So, I spent some time in prison… just kidding. Well, kind of. 

The first leg of my journey as a mental health professional was in the prison setting. I value the time I got to spend with the inmates, especially the most secluded among them. I felt like I was in a special role, able to bring accompaniment to those who had become most estranged from society. At first, I was eager and excited for the opportunity. But unfortunately, as time passed, my work in the prison started becoming more and more taxing.

What Prisoners Valued…and Feared

As I am sure you can imagine, prison is a tough place. For most inmates, there is a deeply conditioned worldview of hierarchy. The most powerful have the most privileges. Therefore, pursuing the things that make one more powerful is highly valued. Looking and acting menacingly becomes a form of protection. 

On the other side of the same coin is the rejection of anything that could be seen as weak. Weakness meant someone could take advantage of you. It meant you could be walked on, attacked, or abused. It meant you were defenseless. Dr. Greg put it well when he summarized the experience as a “terror of being at someone else’s mercy.”

Closely related to the power hierarchy was how the inmates felt about those who had power but “didn’t deserve it.” In the prison, that meant the correctional officers, the warden, and sometimes, as in my case, the therapists. These figures of authority were often seen as threats designed to further oppress or exploit the inmates. They were to be avoided, disrespected, and certainly not trusted with vulnerability. Vulnerability with them felt dangerous.

How the Prison Became a Mirror

You see, when you are immersed in an environment without the proper support, you start to take on some of the preexisting tensions. In the clinical world, we call this “parallel process.” What I didn’t know then was that these tensions already existed within me, and the prison environment simply allowed them to become more pronounced.

When I was a teenager, I was misbehaving. I skipped school, smoked weed, and found myself in the wrong crowd. As one could tell from the heavy metal band shirts I wore, I was angsty and angry. Parts of me hated the world and its apparent pointlessness. This band of hooligans I was part of felt similarly, though none of us would ever have admitted it to each other. 

I also strongly distrusted adults. I think part of me stopped trusting adults because I could not see meaning in the world they were asking me to participate in. I started seeing everyone as simply going through the motions. 

When Mercy Changed My Life

Long story short, I finally got caught after a particularly bad decision involving breaking and entering. I should have gone to jail, but because of the mercy of the victim, I never saw a judge. Word is, she knew I was a kid and wanted me to get better. She saw no justice in sending my so-called friends and me to jail. I hope we get to meet in heaven because she has no idea how this benefited me spiritually. 

This became one of my turning points. I started getting my act together. I started actually going to school, showing up to work, and taking responsibility for my life. Fast forward eight years, and I had a master’s degree in psychology and was working in a prison. During those eight years, I was a pretty straight shooter. I had no idea that underneath all the studying and striving, there was still a kid holding onto a middle-finger-to-the-world attitude. Until… I started working in the prison.

What Was Really Driving My Rebellion

Looking back, I can see that much of my disregard for rules and hatred of authority came from a deeper terror of vulnerability. Trusting another person felt dangerous. Trusting the “rule giver” felt dangerous. To truly face that, I had to face the pointlessness underneath it all. 

Antisocial defenses protected me during some dark periods of depression and, in a way, even led me toward community. Those defenses served a purpose for a time—a time when I could not navigate the deeper feelings of pain underneath them. It certainly does not excuse my actions during that period, but it does allow me to feel compassion for the teenager who was so hurt and broken. I know now that what once looked like rebellion was often fear, and I hope that others might begin to recognize the same truth within themselves with honesty and mercy.

The post Rebellion Isn’t Always About Anger—Sometimes It’s Fear appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

You probably know the feeling:

Someone you care about is struggling. They’re stuck. They’re overwhelmed. They’re not thinking clearly. You can see what they need to do, and you want to help. So you offer some advice. A suggestion. A truth that feels obvious.

And then… nothing.

They nod politely or they get defensive. They thank you—and keep doing the exact same thing. And you’re left wondering: Why didn’t that land? 

You weren’t wrong. You weren’t unkind. So why didn’t it help?

Truth Without Readiness Isn’t Helpful

I’ve learned this the hard way—again and again: It doesn’t matter how good your insight is, or how clear the path seems to you, if the other person isn’t ready to hear it. It won’t go anywhere.

Not because they’re stubborn, but because real change doesn’t start with advice. It starts with relationship.

Before people can receive what’s true, they need to feel seen. Safe. Understood. Otherwise, the advice feels like control, criticism, or pressure to be someone they’re not ready to be yet.

Advice Often Comes From Our Anxiety

Here’s something we don’t always like to admit: A lot of the time, we give advice because we’re uncomfortable. We can’t tolerate watching someone we love feel lost, stuck, or unsure.
So we try to fix it, move it forward, and clean it up.

But that often has more to do with our need for clarity than their need for help.

It’s not wrong to want to be helpful. But when our advice comes from our own anxiety, it usually doesn’t land as love. It lands as urgency—and urgency rarely leads to trust.

Why “Helpful” Sometimes Feels Like Judgment

Think about the last time someone gave you advice when you weren’t asking for it.

Even if it was well-meaning, you probably felt a little judged. A little like you weren’t being fully heard or like they were more focused on fixing you than knowing you.

That’s what happens when advice comes too early. It may be technically right, but emotionally, it’s misaligned. And when that happens, it can actually shut down the very connection that would have made the advice useful later on.

What Helps Instead

When someone’s struggling, here’s what often helps more than advice:

• Being curious
• Asking questions
• Naming what you see gently
• Sitting with them in the confusion, without rushing it

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is:

“I see how hard this is.”
“I can feel how much you care.”
“I don’t have an answer yet, but I’m here with you.”

And when the time is right—when the relationship is safe enough—they’ll start asking for what you already wanted to give. But now it won’t land as pressure; it’ll land as love.

You Don’t Have to Fix It Right Away

If someone in your life is stuck right now and you’re tempted to offer advice, pause for a second.

