Naming Your Needs Isn’t Selfish; It’s Loving. Here’s What to Do.

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Interpersonal conflict is tricky enough to navigate in any setting, but when it happens at your parish, it can be extra stressful.

That’s what happened to Maria. For two years, another woman on a volunteer committee had been the self-appointed boss of everything. She assigned tasks without being asked and changed plans other people had already agreed on. If anyone pushed back, she’d get tearful.

Maria — and everyone else — went along with her to avoid the drama. But then the woman mapped out the committee’s entire summer program without input from anyone else, presenting it as a done deal.

That’s when Maria realized she’d run out of patience.

“I realized I was angry, not just about the schedule, but about the fact that I’ve been swallowing this for two years,” she said in an email to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s More2Life radio program. “I want to handle this the right way. But I honestly don’t know what that looks like when the person seems to genuinely believe they’re doing a good thing. How do I address this without being the one who caused a problem at church?”

The answer to that question, according to the Popcaks, begins with recognizing that setting healthy boundaries with difficult people isn’t “selfish,” but often the most loving thing to do.

Your Needs Matter, Too

Demanding people tend to get their way because they know how to make you feel guilty about saying “no.” In a church context, that strategy can get a boost from the idea that saying “no” is selfish and therefore un-Christian.

But that guilt isn’t the “good guilt” that helps us get back on track when we sin.

“That guilt isn’t coming from the Holy Spirit,” Lisa said. “It’s the enemy’s voice, whispering that your needs don’t matter as much as theirs.”

The truth is, your needs, your time, your emotional energy all have value because you have value, Lisa continued: “Protecting those things is not selfish. It’s how you stay healthy enough to keep loving well.”

Some Christians might object that Jesus called us to “take up our cross” in imitation of him. That kind of sacrificial love has its time and place; sometimes, love requires sacrificing our own needs and priorities. Think, for instance, of the parent who gets up in the middle of the night to care for a sick child.

But acquiescing to others isn’t always the best way to love them. Yes, Jesus’ sacrifice is the ultimate expression of his love for us. But on countless occasions, he pushed back on people for their own good: the scribes and Pharisees, but also Peter and other of his closest disciples.

The Popcaks point to Galatians 6:2 as a good reminder of what responsible love looks like: “Bear one another’s burdens.” Notice, Lisa pointed out, that St. Paul says we are to bear “one another’s” burdens — not “everyone’s” burdens. Mutual self-giving is the key.

Three Ways to Respond to a Demanding Person

So what should someone in Maria’s position do? Here’s what Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak recommend.

1. Ask whether this is actually a hill worth climbing

Before you do anything else, step back and ask: Is this person demanding something truly unreasonable — or just annoying?

If what they’re pushing is genuinely good for the relationship or the project and doesn’t really cost you much, the wisest move may be to simply do it.

“This is one of those times where offering it up — the old Catholic practice — might actually be a good thing,” Greg said. Not every demand deserves a confrontation, and not every irritating request is worth the energy it would take to resist it.

But if the person’s demand harms your well-being or undermines the good of the project or group, pushing back might be the best way to go.

2. Name what you need — calmly and clearly

Once you’ve read the situation, put your needs on the table. Not as an accusation or a demand — just as information.

In the context of Maria’s committee, Greg and Lisa suggested leading with gratitude before raising the question. Something like: “Thank you so much for all the work you put into this. Let’s take some time for everyone to look it over, and then we can see what works for the group.”

In a one-on-one situation, Greg recommends being direct but low-key: “Hey, I want to make sure we make room for what’s important to me and my family.” State it plainly and see what happens.

3. Use the ‘qualified yes’

If the person pushes back, consider offering a “qualified yes”: “I could do this, but I can’t do that.” Offer what you genuinely can, name what you can’t — clearly, and without apology.

And if they won’t accept even that? Greg’s counsel is simple: let the consequences play out naturally. Say, for instance, that you’re being asked to bring potato salad to the potluck, but for some reason you can’t do that. After clearly communicating that you won’t be able to bring the potato salad (or run the parish festival, or round up prizes for the raffle, or lead the fourth-grade vacation bible school…), simply let the cards fall where they may.

