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.

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.

Why Your Faith Might Be Making You Anxious (And How to Fix It)

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Practicing religious faith isn’t just good for your spiritual life; it usually has physical and mental health benefits, too.

That conclusion has been the consensus of researchers for decades. When Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital reviewed hundreds of studies in 2022, for example, they found that people who participate in a religious community tend to live healthier, longer lives.

But researchers caution that religious faith and practice isn’t always beneficial in these ways. In fact, sometimes it can actually lead to greater anxiety and other mental health problems.

Such “toxic faith” is usually the result of extrinsic faith or insecure God-attachment, the Pastoral Solutions Institute’s Dr. Greg Popcak explains in his book Unworried: A Life Without Anxiety. Let’s focus on the issue of how extrinsic versus intrinsic faith can impact your mental health.

 

The Impact of Extrinsic Faith on Mental Health

Extrinsic faith, as defined by psychologist Gordon Allport, refers to religious or spiritual behavior primarily oriented towards achieving non-religious goals. These goals often include seeking parental or social acceptance, gaining approval, or achieving success in social status. The young adult who goes to church to satisfy her parents, the retiree who is involved mainly to socialize with friends, and the businessperson looking for social status or networking opportunities all exhibit extrinsic faith.

Intrinsic faith, on the other hand, is oriented towards helping a person live a more meaningful, integrated life.

“Extrinsic faith can be sincere in its way, but it is often a poor source of comfort because, unlike intrinsic faith, it is not intended to help you make more sense out of your life,” Dr. Popcak writes. “Rather, it is intended to get another person to give you something you do not feel you can claim for yourself, such as self-esteem, social or cultural identity, or professional success.”

When faith is just a means to an end, it can lead to anxiety and other psychological issues. Constantly trying to gain approval or acceptance from others through religious practices can be exhausting and unfulfilling.

Everyone goes through a phase where their faith is mostly extrinsic, either in childhood or as a newcomer to a faith community: during this initiation period, our practices and beliefs are given to us by others. But at some point, Dr. Popcak writes, each of us must decide whether our faith is a series of hoops we need to jump through to please others or the “source and summit” of our life (to borrow language from the Catechism of the Catholic Church).

 

Three Ways to Better Own Your Faith

Most people have many motivations for practicing their religion, some extrinsic and some intrinsic. But our overall goal should be to keep moving toward a more authentic “owned” faith, one that is a source of meaning, integration, transformation, and transcendence.

This journey begins with a conscious decision to seek a more personal, honest, open connection with God. If you feel the need for a more intrinsic faith, here are three practices to help you begin:

  1. Center Your Faith on Your Relationship with God: When you go to Mass, pray, or read scripture, do so with a genuine desire to connect with God. As the Catechism points out, our prayer and worship ought to lead us to a more intimate relationship with God. Don’t talk “at” God, but with God. Bring your whole self into your prayers, expressing your thoughts, fears, hopes, and gratitude sincerely. The Psalms are a good example of this sort of free-flowing, honest prayer.

  2. Seek Understanding: Spend time learning more about your faith through study and reflection. Learning about your faith can help you better integrate a more genuine faith into your lived practice, as opposed to just “going with the crowd.” Read books that deepen your understanding of spirituality and help you grow closer to God.

  3. Seek Spiritual Direction: A spiritual director or pastoral counselor can help you identify hidden assumptions, old hurts, and patterns of behavior that may be preventing you from growing close to God.

“The more your faith becomes intrinsic, the more you will be able to put aside your anxiety, sit at the feet of the Lord, and let your heart be still, knowing that he is God,” Dr. Popcak writes.

