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.

Is Suffering Always the Holiest Choice? Not Necessarily.

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Here are a few fun facts, courtesy of marketing expert Rory Sutherland:

  • Even though Coke Zero and Diet Coke both offer zero calories, many people prefer Diet Coke. Why? Because it tastes slightly bitter rather than sweet, leading people to believe it is the true “diet” beverage.
  •  Household insecticides are often formulated to smell bad so consumers will perceive them as more effective.
  • Certain items (like wine) actually sell better at a higher price.

The weird psychological myth that leads people to believe that “the worst thing is actually the best thing” is all very good for marketers like Sutherland.

But when Catholics buy into this myth in their spiritual lives, the consequences can be disastrous, says pastoral counselor, Jacob Popcak.

The Suffering-Is-Always-Good Myth

Jacob Popcak, a pastoral counselor with CatholicCounselors.com, sees this pattern in some of his clients. Faced with some problem — a chronic medical condition, unhealthy relationships, unfulfilling work — they believe that the faithful response is to patiently endure the situation rather than taking action to make a positive change. They see quietly enduring the problem as “carrying their cross,” whereas making a positive change — setting healthy boundaries, looking for another job, accepting medical help — feels selfish.

“That’s not mysticism, that’s masochism,” Jacob explained on a recent episode of More2Life with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak.

Yes, the cross is central to authentic Christian faith, and Catholics believe in the possibility of redemptive suffering. But here’s the key: Jesus didn’t suffer and die on the cross for the sake of suffering and death; he did it to achieve a much greater good.

“Suffering, as Aquinas tells us, for its own sake is not a good,” he said. It may be something we encounter on the path to greater virtue or deeper union with God — but it is never the destination.

Scripture supports this. Hosea 6:6 and Matthew 9:13, among other passages, carry the same message from God: “I desire love, not sacrifice.” Not the absence of sacrifice, but a clear priority — love first, virtue first, the most genuinely good and meaningful choice first.

“It’s really important to not just assume that God is calling you to do the thing that would be the most painful or the most miserable,” Popcak says. Instead, take a deep breath, relax your shoulders, and ask yourself, “What course of action will bring me more intimacy with God and others? What is the most loving option?”

Of course, choosing the most loving option might indeed involve some kind of suffering. Giving up a higher paying job in order to have more time with your children, for example, is a real sacrifice. But it’s a sacrifice motivated by love, with a good outcome.

Three Questions to Ask Yourself

When you’re feeling depleted and stuck, Jacob Popcak suggests stepping back from the assumption that staying miserable is the holy option. Instead, ask yourself:

1. Is this suffering leading anywhere?

There’s a difference between the discomfort of genuine growth — standing up to a difficult person, having a hard conversation, making a necessary change — and simply enduring the same painful situation indefinitely. The first can be redemptive. The second may just be avoidance dressed up as virtue.

2. What would be the most loving choice?

Not the most painful, not the most self-denying — the most loving. For yourself, for the people around you, for the relationship or situation you’re trying to improve.

3. Am I turning toward God and others, or away from them?

Dr. Greg Popcak offered a helpful image: isolation under stress is like a phone battery draining in the cold. “Isolation doesn’t just leave us running low, it actively drains us,” he said. If your default response to stress is to white-knuckle it alone, that’s worth examining. We’re made for communion — with God and with the people he’s placed in our lives.

The Holiest Choice Always Leads Somewhere Good

None of this means avoiding real sacrifice when it’s called for; sometimes the loving choice is the harder one. But the starting point for discernment isn’t assuming that the hardest option is the holiest one. Instead, it’s always asking, “What will bring the most good — for me, the people I love, and in my relationship with God?”

If you’ve been white-knuckling a situation and calling it holiness, it may be worth a second look. For support in discerning the difference, reach out to Jacob Popcak or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the Saints Belong in Pastoral Counseling

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saints Didn’t Have It Easy

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Maximilian Kolbe: Choosing the Adult Mindset

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

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

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

The Saints Show Us the Way

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

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

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

How to Help Your Kids Build a Joyful, Lifelong Prayer Life

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If you want to raise kids who practice their faith as adults, teaching them how to pray has to be a priority. But how kids learn to pray makes a big difference, according to Lisa Popcak, co-founder of the Pastoral Solutions Institute and host of the Momfidence podcast.