“You’re not being petty,” Greg said. “You’re not being mean. You’re not creating drama. You just didn’t do the thing you couldn’t do.”

Most situations don’t require dramatic confrontation. “Only if they are adamantly refusing to be a virtuous person do we have to escalate in any way, shape or form,” Lisa says. A calm, consistent pattern of naming your needs — held with warmth and without drama — is usually enough to shift the dynamic over time.

Naming Your Needs Is Good for Everyone

We don’t know how Maria’s situation played out, but we can imagine. If she followed the steps outlined by the Popcaks, then she didn’t need to cause a scene or demand a full restructuring of the committee.

She could simply begin saying, with grace and gratitude, what she could and couldn’t do. Gradually, other committee members might see a way to name their needs, too. Hopefully, the end result would be more honesty, more mutual support, and more room for people to share their ideas and talents.

That’s not a bad thing for anyone; even for the self-appointed “boss,” the end result is a richer, more fulfilling volunteer experience.

For more help navigating difficult relationships, reach out to the team of professional pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. You might also find Dr. Greg’s book God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! a practical companion for the work ahead.

Helping a Loved One with Difficult Problems? Ask These 3 Questions First

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When a loved one is going off the rails, how do you love them without enabling their self-destructive behavior?

That’s the question Kim brought to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak on a recent episode of their More2Life radio show.

When her 25-year-old daughter moved back home after a suicide crisis, Kim and her husband took her in, paid off her debts, covered residential treatment and three months of intensive outpatient therapy, and handed over the keys to one of their cars.

“We’ve been very supportive,” Kim told the Popcaks. “But now she seems to be going off the rails…we’re just kind of not sure where to go from here.”

Where’s the line between supporting a loved one and enabling their harmful behavior? It’s one of the hardest questions in family life. Fortunately, the Popcaks have spent decades helping families work through this dilemma.

When ‘Helping’ Isn’t Authentically Loving

Human beings are hardwired to want to relieve others’ suffering, especially the people closest to us. Usually that works out, but sometimes the way we offer support backfires.

“Love isn’t just about doing what makes people feel better in the moment,” Lisa Popcak said. “It’s a commitment to doing whatever we reasonably can to help someone be their best. And that sounds simple, but it can get so complicated when someone we care about is really hurting, because we tend to focus more on what we need to do to reduce the tension in the moment rather than working for their ultimate good.”

We shift into fix-it mode, taking the responsibility for their decisions off their shoulders and saying yes when we probably should say no.

“We don’t do it because we’re selfish or weak, but because we can’t stand watching someone we love suffer,” Dr. Popcak said. “The clinical word for that is enabling, but what it really means is that we confuse making someone comfortable with actually loving them.”

What inevitably happens next? Our loved one stays stuck and we burn out, which makes the situation worse.

Authentic love means working for the other person’s ultimate good, not just relief in the moment. This is where things get complicated. How do we figure out what authentic love looks like in a particular situation?

An Examination of Conscience for Helpers

Jacob Popcak, a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com, offers a simple starting point: a three-question “helper’s examination of conscience” that cuts through the confusion by getting honest about our motivations and our goals.

1. Am I doing this for them, or to feel better about myself?

Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are doing something for the good of the other person, but in reality, we are more motivated by our own self-interest. That’s why it’s important to explicitly examine our motivations.

Let’s say, for instance, that you really don’t want to stand up to your loved one about their irresponsible or self-destructive behavior. As a Christian, you might tell yourself that you are being loving — carrying your cross, so to speak. But if your real motivation is to avoid the person getting angry at you, then your actions aren’t really oriented towards the other person’s well-being.

“You might be doing it to feel better about you,” Jacob said, “because you don’t want to feel the feelings you associate with someone being angry at you.”

Self-interest takes other forms too — protecting your reputation, advancing your own agenda, or simply nursing the quiet satisfaction of being the person who swoops in and saves the day. None of that is the same as working for someone’s good.