For more about this topic, see Chapter Five of Unworried: A Life Without Anxiety. And if you’d like more personal, one-on-one help with your faith life, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

How To Raise The Dead

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Guest post by Jacob Francisco M.A., LMHC, Pastoral Counselor at CatholicCounselors.com


There is an emotion that can kill, and that emotion is called shame. Shame is the sense that deep down inside, at the very core of who we are, we are unlovable, unworthy, broken beyond repair, or otherwise bad. This feeling is something we are all familiar with going all the way back to the garden of Eden. For some of us, this shame seems to kill a part of us. We may describe ourselves as feeling “dead inside” or talk about the skeletons in our closet. Another common description is feeling numb all the time. 

Shame feels repulsive or ugly, like something dead, and we do not want to think about it or anyone else to know about it. It’s a natural impulse to bury something that is dead. We do this in the physical world and we do this emotionally. So we toss it in a hole and throw heavy stones on top to keep it buried. We medicate our self-loathing or despair with things that make us feel better in the moment; food, TV, social media, substances, pornography or other sexual behaviors, oversleeping, overworking. The list is endless. Sometimes the thing we use to bury the shame is even more of what we are ashamed of, and so the cycle continues around and around. Oftentimes we are able to numb out the shame to the point that we rarely consider it consciously anymore. We may deny that we have any shame at all. This dead part of us that we have now buried is a festering, rotting, thing that poisons the other parts of us. It spreads like a plague into many areas of our life, warping our thoughts and emotions into twisted half-truths that trap us in despair or suffering. 

Christ came to raise the dead in all senses of that phrase. He came that you may have life, and have it to the full. When Lazarus had died and Jesus went to Bethany, Martha and Mary asked Jesus for a miracle. In response to this request He says, “Take away the stone.” In other words, Jesus requires an act of faith. He requires that they work for what they pray for. Jesus is the only one who can do this and He requires that we clear the way.

 Here are a few steps to do just that:

  1. Identify the stone. What are the stones I have piled up over my shame? What sinful or unhealthy behaviors do I feel stuck in or powerless to change?
  2. Work for the miracle. I must do what is in my power to grow and become more healthy. I must act before I feel better. I need to cut away sinful behavior from my life. I must act contrary to my unhealthy urges and desires.
  3. Seek help. Big stones rolled in front of tombs are heavy! You will need help from someone trustworthy, mature, and/or professional. Start asking the Lord for the faith you need to believe He can raise the dead.
  4. Tell your story. Shame is like mold. It grows where it is dark and cool and hidden. Share your story with a trusted person. Let the light and the heat into that tomb. 
  5. Have faith and courage. Do what is within your power, and God will do what is within His. Your faith can raise the dead.

If you would like more resources or support to work through shame or other difficult emotions, reach out to a Pastoral Counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

Paralyzed by Powerful Emotions? Here’s How to Break Free

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Have you ever been so overwhelmed by your emotions, it was next to impossible to take action to solve your problems?

If so, you’re not alone. This “emotional paralysis” is one of the most common problems that Judi Phillips, MS, LMHC, sees in her counseling practice.

“This is something I talk about with my clients all the time,” Phillips said. But she tells her clients that no matter how stuck or trapped they feel, “there is always something you can do; there is always a way forward.”

During a recent conversation, Phillips, a pastoral counselor with the Pastoral Solutions Institute, outlined exactly how she helps her clients get off the emotional treadmill so they can take practical steps to move forward.

 

Recognizing Emotional Paralysis

Anxiety is one of the most common ways that people get paralyzed by their emotions—in this case, fear and worry. But the problem can crop up in other contexts, too. College students might feel so overwhelmed by everything they have to do (especially at the end of the semester), they don’t even know where to begin.

Emotional paralysis shows up in relationships, too.

When Phillips does marriage counseling, for instance, her clients often want to begin by describing the problem they’re having with their spouse. But it is usually fruitless to address the surface-level conflict without first addressing what’s going on inside each person: guilt, anger, sadness, grief, and so on.

“I say to them, ‘Okay, I understand. But let’s go back to what’s going on within you. You know, what are you feeling?” she said. “What do you have to do to help yourself so that you can effectively communicate to the other person?  You know, if you’re angry or sad or overwhelmed or whatever it is, you have to first acknowledge that, because if you’re not able to acknowledge that, you’re going to continue to put the problem out there on (the other person). And you’re going to continue to spin around and feel powerless. And that’s not at all where God intends us to be.”

