Well, first of all, we thank all of you for your gift of time.
I think it's a wonderful series that we're gonna have on loneliness.
It just shows by the number attending It's at the top of mind of a lot of individuals.
I know Peter from being at Catholic Psychotherapy Association meetings with him, and we're going to Philadelphia tomorrow.
So I wanna kinda give you his background.
Natalia gave you a little bit of information.
He currently is with Catholic Charities in Arlington, Virginia.
He is a very personal man in his, counseling, if you will, and I I actually took this off of his site.
He says, I'm married to my wonderful wife, Cecilia Dribont.
My goals in life, well, first of all, to help both of us get to heaven through God's grace.
I want to make sure that I'm helping suffering souls to get to heaven if they choose and help them find meaning in their earthly lives.
Their search to God and if they are seeking an assistance, those who are interested in integrating their Christian faith through the lens of sound psychological principles and down to earth clinical interventions.
So help me God.
Don't we all want therapists like Peter?
So we're gonna get started here in just a moment, and I do know that other people will be joining.
So, I would say go ahead, Peter.
We're just about five minutes past the starting time.
Well, everybody, welcome.
And those who are trickling in late, that's fine.
I'll, do my best to, be as thorough and, to the point as I can.
I have 50 slides, but we'll try to get through it, best I can to get to the main points.
I'm trying to cover a general overview.
That's usually what I like to do.
I like to give an overview of many of these topics when it comes to mental health issues, and loneliness is a huge topic.
So I'll do my best to cover these thoroughly, without getting too much detail.
Okay?
So welcome everybody.
Is everybody good to see everybody?
And, today, we are going to be looking at ways people adapt to loneliness.
Again, very vast topic.
This is all post COVID stuff.
Stuff happened even before COVID.
Loneliness has been with us for a long time.
And, I would, again, try to give an overview, three main categories.
Okay?
So ways people adapt to loneliness.
Okay?
Some immediate solutions to loneliness that, I'll lay out, and then I'll go a little more in-depth in part c about, things that we can do, regarding this very, difficult topic, but so many people suffer from this.
Okay?
So let's move let's press forward.
So here we are.
We are in this first section, we are gonna talk about, I have, I think, a few slides here regarding what can cause, what can lead to loneliness.
There's these are very broad categories.
So one is social media and technology driven communication.
Okay.
So this is, becoming an ongoing problem.
An overabundance dependency on TV and news.
We have that going on for a long time.
Online gaming, texting, sexting, growing, artificial intelligence, relationships, right, like GROC, adult anime, Gemini, chat GBT.
These things are growing.
Bullying online, ghost, and then being ghosted by others, online.
This is very, very painful for both youth and adult alike, to be ghosted when you attempt to reach out to somebody and then no one responds.
You get just, like, ghosted.
Like, you are not no one responds to you.
Alright?
So, and I wanna make a qualifier here too is, you know, things that I'm describing here, not are not all are bad.
Okay?
You know, we have to be, make sure that, things in themselves aren't necessarily bad.
Like, AI is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's what it what it can do.
It can mimic intelligence.
Okay?
And the problem with, it's they they can do good things, AI, if you, provided you use it responsibly.
So the problem with AI, though, and and many of these things they mock or they sort of try to imitate relationships, which they can never do.
AI can never think for itself.
Okay?
The problem with AI too is that many people will stop thinking.
And a friend of mine, Greg Kolachek, he mentioned this.
Doctor Greg, him were, colleagues at Divine Mercy when we started '20 2000.
He was saying, too that, with AI, The problem is is that they try to mimic relationships.
They can never do that.
And then secondly, they can't, think for themselves.
Yeah.
Well, they can't think for themselves.
People cannot think for themselves because a a a gender generated intelligence takes over.
People could you don't have to think.
It takes away thinking for yourself.
People could have papers done with AI.
I mean, it's just really growing exponentially.
So alright.
So the point I'm making here is, they do jeopardize face to face human interactions, and we don't want to replace human interactions, with machine, with technology.
But it has.
Okay?
And that has become a huge problem.
Alright?
And, so the sense of human connection, god create us body and soul.
You can't have a body interaction, and a soul interaction on a computer screen.
So, I mean, again, nothing in itself wrong with it, but it can become a problem if it's overly relied on, and people are doing that, as a way to hide even.
People hide also behind technology, so no one can be really seen for who they are.
So these things can cause a deep loneliness in people because that human element, that human connection is missing.
Number two, Societal pressures and expectations.
Okay.
So people like to, you know, try to, find position, title position, productivity, go, go, go, always on the go, getting degrees, getting doctorates, whatever, a sense of perfectionism.
I'm too busy.
I'll have to call you back later.
I'll text you later.
I'm busy.
Deadlines.
All these things, there's a perpetual noise that is occurring that has happened at least today.
It's gradually progressing in in in our culture and in many other cultures all over the world.
This constant movement.
My wife's from Indonesia.
And when I'm in I go to Indonesia with her, I see nothing but movement and people and on their phones all the time.
Restaurants, everybody's on their phone.
There's no human contact.
Alright?
So and but that's regarding technology.
But here, then there's this need to sort of one up everybody with what I accomplished, my degrees, my accomplishments.
I have to be efficient.
If I'm efficient, then I'll be light, and all these things happen.
And this is can bury loneliness, feelings because it's an external part of oneself.
So here, efficiency, the need for efficiency wins over human connection.
Okay?
I gotta be efficient.
I gotta be on top of everything.
Go go go.
Deadlines, productivity.
And this is this is a problem because another reason you can't tap into your own loneliness or what's going on inside because you're constantly filling the outside with noise and busyness.
And this is happening all the time in our world with media, technology, everything.
Okay.
So, again, I'm only giving an overview.
You guys can look at this, on your own if you want to, however you wanna see it.
Okay.
So we got that.
Okay.
So we have that going on.
And then we have loneliness and mental health conditions.
Now remember, I'm giving an overview of this.
I'm not going into great detail.
Alright?
I'm trying to avoid that.
I'll try to give some detail at the end.
Okay?
But I want to be able to get through this.
So we have number three, loneliness and mental health conditions.
Okay.
Boom.
This is quite an issue.
This is quite something good.
Loneliness and anxiety, PTSD.
Right?
We have loneliness and depression, loneliness and bereavement, grieving people, loneliness and substance abuse, loneliness and suicide, loneliness and the stigma of mental illness.
Yes.
That stigma still exists.
Somehow, if people have some emotional mental problems, they have to hide it, and, they can't just speak openly about it.
I mean, everyone is we're all born in original sin.
Everybody's got some problem, and we have to be able to, feel free to communicate our issues.
We're more transparent with each other, as as a human culture.
Whether it's North America or out, you know, in the other parts of the world, Asia, everywhere else, it's important that that human connection, excuse me, that we address our issues, whatever they are.
Veterans, the suicide rate, we'll I'll I'll get to that in a second.
The suffering that they have, from post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and police officers, which they tend to not I I according to my understanding, they don't really deal with these issues.
They're constantly dealing with, with people, and risks of being killed or not when somebody pulls a gun on them.
And that's very traumatic.
And then repeatedly, that happening with with law enforcement and police officers.
That's that could generate a deep post traumatic stress.
But they're too busy, and they have to keep going, and they have they have paperwork to do, and they have bosses to answer to.
So they struggle a lot.
But I think this PTSD, post traumatic stress, which would lead to a sense of being alone in their pain, it'll be buried alive, and then they have to, again, live functionally on the outside, whereas whereas inside is turmoil, and we don't want that.
But that's what's happening.
Okay?
Let's move on.