If you really want to help your loved one, stay focused on the question: What do I need to do to help this person to heal and become their best self?

2. What does success look like?

This question helps us reframe our expectations. The truth is, when we stop supporting someone’s harmful behavior and start helping them get to a better place — well, most people on the receiving end of that kind of help aren’t thrilled about it.

“That question helps me to adjust my expectations so that my goal becomes my own virtue, not just getting a positive reaction from the person,” Popcak said.

Depending on the situation, success might look like remaining calm in the face of the other person’s angry reaction. Or if I know I tend to come off as condescending and preachy, success might look like delivering a tough message in a more neutral way.

Reframing your definition of success is all about recognizing what you can control and what you can’t. You can control your own behavior; you can’t control what the other person does.

It also means the intervention doesn’t fail just because the other person gets angry, refuses to cooperate, or walks away from the conversation. If you showed up with integrity — calm, honest, respectful — you did your job. Their reaction is theirs to own.

3. Am I speaking with the love due to a child of God?

Examining your motives and freeing yourself from the need for a positive reaction doesn’t give you permission to be cold, blunt, or self-righteous. The person you’re confronting is a child of God, and they deserve to be treated as one, regardless of what they’ve done or how they’ve responded to your efforts.

As Jacob Popcak puts it: “The first two questions are not a carte blanche license to speak however I want to and say, ‘Well, if they’re mad at me, it’s just because they can’t handle the truth.’ I am, as a Christian, still obliged to ask myself this third question.”

Help That Actually Helps

Kim and her husband had already done so much. The question wasn’t whether they loved their daughter, but whether their love was being directed well. Asking yourself these three questions not just once, but as you continue to accompany your loved one, will make the journey easier for both of you in the long run.

“The best way to make sure that we’re loving responsibly is to keep asking God, how do you want me to work for their good, given everything that I’m seeing?” Dr. Gregory Popcak said. “Let the answer to that prayer, not our guilt or sentiment or panic or fear, guide what to do next.”

For more on loving the difficult people in your life well, see Dr. Popcak’s book God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts!. For personalized, faith-filled support, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com. 

4 Reasons People Avoid Praying About Tough Problems (and How to Pray Anyway)

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It seems like it should be pretty simple. If you’re Christian and you’re dealing with a problem, you ought to take it to God in prayer, right?

Right. And yet…so often, we don’t. It’s a pattern that the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com encounter again and again.

And on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, a caller named Colleen shared her own experience with this hesitation around prayer.

In confession, Colleen shared that she was hesitating to pray “because it hurts too much.” The priest advised her to push through that hesitation and pray anyway.

She took his advice, realizing that when she does, on the other side she inevitably experiences the “healing, hopeful, calming, release of my worry and my hurt.”

“I know I’m not alone” in shying away from taking her problems to God, she told the Popcaks.

She’s not, and the Popcaks used her call to talk about four common reasons that people avoid bringing their problems to God in prayer—and how to overcome those blocks.

Four Reasons People Avoid Prayer

1. You’re avoiding what you need to face

The most common reason is simple enough: we don’t want to think about the hard thing, so we don’t want to pray about it, either. If something is painful, revisiting it feels like making the pain worse.

“It’s all I’m thinking about, and if I have to actually bring it into words, I’m afraid it’s going to hurt even more,” Dr. Popcak explained.

But doing what Colleen’s priest advised (pray anyway!) is the way to go.

“It really is best to push through,” he continued, “because (when) we give God those particular problems, he gives us the grace to deal with them and think through them, and that’s a healthy thing to do, rather than running away and avoiding stuff.”

Staying away from prayer keeps the problem in the dark, where it tends to grow. Bringing it to God exposes it to the one who can actually heal it.

2. You’re performing piety instead of being honest

Many Christians grew up with the sense that prayer has to be reverent, composed, and properly packaged—“very polite,” as Lisa put it, and certainly not sharing any negative feelings you might be having.