 

God Gave Us the Tools We Need to Move Forward

The fact that God doesn’t want us to get trapped by our emotions is revealed in Scripture, of course, but also in the Theology of the Body. (The Theology of the Body is based on a series of lectures given by Pope John Paul II that explored how God’s design of the human body reveals his purpose for us.)

Phillips said that the dual functionality of our brain—its emotional side and its reasoning side—demonstrates that while God intends for us to experience emotions, he doesn’t want us to be held hostage by them. The brain’s very design allows us to use our intellect, will, and reason to understand and manage our emotions.

Consciously naming what we are feeling enables us to begin addressing them, taking concrete steps that will move us toward the way we would prefer to feel.

People who are trapped by their emotional state often believe that once they feel differently, they will be able to take action to address their problems, Phillips said. “We say something like, ‘If I only felt…, then I would….’ But the truth is, we have to act first, and then the healthy feeling will follow.”

 

3 Steps for Breaking Free and Taking Action

Here are the three steps Phillips uses to guide clients from emotional turmoil to empowerment:

  1.       Identify your feelings. Ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?” This step is crucial for acknowledging your current emotional state. At the same time, you can also name how you would prefer to be feeling.

“You’re honoring yourself in the way that God created you,” Phillips said. “And when you do that, you’re able to get more clarity about what is going on.”

To take the college student example, you might say, “I’m feeling overwhelmed and anxious because I have so much to do, I don’t know where to begin, and I am afraid I won’t get everything done on time.”

Bonus points if you write this down: the act of writing engages the brain more holistically.

  1.       Understand the cause. Ask, “What is it that’s causing this feeling?” Only by identifying the real-world cause(s) of your negative emotions can you begin to take steps to address those causes.

Continuing with our college student example, you might sit down and write out every single thing you have to do by the end of the semester.

  1.       Take action. This step has two parts:
  2.       First, figure out what you need to do to regulate your out-of-control emotions. There are many ways to do this, but one method Phillips likes involves listening to the rosary sung in Gregorian chant; the rhythm of the chant helps to re-tune our own internal rhythm, she said.
  3.       Make a plan, then act. Finally, ask, “What steps can I take to help me feel better?” Identify what specific actions you can take to move you toward your preferred emotional state. The college student, for example, might create a calendar or schedule that lists how she will tackle the tasks she needs to get done.

Phillips asks her clients who suffer from anxiety to write out all their worst-case scenarios. Then, she has them write down a plan naming how they would respond in each situation.

 

A Spiritual Practice to Boost Your Well-Being

Anyone who is familiar with the spiritual practice of the daily examen, also known as the Ignatian examen, might recognize some similarities between the method described by Phillips and the examen.

Like the examen, Phillips recommends checking in with yourself several times a day. As a spiritual practice, this works just as well with positive emotions.

“If I’ve been out in nature, walking, and it’s just a beautiful day, and I ask myself that question, ‘How am I feeling right now? I’m feeling really joyful.’ And what is it that’s causing that? The beauty of nature.

“Then: ‘What can I do to help myself?’ Well, there isn’t anything I really need to do to help myself, but I’m just going to acknowledge it, and by acknowledging it, I’m honoring myself in the way God created me to be.

“And then, thirdly, ‘What do I need to do about this?’ I don’t need to do anything other than offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God. I’m going to just acknowledge it, appreciate it, and thank God for the beauty of his creation.”

Incorporating this practice into your daily routine can significantly enhance your mental health and quality of life. Phillips notes that her clients who consistently apply these steps quickly gain self-awareness and change the way they tackle the problems life throws their way.

“It’s life changing,” Phillips said, “because you realize, first of all, I can always understand myself. Secondly, because of that, I can always find a way forward.”