Ask yourself:

• Am I speaking from their need or mine?
• Are they ready to hear this, or am I just ready to say it?
• Have I spent more time listening than explaining?

Because the truth is: Advice works best when it’s the answer to a question, not a substitute for connection.

So take your time. Stay present. Trust the process.And when the moment is right… you’ll know. Not because you need to say something. But because they’re finally ready to hear it.

The post The Real Reason Your Advice Falls Flat appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

Earlier this year, my four-year-old daughter stopped sleeping through the night and started experiencing significant emotional distress every time my wife or I left the house. 

On the one hand, the change came out of nowhere. Maggie is our best sleeper. She started sleeping through the night at three months old and never looked back. And she had plenty of experiences of being without mom or dad. I travel a decent amount for work and my wife, Katie, works part-time. So Maggie has spent a lot of time with her grandparents and, at times, a nanny. 

On the other hand, it made sense. About a month before this change in behavior, Katie and I had to unexpectedly travel for a family tragedy. We woke up thinking it was a normal day, and we finished the day in a different state, uncertain of when we would return home. All in all, we were gone for five days, and though we didn’t share what had happened, Maggie has always exhibited strong intuition and emotional intelligence. So, she didn’t know…but she did, if you know what I mean. Her emotional outbursts, her clinginess and the constant middle-of-the-night wake-ups rivaled a newborn. 

We were exhausted!

In response, Katie and I started asking the wrong question. At night, after the kids were asleep, we’d look at each other and ask, “What’s wrong with Maggie?”

It’s an understandable question and a natural way to respond to such a drastic change in behavior, behavior that came with significant consequences for us (less sleep matched with the demand for endless patience).  

After a few days of things worsening and separation anxiety becoming increasingly intense, I reached out to a friend of mine who I’d gone to for parenting advice in the past. And she reminded me of something I’d forgotten in the midst of all the chaos. 

She told me, “Instead of wondering what’s wrong with Maggie, start asking, ‘What does she need that she isn’t getting?’”

How Children Enter this World

When we’re born, we’re not equipped with the tools to regulate our own nervous systems. When things go a bit haywire within us, when we’re flooded with emotion, or when we experience something new, we don’t know what to do! And, when we’re young, we don’t really know how to talk about it either. 

What we need, from the beginning, is a parent who can see me, understand what I’m going through, offer a stabilizing presence, and help me navigate this new experience or flood of emotions effectively. 

In other words, babies and toddlers (sometimes adults too!) cry when they’re tired or hungry because they’re not yet able to verbalize I’m tired and hungry. They can’t recognize the hunger or exhaustion they feel and connect it to the inner negative emotion. So, they need mom or dad to see the emotional dysregulation, understand it, and get them a snack or a nap despite the resistance. 

As emotions become more complex, the same process matters. Naming what’s happening really does tame what’s happening. And until a child learns how to identify these feelings and speak about them, they’re left confused and dysregulated. 

In other words, Maggie was experiencing something new and intense, and she didn’t know what it was. She needed mom and dad to step in, understand what’s happening, and give her the emotional equivalent of a banana to a hungry kid.  

Dysregulation Versus Disorder

In our modern world, thanks in large part to social media, it’s far too easy to rely on sound-bite psychology to solve your problems or provide insight into what you’re going through. I’m sure some good has come from that, but there’s also been several unregulated challenges that emerged from it. 

One of the challenges is the tendency for parents to start trying to diagnose their child instead of figuring out what they need. 

When a child keeps having outbursts over having to eat their veggies, or keeps doing the exact opposite of what you command, it’s easy to wonder if they have the beginnings of some sort of personality disorder or anxiety due to their behavior. 

But that isn’t the right first (second or third) response! Most of the time, the child is simply expressing some level of dysregulation – something feels off and overwhelming inside – which is developmentally normal. There isn’t something wrong with the child, Instead they’re likely testing the waters. Pushing boundaries. Discovering for the first time what it means to have emotions and to deal with them. 

By helping them identify what they’re feeling (you must feel really upset right now) and regulate (why don’t you take a few deep breaths with me), this child will eventually learn to respond accordingly to said emotion. That doesn’t mean they won’t fail to regulate themselves sometimes. But as they get older, their dysregulation becomes more manageable.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not denying that kids can be diagnosed with ADHD, ASD, or OCD. They can. But for most kids, their “bad behavior” is not a sign they need to see a psychiatrist, but that something is off in their environment. Perhaps they aren’t getting as much undivided attention as they need. Or maybe they need more reassurance and affirmation. Or perhaps they just need more sleep and more food! 

Be Steady 

As much as I wish this weren’t the case, I can’t shield Maggie from all suffering. It’s impossible. 

What I can teach her is how to regulate herself in response to suffering. I can teach her how to view negative emotions, not as a bad thing, or something that proves something is “wrong” with her. Instead, Katie and I can teach her to treat her inner life with curiosity, with compassion, and with one foot on the shore of eternal hope. 

It’s easy as a parent to want to immediately subdue, distract, or ignore big feelings when they bubble up in a child. It was natural for me, in response to Maggie, to offer incentives for staying in bed (both positive and negative) or to speak sternly to her when she threw a fit every time I tried to go to work or the grocery store. But even if those things work, they fail to teach her how to deal with these feelings in a fruitful or healthy way. 

As I continued to talk with my friend, she encouraged Katie and I to rally around Maggie in three ways:

1. Offer her a steady, loving presence in this season of turbulence. 

If we don’t treat our own inner world with kindness and gentleness, then our children are unlikely to treat themselves that way either. But if we can live what we hope to teach, then not only can we provide a strong example, but we can also offer her an authentic, steady, and loving presence regardless of how she is acting. 