She grew up in a family that took that approach to prayer.

“I grew up with a mother who was very, like, you have to talk to God a certain way, because he might get mad at you,” she said.

But when she met Greg, she saw how he prayed with total honesty through grief and struggle. “I was terrified when you were honest with God,” she recalled. “But what I saw is you never got hit by the lightning bolt. You actually got closer and closer to God when you were honest with him.”

Formal prayer is great, the Popcaks say, but it is meant to support, not replace, an open, honest relationship with God. When we pray in a way that guards our true feelings, that prayer experience can “hurt” because we’re not really connecting with God.

“God really wants an honest relationship with us,” Dr. Popcak said. “He would rather us yell at him and call him names and beat on his chest and scream and holler and talk about how much we hate him than not talk to him or just be polite.”

3. You keep asking God to take it away instead of asking what to do with it

God doesn’t always remove suffering; he often walks us through it, and those are different things.

As a little kid with terrible math anxiety, Greg wanted his parents to “just do the problems” for him. But no matter how much he cried and fussed, his parents never did. Instead, they sat with him, helped him calm down, and walked him through the steps.

“A lot of times, that’s what God wants to do with us,” he said. “He wants to walk with us so that he can show us how to be competent, how to not be afraid of things anymore, how he’s given us gifts to use.”

You can certainly ask God to take away your problem; after all, Jesus did that. But you should also pray that, if he doesn’t take the problem away, God will help you through it: “Show me how to respond to this in a way that will help me be my best self, in a way that will challenge the people around me to be their best self too, and glorify you.”

4. You know what God is asking, but you don’t want to do it

This is the one Dr. Popcak names from personal experience, offered with some humor. When prayer feels stuck and the other three reasons don’t quite fit, this is often the answer.

“I know in my heart of hearts what God’s actually asking me to do,” he said, “and I don’t want to do it because it’s scary, or because it’s painful, or because it makes me feel vulnerable. So then I get mad at God for asking me to do that thing.”

The solution is straightforward if not easy. “When I get over my big bad self and I do the thing, it gets better.” Prayer isn’t stuck because God is silent; it’s stuck because we already know the answer.

Trust the Great Teacher

If you find that you’re hesitating to bring your problems to God, think about whether one of these four common reasons might be at the root of the problem. Reframe the way you approach prayer, and as Colleen’s priest suggested, push through your hesitation.

“Really, what you’re doing is saying, I am going to trust in you, God, I’m going to trust that you love me enough to hear all my thoughts, all my feelings to be there for me, even when I’m angry at you,” Lisa said. “What you’re doing is inviting the Holy Spirit into all of it, so that you can deepen your relationship with God and you can find ways to find solutions.”

She continued: “We’re literally asking this great teacher to teach us how to be our best selves. We’re not saying, I’ll go back to God once I’ve become my best self. We’re actually going to him because he knows exactly where he wants to take us.”

For more help navigating personal and relationship problems with God’s help, connect with the resources and pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. And for help introducing your children to open, honest, everyday prayer, check out How Our Family Prays Each Day.

What Does the Theology of the Body Have to Do with Mental Health?

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Which is more important to your health, your mind or your body? How you or your health care provider answers that question has real implications for your well-being.

Most of us treat the body and mind as two separate entities, reaching for a pill for physical pain and going to therapy for emotional struggles. Inevitably, this divide leaves us feeling fragmented and poorly served by modern medicine.

But the Catholic Church has long insisted that body and mind are not competing entities, but are profoundly united. Spirit and matter “are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature” (Catechism #365).

It’s a radically countercultural doctrine. For centuries, influential thinkers have pulled this unity apart. On one side, Plato and René Descartes treated the body as a sort of prison for the mind; early pioneers of psychology like Freud and Skinner followed suit by largely ignoring the body’s role in mental health. On the other side, materialist philosophers claimed that the human being is nothing more than a complex biological machine—a view that resurfaced when the discovery of psychiatric medications led many modern experts to reduce mental health to “chemical imbalances” in the brain.