If you would like more help with this or another mental health topics, reach out to Judi Phillips or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

How To Walk On Water

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

Anxiety and fear are primal emotions that we all experience to some degree, in big and little ways. The nature of fear and worry is to draw our attention to the object of the feeling, whether inside or outside our head. When we are afraid of something we are alert for that thing and we sometimes see it where it is not actually present. If I am afraid of monsters in the dark, everything in the dark room becomes a possible monster. My perception becomes focused on finding the monsters, so I see them even in ordinary things. If I am worried about an upcoming event, the thoughts about it might be so strong that I stay up at night dwelling on those worries. It can be very difficult to think about anything other than the object of my worry or fear.

Because these emotions take our attention and focus we often cannot see how to deal with them. We become wrapped up within the thoughts and emotions so much that we cannot sleep, have trouble relaxing or find it difficult to think about anything else other than the worry or fear. We may become so paralyzed in a given moment that we are unable to act at all. Maybe we can never think of the right thing to say to our boss or our spouse when they are angry with us. Perhaps we find it difficult to socialize with people in the same room, so we say nothing. Some may have unwelcome and unwanted thoughts come into our mind that take our peace or cause a whole chain of strong emotions and regrettable actions and we become distraught that we cannot seem to be rid of the thoughts.

Recall the story of Jesus and Peter walking on the water. (It is Matthew 14:22-33 if you want to read the whole thing). The disciples in the boat see what they think is a ghost walking through the wind and across the water. Peter calls out to Jesus, walks on the water, and then sinks.

Now here is the key: when Peter “saw the wind” he was afraid, and began to sink. It was fear that caused his sinking. Why? It is precisely the moment that Peter gives attention to the wind that he is no longer focused on Christ. When his focus was on Christ, he could walk across the waves. When he was focused on what brought fear, he sank. He moved towards the object of his gaze. When he took those first steps towards Christ, nothing happened to the wind and the waves. Those remained as strong as ever. His focus on Christ allowed him to move beyond the fear that they instilled.

The disciples were in the boat and very much aware of the wind and waves. So we begin by acknowledging our fears and worries. The avoidance of what causes our fear or worry is a natural strategy for managing these feelings, and we do it because it works for a time. The reality is that this only increases our anxiety over the long term. This becomes a cycle which can get out of control. We must see and acknowledge our wind and waves.

Then we turn our gaze to the healthy thing. This new object of focus can be internal or external. Internally, we can focus on a comforting Scripture verse, a mental image of God or His saints, or some other holy thing. Scripture encourages us to “Set your minds on things that are above” (Col 3:2). When we are confronted with the thoughts and feelings of fear or worry, we need to turn our gaze, or set our mind, on Christ in this way. This is not an easy thing to do. Your attention will wander. The fear or worry will make every attempt to regain your attention. This is unavoidable. Peter was unable to walk all the way to Christ on his first attempt.

Because this can be so challenging, we often need to begin on a more natural level and work our way up to the mental strength to hold an image of Christ in our minds. God created us with a body, and our body is good. We were made to interact with the world in a physical manner. God communicates His grace to us through physical reality every day. The Sacraments and sacramentals convey grace through physical means. Physical things are easier to focus on amid anxiety and fear. If I am having strong unwanted thoughts in my mind, turning my focus to the things my five senses tell me can be very effective. If I am focused on my senses or what my body is telling me, it helps me to move through the thoughts by allowing me to not become overwhelmed.

Each step we take in life, whether spiritual, or emotional, or physical, needs to be with the awareness of grace. God is constantly pouring out His love and grace, that we might be overcomers and conquerors of sin and evil. We have to accept this grace, allow it to fill us consciously so that all our actions move with the strength of that grace.

The next time that you feel afraid or worried, remind yourself of the presence of God’s grace, focus on the healthy thing and take a step out onto the water.