2. Seek to understand and name what’s happening within her. 

Maggie hated the uncertainty of mom and dad leaving without a clear expectation of when we would return home or a clear explanation of why we were gone in the first place. It upended her inner world. If she couldn’t count on having confidence that mom or dad would leave and return within a reasonable time, then she would do everything in her power to make sure we were never separated at all. That kind of fear deserved loving attention, affirmation, and reassurance to rebuild her sense of confidence. 

3. Patiently allow love to win in the end.

Maggie didn’t just need one good conversation or one afternoon of tender care. She needed a few weeks of steadiness and connection with mom and dad to recover. So, she went to work with me in the afternoons when Katie had to work. Katie started a new bedtime routine that helped Maggie ease into the time of separation. And, as a family, we created more opportunities for Maggie to have special one-on-one time with her mom. And slowly but surely, Maggie returned to herself. 

Parenting isn’t easy. In many ways, it will be the hardest thing we ever take on. I don’t pretend to have all the answers (or even any answers), but I do have stories like this to share. One where it’s okay to not know everything as a parent. Where it’s good and healthy to seek advice from real people whom you can see, interact with, and are loved by. And one where it’s normal for a parent to struggle to connect with their child. 

If you are reading this while searching for how to accompany your child through a particular season, let me know. I’d be happy to help or point to someone who can. 

Jack@catholicpsych.com

The post My 4-Year-Old Suddenly Stopped Sleeping Through the Night—Here’s What We Learned appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

It may sound strange, but sometimes disconnection from God is not about a lack of faith.  

At different times in my own faith journey, I have found myself doing all the right “Catholic things” while still feeling disconnected from God. I would go to Mass, say all the right things, and pray the rosary. But beneath all of it, I felt exhausted trying to live something externally while struggling to receive anything interiorly. 

I could be sincere. I could really want God. And yet I found myself still going through the motions, managing appearances, or staying busy enough that I never had to face how distant and unseen I actually felt before God. My response was just to try harder, which only intensified my unrest and disconnect.

If you can relate to this sense of spiritual heaviness, that does not automatically mean you are rejecting God. Sometimes it means you have learned, often without realizing it, to relate to God through effort or a curated image rather than trust.

For some, this begins with perfectionism. I have to do everything right. For others, the deeper issue is insecurity. I don’t feel good enough, so I need to do more. And still, others feel that genuine intimacy with God is too vulnerable and frightening. I can’t share myself honestly because it may disappoint Him. 

So we find ways to compensate for that deeper fear, and distract ourselves from confronting the pain of being so distant from God. If this sounds like you, let’s unpack three signs your spiritual life may be slipping into performance, and one big change that can help you begin finding the healing and connection you long for.

1. You are doing spiritual things, but rarely feel present to God while doing them.

You may still be praying, attending Mass, and checking all the right boxes. But your inner life feels elsewhere. Your attention is scattered. Your prayer is rushed. Your relationship with God begins to feel like something you are maintaining rather than inhabiting.

This does not mean you should stop doing the practices. It means something in your heart needs attention and healing.

2. You feel more pressure to be a good Catholic than desire to be with God.

This is a painful shift, and many sincere people experience it. You may start to measure your faith primarily by consistency, productivity, or discipline. And while discipline has a real place in the spiritual life, it cannot carry the whole weight of the relationship.

When pressure becomes the dominant experience, faith starts to feel burdensome. You may still be doing many good things, but they no longer feel like a response to love. They feel more like a test you are always trying to pass.

3. You find it easier to signal faith than to pray honestly.

It may be easy to talk about God, share spiritual insights, recommend Catholic resources, or present yourself as someone trying to live faithfully. But honest prayer feels foreign, even threatening, because of how exposed it leaves you.

It is much easier to speak about God than to speak to Him from the truth of your heart.

When that gap grows, it is often a sign that your spiritual life does not need more polish. It needs enough courage to become more honest.

The solution is not more intensity, but deeper presence

If your faith has become burdensome or performative, the answer is probably not to do more. In fact, doing more may be part of what is keeping you stuck.

Sometimes this desire to do more only reveals how much of our spiritual life has become driven by pressure, fear, or the need to maintain an image of ourselves. We are no longer simply praying. We are managing. 

That is why the solution is not less faith, but a different way of entering into it.

Healing begins when we stop trying to relate to God primarily through performance and begin learning how to remain present to Him. It means allowing yourself to be seen by God without hiding behind the appearance of devotion, without using busyness as a shield, and without forcing yourself to feel something that is not there.

This is where prayer gets real even if the experience feels predictable or uncomfortable.

It may sound like, “Lord, I do not know why I feel so far from You” or, “I’m tired of trying to prove that I’m faithful to you.” It might even sound like silence.

But this is the turning point. Because once your spiritual life no longer becomes built around managing appearances, it can begin to be built on relationship.

The advice here is not to stop going to Mass, stop praying, or stop practicing the faith. Instead, it is to let those practices become expressions of love and encounter, rather than substitutes for them. Over time, what once felt compulsive or like a performance can become peaceful and a place for communion.

That is the deeper invitation. God is not asking you to become a more convincing version of a faithful Catholic. He is inviting you into a real relationship with Him.

If this is something you are searching for, but feel trapped by the fears surrounding vulnerability, we are here to help. Reach out to one of our team members for a free consultation, and we can begin walking alongside you in your journey with God today.

The post Is Your Spiritual Life Performance-Based? Three Ways to Figure out the Answer and One Powerful Solution appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

It doesn’t matter how many people you’re surrounded by. If you are never vulnerable, you will still feel alone.

This instinct to hide, to avoid vulnerability, is very human. The first human beings did it, and we continue to do it today.

But this instinct, however easy it is to fall into, will damage every relationship we have. If you let this instinct take over, the cost is great: deep intimacy and any meaningful relationship.

If you feel like you’re constantly seen by others but hardly known, you may be falling into the trap of our first parents. But in learning about their downfall, we can also learn the key to our healing. 