In recent decades, modern science has come to recognize that mind and body are a single, deeply connected system. The Catholic Church has known this for centuries, and in the writings of Pope John Paul II, now known as the Theology of the Body, that ancient truth has been developed into a comprehensive framework for understanding the human person.

The Theology of the Body is foundational to the way the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com approach pastoral therapy. Here’s what it teaches and why it matters for your mental health.

A Roadmap for Human Wellness

When St. John Paul II became pope in 1978, he brought with him a manuscript he had been developing for years on what it means to be a human person. His starting point, as Dr. Popcak describes on the More2Life radio show, was this: if we took everything God has given us—creation, Scripture, salvation history, all of it—what universal principles could we discover about living a more abundant life and having healthier, holier relationships?

The answer became a comprehensive vision of the human person: what it means to be human, how we are wired for mental and emotional flourishing, and how we relate to one another. This vision became known as the Theology of the Body, and several of its insights speak directly to mental health.

Your Body is Speaking. Are You Listening?

One of TOB’s central claims is that our bodies are part of how God communicates his design for us. As Lisa Popcak explains on the show, drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, God speaks to us through every cell of our bodies. Aquinas called this the Book of Nature—the idea that how God designed us, body, mind, and spirit, reveals his plan for how we are meant to live and relate to one another.

“Theology of the Body reminds us that biology is theology,” Dr. Popcak explains. “By prayerfully reflecting on the way God built our bodies and brains, we can discern important insights about what it takes to live a healthy, holy life.”

The human body offers numerous examples of this principle at work.

  • The face. The human face has roughly 43 muscles dedicated almost entirely to emotional expression—far more than almost any other animal. Humans are also unique among primates in having visible whites of the eyes, which allows others to track exactly where we are looking and what we are paying attention to. We are, literally, built to be
     “read” and to “read” others. The body reveals that we are made for mutual knowing.
  • Mirror neurons. God wired the human brain with mirror neurons—cells that fire when we observe another person’s emotional state, producing a similar feeling in ourselves. This is the neurological basis for empathy. We are designed not merely to observe others’ inner lives, but to share them.
  • Touch. Physical touch—a hand on a shoulder, a long hug from someone you trust—triggers the release of oxytocin, a hormone that reduces cortisol, lowers heart rate, and builds a sense of safety and trust. Research shows that holding someone’s hand during a stressful situation measurably reduces their physiological stress response. The body is designed to give and receive comfort through physical presence—another form of self-donation.
  • Secure attachment. When people feel securely connected to God and others, their nervous system operates in a calmer, more integrated state. The body’s social engagement system is literally activated by felt safety in relationship. Isolation, by contrast, keeps the nervous system in a low-grade state of vigilance and threat. This is why withdrawal from God and others doesn’t just feel painful—it physiologically disrupts our capacity to function well.
  • Anxiety. Brain science tells us that anxiety is not primarily a response to external problems, but acts as a warning signal that something is wrong in our connections to God and others. “Rather than being a direct response to problems,” Lisa Popcak explains, “anxiety is actually a sign that we feel disconnected from people—the people that God has placed in our life to support us. The key to regaining our peace is working to restore that sense of communion and connection.” When we feel anxious, the body is sending a message: go find safe, healthy people.

Physical symptoms like panic attacks, chronic tension, and persistent exhaustion follow the same logic. They are often the body making visible some dysfunction in the mind or spirit. Medication may help manage those symptoms, but lasting healing requires attending to the whole person.

We Are Wired for Communion

These five examples point toward one of TOB’s most practically important teachings: we are made for communion. Not just in the sense that other people are nice to have around, but in the deeper sense that we are literally strongest when connected to God and to one another—physically, neurologically, and spiritually designed to give and receive love.

As Dr. Popcak puts it, isolation doesn’t just leave us running low; it actively drains us. When problems cause us to withdraw from God and the people we love, our brains change in ways that make us feel powerless, overwhelmed, and alone.