 

To learn more about Jacob Francisco’s work, visit CatholicCounselors.com

Apocalypse Always: How to Stop Catastrophizing

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In the classic children’s book Wemberly Worried, written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes, a little mouse named Wemberly worries about everything, big and small: cracks in the sidewalk, noises in the house, taking a bath—and, especially, starting school. No matter the situation, she constantly assumes the worst will happen.

Her constant worrying about what could go wrong is a hallmark of catastrophizing, where the focus is on the most catastrophic outcomes rather than on more likely, benign possibilities. Catastrophizing is an example of what therapists call cognitive distortions: unhelpful “scripts” that we pull out of our subconscious mind to help us interpret our experiences.

Some other examples of catastrophizing:

  • You find a strange mark on your skin and stay up late researching skin cancer. By the morning, you’re a wreck.
  • Your spouse is running late and not answering their phone; your mind starts fixating on the possibility that they were in a serious car accident.
  • You decide you need to leave your dysfunctional workplace, but you’re so focused on the worst possible outcome (not finding a new job, or finding a new job that is even worse) that you can’t take action.

It’s not that these worst-case scenarios aren’t real possibilities: you might have skin cancer, your spouse might have gotten into a serious car accident, you might not get a better job than the one you’re leaving. But are these the only possibilities? No, and they are not even the most likely possibilities. But catastrophic thinking leads us to focus almost exclusively on the worst-case possibilities, causing stress and anxiety without doing us anything good.

“Catastrophic thoughts like these represent Satan’s way of causing us to spend all of our energy on imaginary problems so that we don’t have the strength to deal with the real problems in our lives,” says Dr. Greg Popcak in God Help Me! The Stress is Driving Me Crazy!

 

Dealing with Catastrophic Thinking

So, what can you do if you recognize yourself catastrophizing in certain situations? Because cognitive distortions are deeply rooted in our subconscious minds—and often related to bad memories of similar situations—it usually isn’t going to work to simply tell yourself to “stop thinking that way.”

If catastrophizing is causing significant problems in your life, you might want to reach out to a therapist for help; you can find many Catholic Pastoral Counselors who draw on psychology and the wisdom of the Catholic tradition at CatholicCounselors.com. Another option would be to work through the process outlined in God Help Me! The Stress is Driving Me Crazy! or Unworried: A Life without Anxiety, also by Dr. Popcak.

Either way, you’ll be led through a “cognitive restructuring” process that is aimed at challenging and altering negative thought patterns to promote healthier thinking. Here’s a brief outline of what that process might look like:

  1. First, you’ll identify the type of events that trigger your anxious, catastrophic thinking.
  2. Next, you’ll name what this type of event means for you—why does it matter? What does it “say” about who you are, or how others see you?
  3. Then you’ll identify the memories of past experiences that provide the basic template for your catastrophizing way of thinking.
  4. Next, you’ll begin to develop a more helpful way of thinking to replace the unhealthy, unhelpful, catastrophizing script. For people of faith, this involves carefully listening to what the Holy Spirit is whispering to our heart.
  5. Next, you’ll make a conscious connection between this new way of thinking and experiences you’ve had that reinforce the truth of this new script.
  6. Finally, you’ll develop some practical strategies—physical, mental, spiritual, and relational—that you can take to further strengthen your mind’s connection with this new way of thinking.

You can find an abbreviated version of this approach in another post on our blog, “Feeling Overwhelmed? Try This Journaling Exercise.”

Changing old ways of dealing with stress doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t mean we’ll never have another worrying thought.

But remember: God doesn’t want you to live with constant, overwhelming stress. And with the right support and an openness to God’s grace, you don’t have to.

Feeling Overwhelmed? Try This 3-Part Journaling Exercise

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In a previous post, we discussed types of self-talk that only make stress and anxiety worse without addressing the root causes. (See “10 Ways of Thinking That Sabotage Your Life.”) Now, let’s look at one strategy for breaking the habit of unhelpful self-talk so that we can practice ways of thinking that actually reduce stress and anxiety.

