What Alysa Liu Can Teach You About Not Letting the “Shoulds” Run the Show

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When Alysa Liu won gold at the Milan Olympics, she ended a 24-year U.S. “gold-medal drought” in women’s figure skating. That fact alone would have been enough to propel her to celebrity status.

But it isn’t so much her technical performance that has entranced ordinary fans and professional commentators alike; instead, people can’t stop talking about the attitude she carried onto the ice: loose, joyful, and unburdened by any expectations. Unlike other athletes at the Olympics who were undone by nerves, Liu’s relaxed, fun approach not only won gold, but fans’ hearts, too.

That performance caught the attention of pastoral counselor Rachael Isaac, who had been following the women’s figure skating competition. Liu, she says, shows what it looks like when a person works on getting out of their own way.

The “Shoulds” That Hold Us Back

“She doesn’t subscribe to the ‘shoulds,’” Rachael says, by which she means the self-talk that says, “you should do this, you shouldn’t do that.” Liu, for instance, was told during her early teens that she should practice every day, that she shouldn’t eat certain foods, and that she should value winning above all else.

The “shoulds” shape how we approach everyday opportunities, relationships, and decisions. They tell us we’re not ready, not qualified, not the kind of person who does this sort of thing. They keep us stuck.

From a psychological standpoint, Rachael explains, those “should” thoughts originate in the limbic system—the reactive, fear-driven part of the brain. Confidence, by contrast, draws on the prefrontal cortex—the part capable of solution-focused thinking: I have this strength that can help me figure this out as I go.

Nothing to Prove and Everything to Share

The Theology of the Body has something to say here, Rachael says. God has given each of us unique gifts, strengths, and talents—and we’re called to use them in our own specific way, not measure them against someone else’s.

“We’re all unique and unrepeatable people with our own gifts and strengths,” she says. Realizing the unique person God made us to be frees us from having to be like everyone else.

When our identity is grounded in God’s love for us, the uncertainty that might otherwise paralyze us evaporates. If God has equipped us with the gifts and strengths that we need and is always working with us, then we don’t have to have everything all figured out, nor do we need certainty about how things will turn out.

Liu’s ability to let go of outcomes — she famously said that it didn’t matter whether she medaled — enabled her to focus on simply sharing her gifts with the world, leading to her beautiful performance.

Rachael points to the motto she picked up from her dance instructor years ago: I have nothing to prove and everything to share. That phrase changed the entire dynamic of the class—and she sees it as exactly what Liu embodied on the ice in Milan.

Banish the “Shoulds” with These Three Steps

If you recognize the “should” trap in your own life, here are three practical steps to begin breaking free.

1. Write out your “shoulds”

The first move is awareness. Take a few minutes to identify and write down the “should” thoughts that most often run through your mind:

  •  I should be better at this.
  •  I should know where God is leading me before I act.
  •  Everyone else is panicking; shouldn’t I be anxious, too?
  •  Everyone expects me to take this promotion, so I should probably take it.

Getting them on paper creates some distance. You’re no longer just living inside those thoughts—you can look at them.

2. Label each one: helpful or hurtful?

Once you have your list, go through it and ask yourself honestly whether each thought is helping you move forward or holding you back. “If I recognize consciously that this ‘should,’ this thought that I’m having, is actually hurtful,” Rachael says, “it’s easier for our brain to disconnect from it a little bit instead of getting locked down on it.”

This isn’t about dismissing hard truths. It’s about noticing when a thought is driving you toward fear and rigidity rather than toward God and growth.

3. Write a counter thought—grounded in evidence

For each hurtful “should,” write a replacement thought that is both helpful and true. Not wishful thinking, but evidence-based: the actual gifts and strengths you bring to this situation.

“A lot of times those ‘shoulds’ aren’t evidence-based,” Rachael says. “They’re emotionally based.” A counter thought anchors you in reality—including the reality that God is present and working in you.

You can close this exercise with prayer: Lord, help me to see where you’re leading me. Help me to see and acknowledge the gifts and strengths you’ve given me. Help me to trust that you’re going to continue to empower me through those gifts and strengths, so that I can keep acting even when there’s uncertainty.

Getting Out of the Way

Alysa Liu didn’t suppress her nerves through sheer willpower; she had done enough inner work to stop letting the “shoulds” run the show—which freed her to be fully present, fully herself, and fully capable of doing what she’d trained to do.

The same is possible for the rest of us. When we stop measuring ourselves against a checklist of “shoulds” and start trusting the gifts God has actually given us, we stop holding ourselves back. We can act, move, and let God direct us from there.