So loneliness and repeated romantic or sexual relationships gone awry.
Now this is a not a relation an issue with many couples in relationships and not just couples.
This happens in marriages as well.
But the need to sort of chase that loving feeling, that romantic love, that obsession, this, pop culture obsession with it, the thrill of chasing that loving feeling.
Right?
It becomes like a drug or it's like chasing so I have a background also in drug and alcohol.
Okay?
So it's like chasing the drug of wanting that high of a romance, alright, to to nullify, to assuage those lonely feelings.
Right?
So promiscuity.
So we have this promiscuity going on, relying on central partners to fill this inner void.
Okay?
Relationships, we we can't do that.
Hint hint, there's one person who can only fill the deepest part of us, and that, of course, would be other than other than god if he chooses to fill it, by the way, and we'll get to that maybe later on.
So there's the obsession of these relationships.
In the media and the culture and the movies, they all talk about this romance.
They talk about how to fall in love.
They show falling in love, but they don't show how to remain in love and what that means and sustaining love in relationships.
How often do you see movies that portray the sustenance of of love in a relationship, of the the the struggle, the battle, the communication, the arguing, the fighting, and then they come back and they make up and reconcile.
When when do we see that?
We don't see that too often.
This focus is on this, again, this falling in love, Eros, being you know, I'm falling in love, and, that's everything.
Okay?
And and that's a problem.
Okay?
And that's only gonna lead to disappointment because you can't use a person as a drug to fill some sense of inner void that's using a person.
Perhaps you're doing that unconsciously, but it's still that's what's happening.
Okay.
And then we go to here number five.
So we have a lot of distorted so forgive me if I'm going a little fast here, but I I'm just trying to give an overview of this.
So, bear with me.
Distorted perceptions can lead to isolation, hence and then to loneliness.
Okay?
So this this is, this can get a little deep here.
So let me read this quote by Brian Hannon.
The inner child as a part of the true self internalizes shameful beliefs about the self due to past hurts.
Okay?
So what happens is many people who struggle, there's a part of with is within each of us is like a broken self or can be a broken self.
Alright?
And this gets internalized.
Alright?
And the belief would be, well, you know, I'm not lovable.
You don't love me.
Alright?
That's the belief that has been formed perhaps in childhood.
This happens a lot in the relationships.
Okay?
So these be due to past hurts, whether it's a rejection or abandonment, these things happen all the time.
So So what they're saying is, perhaps this is a little deep at this point, this part of the self needs to be befriended.
So we want to befriend make friends with this inner child of us.
How's that happen?
Well, that we'll we'll get to that.
K.
So we have everybody portrays an outward self that appears normal and together.
Okay?
And I see this a lot with my practice.
I've been doing this now for twenty almost twenty two years by the grace of God as a therapist, totally by the grace of God.
Alright?
There's no other way I'm doing this.
It's only by the grace of God.
I see a lot of people, who have this very external self.
Again, this sort of this crusted out external self that gets shown by others as, oh, successful, accomplished.
Right?
And then underneath there, there's a a well of brokenness that they either are repressing or they're not in touch with.
And that's just because there's too busy with being busy in the world, they're not they don't tap into that.
Okay.
They don't tap into that brokenness because they're constantly filling the void with success, accomplishments, degrees, productivity.
That's not the person's fault.
That's often the demands based on supervisors and bosses that put so many expectations on people to accomplish this goal, that goal, this task, deadlines, papers.
I mean, whatever, if you're in student, whatever.
So all these things.
So people don't have the time to take the journey inward or cast into the deep waters of the sea and go down and see what's going on.
Okay?
There's a deep hurt there.
So we have here a distorted belief or perception.
I know what you're thinking, terrible things about me, says one of the dogs.
Well, screw you and your judgments.
And the one guy is saying, oh, I'm just thinking about his pie.
Okay.
It's a very simple, silly example, but it shows the point how people can believe what they think others are thinking about them when you have when there's no evidence to the contrary.
Okay.
This guy's just thinking about pie.
Okay?
And the one guy, the other dog just says, you're just making judgments about me because you're just staring and looking at me, and and he's thinking about pie.
So we have to be careful how we perceive people, what we think they are.
But the brokenness, sometimes people make the conclusion, they don't like me, okay, or they are judging me.
Now sometimes that's true.
Okay?
Depends on the facial, okay, facial exterior, what they're portraying, like looking at someone sideways.
Sure.
That can be, interpreted as something real and, okay, this person really is judging me.
So that's a it's a matter of discernment.
It's a matter of judgment.
But, usually, we have to be careful not to make these conclusions, as I tell my clients, what you think they're thinking about you because we don't know we don't have the evidence unless you ask them.
Are you thinking terrible things about me?
No.
Alright.
Oh, okay.
Well, then not don't no screw you.
Okay.
I appreciate you telling me.
You're thinking about pies.
Oh, I get it.
Okay.
So there's a there's a communication that clarifies that.
Alright.
Okay.
So so the point is that this repeated rejections from people or misperceiving others can lead people to isolate, and then they that it gets internalized in deep loneliness because they don't trust others.
Okay.
They don't trust them.
So they develop a a a continuity of lack of trust toward other human beings, then they shut down, isolate, and then you got serious loneliness and depression going on.
Alright.
Let's go to the next slide.
Loneliness is a factor in elderly suicidal rates.
Okay.
General factors, declining health, decreased mobility, grief, isolation, the a decrease in care from family members toward others.
Okay.
This is a big problem with with the elderly.
Okay.
A lot of suicide.
I just had a couple of elderly people, total strangers, came up to my wife at night to sleep, and they wanted just to talk and hang out in a restaurant.
This happened last week.
It was unbelievable.
We don't know these people, but they wanted They were in their elderly age.
They're so lonely.
They wanted other outside contact.
Okay.
So and then another person who I know from my hometown in Canada said the same thing.
So and, sure, I mean, I plan to reach out and and and because I know them from the past a little bit, the one in Canada.
Originally I'm originally from Canada, by the way.
So, yeah, and people are very lonely, and they need that human element contact.
Suicide rates, I'm not gonna read this, is is high it has grown eight point one percent since 02/21, okay, for people aged 65 and over.
Okay.
The suicide rate, that's extremely high.
Okay?
And that's a huge issue.
The elderly suffer from so much of this, either with their spouse in their elderly age or in a nursing home or retirement home.
Okay.
So and there's deep, deep loneliness there.
Especially if you don't have faith, it's very, very difficult.
I can't imagine, okay, how hard that would be for people.
Seven, poor attachments.
Okay.
So means family of origin.
Okay.
So this is has to do with attachments.
This is big in psychology, attachment disorders, people who have the inability to form emotional connection with other people.
Hence a parent, a caregiver.
And they they don't know how they don't know how to have the attachment.
So adult identity crisis is a result of these things, poor parent child attachments, lack of self differentiation.
What that means is, basically, the inability to have a sense of self, of who am I as a person, and can I say yes to this and no to that, or who am I?
How do I feel?
I have no idea.
We'll show you video on this by Gabor Mate describing this thing.
Alrighty.
Moving on.
Lack of authenticity, affirmation.
I will talk about affirmation below if you stick with me.
In utero stress, okay, the stress of the mother, Okay?
When it comes to, remember what the infant feels.
The let's try.
What the mother feels, the infant in the womb also feels.
If the mother is stressed, the infant will also experience that stress level.
Okay?
So stressed mothers will form stressed babies.
Okay?
Alright?
And not all.
So there's a resiliency factors that would decrease that with certain people.
It depends on the person.
But if someone's constantly stressed, one's being abused while they're pregnant, I mean, there's incredible stress factors going on there.
