The Many Benefits of Gratitude

Humans are wired to give more of their attention to threats and challenges. That’s a useful trait if you’re battling a predator or figuring out how to stave off hunger or cold. But focusing too narrowly on your problems can actually be counterproductive: when your brain is on high alert, it may be more difficult to think through complex challenges that require a more nuanced solution than fight or flight.

Intentionally acknowledging the good as well as the challenge allows us to calm down and puts the brakes on the stress hormones flooding our brains. “And that allows us to bring that more solution-focused part of our brain online, so that we can think through our challenge,” Isaac says.

The past few decades have seen an explosion of research into the benefits of practicing gratitude, with researchers saying it can help improve sleep, cardiac health, social connections, mood, and problem-solving abilities, to name a few. The Bible recommends giving thanks to God as well, and spiritual masters have been pointing to the importance of gratitude for thousands of years.

But while the benefits of gratitude are well-attested, developing the practice takes time and intention.

“More often than not, it’s not a natural thing for people to do,” Isaac acknowledges. “At the end of our day, we kind of go through that litany of ‘didn’t get this done, I should have done this, I should have said this in that conversation.’ All these things are still on my to-do list that now I have to add on to tomorrow…

“That’s what we’re thinking about, and it requires some very conscious and intentional effort to say, ‘What went well today?’”

Practicing gratitude can be even more challenging for people who have feelings of low self-esteem or who suffer from religious scrupulosity, the sense that they can never be “good enough” to deserve God’s love and care.

The good news, Isaac says, is that the more we practice gratitude, the easier and more natural it becomes.

Three Tips for Effective Gratitude Practice

To help practice gratitude in a healthy way, Rachael Isaac offers her clients several practical tips.

First, be specific about what you are grateful for now, today. Yes, you “should” be grateful for your family, for the roof over your head, for your health. But reciting the same broad categories every day dilutes the power of gratitude. 

Second, set aside a few moments at the end of the day to practice gratitude, but also begin practicing it in the moment. For example: “You’re driving to the store, and the store is packed…and then you find a parking space really close to the door. And you take that moment to say, ‘Oh, thank you, Lord.’”

And third, write it down. Keeping a gratitude journal can actually be quite helpful. You’re more likely to stick with the practice if you have to sit down with a pen and paper, plus writing engages more areas of our brain so that our act of gratitude leaves a more lasting impression.

Here are a few questions Rachael Isaac suggests to make the above points practical and simple:

  •  What went well today?
  •  Where did I see beauty today? 
  •  What did I do well today?
  •  What blessings did I receive today (that parking spot, or kind words from a friend)?

A New View of Life

For clients who embrace this balanced approach to gratitude, the results can be profound. “People feel a lot more peaceful and a lot more hopeful,” Isaac reports. “Because again, it doesn’t make everything better, but it allows us to see that the good exists, too.”

This shift can be even more profound for people who feel they are not “good enough” to receive God’s blessings.

“It can really start to draw us into a closer and healthier relationship with God,” Isaac explains. “I’m not doubting his love for me anymore, I can see it all around me.”

The practice of gratitude, when approached with balance and intention, offers more than a temporary mood boost—it provides a pathway to deeper peace, stronger faith, a more nuanced understanding of our life, and more resources for creatively tackling our troubles and challenges.

If you are struggling with anxiety or negative thinking, reach out to Rachel Isaac or the other pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. And if you are ready to begin journaling, and cultivating a new mindset, take a look at A Beautiful Life: A Year of Monthly Journal Prompts for a Happier, Healthier, Holier Mindset.

Going On A Bear Hunt–Understanding The Relationship Between Prayer and Powerful Emotions

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Whether trauma, depression, anxiety, anger, or other strong feelings are causing us problems, turning to God in prayer is always a good idea. After all, God loves us and always wants to help us become more fully alive—more fully ourselves.

But in order to really benefit from prayer, we must “also learn how to pray,” as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (#2650). It’s no wonder the Catechism spends more than three hundred paragraphs on the topic of how to pray.

When it comes to mental health, one trap that people sometimes fall into is treating prayer as a way to avoid the strong feelings that come with a crisis, according to Jacob Flores-Popcak, a pastoral counselor with CatholicCounselors.com.

“An unhealthy relationship to prayer says, ‘Help me climb up above this thing,’” Flores-Popcak said in a recent interview. Underlying that impulse is often the assumption that “spiritual things are higher than these base, awful, physical things like feelings.”