What the Fall Reveals to Us

The biblical account of Adam and Eve starts with an ideal picture of the relationship between man and God. God is generous and kind, intentionally designing a suitable partner for Adam. Both Adam and Eve are well provided for, given a beautiful garden to eat from and animals to tend for.

And yet Eve falls for the deceit of the serpent that God is not truly generous, that He is withholding something good from her. So she and Adam disobey God, and hide from Him afterwards.

I’m sure they knew God would find them. He knows everything, after all. Yet, for some reason, it gave them a sense of refuge or relief.

But they don’t just run from God. They also hide from each other. The story notes that they put leaves on their bodies to cover their nakedness, for they were “ashamed” of it. Vulnerability intimidated them. They could no longer be exposed without feelings of fear or shame looming over them. Exposure now came at too great a cost.

The fruits of sin are immediately revealed: shame, hiddenness, and isolation. And these fruits remain deeply felt in the core of our being today.

The Truth About Exiled Parts

We first experience this as a child. Maybe your parents were overbearing, constantly criticizing you. A part may have emerged to make sense of this. It may carry wounds of rejection and fear, holding beliefs like “I’m unlovable” or “I’ll never be good enough.”

These are often referred to as “exiled parts.” Parts that are pushed aside and locked away to protect us. A deep fear develops that if these parts were seen, they would be rejected. And if they were rejected, it would confirm the very beliefs they carry.

So the system decides it’s safer not to risk exposure at all.

Before the Fall, human intimacy was created to be completely naked without shame. To be completely vulnerable and exposed without fear of rejection or unworthiness. But with brokenness in the world, we face continual roadblocks to this intimacy.

Some even experience an unfortunate perversion of this ideal: nakedness with maximum shame. They put on grand performances around others, grabbing their attention through bold humor, loud expressions, and fun storytelling. It seems like they’re exposing themselves to others. After all, they talk more, are louder and more visible than everybody else in the room.

But really, their behavior is a cover-up. If people only focus on their extravagant act, they never get to see the parts of themselves that feel little, scared, or ashamed. They may be more seen, but they are far less known.

And just like Adam and Eve, their attempt to hide is futile. Because ultimately, the parts you hide will not disappear because they’re buried. You cannot run from yourself.

And in hiding, there is no opportunity to disprove the beliefs those parts carry. If no one is allowed to see you fully, then no one can truly love you fully. Like Adam and Eve, the shame remains.

God’s Merciful Pursuit

But there is one final truth revealed in the Fall: the relentless love of God.

Despite their disobedience, God pursues Adam and Eve. He seeks them out and finds them. If, at their most unworthy, they were still loved and desired by God, then what grounds do we have to fear rejection?

When we allow every part of ourselves, including the exiled ones, to be seen and loved by God, we rediscover what it means to be naked without shame. Love becomes the antidote to shame.

This requires faith. It requires trust. Most of all, it requires courage. But it is the only true path to healing.

If we try to hide from God, we will always fail. His love waits patiently. And if we allow it in, the shame begins to lose its hold, and we become free to love and be loved in return. 

This is the first step towards truly being known. When we learn that every part of us is worthy of love, we no longer operate from places of fear or shame. Instead, we can share ourselves with others freely and completely. 

This will not be a one-time decision, but is a continual process of being transformed by Love. If this is a journey you feel ready to start, we would be honored to walk alongside you. Reach out to the mentorship team today and schedule a free consult.

The post Understanding Exiled Parts: How the Sin of Adam Affects Intimacy Today  appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

You have tried to stop.

You have told yourself it does not matter what people think. You have prayed for humility, confessed vanity, and genuinely meant it every time. And then you walk into the next room, the next conversation, the next gathering — and it is right there again. The pull. The need to be seen, to hold attention, to matter to the people around you. Not as a quiet hope, but as something that feels almost compulsive. Something you cannot simply decide to turn off.

If you are a Christian, you probably already have a prescription for all this: Be more humble. Detach from the opinions of others. Fix your eyes on God. Stop caring so much about what people think.

But here’s the thing…you have tried that. And it has not worked. Not because you are insincere, and not because you lack faith, but because what you are dealing with may not be vanity at all. It may be something that looks identical on the surface but operates from an entirely different place. And that difference changes everything about how you find freedom from it.

Vanity Is a Choice. Anxiety Usually Is Not.

In the Catholic tradition, vanity is not simply caring about how you look or wanting to make a good impression. Vanity is a disordered desire to be admired, and it involves a level of freedom and intentionality that matters more than most people realize. The vain person does not merely hope to be noticed. Over time, being noticed becomes the goal itself, and their energy begins to revolve around maintaining an image rather than living a life.

The Desert Fathers understood that vanity is a temptation “against which we must battle our whole life, because it always comes back to take the truth away from us.”

That phrase is worth sitting with: vanity takes the truth away from us. It replaces what is real with what is performed. Pope Francis once compared vain Christians to soap bubbles — beautiful for a moment, catching the light, but lasting only a second before they burst. “How many Christians live for appearances?” he asked. “Their life seems like a soap bubble. The soap bubble is beautiful, with all its colors. But it lasts only a second, and then what?”

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew the weariness that comes from vanity well. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? There is a deep human exhaustion that comes from chasing what cannot satisfy, from building an identity on reactions that shift like wind and streams that empty into a sea that is never full.

But here is where we need to slow down. Because not everyone who appears preoccupied with how they are perceived is choosing to be. And that distinction really matters.

When Self-Consciousness Is Not Pride — It’s Protection

I’ve worked with many people over the years who start Mentorship carrying a verdict about themselves. They had decided, or someone had decided for them, that they were vain, self-absorbed, too concerned with what others think. And they carried that label like a weight, believing that their constant self-monitoring was a moral failure they needed to repent of.

But when we began to explore what was actually happening inside them, a very different picture emerged. The self-consciousness was not chosen. It was automatic. It showed up from an unconscious place and just took over. These were not people pursuing admiration, they were people managing fear. The fear of being overlooked, dismissed, or found inadequate. And that fear had usually been there for a very long time.

