Sep 23, 2026 | Family, Featured Content, Healing, Identity, Popular, Relationships
Last of three pieces on Denethor and his sons. The first, The Son He Loved Best, is about Boromir; the second, The Son He Could Not See, is about how his father missed Faramir. Each stands on its own. Two essays have brought me to a single question. Faramir of Gondor...
Sep 22, 2026 | Featured Content, Identity, Popular
For Hobbit Day, the twenty-second of September The Shire is a simple country. Tolkien meant it to be. Good soil, good beer, a postal service, and almost no history worth recording. It tells us of something that the entire series is trying to protect. Something that we...
Sep 16, 2026 | Family, Featured Content, Healing, Identity, Popular, Relationships
Second of three pieces on Denethor and his sons. The first, The Son He Loved Best, is about Boromir. Each stands on its own. Denethor, son of Echthelion and Steward of Gondor, had two sons, and he failed them in different ways. He loved his elder son, Boromir, and...
Sep 10, 2026 | Family, Featured Content, Healing, Identity, Popular, Relationships
First of three pieces on Denethor and his sons. Each stands on its own. No one chooses the hands that first shape them. By the time we are old enough to have opinions about who we are becoming, a great deal of the shaping has already occurred. We are molded by a...
Sep 2, 2026 | Anxiety, Featured Content, Identity, Popular, Stress, Trust
I fell off my board and hit something hard. I assumed it was a rock. My back was aching. I squirmed for a moment before I realized it was not a rock — I had landed directly on top of a sea turtle. After a quick, inadvertent expletive and an appropriate level of fear,...
Aug 26, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Personality Disorders, Popular, Trust
When most people picture someone struggling with OCD, they picture a very particular kind of suffering. Counting steps. Checking locks. Washing hands until they crack. For some people, this is their reality, and they bear a tremendous cross. While most of us will...
Aug 18, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Personality Disorders, Popular, Trust
Simon of Cyrene is one of those fascinating Gospel figures about whom we know very little. He shows up right at the end of Jesus’ life, wandering into a chaotic scene like a character that got lost in the wrong act of a play. In fact, he happens upon the most painful...
Aug 13, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Parenting, Personality Disorders, Popular
My personal encounter with OCD and scrupulosity has come through some of the closest relationships in my life. I have watched people I love suffer in ways that are difficult to adequately describe. Scrupulosity can feel like torture—an agony that those of us without...
Aug 5, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Faith, Featured Content, Popular
Spider-Man has been rebooted three times in a single generation. New actors, new timelines, new universes, and now, with Brand New Day, a new beginning that is not truly a beginning. By every rule of audience fatigue we should be finished with this character. And yet...
Aug 4, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Faith, Featured Content, Healing, Personality Disorders, Popular, Trust
Doubting Thomas: the disciple we’re all familiar with, having said he would not believe Christ had risen unless he himself could see and touch the nail marks in His hands and His wounded side (John 20). The Chosen, in a clever and creative way, depicts Thomas as...
Jul 29, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Healing, Popular
So, what do you actually do all day? I have a friend who knows I am a licensed therapist. But he has no idea what I do. I’d imagine he has some image in his head of a therapist wearing a long robe and holding a wizard’s staff. He seems to connect...
Jul 22, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Dealing with loss, Faith, Featured Content, Healing, Popular, Prayer, Relationships, St. Joseph
by Dr. Gerard McNicholas A few months back I sat down with Dr. Greg Bottaro on the Being Human podcast for an episode called “Stop Preventing the Saints From Doing Their Job.” The premise was simple but, I think, quietly radical: the saints are not statues to admire...
Jul 20, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Healing, Popular, Positive Psychology
The psychology of desire is complicated. It can be that emotion that drives us toward the most noble of human experiences. And yet it can also arrive uninvited. It can run amiss. Desire doesn’t always align with the person we are trying to become or honor our...
Jul 15, 2026 | Featured Content, Healing, Popular, Trauma
Most of us have felt the pull at some point. When the world gets too loud, the relationships too complicated, something in us just wants to go quiet, to shrink the radius down to something manageable, to stop returning calls, to close the door. That impulse is not...
Jul 8, 2026 | Communication, Featured Content, Popular, Relationships
We all avoid. Let’s start there. We avoid far more than we realize. Just like breathing—we all breathe—but how often are we consciously aware that we’re doing it? Avoidance can be much the same way. It becomes so automatic, so woven into our daily lives,...
Jul 1, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Communication, Faith, Featured Content, Healing, Human Dignity, Popular
When I mentor others, clients commonly express concern that our conversation might just amount to venting or badmouthing others in their lives. I hear things like, “Yeah, I was hurt, but I don’t want to throw this person under the bus.” In other words, there is often...
Jun 24, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Faith, Featured Content, Healing, Popular, Prayer
The story goes that I first asked Jesus into my heart around three or four years old, after punching my friend Katie. Apparently, I felt remorseful; my mom asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus to forgive me, and I agreed. I’m sure that wasn’t the first I...
Jun 17, 2026 | Catholic Psychology, Featured Content, Healing, Popular, Prayer
Every June, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart arrives and I often find myself feeling unprepared. There is something intriguing about this mystery, but also something I can find hard to grasp. What does the Heart of Jesus have to teach us, especially about being...