But the view that physical things—and by extension, our emotions—are to be shunned or avoided simply isn’t Catholic, Flores-Popcak said. In fact, this attempt to detach from embodied feelings is more in line with Buddhism or, within the Christian tradition, the old dualistic heresy known as Manichaeism.

The Christian tradition says that feelings are given to us by God for a reason, Popcak said: in fact, they are invitations to go deeper.

“There is no point at which any character, any person in scripture just prays a feeling away,” Flores-Popcak explained. On the contrary, the Bible is full of people who openly embraced their feelings. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, for example, and expressed his anxiety openly to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.

“Feelings are meant to help us bond with other people and they’re meant to help us get certain needs met,” Flores-Popcak explained. “So to pray away a feeling is to pray away an opportunity for connection, and it’s to pray away a need.”

He continued: “God gives us our needs, and God calls us to relationships. Both of those things are, at their core, godly things. If I’m trying to just get rid of that, it’s gonna end up feeling like I’m just repressing the feeling, and it’s just going to come raging back later.”

It’s like the children’s song, “Going on a Bear Hunt,” Flores-Popcak said, in which the hunters come to an insurmountable mountain that blocks the path forward: “The refrain of that song is, ‘Can’t go around it, can’t go over it—gotta go through it.’ We’ve gotta go into that tunnel, into that bear’s den.”

Similarly, prayer is not meant to help us go “over” or “around” our feelings of anguish, anxiety, or sadness. “Prayer is supposed to help me go deeper into it, to find the truth at the center of it, or even on the other side,” Flores-Popcak said. In the Catholic mystical tradition, every challenge is “an opportunity to go deeper into my knowledge of myself, deeper into my knowledge of Christ, and deeper in relationship with other people.”

What does this look like? Instead of trying to pray away your feelings, try praying with these questions:

  1. “Lord, what do you want me to learn from this feeling?”
  2. “How do you want me to respond to the need at the center of this feeling?”
  3. “How do you want me to grow closer to you and to the people around me as a result of experiencing this feeling?”

Such questions align with the example of spiritual masters such as St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, and others, all of whom advise that instead of running away from feelings we’d rather not be experiencing, we ought to plunge deeper into their depths, accompanied by Christ and supported by friends—so that we can emerge stronger and more connected to God, ourselves, and the people around us.

If you need help managing your mental health and want to do so in a way that draws on your Catholic faith, reach out to Jacob Flores-Popcak or any of the other Pastoral Counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

Don’t Reject Your Anxiety; Nurture a Better Relationship With It Instead

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You think you want to get rid of your anxiety—after all, it takes over your brain and floods your body with stress hormones that don’t do much but make you miserable.

But do you really want to get rid of it? When push comes to shove, the idea of getting rid of your anxiety might just…well, make you anxious.

Jacob Flores-Popcak, a pastoral counselor with CatholicCounselors.com, often runs into this problem with new clients.

“Despite the fact that they are ostensibly coming to me for help decreasing their anxiety, they’ll often be very, very resistant to switching anything up,” Flores-Popcak said in a recent interview. The reason they often give? They can’t imagine how they could get along without their anxiety to keep them going.

“And so there becomes this horrible Catch-22 that people live with where they would really, really like to not be anxious anymore,” Flores-Popcak continued. “But when it comes right down to it, they don’t know how they’d get anything done, how they’d be in relationship with anybody, or how they’d keep themselves safe without anxiety to motivate them.”

When clients run into this roadblock, Flores-Popcak often invites them to reframe their thinking with a little help from the 2001 children’s movie Shrek.

Anxiety, the Overworked Sidekick

In the movie, an ogre named Shrek sets out on a quest, begrudgingly accompanied by an annoyingly talkative, overly helpful Donkey.

Anxiety, Jacob says, is like Donkey—or any number of other over-eager sidekicks from popular animated movies: “These sidekicks are always depicted as being very loving; they want what is best for the hero,” Flores-Popcak said. “But often, the ways that they attempt to help are kind of destructive. They mean well, but they are fallible and can get messy.”

On one hand, people suffering from constant anxiety may loathe this sidekick (much like Shrek trying to shake off Donkey in the early part of the movie). On the other hand, they rely on it for so much—getting out of bed in the morning, getting kids ready for school, managing household finances—that it can be difficult to imagine another mode for getting those things done. In this way, they can end up responding to their anxiety the way Shrek does later in the film, doing whatever Donkey tells him without questioning and suffering hijinks as a result.