Here is what happens, psychologically. When a child grows up in an environment where love, attention, or emotional safety is inconsistent — not necessarily absent, but unpredictable — the brain adapts. It develops a kind of internal radar, a hypervigilance toward other people’s emotional states. Every reaction matters. Every shift in tone is registered. The child learns, often without words, that staying attuned to others is how you stay safe. And that system does not simply turn off when you grow up.

What we see in adulthood, then, is a person who walks into a room and appears confident, engaging, even magnetic. They know how to read people, how to adjust, how to hold attention. It can look effortless — even calculated. But beneath that exterior is a nervous system that is working very hard to prevent something it learned to fear long ago: being unseen. The amygdala — the brain’s threat-detection center — is responding not to a physical danger but to a social one, and it is driving behavior that looks like performance but is actually protection.

This is the critical difference. Vanity says, They should notice me. Anxiety says, If they stop noticing me, something terrible will happen — and I do not even know what it is.

Why the Usual Advice Makes It Worse

When we misidentify anxiety as vanity, we send people down a path that compounds their pain. We tell them to try harder at humility. To stop being so self-focused. To offer it up. And for someone whose self-focus is compulsive — driven by a nervous system, not a free choice — that advice becomes one more thing they are failing at. Now they are not only anxious, they are anxious and ashamed of being anxious. The Chinese finger trap tightens.

If the root is genuine vanity, a freely chosen pursuit of admiration, then the work is reordering desire. Growing in humility, examining where the need for recognition has displaced something more important, asking the honest questions: Do I do good? Do I seek God? Do I pray?

But if the root is anxiety, the approach requires something different: understanding, patience, and healing at the level where the pattern began. Not fighting the radar, but learning — slowly, with compassion — that you no longer need it the way you once did. That the room’s attention is not the thing keeping you alive.

The Ground That Does Not Shift

There is a passage from St. Gregory of Nyssa that applies well here: “Man, as a being, is of no account; he is dust, grass, vanity. But once he is adopted by the God of the universe as a son, he becomes part of the family of that Being, whose excellence and greatness no one can see, hear, or understand.”

Notice how St. Gregory begins with vanity, dust, the passing nature of everything we build under the sun. It sound like Ecclesiastes: Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. But St. Gregory does not stay there. He turns sharply: in being adopted by God, “man surpasses his nature: mortal, he becomes immortal; perishable, he becomes imperishable; fleeting, he becomes eternal; human, he becomes divine.”

This is the solution, the stable ground that neither vanity nor anxiety can find on its own. The vain person builds identity on a soap bubble. The anxious person builds it on the room’s reaction. Both are fragile because both depend on something that shifts. But your identity, the deepest truth of who you are, was established before you walked into any room. It does not increase when people respond well to you, and it does not decrease when they turn away.

When that truth begins to move from idea to experience, when you begin to feel it in your body, in your prayer, in the quiet moments when no one is watching — the radar starts to soften. The compulsive scanning slows. Not because you forced it, but because the deeper question has been answered. You are already seen. You were always seen. The God who holds you does not look away.

A Practice to Begin With

If you recognized yourself in this article, I want to invite you to try something this week. It is simple, but it is not easy and that’s the point.

The next time you feel the pull — the need to hold the room, to monitor how you are being received, to keep the attention from slipping — do not fight it. Do not shame yourself for it. Simply notice it, as gently as you can, as if you were observing it for the first time.

Then ask yourself one quiet question: What am I afraid will happen if they stop noticing me?

You do not need to answer it in the moment. Just let the question sit. You may be surprised by what surfaces — not vanity, not pride, but something much younger and more tender. A fear that was never really about the room at all.

And when that fear surfaces, bring it to prayer. Not to fix it, but to hand it over. You are not a soap bubble. You are not the impression you make. You are dust that has been adopted by the Living God — and that is a ground that does not shift, no matter who is watching.

The post Is it Vanity, Or Is it Just Anxiety? appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

Wanting to be seen is normal. It’s deeply human. 

But there’s a difference between wanting to be seen and needing to be seen. When you need to be seen, there can be a feeling of anxiety flooding your body at the thought of going unnoticed.

I remember being at a party once where someone lit up the entire room from the moment they walked in. Their laugh was contagious. They were funny, engaging, telling stories the whole night. Everyone was drawn to them. This person made me laugh a lot that night.

But by the end of it, I thought to myself how exhausting must it be to be her. To feel like you always have to be “on.” To carry the energy of the room. To expect to be the entertainment of the night.

Carrying that is not life-giving. It usually ends up being anxiety-inducing.

Why do they do it? Because they have to. Because without it, they’d feel invisible. So they put on a performance. And they hope that people don’t get tired or bored of it. 

Here are three signs that anxiety is driving your attention-seeking habits.

Sign One: Staying Quiet Feels Impossible

In most social settings, there’s a natural rhythm. Sometimes you speak. Sometimes you listen.

But for some, staying quiet doesn’t feel neutral. It feels threatening.

There’s an internal pressure: Do something. Say something. Be noticed.

Social settings begin to feel like a zero-sum game. Either you’re getting the attention, or someone else is. And when it’s not on you, your anxiety skyrockets.

So you jump in. You make the joke. You tell the long, dramatic story. You keep the energy going.

Not because you always enjoy it, but because the alternative feels unbearable. There’s too much at stake in being silent.

Sign Two: Attention Temporarily Relieves the Anxiety

Underneath this pattern is often a much deeper fear: I’m nothing. Not just unimportant. Not just overlooked sometimes. But invisible.

When people are watching, laughing, responding, something in you shifts though. You feel relief. Because for a moment, you’re seen, and that must mean you matter.

That’s why the performance can feel so powerful. People laugh, they engage, they respond. It gives you an emotional high and a temporary sense of stability and identity.