Birthing complications, hospitals, ripping away the child, the infant from the mother, okay, when they're delivered.
Not all hospitals would do that.
Enough, and, but when they do do that, that just there's a separation that's instantaneous.
When the child has been there forming a bond with the mother supposedly in the womb for nine months, and then all of a sudden, they have to take the child, the baby away quickly from the mother.
That's a problem.
Okay.
So abuse I mean, just and okay.
So we're talking about attachments, whether it's abuse or neglect.
Abuse, something wrong has been done to you.
Neglect would be something not done for you.
Okay?
And that happens in both.
Some people get the double whammy of both abuse and neglect.
Some people just get the neglect.
Some people get the abuse.
Usually, people get the both.
Okay?
The average childhood experiences, the ACE, determines, what level of degree one's ACE score would be.
I don't need to get into that now, but you can look at ACE, ACE, adverse childhood experiences.
Alright.
Substance use addictions.
Okay?
So there's chemical and there's behavioral addictions.
Chemical being alcohol, heroin.
We got the fentanyl epidemic crisis.
Okay?
And that's laced not only with, other drugs.
There's let me I'll I'll get to this.
I know this is a sensitive topic, but there could be there also is a correlation of demonic activity for those who do drugs.
Okay?
Serious drugs.
It's a gateway.
When you do drugs like that, it's a gateway for the supernatural or the preternatural realities, okay, such as demonic influences.
That's that's that's huge.
That's never talked about.
Okay?
We're we're approaching this from a Catholic perspective, from a Catholic anthropology and spirituality, and we cannot deny the spiritual realities that exist.
So we have chemical, alcohol, heroin.
We have behavioral addictions, porn addiction, gambling, the labeling of an addict or incarcerations because one is labeled an addict, and they're punished for their addiction.
Okay.
Alright.
This is a problem.
Okay?
And, again, these cause all, again, back to the point, deep loneliness in people.
Alright.
Then you have, food addictions.
These are the main and top addictions.
Alcohol, cannabis, fentanyl, stimulants, Okay?
When it comes to chemical.
Behavioral addictions, social media, smartphones, online gaming, food addictions, shopping, gambling, sex and porn addictions.
Those are the top, give or take, top addictions that are occur occurring when it comes to either behavioral or chemical.
Alright.
Growing secularization and loss of sense of sin.
Again, this is from a Catholic anthropological perspective that we're discussing here.
We have a growing secularization of culture in all parts of the world.
Alright?
There's pockets of good Christianity that's happening, but overall, there's a growing secularization and a movement away from truth, which is a movement away from reality, which will lead to what your removal of God will lead to chaos and anarchy.
If you remove God from culture, you have no choice, but you're gonna fall into chaos or anarchy.
Alright?
Especially, it's a gradual progression away from and toward, perhaps even communism.
So, where the state takes over, the state becomes god, and god becomes obsolete and pushed aside.
Alright.
So there's a decrease in need for the transcendent, which would be god lack of sense of sin.
That's been growing for the last fifty, sixty, hundred years now.
Consciences, not conscious, but conscience is repressed.
Alright?
One's conscience, knowing right from wrong, gets repressed, and that happens a lot.
This is bishop Sheen talking this way too.
Bishop Fulton j Sheen.
Rugged individualism, we have that going on.
Materialism, empiricism, divorce.
If married, there's lonely spouses, lonely moms, or single moms and absent fathers.
These are constantly happening, in all parts of the world.
Such revolution, we have the pill.
In the sixties, of course, abortion, hookup culture, alright, promiscuity, homosexuality, transgenderism, transhumanism, which is altering human nature through technology.
So these are problems, again, that causes a a isolation.
I'm speaking I don't speaking here globally here, causes isolation, separation from the self and from God.
Separation from the self, body and soul gets separated, and then separation from god as well, especially from god.
And because god is the one that keeps body, soul together.
Alright.
So excuse me.
Four if this is too complicated or not complicated enough.
I don't know who my audience is, but, hopefully, this is making sense.
And this is bishop Fulton J.
Sheen, one of my favorites.
He is just I hope he gets canonized someday.
He's he's just a wonderful philosopher, psychologist even.
He because he's contact with reality.
His teachings focus on a sound psychology, which is sound found which is grounded on a sound philosophy, which in turn is grounded in a sound theology.
Okay?
So he says where theology drops sin, psychology picks it up.
So theology drops the notion of sin, while psychology will twist it and turn it and interpret it however they want to, and they've done that.
Okay.
So now there's no such thing.
Abortion is fine or contraception is okay or whatever, or IVF, all these technologies, they are considered now normal.
Right?
And it's promoted.
And there's a movement away again from this reality of god.
Again, it causes a a a a global loneliness and isolation because of even the factors of of removing reality of truth.
The church is an expert in humanity.
It is.
And I think that's in veritable splendor.
The church is an expert on humanity.
Right?
Meaning its teachings will be sound, and we have to maintain the orthodoxy, not heterodoxy, but orthodoxy or a Catholic faith.
There should not be a division split.
We need to maintain the truth of the integrity of of of moral decency in our world.
And if we don't and what psychology has done is they sort of reintegrated the whole thing.
It caused a mess with it.
Okay.
Very good.
Finally, last one, reality of preternatural influences.
Again, the point here regarding loneliness and isolation is to separate the person gets isolated.
If there is now on a personal and cultural level, if this happens, demonic influences can significantly affect mental health, especially by way of isolation of the individual.
Okay?
The person isolates and they are alone in their confusion, in their diabolical disorientation, if you will, from sister Lucia.
She talks about that, diabolical disorientation, both individually and globally person in in the world.
There's been and also this is from Chad, father Chad Rippiger, wonderful psychologist.
Okay?
He's actually not a psychologist.
He's a he's a theologian, exorcist, and philosopher, but he's brilliant.
So he's saying there's an increase in manifestation in the possession, okay, oppression, obsession in society, willful submission to the lordship of the demons on the is on the rise as well, which is subjugation.
So we see this happening a lot.
People go into witch doctors, whatever, to expel something that's not right in them, some alien spiritual force, and they go to a witch doctor to expel it.
I mean, this is this is looted.
This is this is crazy.
Okay?
I mean, literally, it's it makes no sense to do that.
Instead of going to a priest for an exorcism, or if that's needed or a psychologist, or therapist, whatever, to see what's going on there.
So this can cause a deep loneliness for people they carry alone.
A lot of people suffer from this.
It doesn't have to be full, like the movie, like, The Exorcist, like, full possession.
It can be oppression of war.
So oppression is external influences, demonic influences.
Obsession is internal influences, bay mainly psychological.
And that's scary because we have psychological, emotional factors, and then get you combine that with spiritual demonic forces as well that happen.
Okay.
I know that's very heavy.
I'm sorry to say this if this, offensive to anybody, but this is a reality.
Again, we don't wanna look at reality head on here, what's going on, and causes this division and separation, first away from self and then away from God.
And we and we would need to bring God through the church back into society.
Thus, the election of the next pope in the conclave is absolutely critical that, we pray for the proper led by the Holy Spirit selection of the next, pontiff is very important that we pray for that.
Alright.
Very good.
07:00.
Let me move on.
Okay.
B, potential solutions to alleviate loneliness.
Alright.
I mentioned this earlier.
These are adaptation strategies.
We're not gonna have to go over them.
These are ways people cope or may cope with loneliness.
And I talked about this.
Drugs, chemical addictions, working.
Okay?
The life work balance is off.
People are, working all the time, staying busy, blah blah blah.
Right?