 

Start by Identifying Old, Unhelpful Scripts

First, a quick review. “Self-talk” is the story we tell ourselves to make sense of our experiences. Unhelpful or harmful self-talk is often a “script” rooted in memories of experiences from our past. When we encounter a similar type of experience, our unconscious brain pulls out the old script and runs through it as a way of making sense of the new situation.

The problem is that the old script doesn’t give us a good handle on the new situation. The old script is what cognitive behavioral therapists call “cognitive distortions,” so named because they distort our perception of reality.

Dr. Greg Popcak explains how to identify the ten most common types of unhelpful self-talk in his book, God Help Me! The Stress is Driving Me Crazy! A few examples include mind-reading (assuming you know what others are thinking without having sufficient evidence), catastrophizing (expecting the worst-case scenario to happen and seeing it as inevitable), and polarized thinking (viewing situations, people, or yourself in extreme, all-or-nothing terms, without recognizing any middle ground).

But once you’ve identified an old script that’s keeping you from achieving a happier, healthier life, what do you do next?

 

A Journaling Exercise for Rewriting Old Scripts

One option is a three-step journaling exercise that helps you take apart the old script and rewrite a more helpful one. Here’s a summary of the process as Dr. Popcak explains it in God Help Me! The Stress is Driving Me Crazy!

 

1. Vent about the stressful situation 

Start by writing a single sentence that describes what happened. For example:

I applied for this job I really wanted two weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard back.

Keep it pretty straight-forward, focusing on the bare facts of whatever is causing you stress and anxiety.

Next, vent! Write down what this event means to you. Why is it stressing you out? For example:

I applied for this job I really wanted two weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard back. This is the fifth job I’ve applied for where they never even called to set up an interview. I thought I was a perfect fit, but they obviously don’t think so. I feel worthless, like a complete failure.

 

2. Identify the distortions

 Next, re-read what you wrote as if it were written by a friend; your job is to sort through each statement and separate facts from distortions. Make notes in the margins classifying each statement. For example:

I applied for this job I really wanted two weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard back. (That’s a fact.) This is the fifth job I’ve applied for where they never even called to set up an interview. (Also a fact.) I thought I was a perfect fit, but they obviously don’t think so. (Distortion: mind-reading,) I feel worthless, like a complete failure. (Distortion: polarized thinking, i.e., all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking.)

 

3. Write yourself a helpful letter

Finally, continuing in your role as a helpful friend, write yourself a letter that responds to the facts of the situation in a way that grounds you in reality, puts things in perspective, and offers practical steps that might actually help address the situation. Here’s an example:

Dear friend,

I know job hunting can be discouraging and demoralizing. But don’t make it harder than it is by listening to negative thoughts grounded in faulty thinking! The reality is, there are many possible reasons why these employers didn’t get back to you, including reasons that have nothing to do with you—so stop “mind reading!” And the fact that you didn’t get these jobs doesn’t make you a “failure”; it means you didn’t get those jobs, and that’s it. Plenty of successful people experienced way more rejection before finding success.

Here are three things you can do. First, take some time to pray, and just rest in the assurance of God’s care for you. Second, get some professional help with your job search process: hire a job coach, or take an online course to spruce up your resume. Third, ask around about a Christian job support group you could join, or start one yourself. Getting some friends to support you on the journey will help you keep going.

As you write this letter to yourself, avoid any “empty talk”: platitudes, pep talks, or encouragement that isn’t backed up by evidence. Focus on putting the facts of your situation in a more realistic light and naming practical things you can do to move forward.

This exercise can help you get on top of your stress and anxiety, but for a more comprehensive, one-on-one approach that takes your faith into account, reach out to Dr. Popcak and the therapists at CatholicCounselors.com.

10 Ways of Thinking That Sabotage Your Life

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Some ways of thinking help us lead to a healthier, holier, happier life. Other ways of thinking aren’t helpful at all, leading us to powerlessness, isolation, and self-indulgence.