This understanding that we are made for relationship shapes the Popcaks’ approach to specific problems. When a caller struggles with anxiety, for example, the conversation might move toward examining what connections in their life feel threatened or broken. Other times, when someone lacks the confidence to tackle a tough problem, the Popcaks urge the practice of receptivity, which Lisa explains as “the ability to listen to God in the moment so we’re not just relying on our own strength or our own instincts or even our own fears to guide us.”

Suffering is Not the End of the Story

Perhaps the deepest gift the Theology of the Body offers to people in pain is a way to understand their suffering.

As the Popcaks explain, every human story follows the pattern of the larger biblical story of God’s relationship with humanity.

  1. Chapter one is original man—who God created us to be before sin: “secure, whole, capable of loving and being loved totally without fear.”
  2. Chapter two is historical man—the wounded people we are now, “living in a fallen world, carrying the scars of sins committed against us and the sins and mistakes that we’ve made.”
  3. Chapter three is eschatological man—the people we are becoming, day by day, through God’s healing grace. Ultimately, we are destined to be fully restored and glorified in Christ.

The paschal mystery—Christ’s suffering, death, and Resurrection—blazed a path for us from chapter two to chapter three. Because Christ took on a human body, he did not suffer abstractly. He suffered physically and emotionally (body and mind): exhaustion, grief, betrayal, abandonment, and death. Human suffering does not have to be meaningless: God himself has walked this territory, and because he has, he can lead us through it.

“Even in the middle of difficult times,” Lisa says, “God wants to show us how to respond to what we’re going through in a way that helps us to become the people he created us to be, and to work for the good of those around us.”

It is tempting to think that our wounds, our struggles, and our bad habits define who we are. But the Theology of the Body insists otherwise.

“Our past may explain some things about us,” Dr. Popcak says, “but it’s grace that defines us.”

Body, Mind, and Spirit Working Together

Pastoral counseling rooted in the Theology of the Body doesn’t treat the body, mind, and spirit as separate departments. It understands them as interlocking dimensions of a single human experience. Tackling relational or personal problems means taking all three into account, and the Theology of the Body offers a framework for doing exactly that.

If you’d like to explore what that kind of integrated healing might look like in your own life, reach out to any of the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

To End the Chore Wars, Go Deeper Than Deciding Who Does What

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More than half of married adults say sharing the load of household work is very important to a successful marriage, according to a 2016 Pew Research survey. Yet nearly half of married couples say that responsibility for work around the house is split unevenly in their marriage.

Since chores are one of the leading causes of conflict in marriage, figuring out how to share the load matters. But as Dr. Greg Popcak points out, reducing conflict around chores is about more than balancing out how much each person does. It’s about something most couples have never talked about: emotional labor.

The 10 percent problem

“Doing the task is only about 10 percent of the actual task,” Dr. Popcak explained in a recent episode of his BeDADitudes podcast.

Think about what actually goes into getting something done. There’s the task itself — and then there’s everything that surrounds it: noticing the task needs doing, making a plan, gathering what’s needed, scheduling the time, following through, and making sure it stays done. That surrounding work is emotional labor.

In most households, emotional labor falls unevenly, with women usually (but not always) carrying most of the mental load. Often, the person doing the emotional labor can’t fully explain why they feel overburdened. They just know that even when their spouse “helps,” they’re still the one who had to notice, plan, and direct everything. In effect, that person has an extra job as the “general contractor” for the household.

“We’ve been socialized to think it’s one person’s responsibility to do the emotional labor,” Dr. Popcak said, “and the other person’s job to show up when told to do something. That’s really not the Christian view of household labor.”

More than checking boxes

Christian family life calls every member of the household — not just one person — to practice prompt, generous, consistent, and cheerful attention to each other’s needs. (Readers familiar with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s Liturgy of Domestic Church Life will recognize this as one of twelve foundational practices for a healthy, holy family.)

The goal is to really “show up” for one another — cluing in to what the household and the people in it actually need, and contributing to that without waiting to be asked. Waiting to be told what to do, staying focused on our own corner of the house, or checking out after our assigned tasks are done amounts to the vice of sloth, Dr. Popcak said.