“We often swing back and forth between treating anxiety as an antagonist in our story and then, on the other hand, doing whatever it tells us,” Flores-Popcak said. “But that attitude is really unfair to anxiety, poor little sidekick that he is, because guess what? He’s not a bad guy. He’s actually just like any of these other parts of me—another sidekick that’s trying to help me out. He has a job within me. For instance, if a bear is chasing me, anxiety can be a very helpful and effective survival mechanism. So anxiety certainly has its due place. But he can get overburdened.”

To put it in the language of faith, God gave us anxiety and all the physiological responses that come with it to help us out in certain situations. But habitually deploying anxiety to handle even the ordinary tasks of everyday life isn’t healthy, Flores-Popcak said.

The solution isn’t to fear and loathe our anxiety, he said, because when we do that, we’re really rejecting an essential, God-given part of ourselves. Rather, the better approach is to begin “re-assigning” the jobs that we habitually give to anxiety.

“To make progress in our experience of anxiety, we need to recognize that anxiety does not need to be my exclusive motivation for all those things,” he said. “I can wake up in the morning, and sure, I can feel anxious, and that can get me out of bed—or, I can wake up in the morning and I can challenge myself, ‘What would be a love-based reason for getting out of bed?’ And instead of just immediately giving into the kind of knee-jerk instinctual anxiety that hits me the second I open my eyes, let me take a deep breath and challenge myself to imagine a love-based reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

Similarly, when anxiety begins to assert its annoying self throughout the day (like Donkey’s constant chatter), consider pausing to take a deep breath, asking yourself: “Hey, what if I didn’t outsource this thing I’m worried about to my anxiety sidekick? What if I gave this concern to another part of me to handle? How would that feel different?”

Breaking the Habit of Anxiety

When people are reluctant to give up their anxiety because it’s the only way they know to get things done, reframing the situation in the way Flores-Popcak suggests can help overcome that mental roadblock.

But it’s no magic bullet, he said: “Just realizing, ‘Oh, huh, I can do all the things that I’m already doing, but for a love reason as opposed to a fear reason, and I won’t be anxious anymore’—no one’s going to hear that and just magically change.”

Instead, it takes time to build a new, healthier habit: slowing down enough to question the automatic anxiety response, then intentionally choosing a different response instead, and then actually carrying out that choice as an act of one’s will.

Someone has to make that choice over and over many times before it becomes habitual, Flores-Popcak said—a process that is often supported with other approaches during therapy.

But the effort is always worth it, he said, because it allows people to enter into a healthier relationship with themselves (including their “anxiety sidekick”) and with others. “It allows the actions that I take in regard to my co-workers, my friends, my kids, and my spouse to be more effective because they no longer feel that I’m coming at them with a giant fear gun,” he said. “Instead, I’m coming at them with a loving spirit.”

In the end, this allows us to arrive at the same point with our anxiety that Shrek arrives at in regards to Donkey: no longer resenting or repressing our “sidekick” as an unwanted intruder or antagonist, nor letting him control everything for us, but instead welcoming him as a well-intentioned sidekick who can be taken with a grain of salt.

For more about tackling anxiety, check out Unworried: A Life without Anxiety by Dr. Gregory Popcak. And for one-on-one pastoral counseling help from Jacob Flores-Popcak or another Catholic counselor, reach out at CatholicCounselors.com.

Everything You’ve Been Told About Raising Faithful Catholic Kids Is Wrong

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Several times a week, Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak hear from parents whose adult children no longer practice the Catholic faith they were raised in. These callers to the More2Life radio program are devout Catholics who did “all the things” to pass the faith along to their kids: they sent them to Catholic school or parish-based faith formation, attended Mass every week, and involved their children in youth groups.

Yet despite their best efforts, their children abandoned the faith as adults. Why?

“Everything that parents have been told about raising faithful Catholic kids is wrong,” Dr. Popcak said in a recent conversation with Marcus Peter, host of Ave Maria in the Afternoon, on how parents—and the Church—can better support raising kids who remain faithful into adulthood. Despite the significant investment that churches make in youth ministry and faith formation, research shows that only about 15 percent of Catholic kids continue to practice their faith as adults.

“You know, the Church has this spiritual cancer where we are not going to survive the next few generations if we don’t get this number up,” Dr. Popcak said.

What Matters Most: The Family Transformed by Jesus’ Love

In 2018, Dr. Popcak, founder of both the Pastoral Solutions Institute and the Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life, partnered with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) to conduct the Future of Faithful Families Project. This study interviewed adults who had retained their Catholic faith to identify the common factors in their upbringing.