But it also doesn’t last. Eventually, the room quiets down again. One by one people leave. The loneliness starts to creep back in. And with it, the urge to find another way to be noticed again.

Sign Three: External Validation Feels Like Oxygen

Over time, your identity can start to form around how others respond to you. Who you are becomes tied to what people think of you. How much they laugh at your jokes. How much they affirm your character. How much they notice your looks.

A core thought forms: If they see me this way, then I am this way.

So you show up ready to entertain, to engage, to capture attention, because that’s all you know yourself to be.

Everything becomes filtered through that lens: What are they thinking about me? Do they like me? Am I good enough for them? And without that feedback, your identity starts to slip. You don’t know how you can feel okay without other people’s approval.

Where These Patterns Were Born

If any of this resonates, it’s important to understand: these patterns did not come from nothing.

They developed in response to pain. To a deeper experience where being seen, valued, or known did not feel consistent or secure growing up.

So your mind adapted. It learned to seek attention more actively. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but out of a need for stability.

But while these patterns can succeed in getting attention, they often block something deeper: real intimacy. Because real intimacy isn’t built on performance. It’s built on being known without needing to impress. And that’s where healing begins.

The goal is not to eliminate the desire to be seen. It’s to anchor that desire somewhere stable. Because when our sense of worth depends entirely on others, it will always feel fragile. Their attention shifts. Their responses change.

But you are not valued because you perform well. You are valued because God made you in His own image. And His attention is not something you earn. It’s constant, and it doesn’t leave when you are quiet, unseen, or ordinary.

And when that truth begins to take root, something shifts: you can begin to be known as you are.

If you resonated with any part of this, we invite you to reach out for a free Catholic Mentorship consultation. Healing these wounds is possible, and you don’t have to navigate them alone. We’d be honored to walk alongside you.

The post Three Signs Attention-Seeking Has Become a Silent Cry For Help appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

For those on the outside, witnessing the choices and behavior of someone with a Borderline defense can feel utterly confusing.

Why do they “blow up” over a simple question? Why do they say they love me one day, then threaten to leave the next? Their reactions seem so unpredictable…

Well, that’s because they are!

But, before we dismiss the borderline defense as something that is too much to understand or relate to, know this: the borderline defenses give insight into what it truly means to be human! 

Their reactions may be stronger than yours. Their emotions may shift more quickly than yours. But, instead of dismissing borderline defenses as irrational or incomprehensible, let’s approach it with curiosity. Because when we do, there are three (at least) truths that emerge to teach us how to make the most of the messiness of life.

1. Hard Times Can Make You Forget Who You Are

What happens to you when you experience a season of stress? It’s disorienting, right? Decisions are difficult to make, virtuous actions are harder to maintain, and your emotions can often fluctuate from day to day or even moment to moment. 

This is part of the “normal life” for those with borderline defenses. Through immense instability and trauma, they lost (or perhaps never developed) a coherent sense of themselves. Instead, their identity was created around the only thing they could recognize in themselves: their emotions.

And because their emotions inevitably change, so do their perceptions of themselves and how they relate to others. One moment they know themselves to be the happy, bubbly person in the office. The next, they are the person who can’t even get out of bed in the morning. This chaos and instability begins to shift something inside: Life is no longer something I control but something that controls me. And they begin to live at the mercy of their feelings, without any stable sense of self apart from their emotions.

Ultimately, this reveals something true about all of us: when we are flooded with emotions, things we know to be true suddenly feel uncertain at best. And if the experience is intense enough, it can feel like our entire sense of self is on shaky ground.

The best way to become grounded and restore a sense of peace is to set our identity upon the unchangeable: God. He alone can withstand the test of time and is a stable, trustworthy foundation. All else will fall short in comparison.

2. People Are Messy, and So Is Life

As human beings, we prefer clean narratives and neatly written labels. But real life often doesn’t work that way. Our past experiences are usually complicated and messy. So it follows that we would likely find some messiness in ourselves and in those we love. 

Take the following example. A man has been undergoing a lot of stress at work the past few months. His wife has noticed the stress seeping into their marriage. He’s more irritable. Less patient with the kids. And less involved around the house. 

One night, she finds herself overwhelmed and begins to relay to him the list of all the chores and errands needing to be done. Instead of reassuring her, something in him snaps: “I’ve been bossed around all day, rushing to finish a million different tasks thrown onto my plate. Just to come home to more demands. Thanks for that.”

The wife is immediately caught off guard. She knows her husband is a good, respectful partner. But lately his behavior has made her feel otherwise. His response brings her to tears. How could her husband, who was her place of safety, make her feel so alone?

Later that night, after calming down, the man apologizes to his wife and he repairs the rupture. 

This kind of thing happens in every relationship. Even those who love us the most or make us feel the safest can also let us down. They’re not perfect. But they also aren’t wholly evil for that either. Instead, we need to hold two realities together at the same time, they love me and they will hurt me. 

Those with Borderline struggle to hold two contradictory experiences or emotions like this at the same time. Instead, their mind splits. The husband has to be either entirely good or entirely bad. He can’t be both. Neither can an experience. It’s either joyful or devastating. There is no room for both.

But reality is rarely that simple. Our character and our stories cannot be reduced to one descriptor. Someone or something can bring us contradictory feelings (like joy and sorrow or excitement and fear). And we shouldn’t ignore one feeling or experience because it seems to oppose another. Instead, we can make space for them both, even when we can’t fully understand them. By doing so, we can perceive others and circumstances most authentically, without dismissing what feels uncomfortable or opposing.

3. Healing Takes Time and Consistency

Most wounds are not formed overnight. They develop slowly through repeated experiences of neglect, inconsistency, and maybe even abuse. They may have been small instances, but they were significant. 