“Sloth isn’t necessarily laziness,” he said. “It’s the checking out. It’s not engaging with the things right in front of us.”

That inattention, however unintentional, damages relationships over time.

Building the Kingdom of God, One Sock at a Time

On the other hand, showing up, noticing what needs to be done, and then following through is a very real part of Christians’ responsibility to build the Kingdom of God.

“It’s not enough for the Christian person to be told what to do,” Dr. Popcak said. “The Christian person really needs to recognize what needs to be done and how I can use this moment to build the kingdom of God.”

Building the kingdom of God means doing what we can to cooperate with God’s grace and to undo the damage that sin does to our relationships with one another. “That’s what building the kingdom is because the kingdom is built on relationship,” Dr. Popcak said.

We tend to think of building the Kingdom of God in terms of “big” acts of charity. But noticing that the laundry needs putting away or that the dishes need to be done and then taking the lead on that is just as much part of building the Kingdom of God as bigger, more visible work like establishing hospitals and housing programs. The ultimate goal of both types of work is the same: sharing God’s love in a way that restores and strengthens relationships.

With that in mind, here are three simple ways to start shifting your family’s mindset around household work.

1. Scan before you sit

When you walk into a room, take five seconds to look around before settling in. Is there something small that needs doing? Maybe it’s a dirty cup on the counter or a child who looks like she’s had a rough afternoon.

You don’t have to act on everything you notice. The goal is simply to pay attention — to cultivate the habit of awareness rather than waiting for someone else to flag what needs doing.

2. Leave every room a little better than you found it

Dr. Popcak suggests adopting the old scouting principle of leaving your campsite better than you found it. Applied at home, that might mean wiping down the sink when you leave the bathroom, putting something away as you pass through the kitchen, or picking up what’s on the floor before you leave the bedroom.

Small contributions, made consistently by everyone in the household, add up to a home that doesn’t depend on any one person’s constant vigilance.

3. Leave every person a little better than you found them

The campsite principle applies to people, too.

“Am I leaving the people I encounter a little better than I found them?” Dr. Popcak asks. Offering to help, giving a hug, saying a word of encouragement all counts.

At this level, emotional labor is more than household management. When our attention to the household extends to the people in it, work stops being transactional and starts being relational — which is exactly what God intends it to be.

For more help building a stronger, more connected home, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. And if you’d like ongoing support for your family life, join the community of Catholic parents at CatholicHŌM, where you can also connect with Dr. Popcak and his team of expert pastoral counselors.

The Three Essential Steps of Real Reconciliation

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It was bad enough that Julie’s mother-in-law and sisters-in-law disrupted her wedding reception so horrendously that the family had to ask them to leave. But even worse, her mother-in-law kept her distance from Julie and her kids for eleven years. When she finally reached out, her “apology” was brief and breezy: “I’m sorry for everything — let’s just move forward.”

“That’s not a sincere apology to me,” Julie told Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak during a recent episode of their More2Life radio show. Meanwhile, her husband felt caught in the middle, and the wound from that wedding day had never really closed.

Lisa Popcak could empathize with Julie’s situation. “One of the things that’s really difficult is when you feel that the Lord is asking you to get yourself in right order about forgiving someone, about fixing a relationship, and they don’t want to or they don’t have the insight to, then how do you handle it?” she said during the show opener. “How do you work through that with God? I know that had been a process for me. I’m in a really good place with it, but it was a walk that I had to walk with Jesus to get there.”

In last week’s post, the Popcaks explained the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. This time, the Popcaks are going to help us understand what constitutes a genuine, sincere apology that opens the door to reconciliation. It’s a skill that’s useful whether you’re on the receiving end like Julie or you need to apologize for something yourself.

The Road to Reconciliation

Previously, the Popcaks explained the important difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness, they explained, is something one person can do alone — it’s the decision to surrender the desire to hurt someone for having hurt you. Even better, it is about getting to a place where you are able to want the offending person’s well-being.