Behavior, food, gambling, shopping, brush, rush, rush, go go go, gaming, surfing, web, Internet.
Alright?
Global addiction.
Alright?
This these these are ways people cope to hijack and prevent working through whatever emotional spiritual pain people have.
Okay?
And there's this is not an endless list.
There's there's many examples of this.
Relationships, we talked about that.
Entertainment, socializing, adrenaline junkies, chasing, drama queens, addicted to chaos.
People love chaos.
They like to fight as a way of interacting.
That happens a lot too in relationships in particular.
Minimizing, rationalizing, blaming, projection, gossip, attraction, actual sins.
All these things prevent people from, having to bring restoration to the body soul union, restoration with god in the soul.
And we we we focus away from from god, and we focus on these things too much.
Disassociating, numbing, which is a form of trauma.
Don't worry about the polyvagal states.
But people repress a lot of their emotions, and then they're not in touch with them.
Okay.
That's a psychological issue.
Addicted to pleasure, wealth, honor, power.
Okay?
Obsessive compulsive disorder driven need to control others.
This is also an issue, to control other people and control outcomes the way they want it.
Okay?
Because they cannot let go.
They need to control things to a hyper degree so that they can get what they want, get what they need.
Alright?
And this is a very big problem in our culture as well.
Excessive religiosity.
We have this problem as well.
People tend to hide their wounds or push away healing from the lord in any way, through being hyper religious, devotionalisms, highly moralistic, obsessive compulsive, scrupulosity.
All these things happen.
So excessive religiosity is also a factor.
And then how about this one?
Working through the pain.
Hey.
What about that?
Isn't that something good?
That's a positive one.
Alright?
Therapy and Medicaid assisted treatment.
Of course.
There's benefits to that.
That's good.
Sacraments, prayer, adoration.
Hey.
We're on the we're on the we're on the right track here.
And that's what we wanna be able to call this at last one.
Okay?
Because people do do that one.
They try to work through their stuff.
Okay?
So very good.
Okay.
So so four ways to approach a problem.
It is from Marcia Lindenhund.
Solve problem.
Good.
We can do that rationally.
We can solve a problem.
We can we need to change how you how we think of or perceive a problem.
We talked about that earlier with cognitive behavioral, how we perceive things that could be wrong, like the comic strip we saw.
We accept the problem.
Hey.
That's good.
And stay miserable.
And a lot of people choose to stay miserable.
Some people not a lot of people not by choice, other people by choice.
Okay?
But usually not by choice because it's people suffer so grave grievely, grievously in their aloneness and isolation.
Alright.
Good.
So that's Marshall enhanced.
And then now, we're doing the, again, we're doing the potential.
Right?
We're doing potential solutions to alleviate loneliness.
Alright?
Potential solutions.
Alright.
Love is found in community.
Good.
We this is probably the number one thing.
Building connections with others.
Okay?
Make efforts to initiate connection with others.
Parish activities, small groups, bible study.
Okay?
Or make self available to others.
Fellowship mass.
Okay.
This thing has to happen more.
There's a lot of people who are isolated, even when they're, in church or, they don't they just go to mass and they everybody disperses and there's no real not most people probably just kind of go and go their own way, but some people, have parish activities that happen afterwards.
I wrote an article called lost within the sheepfold, and this has to do with people who feel invisible among the 99 sheep as Jesus talks about the parable.
Lost within the sheepfold.
So there's a lot of people that yes.
Sure.
Jesus looks for that one lost sheep.
Wonderful.
And the Lord will do that.
Okay?
But there's some people in the 99 who are very lonely, and they're in they're among everybody, but they're alone.
They feel alone in the group of 99 sheep.
Okay?
And this is a very sad thing.
If you want to find that article, it's it's a short.
It was in the Catholic Herald, lost within the sheepfold.
Alright.
So that's that's an issue too.
Everybody's around them, but everybody's alone.
They feel lonely, but everybody every peep there's people are surrounding them, but they feel alone.
Something not right there.
Something's wrong with that.
This is a quote by Dorothy Day.
We have all known the long loneliness, and the only real solution to loneliness is love.
Hey.
And that love is found in community.
I mean, true community, okay, where people can be vulnerable with each other.
They can share their hearts and feel safe to share their hearts with somebody.
That's community.
Okay?
That's true intimacy.
Okay?
Alright.
So utilize technology mindfully and responsibly.
Okay.
So we gotta do that.
Alright?
No pseudo companions.
AI is a pseudo companion.
They're not real.
Okay?
It's a generated, mimicked intelligence.
There's things good things it says, but it cannot form a relationship.
It's impossible.
It never will.
It cannot think for itself.
Epistemologically, it cannot think for itself.
They're programmed what they have to say, and they all have all the data they can gather, these AIs.
So we have to be careful about AI relations.
I got on once with Chad GBT.
I couldn't believe the dialogue that was happening.
I was like, really?
That was unbelievable.
And and but they're not real.
Okay?
They're not they can't be there's no human connection.
There's no soul.
Alright?
Good.
Okay.
So let's move on.
Number three.
Finding so these are again, these are quick solutions that people we can do to deal with loneliness.
Finding joy in serving others.
Volunteering at a Catholic charity or ministry can help overcome loneliness.
Paradoxically, it can foster a sense of joy as you're coming out of yourself.
Okay?
When you go out of the problem is that people tend to self deprecate, and they get too locked in themselves.
They focus on their pain so much.
They can't look outside themselves.
So here, when you're serving through charities, again, bishop Shane talked about this, they can foster a sense of joy because you're forcing in a way to come out of yourself by doing something for somebody else.
Okay.
Finding joy in serving others.
Embrace solitude and spiritual practices.
Alright.
Good.
So embracing solitude will lead to deeper connection with god as long it doesn't turn to isolation.
Solitude is a good thing.
Alright?
Meditate on passages that speaks of god's consolations.
Remember, Christ experienced the fluid of feeling abandoned by the father.
He was never abandoned by the father, but he felt he experienced the full weight of abandonment on the cross as we just celebrated, Lent and going into Easter.
Okay?
And then the three types of prayer, verbal prayer, mental prayer, meditation, and then contemplation.
Alright.
So embrace solitude and spiritual practices.
That can help connection with the Lord, to alleviate loneliness.
Alright?
Finding peace in God's will for you.
This is something.
I would probably recommend everybody to read uniformity with God's will by saint Alphonsus Liguori.
Yes.
He struggled with obsessive compulsive issues.
So so I heard.
I don't have evidence of that, but I heard that, that he struggled with that.
But only god can meet our deepest longings.
No human can do that.
No place or thing can make that happen.
True peace can only be found by surrendering to god's divine plan.
And this is hard for so many people.
I struggle with this for twenty years of my life of what it means to surrender to god.
I'm still not there, but we're working on it of surrendering.
That means letting go, let trusting God and letting and and he will allow the loneliness for many people so that maybe they'll turn to God, lonely people who don't even believe.
That loneliness, God allows people to feel so they can turn to God.
Right?
And then God will then step in when they, in their freedom, reach out to God.
Lord, I need you.
I'm just devastated.
So they reach out to God.
Okay.
And then we want to be able to conform our wills to his will.
That doesn't mean we our wills are are removed.
We still have free choice, and we need to have that self possession of will.
But then once we own that for our free will, then we wanna give it to the lord so he can guide our lives.
And that's that's how that that that is a journey of spiritual fulfillment that requires years to work through.
And so I recommend everybody maybe look at this.
It's pretty intent.
It's pretty good read.
It's very good.
It's probably one of the best classics I've ever read.
Uniformity with God's will.
Very good.