The study found that what mattered most was not the quality of the youth group or Catholic school, or even the family’s weekly Mass attendance. While those things are valuable, they are secondary to the habits and practices within the home, Dr. Popcak said.

“And I don’t just mean the prayers that the family says,” he explained. “I mean that the children need to experience the faith as making a significant difference in the quality of the relationships in the home compared to their less-churched friends’ families.”

Children need to see that their family’s faith influences how they handle challenges, celebrate joys, and navigate everyday life. Even in their imperfections, these families’ grounding in Christ challenges them “to address problems differently, to hang in there with each other, to pray through things, to talk about these things, to draw closer together in difficult times,” Dr. Popcak said.

“Kids need to experience the faith as a source of the warmth in the home,” he added.

Learning about Christ is important, but it is essential that kids experience the love of Christ within the family, he said. A child or teen might memorize the Catechism or attend Bible study, but that catechetical work builds on the foundation of the young person’s lived experience of faith.

“When we take the approach where we treat religion like algebra and just teach kids faith facts, they’re not falling in love with Jesus, right?” Dr. Popcak said. “But what happened in these families (in the study) is the kids experienced for themselves the real difference that living the gospel made in their daily lives as a family, which made it real for them.”

Connection, Affection, and Service

The Future of Faithful Families Project identified several common habits and practices among families who successfully handed on an enduring faith to their kids. Here are some key takeaways:

  • Prioritizing Family Time: Successful families made intentional efforts to spend time together regularly, whether through shared meals, game nights, or simply being present for each other. This emphasis on togetherness allowed faith to be modeled naturally and authentically.
  • Creating Meaningful Family Rituals: These families established daily or weekly rituals for working, playing, talking, and praying together. These rituals enabled family members to connect meaningfully with one another and practice the faith in the context of everyday life. Shared work rituals, for example, provided opportunities to experience how loving service and cooperation make work more pleasant and rewarding. They didn’t just pray at mealtimes; they brought God into everyday moments, whether through gratitude, a simple blessing, or turning to prayer during conflicts.
  • Practicing Generous Affection: Participants frequently described their families as “huggy,” highlighting a warm and affectionate atmosphere. From frequent hugs to verbal affirmations, these gestures created a sense of safety and belonging, reinforcing the idea that love is at the heart of faith.
  • Discipleship Discipline: Instead of punitive measures, these parents practiced discipleship discipline focused on teaching good behavior and encouraging virtue. They created structures that supported their children’s growth and helped them understand the “why” behind their actions.
  • Serving Each Other and Others: Families found small ways to serve one another and those around them, demonstrating that faith isn’t just about belief but action. Simple acts of kindness and service were seen as natural extensions of their love for Christ.

These families didn’t treat faith as a subject to be learned; instead, they showed that living the Gospel had a tangible impact on their daily lives, fostering resilience, hope, and a deep sense of connection.

Even in Today’s World, It’s Possible to Raise Faithful Kids

The habits and practices identified by the Future of Faithful Families Project are not a guaranteed formula, and other factors also play a role in young adults’ faith decisions. However, these foundational practices greatly improve the chances that children will grow into adults who experience the warmth of a strong relationship with God.

For parents feeling anxious about raising faithful children in today’s challenging cultural context, the study’s findings provide real hope and a clear path forward.

“The good news of this study is that we have the control, we have the ability to raise faithful kids,” Dr. Popcak said. “It’s not about the culture, it’s not about peers, it’s not about the media. It’s about how we live the faith in our home, and the degree to which the faith impacts the way we relate to each other, and the love that we share.”

For those seeking to deepen their family’s faith life, resources like the CatholicHOM app developed by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak can support parents in cultivating these habits and nurturing their children’s faith in meaningful ways.

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.

After Trauma, EMDR Therapy Offers Hope for Healing

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“Lucy” is 62 years old, but she is still haunted by the physical and psychological abuse she experienced as a child. Although decades have passed, Lucy continues to experience anxiety, periods of deep depression, panic attacks, and other symptoms.

Most of us will experience a traumatic event at some point in our lives. The U.S. Center for PTSD defines trauma as “a shocking and dangerous event that you see or that happens to you” in which “you think that your life or others’ lives are in danger.” Anyone can experience trauma at any age, and for a wide variety of reasons: bullying at school, a car accident, or conflict with a spouse or acquaintance, for example.

Often, people are able to heal following traumatic events. But in some cases, for reasons that aren’t entirely understood, the traumatic memory gets “walled off,” making it difficult to process—and heal. In this case, the trauma can persist for years or even decades.