This was one of the key insights of the great spiritual master St. Ignatius of Loyola, who realized that some thoughts (or “movements of the soul”) drew him closer to God and his own well-being, while others led him away from those things.

More than five hundred years later, a similar insight among psychologists would give birth to cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy that has proven effective for treating anxiety and depression.

As Dr. Greg Popcak points out in his book Unworried: A Life without Anxiety, the two frameworks—one spiritual and one more science-based—can both help us identify whether our “self-talk” (the little stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our experience) are healthy, godly, and productive. Identifying unhelpful self-talk can help us take steps to change the unconscious “scripts” that are sabotaging our lives.

Dr. Popcak goes into more detail about St. Ignatius’s approach to discerning helpful and unhelpful thoughts in Unworried, but for now, let’s turn to some of the most common types of unhelpful self-talk identified by cognitive behavioral therapists.

 

The Top Ten Types of Unhelpful “Self-Talk”

The following list of “cognitive distortions” (so-called because they distort our perception of reality) is taken from chapter 2 of Dr. Popcak’s book, God Help Me! The Stress is Driving Me Crazy!

 1. Mind Reading

Mind reading involves assuming you know what others are thinking without having sufficient evidence.

Example: You’re in a meeting and your boss looks at you briefly with a stern face. You immediately think, “My boss is disappointed with my work,” without any concrete evidence or feedback to support this assumption.

2. Filtering

Filtering involves focusing exclusively on the negative aspects of a situation while ignoring the positive.

Example: You receive feedback on a project. Despite receiving nine positive comments and one slightly critical one, you focus solely on the criticism, ignoring all the positive feedback.

3. Magnification

Magnification is exaggerating the importance or severity of events, often perceiving them as more disastrous than they are.

Example: You make a minor mistake in your report and think, “This is a disaster! It’s going to ruin my entire career,” amplifying the significance of the error.

4. Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing involves expecting the worst-case scenario to happen and seeing it as an inevitable outcome.

Example: You feel a mild pain in your back and immediately think, “What if it’s a serious illness? I might end up bedridden and unable to work.”

5. Emotional Reasoning

When you believe that what you feel must be true, even if there is no factual evidence to support it, you’re engaged in emotional reasoning.

Example: You feel anxious about flying and conclude, “Because I feel scared, flying must be a very dangerous way to travel,” even though statistics show it’s quite safe.

6. Polarized Thinking

Polarized thinking involves viewing situations, people, or self in extreme, all-or-nothing terms, without recognizing any middle ground.

Example: You don’t get the promotion you wanted and think, “If I’m not a complete success, I’m a total failure,” seeing things in black-and-white terms.

8. Fallacy of Internal Control

The fallacy of internal control leads you to believe that you are responsible for events and feelings that are actually outside your control.

Example: Your friend is in a bad mood and you think, “It must be because of something I did,” assuming you have more control over others’ emotions than you actually do.

8. Personalizing

Personalizing involves attributing external events or others’ behaviors to yourself, often blaming yourself for things you are not responsible for.

Example: Your spouse is short-tempered one evening and you immediately think, “They must be upset with me,” taking their mood as a reflection of your actions or worth.

9. The ‘Shoulds’

The ‘Shoulds’ involve imposing rigid rules on yourself or others about how people should behave, leading to guilt and frustration when these expectations are not met.

Example: You tell yourself, “I should always be working and productive,” and feel guilty whenever you take time for leisure, imposing rigid rules on yourself.

10. The Fallacy of Change

The fallacy of change means believing that your happiness depends on changing others to meet your expectations or desires.

Example: You believe, “If I can make my partner more outgoing, we’ll be happier,” thinking that changing someone else is the key to your happiness.

 

Changing Unhelpful Self-Talk

These distorted ways of thinking have real consequences for our life, leaving us poorly equipped to deal with things the way they really are. Moreover, a number of studies show that cognitive distortions lead to poor mental health and poor relationship satisfaction.

The good news is that once we recognize our unhelpful self-talk, we can change it—although that can be challenging, given that these self-sabotaging scripts are often deeply rooted in our subconscious brain.