For more personalized support in building this kind of God-grounded confidence, reach out to Rachael Isaac 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 Confidence Empowers Us To Be Who God Wills Us To Be

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Imagine you’re planning a garden, and you want to learn more about violets. Consulting an online landscaping guide, you find this entry: “Violets: they’re nowhere near as showy as the rose, and in fact, they’re often overlooked due to their small size. They’re not in bloom for most of the growing season, and when they are, their fragrance doesn’t come anywhere near to matching that of the lily….”

Besides being supremely unhelpful, you might just wonder whether the horticulturist writing that entry had prickly burrs for breakfast.

And yet, says pastoral counselor Rachael Isaac, that’s exactly the way too many Christians define themselves: “I’m not organized.” “I’m not as good at that as she is.” “I should’ve said something smarter.”

That litany of negative self-talk is a problem, she says, because it prevents us from achieving our goals, whether that’s finding healing, managing relationship problems, or making some positive change in our lives. Most Christians know to steer clear of pride, one of the seven “deadly sins”; but pride’s partner in crime, self-abasement, often slips past our defenses under the guise of humility.

“Many of us have this tendency to constantly describe ourselves based on what we’re not,” Isaac says. “We’re taught to believe that being humble means degrading ourselves, but it’s not that at all.”

Confidence: Knowing Your Worth

This negative self-assessment is so common that Rachael Isaac has developed a set of tools to help her clients boost their confidence. Unlike pride, confidence is rooted in humility, the virtue that enables us to see ourselves as we truly are.

“Confidence comes back to knowing my worth innately, knowing who God created me to be so that I can use my gifts and strengths to work for the good of myself and others and to glorify God,” she explains. “It’s not about thinking you’re better than anybody else,” she adds. “It’s about not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.”

Isaac’s words evoke the teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in her Story of a Soul:

[Jesus] set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers he has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy…. Perfection consists in doing his will, in being what he wills us to be.

While a healthy awareness of our faults can help us grow in holiness, self-abasement— allowing our shortcomings to dominate our thinking—actually harms our spiritual growth. The virtue of confidence, Isaac says, allows us to name and recognize our strengths so that we can use those God-given gifts to serve him and “be who he wills us to be.”

Try This Simple Confidence-Building Practice

If you’re struggling with negative self-talk or wondering whether confidence is something you can reclaim, Isaac offers this simple, powerful exercise. Try it for a week and see what happens.

Step 1: Write Down One Thing You Did Well Today

Every day, jot down one or more things, big or small, that you did well. For example, you could list comforting a child after a tough day, letting someone merge in traffic, having a thoughtful conversation, or finishing a chore well. Even if these are things you do every day, they are still things you’ve done well, and they are important. 

Step 2: At the End of the Week, Reflect

Look at your list and ask, “What strength did I use to do this well?” For example, you might recognize that it was empathy that allowed you to comfort that child, and patience and generosity that enabled you to let another driver merge into traffic. You might note that you drew on wisdom gleaned from your lived experience during that thoughtful conversation, and that your attention to finishing the chore well comes from your innate diligence and commitment to excellence.

Step 3: Bring It to Prayer

Make this part of your prayer time. Thank God for the strengths he’s given you, and ask for the grace to grow in others. For example: “Lord, thank You for making me a caring person. Please help me be more strategic in handling my responsibilities today.”

Over time, this exercise will help you identify your God-given strengths and know your worth. Because your list is grounded in evidence—not the empty flattery of others—the resulting confidence boost is real and durable, not fleeting.

Equipping Yourself for Confidence

The exercise above is just one approach to building self-confidence, Isaac says. Other approaches include:

  • Brain-Body Connection: Being aware of how thoughts and emotions shape our physical and spiritual presence.
  • The Power of Imagination: Learning visualization techniques to help you prepare for challenges and build resilience.
  • Effective Expectations: Avoiding the trap of perfectionism by setting appropriate expectations.
  • Setting Healthy Boundaries: Learning how to protect your peace and prioritize your dignity.
  • Owning Your Identity: Learning how to embrace who you are without apology.

“All of this is really focused on helping each of us become our whole, healed, godly, grace-filled self that we’re meant to be,” Isaac says. “And being able to know our worth and recognize the worth of others so that we can just become the people that God created us to be.”

If you’re interested in boosting your self-confidence, consider joining Rachael Isaac’s six-session virtual Confidence Coaching Cohort. These live sessions offer a supportive group atmosphere for learning the skills that will help boost your confidence. Or, for a more personalized approach, reach out to one of the pastoral counselors 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.