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
We wanna be able to meditate, to be grateful, to meditate on the good things that God has given us, and express the gratitude to the Lord.
Lord, thank you for this.
I got 99,000 problems around me, but this one thing is good.
Thank you.
I have my health or whatever.
I have a home.
Thank you, Lord.
And we wanna be able to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
Okay.
Very good.
I don't wanna explain now the you maybe look at that if you want later the 12 tribes to march into battle in the old testament.
Okay.
So Judah literally means praise.
Okay?
That's what Judah means.
And they were one of the tribes of the 12 tribes of Israel, and they're the ones that led the march into battle or the when they traveled.
Judah is they're the ones they praise God, and they're the ones that led the other 11 tribes of Israel, when they did, either battle or they traveled with the tabernacle to different locations in, in Israel.
Okay.
So praising and thanking god.
That's a good thing.
Very good.
Realize loneliness will remain if you rely on the four p's, power, pleasure, popularity, possessions.
Okay.
If we rely on those, I said rely.
There's nothing wrong with power, nothing wrong with pleasure, nothing wrong with popularity, nothing wrong with possessions.
But if you rely on those and they replace god, then you got a problem.
Alright?
Then there's isolation.
Again, there's loneliness.
All these things stem from would would bring about deep loneliness for so many people, confusion, mental illness.
Seek professional help.
Okay.
Good.
Here we go.
Loneliness persists persists, or significant impacts well-being.
Seeking professional help can help be helpful as a means to an end.
Therapy is not an end in itself.
Therapy is a means to an end.
It's supposed to be a means toward helping others to help people find their ways.
Okay?
And, very good.
Also, you can seek spiritual direction, right, for clergy religious.
It can be female.
It's okay.
If they're available.
If they make themselves available, priests are always busy.
Alright?
And they got a congregation and a flock to to govern, either shepherd as a bishop or a priest in his parish.
So, yeah, they're busy.
Okay.
But, you have to search.
Okay?
Okay.
Well, this leads us to number c.
This is we're at seven fourteen now.
Seek professional help, a deeper dive.
Okay.
So we talked about this.
We talked about the eight points of bring some alleviation.
Okay.
Now we wanna move into the see professional about a deeper dive, our last section.
Okay.
So three ways to help alleviate loneliness by helping people connect to themselves.
Alright?
Helping people connect to themselves.
This is gonna be important.
We talked about this earlier, of low knowing what I feel, express how I feel.
I own what I feel or think, and I could claim it.
And I have self possession.
I know who I am.
I could say yes to this person.
I can say no to this person.
And if they get upset, I'm sorry.
Okay?
And you don't get bent out of shape if they get upset because there's a sense of authenticity.
I know who I am.
It could be also self agency, or self efficacy, self agency.
I'm the cause of my actions.
Self agency.
I'm the cause.
I am nobody else.
I am the cause of what I do, what I choose, what I don't, what I choose not to do.
Okay.
That's self agency, and we want to be able to have that and work toward it.
Doc Garber Amanti refers to this as authenticity.
Self differentiation is a a systems theory.
Another way of looking at that is another form of self possession.
Possession meaning I possess.
I own myself.
Okay?
And that is from, the systems theory, Murray, Bowen theory, which I love.
Murray Bowen is just awesome.
I love systems theory.
It's very good.
I don't have to get into that now.
But it's important to know that, because systems theory talks about the family dynamic.
Okay?
It talks about the interaction between family members or extended family, whatever.
And, when I see a family or a couple, the the patient is not the individual person.
The patient is the couple.
The patient is the family as one unit, and that's systems theory.
And we wanna look at the interactions between the family members.
So systems theory is very, very good, because it can help alleviate loneliness by people speaking their truth to out work out verbally to other people, and that's so important to do.
Okay.
Now, we're gonna we're gonna attempt this.
This is a video by Gabor Mate.
He's Hungarian like me.
He's from Canada like me, but he's Jewish.
And that's wonderful.
Okay.
Good.
God bless him.
And he's doing very good work.
He gets it, and I think his work is a catalyst toward, a good Catholic psychology.
Okay?
So I'm gonna try on my end here, and we'll see how things go.
It's four it's a four minute video, and let's see what he's got to say.
This is an authentic attachment on authenticity.
Let me set the stage for you just very briefly.
The attachment is people who need to have that sense of closeness, that sense of I need to be close.
I need to feel connected with other people.
And that's a prime primary fundamental need for every human being on on the planet.
Okay?
We'll get to God on that topic in a second.
Authenticity, again, is, like I said, is the ability to self differentiate, to be oneself, to be authentically yourself, to connect to yourself, to know what you feel, how you feel, how you think, and I own that.
Okay?
This is so important.
We lost that.
Okay?
Okay.
So I'm gonna try this on the tally and see how food this works.
And here we go.
When a child is born, the child has two needs.
The first need is for attachment, and attachment is contact, connection, love.
Without that, the human child does not survive.
Any any mammalian child or even an avian child doesn't survive.
So that as soon as you get past the level of reptiles, the reptile is is hatched.
The mother's long gone by then, and the little reptile infant either lives or dies, but there's no attachment to a parenting figure.
As soon as you get to the level of birds now, the baby bird has to be have an attachment with the parents.
The parents have to be attached to the baby.
Otherwise, the infant simply does not survive.
Mammalian's even more so and most so the human because we're the least developed, the least mature with the least developed brains, and the most dependent for the longest period of time of any creature in the universe.
So our attachment needs are enormous, and they remain important to our lifetime because we have to have attachments to foreign society, social groups without which we don't survive.
So attachment is a huge need.
We have to connect, belong, be loved by, and love.
That's just a basic human need.
But we have another need as well, which is for authenticity.
Authenticity is the capacity, as I said earlier, to, know what we feel, to be in touch with our bodies, and to be able to express who we are and manifest who we are in our activities and in our relationships.
Now why is that?
Well, I think of a human being in evolutionary period who's not in touch with their body and their gut feelings.
How long do they survive out there in the wild?
So authenticity is another huge survival need.
Great.
So far so good.
But what happens to a child where the attachment need is not compatible with the need for authenticity?
In other words, if I'm authentic, my parents will reject me.
If I feel what I feel and express what I feel and insist on my own truth, my parents can't handle it.
And parents can be able to messages unconsciously all the time.
Not because they mean to, not because they don't love the child, not because they're not trying to do their best, but because they themselves are suppressed or traumatized or hurt or stressed.
So I convey that message many times to my children, believe me, without any conscious desire to do so.
In fact, it was the very opposite of what I wish to convey.
But that they're not acceptable the way they are with their emotions the way they are, that's the message my kids got whenever small.
And most children get that now to say, what does the child do with that?
Well, if I give up my attachment for the sake of authenticity, I lose my relationships so much my life depends.
Therefore, there's no question.
What becomes suppressed is our authenticity, our emotions.
And then we become twenty five and thirty or 35, 40, and we don't know who we are.
And somebody asks us, what do you feel?
You say, I have no idea.
And how many times we've all had the experience of having an inkling of a strong gut feeling?
Are we ignoring it?
Are we ignoring it if we get into trouble?
Well, that tells us what happened.
What happened was that at some point, we found out it was too costly for our attachment relationships to be in touch with our gut feelings.
So then it becomes a first not our first nature, but our second nature to suppress our feelings, to lose touch with ourselves, and to suppress our gut feelings.
And then we pay the cost later on in the form of addiction as mental illness or any range of physical illnesses.
What it all began with this tragic conflict that children should never be confronted with, but are all the time between authenticity on the one hand and attachment on the other.