We’ll look at some steps to help us rewrite those scripts in a future post, but if you can’t wait, contact a Catholic therapist at CatholicCounselors.com.

Who Is Narrating Your Life? How You Answer Has a Big Impact on Your Happiness

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In the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent who is haunted by the voice of an unseen narrator who offers a running commentary on the events of his life.

Mr. Crick’s unseen narrator turned out to be a frustrated author. But the truth is, each of us have an internal voice that “narrates” the events of our life. The nature of that running commentary shapes the way we react to situations and events—and that, in turn, has a big impact on our overall happiness.

Like Mr. Crick, then, it’s a good idea to occasionally interrogate that internal narrator.

Interrogating Our Narrator

In his book, God Help Me! This Stress Is Driving Me Crazy!, Dr. Greg Popcak proposes a simple exercise. Whenever you hear that unbidden voice interpreting a situation or event in your life, stop and ask: Is this thought true or false?

In the context of this exercise, we’re not so much analyzing the factual accuracy of the thought. Most of the time, our internal narrator’s interpretation of events contains at least a grain of truth. Rather, we’re trying to determine whether the thought leads us to the richer, more joyful life that God wants for us.

“We know that a thought or feeling is true (healthy, productive, rational) if acting on that thought or feeling would lead us to experience a greater degree of hope, confidence, competence, intimacy, security, peace, strength, and so on, even in the face of problems,” Dr. Popcak writes. “On the other hand, we know a thought or feeling is false (not of God, who is ‘the way and the truth and the life’) if acting on that thought or feeling would lead to hopelessness, confusion, doubt, anxiety, despair, estrangement, insecurity, ignorance, or incompetence, none of which come from God.”

Let’s look at an example. Your boss asks to meet with you on Friday without specifying the reason for the meeting. How does your inner voice narrate this situation?

Here’s one option: “Is she mad at me? Did I do something to upset her? What if she fires me? I don’t need this kind of stress!” This is an example of a “false” thought—not because it is inaccurate, but because it doesn’t help you deal with the situation. You can tell this thought is not from God because it leads to worry, hopelessness, and despair, none of which do anything to help you.

Here’s another option: “I wonder what she wants to meet about? I guess I won’t know until Friday. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m a little nervous, though; maybe I need to pray for peace.” This thought is “true” because it provides a helpful path forward.

Let’s take another example. Martha looks at her calendar for the week; it’s crammed with medical appointments, school events, and work obligations—and that’s on top of her usual busy routine.

Her interior narrator might respond negatively: “I am so overwhelmed! There’s no way I can juggle all this. If one more person puts one more thing on my plate, I’m going to scream.” Those thoughts are “false” because they don’t lead to more peace. They don’t come from God; in fact, they obscure God’s will for Martha’s well-being.

On the other hand, her internal narrator might respond more “truthfully”: “This is way too much for one person to handle. To get through the week, I’m going to have to drop some of these commitments or hand them off to someone else. I need a plan!” This way of narrating her situation might not make it magically better, but it provides a more hopeful path forward.

Tuning into God’s Grace

Both of these scenarios illustrate the power that our internal narration—what psychology calls our “automatic thoughts”—has over the quality of our day-to-day lives. False thoughts send us down a path where we waste energy, spin our wheels, and stew in stress. Worse, these noisy thoughts often distract us from the help and comfort God offers us. True thoughts, on the other hand, help us tune into God’s grace. And when we’re tuned into God, he opens our eyes to new possibilities and strengthens us to get through tough situations.

The key is to be more intentional about what our internal narrator is telling us. Like Harold Crick in Stranger Than Fiction, we need to confront our own personal narrators. If they’re not reading from God’s script, then we need to change that.

Poor Harold Crick had to get hit by a bus in order to get a new script. Thankfully, most of us won’t have to go to such lengths. If you need some professional, faith-based help, though, connect with a Catholic counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.