CatholicPsych Blog
Featured articles
Is Your Spiritual Life Performance-Based? Three Ways to Figure out the Answer and One Powerful Solution
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.
Understanding Exiled Parts: How the Sin of Adam Affects Intimacy Today
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.”
Is it Vanity, Or Is it Just Anxiety?
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.”
Categories
Select a topic from the category list below.
Continue reading
Is Your Spiritual Life Performance-Based? Three Ways to Figure out the Answer and One Powerful Solution
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.
Understanding Exiled Parts: How the Sin of Adam Affects Intimacy Today
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.”
Is it Vanity, Or Is it Just Anxiety?
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.”
Three Signs Attention-Seeking Has Become a Silent Cry For Help
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.
Three Things Borderline Personality Defenses Can Teach You About Being 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.
Is Your Family a Healthy School of Love? Three Keys to Building One
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.
Four Things People Rely On That Don’t Actually Heal the Heart
Real healing does not happen primarily through coaching, ideas, or concepts. It happens through something far more powerful.
Why Repair Doesn’t Heal: The Hidden Cycle in Borderline Relationships
You fight. You reconcile. You understand each other more deeply. Trust consolidates. Peace increases. But in borderline relational cycles, repair does not heal. It resets. And then it happens again. And again. And again…
Be Perfect: What God’s Stability Teaches Us About Emotional Regulation
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” For many, especially those who struggle with emotional instability, scrupulosity, or intense spiritual swings, that command feels overwhelming.
What Attachment Styles Are You Raising at Home?
When attachment is secure, children grow in confidence and resilience. When attachment is strained or inconsistent, children develop strategies to survive emotionally.
Walking on Eggshells: Why You Keep Having Different Fights that Feel the Same
The content of an argument can change every day, every week, or even every month. But the relational dynamic and the cycle of stability, hurt, remorse, one-sided repair, and then stabilization again remains the same.
Are You Secretly Worshipping Your Boyfriend?
It’s good and healthy to want to be with someone you love. But there is a line where that person stops being a lover and starts acting as a substitute for God. And that line can be difficult to decipher.
When You’re Trying to Grow…But Your Partner Isn’t
You’re confronting your not-so-ideal habits. You’re naming your wounds. You’re in therapy, mentorship, spiritual direction—or maybe all three. You’re growing. And your partner isn’t.
Is It Love, or Is It Just Codependency?
Regardless of the exact dynamic, it’s common for codependents to be overtly involved in their partners’ lives. They often have the best of intentions, but it doesn’t change that it is not their responsibility to control or manage their partners’ behaviors.
What If Your Constant Self-Sacrifice Isn’t Love?
For some people, self-sacrifice isn’t a free gift. It’s a compulsion. A need. Something to calm the inner anxiety of not feeling enough. So they give and give and give, even to their own detriment.
Dependency in Marriage: Why “Headship” Can Become Spiritually Dangerous
People started looking for someone who “completes” them or talking about their loved one as someone who “completes’ them as if it’s what love looks like. But, if you really understand what love is, it’s not love.
How St. John Paul II Is Essential to Healing Narcissistic Parts
A narcissistic part is not a monster. A controlling part is not a villain. Nor is a martyr part proof of holiness.
5 Signs You May Be Spiritually Narcissistic And What to Do About It
A pattern of spiritual narcissism is a really touchy, sensitive, and difficult topic. It’s one of the hardest things I talk about…ever.
How to Spot Spiritual Narcissism
So how do you actually begin to spot spiritual narcissism, especially when it shows up in parents, spouses, ministry, or spiritual direction?
Narcissism and the Problem of Change
Every January, people make resolutions. We want to change. We want to do better. We want to pray more, be healthier, be more…
What Guadalupe Teaches Us About Evangelization
When Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego in December of 1531, it was not a divine interruption. It was a divine fulfillment.
Long before…
A New Year’s Resolution You Didn’t Know You Needed
Every January, we rush toward resolutions that promise quick transformation. Pray more. Work out more. But what if the most important…
K-Pop Demon Hunters; a Catholic Response to Shame
Not a clever book. Not a popular book. A disruptive book. The kind that reframes your assumptions. For me, that book is…
The Most Important Book I’ve Read in Years
Not a clever book. Not a popular book. A disruptive book. The kind that reframes your assumptions. For me, that book is…
How St. Joseph Can Help You Make Decisions When You Feel Paralyzed
Joseph doesn’t ask for signs or a clearer plan. He receives a word from God, gets up, and moves. For anyone who feels stuck…
The Hidden Sorrow Behind the Immaculate Conception
As we look forward to celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we remember the reality of how this day came to be…
A Mosaic of Hope: Rebuilding Life After Loss
My husband Tom died suddenly in 2019. He was 46, healthy, and we’d just had a wonderful weekend together. In the middle of the night…