And even as adults, so many people are suffering because they wanna be themselves, but their fate to be because they know or at least they fear that if they do saw us, they're gonna lose important attachment relations in their life.
Okay.
Very good.
Alright.
So, we have the authenticity and attachment.
So his point is people would would give up their authentic selves by not speaking their minds or their hearts to others.
So they should compress and suppress that because the relationship is most important.
If I express my honest feelings or thoughts to somebody, they may reject me, and so they keep it to themselves.
Spouses do it all the time.
Not all, but a lot.
They suppress and repress their feelings.
So, therefore, that will cause a deep internalized depression within them and isolation and loneliness because they can't express themselves.
They're too afraid of losing their relationship, so they suppress their true selves, their feelings, everything.
Okay.
That's a problem.
So this is very important.
I brought I wanna show you this because this is quite nice distinction that he makes, this dichotomy that he describes.
Okay?
And I hope that was helpful to see.
So he says also, when we we repress our emotions, we repress our immune system.
Yeah.
He he backed that up with research.
This is a a difficult thing.
When people repress, they can become doing so, they can end up by doing any of the three of the following or all even.
Mental illness, okay, chemical or behavioral addictions, you name it, or medical conditions.
If people repress their immune system or repress their emotions, that that compromises the immune system to fight disease and bacteria and all that, especially disease, autoimmune disease.
Okay?
They can develop medical problems if people do that their whole lives.
Okay?
The body needs to always restore and integrate body, soul.
We need to learn to feel our feelings and express or at least acknowledge to ourselves our true feelings or thoughts either within or within ourselves to another human being or to god.
Okay.
Hopefully, to God, we can.
But other people not other people because they don't trust sharing their true selves.
Okay?
And if parents do that to their children, that they're going to suppress their their true natures, and then they're going to pay in the form of mental illness, addictions, or medical problems.
Okay.
Doesn't they they they may not, but it can happen that way.
Alright.
Good.
The dangers of suppressing one's authentic self, loss of authenticity, which is the ability to express one's true thoughts, feelings with others out of fear of being rejected, not loved, yelled at, criticized, judged, or teased.
Alright?
So because that's happened so often, yeah, you're gonna shut down.
You're gonna shut you're not gonna you're not gonna trust anybody to share your true self with.
As a result, many people suppress their authentic selves to keep their attachments, their relationships, just as God Ramonte said.
Okay.
The fundamental need for everybody is to be seen, to be heard, to be loved.
God designed it that way.
Many people and then money says many people suffer from the please love me syndrome, the please love me syndrome.
I need to be loved.
They would probably say it, but that's probably what's happening for so many people.
Again, isolation, alone in their pain, unable to express, don't feel safe.
Alright?
So we have to be safe for other people.
Alright.
I'm I'm gonna get to the solutions as we go on this.
Alright.
So let's keep moving on.
Mindfulness.
So how do we connect to ourselves?
We're talking about number one here, how to connect oneself, right, as we did here.
Boom.
Right?
Helping people connect to themselves.
One way is mindfulness, how to be mindful.
It is to be aware of what's going on inside you without judgment without judgment.
I don't care what I'm feeling or thinking.
I'm not gonna judge it.
Alright?
God allows that to be there for a reason.
Alright?
Whatever struggle you have, turmoil, emotional pain, you wanna be aware of it.
It's a movement toward becoming aware, mindfulness.
Be aware of yourself, your surroundings in the here and the present moment.
God is in the present moment.
He's not in the past.
He's not in the future.
He's in the present always.
Okay.
It's a repetitive chosen act of redirecting what's attention to only one thing at a time each moment.
Alright.
Good.
So, you can look at this if you want.
To do to the present moment, when I was I was at Madonna House for a year and a half, a gift of God, after my conversion to the Catholic faith.
I went to Madonna House in Canada.
It's in Ottawa, near Ottawa, and Catherine Dorey talked about the due to the present moment.
It's the most perfect place to be.
I tell my clients this all the time.
Live in the moment for the love of God.
Live in the moment.
Live in the present moment.
You can there's nothing wrong with going to the past or going to the future, but people have a difficult time being in the present because the present is difficult.
Okay?
When they're busy, sure, they can be present in the present moment because they're focusing on the present task that they're doing.
But living but doing at the present moment is what what does god want me to do at this particular moment?
The my due to the present moment right now is giving this presentation to you.
Your due to the present moment is is listening and, what what what I'm saying here to you, what we're trying to present here.
So look up due to the present moment by Katharine Doherty.
And, she's kinda like a Dorothy Day figure, kinda mother Trisha is.
She she's up for cause for for, canonization.
I think she's absurd of god at this point.
Catherine Doherty.
And her community is, in Madonna House in Canada.
Beautiful place.
Boy, you want your loneliness to disappear.
You'll connect to it if you go to Madonna House, but then you'll be healing.
God God is very present there.
There's priests, there's women, men, and priests that live there in communities.
Beautiful.
Madonna House.
Okay?
They have a house here in Virginia.
Okay?
They have them all over the world, actually.
They have field houses all over the world.
Okay?
So Madonna House, it was a very healing time for me to be at Madonna House.
It was a year and a half for me.
And there's community, but it's suffering.
But it's okay.
God allows us suffering so that we can look at ourselves and ask God for healing and to depend on God to bring about that healing.
Okay.
Good.
Alright.
Connecting themselves, view the emotions.
Okay.
So oh, boy.
Our emotions.
Okay.
Quick thing on my emotions.
Not to be afraid of them.
Okay?
It's okay to feel pleasure.
It's okay to feel whatever you're feeling.
Emotions have no more connotation.
There are no bad or sinful emotions.
It's impossible.
Alright?
Sin is in the will.
It is not in the emotions.
Sin is in what I choose in freedom, do good or avoid evil.
Okay?
Or to do evil.
Okay?
It's in the will, never in our emotions.
So don't ever feel bad if you feel sexual, anger, even if you feel hate.
Okay?
God says, don't will hate.
He doesn't wanna that's a different thing.
To feel hate for someone causing injury to you, of course, you're gonna have feelings of hate or anger or sadness.
Okay?
That's normal.
Okay?
But people are afraid of offending god, so they don't feel those things.
They repress it.
Okay?
So don't be afraid of that, of your emotions.
They're all good.
God gave them for a reason for us.
Alright?
All emotions in their pure state are good.
Like I said, they arise spontaneously and are to be guided by the will informed by reason.
Alright.
The emotions are subservient to reason and will.
Okay?
All emotions are accompanied by physiological changes.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
I can't get into the details of basically, when you feel an emotion, you gotta allow the physiological changes to happen.
For example, if I'm angry, you wanna let the blood pressure flow into your body.
You wanna let your face turn red.
Or if you're anxious, you wanna let yourself shake.
These are all sympathetic, nervous systems that are happening that are meant to happen.
So when there's an emotion, you wanna let yourself experience in through your body the emotion state that, will influence your bodily reactions.
This is so important, so critical.
This is the work of Conrad Barzin and Aturu that developed this these points, making it very clear.
So when there's an emotion, you're there's a physiological reaction.
You must allow the physiological reaction to happen.
This is connecting to yourself.
Okay?
This is how we connect to ourselves.
Don't don't have to be afraid of any feelings.
Just let them be there.
And you can even ask the Lord to help you process these emotions.
Okay?
It's so important that you don't repress, but you, allow these things to happen in your body without fear without fear.
Okay?
There's no need to fear.
Fear is useless, says the lord.
Right?
Alright.
Good.
Every emotion does not need to be expressed or gratified.
Okay?
Because every emotion is meant to be felt or experienced in and through the body.
They don't have to be expressed.
Anger, explosion, acting out, expressing.