Often, parents and other caregivers teach kids to memorize formal prayers (the “Our Father,” “Memorare,” and so on) and maybe encourage them to offer prayers of thanks and petition at bedtime. That’s a great beginning, Popcak says in a recent episode of the podcast. But if kids are going to develop a deeply rooted, vibrant prayer life that lasts and matures into adulthood, then we need to help them go deeper.

“It’s wonderful and powerful to have those formal prayers,” Popcak says. “However, we need to anchor those formal prayers that we’re trying to teach our children in relationship with the One to whom we are praying.”

After all, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, prayer is “the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2565).

Without that foundation of relationship, Popcak cautions, you might unintentionally be teaching recitation rather than real prayer. “We want those prayers to be deeply felt in our children’s hearts,” she says. “We want those prayers to be something that they go back to throughout their lives, to go deeper with God, to get to know him better…particularly as they leave our home and we are no longer in charge of making sure they pray every single day.”

3 Baby Steps Toward a Richer Prayer Life for Your Kids

Helping your children build a personal relationship with God might feel like a huge undertaking, but it really doesn’t need to be, Popcak says. It starts, she suggests, with simply helping your children know, through your own habits, that God is always present and loves them dearly. Let them see that God wants to be part of all the moments, big and small. This isn’t about adding complicated rituals; it’s about noticing the opportunities for connection that are already there.

“We don’t have to hold it all in until bedtime prayer or until Mass,” Popcak points out. Instead, teach kids to connect with God in the moment, then “round up” those moments with a regular time for shared prayer later in the day.

Here are some simple “baby steps” toward that goal.

Voice Gratitude Together

When something good happens — maybe your child aced a test they were nervous about, or you simply enjoy a beautiful sunny afternoon — take a second to thank God out loud. It can be as simple as, “Lord, we had so much fun running through the sprinkler this afternoon; thank you for this blessing!” Or: “Lord, we are so grateful that John did well on his geometry test today. Thanks for helping him work through those tough problems!”

When you model gratitude, you invite your children to recognize and appreciate blessings, too.

Praying Through Tough Times

 Life has its bumps and scrapes, both literal and figurative. When your toddler falls and gets hurt, it feels like the end of the world to them. Lisa suggests using that moment as an opportunity to make a God connection: cuddle them close and whisper a quick prayer: “Lord Jesus, please just help my baby feel better. Heal this boo-boo quickly….”

This simple act connects your child’s hurt with God’s comfort and provides a template for other tough times they will inevitably encounter later on in life: anxieties about school, relationship problems, disappointments, loss, and so on.

Moments Made for Praise

If prayer is, at heart, a living, dynamic relationship between your child and God, then it makes sense that it would go beyond petitions for help or words of thanks.

“Sometimes we can just take a moment and thank God for being God,” Popcak suggests. “‘Thank you, Lord, that you are God, that you love us, that you did all this for us.’ Just out of nowhere, because the feeling overcame you.”

Round Up the Day with Family Prayer

These baby steps are super simple, but powerful, too, because they help kids link their daily life experience to God right in the moment. Bringing God into the messy mix of everyday life helps kids develop a more active, dynamic relationship with the One who loves them.

Popcak also suggests finding at least one regular time each day for your family to connect with God together, creating a predictable anchor point for shared prayer and reflection. Make it work for your schedule: Maybe it’s nighttime prayer before everyone settles down for bed, or maybe it’s a brief moment of connection in the morning before the day’s rush begins, or it could be incorporating sharing and prayer around the dinner table.

“Whatever works as a routine for your family, it’s good to bring the whole family together” for prayer, she advises. If you have been taking time throughout the day to acknowledge God’s presence, this family prayer time is a great way to consolidate those prayers.

You can even wrap up with a formal prayer that you are all learning together.

Bringing Prayer to Life

So, relationship is what transforms prayer from rote words into a vibrant conversation. When formal prayers are learned within the context of a lived, daily connection with God — nurtured through these simple baby steps and shared routines — they take on a richness and meaning that grows with your child. Without that personal connection, prayer risks becoming just “talking at God instead of with God.”

A deeper, more meaningful prayer life for your family doesn’t require a grand plan. Just start small: notice the everyday moments, talk to God naturally, and invite your children into the conversation.

“It’s a lot easier than you think it is,” Popcak says. “Just give it a try and let God build the way for you.”

For more parenting tips from Lisa Popcak, check out the Momfidence podcast on the CatholicHOM app or any of your favorite podcast hosts, or check out Discovering God Together: The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids at CatholicCounselors.com. You can also get personalized parenting support from Lisa Popcak directly on CatholicHOM.

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.