Those with borderline patterns, on the other hand, often have wounds that were formed from life-changing events and significant trauma. Due to this, anyone with borderline or who has been in relationship with them knows that their wounds cannot be healed overnight. It does not happen through a single conversation or through willpower alone. Or in weeks or even months. Instead, it takes consistent, stable support and love for them to find healing. 

Through a love that is unidirectional (one that is one way and does not expect anything in return), trustworthy, and reliable, this individual begins to heal the borderline defenses that were formed to protect themselves. What the person with Borderline often lacks is stability. And stability cannot be formed in one or two therapy sessions, but in years of consistent love and support.

And this is not just true of those with borderline patterns, but in anyone with wounds. When we learned from a young age that, for example, “My thoughts and feelings must not matter because mom never listens when I’m upset,” that lie is not unlearned through one instance of someone finally listening. Instead, it’s unlearned through a stable presence that continues to listen, time and time again, regardless of the topic or season of life you’re in.

Most of us were wounded in relationship by someone we were supposed to trust and depend on. And this woundedness can only be undone by a trustworthy, dependable relationship found in therapy, mentorship, spiritual direction, or the like. 

Those with borderline make it clear: healing is not a one-time event. It is a journey. And the more we accept that, the more patient we become with ourselves and others in their woundedness.

Learning from Our Wounds

It’s not easy to live with borderline patterns, or to be in close relationship with someone who does. 

If you are looking for someone to accompany you in your healing journey, we are here for you. Reach out to a team member today to learn more about our Mentorship program.

The post Three Things Borderline Personality Defenses Can Teach You About Being Human appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

You’re made to teach one subject to your children. 

Now that may feel intimidating, especially if school wasn’t something you excelled in. Just the simple reference to being a teacher may give you anxiety because you may not have excelled in chemistry or history. And yet, as a parent, God has entrusted you with the greatest task in educating your children. Not in math, science, or any other school subject, but in love.

Your toddler cannot yet understand spiritual concepts like who God is or what the Eucharist is. But what they can understand is love. They feel and experience it every day through your kind gaze, soft words, and warm embrace. Yes, we will fail sometimes. But no teacher is perfect.

Soon enough, how your child understands love will permeate every aspect of their life, especially their understanding of God. As they grow, they will begin to imitate what they have learned about love through how they treat themselves and others.

This is exactly why St. Pope John Paul II described the family as the “school of love.” As their parent, you are your child’s first encounter with love and ultimately their first encounter with God. By the way you live and love, you are actively teaching your children how to do the same. You’re teaching them what it means to be in a relationship, find safety in times of uncertainty, and maintain key relationships. 

It’s a big task, but one you were made for. So here are three simple tips to help you build a “successful” school of love. 

1. Provide a Secure Base

Every structure needs a strong foundation. In the school of love, that foundation is love itself. But not just any kind of love. It must be selfless and unidirectional (you give to them and don’t ask the child to take care of your needs).

A selfless and unidirectional love provides children with the safety they need to develop healthy attachments and a stable sense of the world. They learn they do not need to perform, achieve, or behave perfectly in order to be worthy of love. They can let their guard down and be authentically themselves because they know they will be loved anyway.

Over time, this message takes root in the child’s heart: You are lovable as you are, no strings attached, simply because you exist.

This love remains constant regardless of their behavior or what they can give in return. It is not a competition and it is not a transaction. Love is not a scarce resource that will eventually run out. It is abundant.

With this secure base, your child can step into the world with curiosity and confidence. They know their identity is good and valuable. From that security flows the freedom to love themselves and those around them well.

2. Foster Empathy

One of the most important building blocks of a selfless and unidirectional love is empathy. 

An empathetic parent holds the capacity for entering into their child’s inner experience to help them understand what’s happening within and what to do with it. True empathy helps a child feel seen, understood, and like they matter. And true empathy creates space for a child to understand what’s happening within them and how to be in a healthy relationship with their emotions. 

For example, imagine your child pushes his sibling. Your instinct may be to correct or discipline immediately. That reaction is natural. Your child needs to learn that hurting others is not okay. But the question is, how do we do that in a way that the child truly learns to be kind and virtuous of their own volition?

Here’s the insight: it’s okay for your child to have his or her feelings, but it’s not okay to hurt others with their feelings. 

Empathy gives you the space to explore what led to the push. To validate a feeling of frustration or overwhelm because a sibling took a toy or went back on a promise. Those feelings do not excuse the behavior. But they help both you and your child understand where the behavior came from and what to do with the emotion so they know how to respond differently next time.

When you put words to your child’s experience, something powerful happens: you teach them to recognize and respond to their own emotions. They begin to think, I am feeling frustrated right now. Then they can consider how to respond. I should use my words. Maybe I should take a few deep breaths.

Not only does this modeling help your child regulate their emotions and respond more lovingly, but it teaches them to consider the interior lives of others too: Mom seems irritated, but she is not mad at me. She might just be overwhelmed right now. Maybe I can help. Through this practice, your child learns what it feels like to receive empathy, and how to extend that same empathy to others. This becomes powerful fuel for building loving relationships.

3. Prioritize Your Marriage

It may feel counterintuitive to prioritize your marriage before your children. How am I supposed to teach my children well if I am focusing on my spouse? But this question overlooks something important. Children learn constantly through observation.

When love is not treated as a scarce resource but as an abundant one, children do not see the love between their parents as a threat. Instead, it becomes the primary source of familial love that flows down to them.

By observing the love and respect between their mother and father, children learn what love looks like between equals. They move beyond receiving unidirectional love and begin to understand how love functions in reciprocal relationships. This provides them with a template for the relationships they will form with siblings, classmates, friends, and eventually a significant other.

Your children also develop a deeper sense of who they are by witnessing your love for one another. A daughter, for example, may learn how to give love by watching her mother give it and seeing how her father receives it. She also learns what it looks like to receive love by watching how her father gives it to her mother and how her mother receives it.

As children grow, they naturally begin to imitate these patterns in their own relationships. When parents model a healthy and respectful love, children are far more likely to pursue and build relationships marked by that same love.