You don't have to do that.
Long as you feel anger and you're angry at someone, let yourself be angry.
You don't have to punch the guy or the girl, but you have to let yourself feel it and and but you have to have reason always guide your emotional state.
Okay?
It would be stupid to hit my boss if he threatens to fire me.
Okay?
Pretty stupid thing to do.
Okay?
And I get angry and I hit him.
Okay.
So my reason reason should tell me, don't do that.
So my hopefully, I'll listen to that and go, okay.
Yeah.
Oh, I'll feel my motion.
I'll experience it in my body.
Alright?
And, I'm not gonna act out like that because reason is informing the reality of what I should do in the situation, and then my will makes the decision not to act out.
Very this is so critical.
Okay.
Good.
So so far so good.
I know I'm gonna, I'm moving moving into oh, okay.
So I'm gonna keep going here.
Just, Michelle or, just let me know when I need to, bring it to a close.
Okay?
But I'm we're going here.
I'm gonna continue.
There's not too many left.
I'm gonna continue.
And so this is now number two, helping people connect to others around them.
So this is, now this is the attachment relationships that governor Monte was talking about, forming a communion of persons.
Okay.
Oh, it's beautiful.
We're gonna move in now to Catholicism here, okay, in this third third section.
So this is number two.
Alright.
I'm gonna, in a way, skip this one.
Coregulation is a necessary prerequisite for self regulation.
Okay.
So look at the image there.
People are alone.
There's an inner child in the picture.
If you notice the picture, there's two inner children inside the cells that are isolated looking at each other, wanting to connect.
I found this I found this beautiful, so I had to, I had to use it.
So, okay, those are the history of trauma, abuse, and neglect.
The autonomic nervous systems have been shaped away from connection and more toward protection.
Okay.
So people, in other words, they don't connect.
They have to protect themselves because they don't trust.
That's coregulation is ability for two people to feel safe with each other.
That's coregulation.
I feel safe with this person.
I can be myself with this person.
Wow.
Wouldn't that be something?
And they are able to coregulate in their relationship back and forth.
Okay?
Just like an infant and a mother.
Oh, here we go.
Right here.
Humans need others.
Okay.
And remember I mentioned the physiological part here, how we need to allow the physiology to happen?
This is from Stephen Porges, okay, the founder of polyvagal theory.
Paul Ray Leggett excuse me.
Humans need others.
Regulators of physiology are embedded in relationships.
Okay.
So we have this beautiful, this emotional physiological connection between mother and infant.
And you could see, of course, the countenance of the face says everything.
Alright?
Good.
Okay.
All people, especially the lonely, need to feel safe, secure, seen, and soothed.
These are the four s's by doctor Dan Siegel.
Safe, secure, seen, and soothed.
Alright.
That's what he says.
Very good.
Especially the lonely.
Not just the lonely, but everybody really needs this because we're all social creatures.
God create us create us for social togetherness.
Okay?
In family, in communities, we need this.
Alright.
Safe, secure, scene, soothe.
Dan Siegel.
And this is from Sue Johnson.
This is beautiful.
She's the founder of emotional focus therapy, also for married couples.
Beautiful quote.
The security of the attachment bond answers the existential question, are you there for me?
Basically, are you available?
A.
R, are you responsive?
E, are you engaged?
Okay?
This is very important.
Right?
So we wanna be available, responsive, and engaged to those who interact with us.
Not easy to do because our minds are elsewhere.
We're thinking about, you know, we feel safe, and we have we we're thinking of how to where when do I have to pick up Susie from, the school and or whatever.
And we're constantly distracted.
We're not being mindful to the person in front of us.
We do this with lonely people.
They will know that you're present to them.
They will know.
Okay?
Because you're available, you're responsive, and you're engaged.
Okay?
People don't forget communication is 99% body language.
Face countenance, eyes, not words, but body language.
This is where the communication happens, and people read this very well.
People could read other people's anxiety.
People can read when someone is angry.
They can feel it.
Okay?
There's nothing new age about this.
This is what happens.
God designed it this way.
Finally, by helping people connect with the triune God, father, son, holy spirit, personal and communal prayer.
Okay.
Now we're bringing this full circle now to the theological with God.
Okay?
And we're wrapping up here, Michelle, very soon.
I I know there's probably gonna be questions.
What we owe to man is first and foremost a truth about man.
This is Saint John Paul the second, Pueblo, Mexico.
He said this at, what we owe to man is first the truth.
What does it mean to be human?
What does true Christian anthropology?
What does it mean to be human, and what does it mean to relate?
Okay.
And, of course, being the Divine Mercy graduate, okay, One of the best school my best school psychology ever.
And even that my first year there, I was a guinea pig student for that first year.
They are already teaching these integration of psychology with theology and the faith.
They were doing that the first year.
It It was absolutely beautiful.
So doctor Paulovitz, him and, doctor Girling and doctor Titus came up with these 12, 11 principles of the Catholic Christian Meta Model.
If you can get a hold of it, it's a big book.
It's a quite a read.
I read quite a bit of it already.
And, but these are the if we follow these principles, this is, like, kinda like salvation history in a nutshell.
The book is like this thick.
Okay?
It's it's a it's a read.
You can get short versions of it as well.
Created in the image of God, fallen due to original sin.
Yep.
Redeemed by Christ.
Absolutely.
That's been done by Jesus' death and resurrection.
Right?
We are persons of personal unity.
Okay?
So this is what the person is.
Right?
Personal unity within the self, fulfilled through vocation, fulfilled in virtue, okay, choosing good, avoiding evil, interpersonal, relational.
Alright?
We talk about that a lot.
That's what we are.
God designed a human person this way.
Has sensory, perceptual, and cognitive capacities.
That's a very interesting deep chapter.
Emotional, we just talked about that.
Rational, k, or intellect.
Volitional and free.
Meaning volitional being free will.
Okay?
That I freely choose my life.
Okay.
Very good.
So if you wanna get a hold of that, you can.
Catholic Christian Meta Model of the Human Person, CCMMP.
Okay.
This is Benedict, substance as relation.
The point I wanna make here is, Pope Francis, Pope Francis, alright, for, Pope Francis.
But here, we are both sub a person, interpersonal substance of a rational nature, Boethius definition of a person, as relation.
Benedict brought out as relation.
So the point is so he posited that substance as relation are equally primordial forms of being, but relation is not secondary to substance.
What he means by that is we have the person, but the relation is doesn't come second to being a person.
The relation is embedded in the person.
We're created for relationship.
Okay?
And we are basically a reflection of God.
We're supposed to be reflection.
The family is a reflection of the holy trinity.
Father, mother, child.
Right?
Father, son, holy spirit.
And you invert that, you get the you get the family.
If you if you think of a triangle and the triangle gets inverted, you have the family.
We're the family.
The community is a reflection of the holy trinity, and this is what Benedict was describing.
This perspective is reflected in his understanding of god, the holy holy trinity, as a communion of persons, communal personarum, and not as an isolated substance.
Okay.
Very good.
Let's not worry about the quote below.
We don't have time for that.
But substance as relation.
There's right?
They're not secondary.
Relations is not secondary to my identity as a person.
It is integral to my nature as a human being to be in a relation.
Alright.
Very good solid good solid theology.
Okay.
Benedict, one of my best one of the best theologians in the world.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
We may not have time to get this.
How we do it for time, Michelle?
I only see you.
Are we okay?
I know I don't know if people are getting antsy or not.
I'm not sure what's going on.
Well, I know you've got some important things to cover yet, but I would just maybe elaborate on your slides real quickly and then have an opportunity because there are some questions Good.