God Wants Our Healing

But that isn’t what God wants for us, says Dr. Mark Kolodziej, a certified traumatologist with the Pastoral Solutions Institute.

“God wants us all to enjoy our lives,” he said in a recent interview. He tells new patients who suffer from past traumas that whatever happened to them was not their fault, nor was it a punishment from God, nor do they need to carry the pain to be “good” Christians. “God doesn’t want us to be stuck in this negative place in our lives.”

With God’s help and a cooperative attitude, most individuals suffering from trauma do get better. But it doesn’t “just happen,” Kolodziej said. “Time doesn’t heal anything,” he said. “It’s what you do in that time that’s going to heal things.”

And with the advent of a relatively new type of therapy, healing can be achieved fairly quickly—sometimes, in just a few sessions, he said.

EMDR Therapy: Breaking Down Walls

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specialized form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) designed to help individuals process and heal from traumatic memories. Developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1989, EMDR emerged from a theory that the brain processes and stores traumatic memories differently from normal memories. This difference can cause these memories to become walled off from the rest of the brain, leading to ongoing psychological and emotional distress.

During a traumatic event, the brain’s usual networking of memories and sensory experiences can go “offline,” leaving these memories unprocessed. This unprocessed trauma can manifest in various forms, such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other trauma-related conditions. The goal of EMDR is to help the brain reprocess these traumatic memories so that they no longer exert a harmful influence on a person’s life.

EMDR therapy does not require the patient to discuss the traumatic event in detail. Instead, the therapy leverages the brain’s capacity to reprocess memories through bilateral stimulation, most commonly achieved through guided eye movements, though other methods like tapping or auditory stimuli—first on one side of the body, then on the other—can also be used.

At the beginning of an EMDR session, Dr. Kolodziej asks the individual to identify a negative thought or emotion that is bothering them, such as anxiety or shame. Then he asks the person to complete a sentence associated with that negative feeling: “I am….”

“And the person will often say, ‘I am a loser,’ ‘I am afraid,’ ‘I am worthless.’ So that is your negative thought,” he said.

Then he asks the person to “float back” in their memory to the point in their life when those negative thoughts started, or to their worst instances. That’s the starting point for reprocessing the traumatic memory.

Next, he asks the person to identify a positive thought they would rather have associated with that feeling. “So right now your negative cognition is ‘I’m not worthwhile.’ ‘I’m a loser,’ right? So what would you like to change that to?” he said. “And they might say, ‘I have a lot to offer’ or ‘I am valuable’ or ‘I am strong.’ Okay, so that’s what you’d like to get to…. So now let’s let your brain work.”

This is where the “bilateral stimulation” comes in. For 20 to 30 seconds, the person follows Kolodziej’s finger without moving their head as he moves it across their field of vision, from left to right and back again several times. This stimulates the right side of the brain, then the left side of the brain, allowing it to more effectively reprocess the traumatic memory—breaking through the protective wall.

During bilateral stimulation, the person lets their thoughts flow in whatever direction seems best. The person might go into more detail about their trauma, or they might go to a completely different place. In either case, by bringing in new thoughts, “they’re reprocessing what happened and coming up with ways of being able to deal with it and cope with it,” Kolodziej said.

At the end of the bilateral stimulation, he asks the person what they are thinking or feeling. Then the whole process starts over again: naming the negative thought, the positive “replacement” thought, and the bilateral stimulation.

“They come up with another thought, and another thought, and another thought,” Kolodziej said. “I’ll have no idea where the thought process is gonna go, but what’s happening as they’re going from one thought to the next thought to the next thought, is they’re no longer stuck.”

‘Healing Can Absolutely Happen’

Over time, as the person’s brain continues to reprocess the memory, the emotional intensity associated with it diminishes. Kolodziej describes this as moving from the stage of having a “wound” to having a “scar”—a memory that no longer hijacks the present and is instead a part of the past.

EMDR is not the only way to address trauma; in certain situations, it may not even be the most appropriate method. But EMDR therapy has been widely embraced by mainstream health organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Whatever approach people take, Kolodziej said the most important step is to have hope that healing is possible. For those who doubt, Kolodziej offers a message of encouragement: “What if you could heal? What would that look like for you? There are so many people who have suffered like you and have found peace. With God at the helm, healing can absolutely happen.”

If you are dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic event, you can connect with Dr. Mark Kolodziej or Anne Brunette–who are both certified in EMDR–or another one of the licensed Catholic therapists at CatholicCounselors.com.