Where to Go from Here

Eventually children will leave the home. They will carry many things with them. But the most important thing they will take with them is their understanding of love.

None of us will teach it perfectly. We will lose our patience. We will need to apologize. But children do not need perfect parents. They just need parents who keep showing up.

If you feel you’ve failed too much, please know: It’s okay, and it’s never too late to change. Many of us were not raised with healthy models of love ourselves. And as parents, we require a lot of learning and unlearning too.

The good news is: you don’t have to carry that responsibility alone. We are here to help, without any judgment or shame. Schedule a call with our team today, and begin your journey in discovering a healthy school of love

The post Is Your Family a Healthy School of Love? Three Keys to Building One appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.

Recently, I was seeing a Mentee who was struggling to break a habit that was causing a lot of spiritual, emotional, and relational pain.

When we started working together, he walked me through his healing journey and all the places he looked for healing before finding us.

At first, to break the habit, he relied on self-discipline. He set strict rules, did hard penances, and prayed more. It didn’t work.

Then he moved to insight-driven therapy and self-help podcasts. He learned a lot about himself. He read great books and listened to some insightful conversations that helped connect the dots on why the habit started and why it was so hard for him to break.

But it didn’t move the needle.

Then he moved to friendships. He had accountability partners. People he shared the struggle with. But that too didn’t work.

All this effort without any progress toward healing left him feeling desperate. So he went searching for something totally different. And that’s when he found us. After four months of working together, he finally experienced freedom from the habit and started consistently putting together full weeks without slipping.

He was shocked. Years of pain, years of futile effort, and years of struggle only to find that Mentorship changed everything in four months. “How did that happen?” he asked me. 

Well, the answer has less to do with trying harder and more to do with how real healing actually works. Let’s break it down together by focusing on the four main ways people try to heal, why they don’t work, and then end with what makes Mentorship such a powerful healing experience.  

1. Learning New Ideas

Many people believe that if they just understand themselves better, things will change.

They read books. They listen to podcasts. They consume content about psychology, spirituality, and personal growth. They hope that one more insight will finally unlock the change they’ve been looking for.

But healing is not simply learning a new concept.

The same idea applies to therapy too. Most people believe that therapy is about learning something new, as if one powerful idea changes everything. But that’s not fundamentally different from reading a good book or watching someone’s YouTube channel. Those things offer ideas and concepts, which are useful. But, healing is something different.

Real healing does not happen primarily through coaching, ideas, or concepts. It happens through something far more powerful.

2. Managing Emotions

Another common strategy is trying to control emotions.

People try breathing exercises, mindfulness techniques, or emotional regulation strategies to calm down intense feelings.

These tools can be helpful. Mindfulness is a key part of what we do here at CatholicPsych for a reason. It can really support the therapeutic effort. But it doesn’t facilitate deep healing because healing is not simply about managing emotions or suppressing them. It’s about restoring a person’s ability to receive, contain, and respond to their internal experience.

Healing means moving from being subject to emotional life toward becoming the agent of one’s life. Instead of emotions controlling the person, the person becomes capable of holding those emotions within a stable sense of self.

3. Leaning Too Heavily on Reciprocal Relationships

When people feel unstable internally, it is natural to seek stability from someone close to them.

Often that becomes a spouse, romantic partner, or close friend.

But romantic relationships are not designed to carry the weight of someone’s psychological foundation.

Romantic love is meant to be mutually reciprocal. Each person gives and receives themselves fully within the relationship.

But the kind of relationship that restores a person’s sense of identity works differently.

Developing a coherent sense of self requires a relationship where stability is provided from a relationship based on unidirectional love. A love where one person receives a reliable presence without needing to provide the same emotional foundation in return.

That kind of relationship has no place in romantic love.

When someone tries to receive their psychological foundation from a spouse or partner, the relationship eventually begins to strain under a burden it was never designed to carry.

4. Willpower Alone

Finally, many people believe the solution is simply trying harder.

They attempt to discipline their thoughts, control their behavior, and force themselves to change through sheer determination.

But healing is not primarily a matter of willpower. The deeper issue is fragmentation within the person. True self-possession requires a self that is coherently integrated at a deep level, including within the subconscious. And that kind of integration takes time.

This is not something that happens overnight. A person in this state is not simply learning a new concept. They’re experiencing healing through a sustained, consistent relational presence that slowly reshapes a person’s internal experience.

What Real Healing Looks Like

Real healing happens through relationship.

Deep wounds are formed in relationships, and they are healed in relationships through sustained, consistent presence over time. Healing takes place when a person experiences stability, reliability, and truth through another person who remains present through the ups and downs of emotional life. As that stability becomes internalized, something begins to change inside the person.

One of the clearest examples of this change is how a person relates to their emotions.

Before healing, emotions feel like they define reality. They take over the person’s experience of themselves and the world. If a person feels abandoned, they are abandoned. If they feel betrayed, the entire relationship becomes betrayal.

But healing restores the center of the person.

Emotions are still present, sometimes even intensely present, but they no longer define the person. Feelings become something that happen within the person rather than something that determines who the person is.

Instead of being driven by emotional chaos, the person begins to hold their emotions within a stable sense of self. The emotions are real, but they are no longer the whole truth of the experience.

This is what happens in Mentorship. The relationship is the healing mechanism where, through unidirectional love, the mentee is able to experience a corrective emotional experience at the core of their woundedness to restore self-possession and increase individual freedom to choose what is good, true and beautiful.  

That is what real healing looks like. Not simply managing problems. But becoming the kind of person who can experience emotions, temptations, relationships, and life itself without losing oneself or one’s freedom of choice in the process.

To learn more about how Mentorship can bring healing to your life, schedule a call with our team today!

The post Four Things People Rely On That Don’t Actually Heal the Heart appeared first on CatholicPsych Institute Blog.