Reconciliation, on the other hand, is about doing the work needed to repair and restore the relationship — and that requires more than two words (“I’m sorry”) and a change of subject.

When Dr. Greg helped Julie think through what she needed from her mother-in-law, he laid out three components that every meaningful apology requires.

First, a display of empathy. Somehow, the person who committed the offense needs to show that they understand how much they have hurt the other person. 

Second, a display of integrity. “In other words, ‘You had a right to expect more from me,’” Dr. Popcak explained. “It wasn’t just that you have too thin a skin, or you don’t have a sense of humor, or you just have too high expectations. It’s: You’re right, I was wrong. You had a right to expect more from me, and I blew it, and I’m sorry.”

Third, the offending person needs to offer to fix the harm they caused. This might involve making a concrete proposal about what they want to do to make things right, or it might involve asking the other person what would make it right for them.

“The person who committed the offense has to be willing to listen to what we need them to do to heal the wound they caused,” Lisa said. “Asking them to listen to your needs and to do the work necessary to meet them is not refusing to forgive them. It is what authentic forgiveness and healing requires.”

Julie’s mother-in-law was missing all three things in her apology to Julie; she had offered the form of an apology without any of its substance.

“When a person isn’t capable of doing those three things as part of an apology, that means that they’re not really accepting responsibility, and you can’t trust them to not do it again,” Dr. Popcak explained.

Reconciliation Requires Hard Work from Both People

The work of achieving reconciliation isn’t only the responsibility of the person who caused the offense, though. When we set healthy boundaries with people who have hurt us, our Christian faith requires that we also provide them with a clear way forward.

In Julie’s case, the Popcaks’ advice was to sit down and talk with her husband about what that way forward would look like for his mother. “Talk together about, ‘What would we need to see from your mom to relax this boundary and to know that she’s safe to be around us and our kids?’” That sense of safety includes emotional, not just physical, safety.

This not only helps the offending person know what they need to do to restore the relationship; it also helps the person who has been hurt to objectively evaluate whether that work has been done.

“You can ask yourself, ‘Well, has she done the things that we asked her to do to let those boundaries down?’” Dr. Popcak said. “And you can answer yes or no. And then you make your decision based on an objective criteria, not just how you feel about it.”

The Three Steps of a Real Apology

If someone hasn’t accepted your apology — or you sense that what you’ve offered hasn’t truly landed — here are three ways to move toward the kind of accountability that actually opens doors.

  1. Name the specific harm you caused. Vague apologies (“I’m sorry for everything”) signal that you haven’t really reckoned with what happened. Before you approach someone, ask yourself: Can I name exactly what I did wrong? Can I describe how it hurt them? If not, more reflection is needed first.
  2. Accept what they need without arguing about it. Once you’ve acknowledged the harm, the other person’s response belongs to them. They may need more time than you’d like. They may not be ready to reconcile at all. Accepting that without pressure or manipulation is itself an act of love.
  3. Work out a clear path forward. When the other person is ready to reconcile, work with them to name exactly what needs to happen to repair the harm you caused in the relationship.

Then it’s all about following through. The first three steps are the key that opens the door that has closed between you and the other person; this key allows the possibility of reconciliation. But it is consistent, changed behavior over time that makes it real.

Let God’s Grace In

Knowing these basic elements of real reconciliation provides a road map forward. Of course, when the wounds cut deep, moving through these steps can still be very difficult on both sides. Prayer, Lisa said, is essential to help us do what we can’t otherwise do on our own.

“Involving the Holy Spirit in this really matters,” Lisa said. ”We can’t white-knuckle our way through forgiveness or even come up with a plan without the grace of the Holy Spirit being invited into the situation.”

Real reconciliation can’t be forced or rushed. It grows from genuine accountability, patience, and grace.

“Asking for and receiving forgiveness,” Dr. Greg said, “is just the first step on the road back from hurts.”

If you need extra help with the challenges of giving and receiving forgiveness, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.