At the end, but I think most people that are really interested just really don't want you to cover the remaining five slides.
Okay.
Very good.
I'll I'll go through this.
And a.
Okay?
Very good.
Excellent.
There you go.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Yeah.
Very good.
Thank you, Michelle.
Okay.
So genetic psychiatrist first encounter.
So this is doctor Anna Tureu in the '9 in the twentieth century, nineteen thirties, around there, nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties.
She was practicing psychoanalysis.
And then after six months of therapy in the red, the patient said, doctor, nothing that you have said has any effect on me.
For six months, I have been sitting here hoping you would take me to your heart.
You have been blinded to my knees.
Okay?
This patient felt like a child.
She needed only one thing, namely to be treated in a tender, motherly fashion.
Okay?
So psychoanalysis wasn't working.
Okay.
So this woman finally said to doctor she was having deep anxiety.
Okay.
Serious, serious anxiety.
And finally, this was a wake up call for doctor Anna Tureu.
Say, woah.
This is we gotta do something here.
Okay.
So then her and doctor Konrad Barz formulated this syndrome called emotional deprivation disorder.
Okay.
Very good.
And I find this Heinz Kohut self psychology would be quite integral and complementarity with the work of Konrad Barrs.
Heinz Kohut is a a kind of a secular based, psychology.
Beautiful.
Heinz Kohut works absolutely phenomenal.
I just it was amazing, but I find it quite complementarity with the work of Konrad Barrs and Anna Turer.
Okay.
So so from loneliness to affirmation, these are principles that Conrad Barrs, identified, kind of tips, waking what you can do for yourself and others regarding loneliness.
I'm not sure I have time to go through these.
Maybe you can look at we can look at these briefly.
Being always precedes doing.
I won't do everyone.
I am valued and cherished by god in who I am, not by what I do, not by what I accomplish, not by what I succeed in, but in who I am as a child as in with dignity created by god.
Stop hiding and repressing your emotions.
We talked about that.
Do not hang on to your fears, especially the fear of hurting other people's feelings.
Don't worry about it.
If you wanna speak speak truth, that's the goal.
Dare to be honest to other people.
This will develop your sense of authenticity.
Dare to be honest with you don't have to yell at somebody, but you wanna be assertive and honest in what you think so that your loneliness will disappear, so that you are speaking words to your to your reality and truth.
Okay.
Do not bend backwards to try to please everybody.
You don't have to do that.
Stop trying to make yourself seem more important by putting down others.
This happens a lot.
Be constantly on the lookout for what is good in other people.
Number good.
Number seven, stop thinking you are no good or worth nothing because your parents in earlier life did not succeed in making you feel loved or accepted.
Okay.
Eight, stop trying to affirm yourself by degree, status, all that stuff.
We talked about it earlier.
Nine, wait patiently and an unhurriedly for another person to affirm you.
K.
That's a little hard to do in our world today because everybody's sort of scatterbrained, doing their own thing.
Okay.
Not everybody.
Most people are.
10, therefore, be gentle with yourself and with the childlike feelings within you.
Okay?
Connect to them.
They have a right to be there and to grow and catch up with the rest of you that is already grown.
Okay?
So we have a die off today, a a dialect between the inner child, broken, buried, and the adult self, successful, accomplished, and there's they're not connected.
They're separate.
There's like a chasm between these two, and god wants them to work together.
Okay?
Inner child, adult self, inter integrated.
Alright.
Good.
So you can get that from Born Only Once, the miracle of affirmation.
Great book.
It's a short read.
It has pictures.
It's a nice introduction to the work of Conrad Barnes.
Again, his work is affirmation.
To be affirmed is to feel the goodness of another human being, just like I showed you the mother with the baby.
They there's a connection.
There's a coregulation.
You know, I feel safe.
Mom is loving me as I am.
I don't have to do anything.
I can be myself.
Okay.
That's affirmation.
And it's a feeling connection.
It's not so much it's no words.
It's a feeling sensory connection.
It's a coregulation with the parent.
Alright?
Or with between spouses.
Okay?
Now I know this is idealistic in many ways because there's only people this is so far language, but we wanna work toward this.
We have to have an understanding of the anthropology of the person as God created, and we wanna work toward that in the church.
It is so critical.
Alright.
Good.
As lonely people need to assert themselves, speak your truth.
You want like, we talked about speak your truth.
Your truth, speak up for yourself.
The truth, speak up for God.
Alright.
So you wanna speak up for yourself regarding your truth, and that's hard to do because the fear of being rejected or criticized or judged or put down is very difficult for people.
Okay?
Very frightening because I'm afraid you'll reject me, and then I have to keep everything to myself just like what Garbo Marte was saying.
Alright.
From a therapeutic standpoint okay.
So briefly here, therapeutically, the relationship must always precede techniques, tools, and interventions.
Always.
My goal as a therapist is to connect with my clients.
Always.
Okay?
If they don't feel safe with me, we're not gonna get anywhere.
They have to feel safe.
Okay?
And that's not easy to do, because there's a lot of resistance with people.
Okay, from a therapeutic standpoint.
People are resistant.
But I do my best by the grace of God to be present, to let them be where they need to be so that that walls of defenses will slowly layer by layer to come down.
And sometimes that takes years.
Okay?
You realize the walls could get built up for many years for people.
Okay?
So there's a fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of being judged or criticized.
Okay?
So just like, Ramonta said, healing offers more than mere coping strategies, skills, and relationship advice.
Okay?
Healing is but maybe more than that is connection.
Alright.
And here's a, list of a smorgasbord of all different types of interventions, which you may know, you may not know.
First connect, then direct and redirect.
Okay?
You first gotta connect.
Alright?
And you don't have to go through all these.
These are all different kind of things that I use, in my years as a therapist.
I love self psychology by Kohut, polyvagal theory, attachment theories, systems theory by Bowen, Mnuchin, all those guys, relationship enhancement therapy, emotion focused therapy, very good.
So a lot of good stuff that we can use as secondary to the connecting with the human being.
I'm speaking from a therapeutic perspective.
Alright.
So this is a key to con these two principles constitute the basis we are almost done.
Constitute the basis for psychic development in the patient.
Okay.
So this is from Healing Unaffirmed, if you wanna get that book.
Page seventy five seventy nine.
Emotional information that this is what the client needs from an affirmation therapeutic standpoint.
Okay?
The client experiences and feels inwardly the therapist's affection, alright, that sympathy or empathy for them, which others did not or were unable to get them.
Okay.
Again, therapy is a tool.
It is a means to an end.
It's not an end in itself.
Okay.
That means a therapeutic relation will have to end eventually.
Okay?
So but this is what the affirmation therapist would want to do.
This is emotional affirmation.
The client experiences and feels inwardly the therapist's affection or their empathy for them.
Okay?
Intellectual affirmation, the client needs to obtain approval by telling the therapist or the person doesn't have to be the therapist.
It could be anybody, a parent, a spouse, a friend, telling the therapist everything about their lives.
They must learn that nothing can damage the therapist's favorable opinion of them or affection for them.
Nothing.
They can say whatever they want.
The therapist will not react, will will be grounded, will be able to coregulate or work toward coregulating with the person so that they feel safe.
Okay?
We wanna establish safe, whether it's therapy or a spouse or a friend or a priest or whatever.
Okay?
Doesn't just have to be therapists that do this, but this is what affirmation therapy does.
Okay?
These two together.
Right?
This is from Healing and Affirm.
The two constitute the basic for psychic development in the patient.
Good.
These two together.
Alright.
Good.
I have hundreds and hundreds of slides like I showed you.
It took time to really try to formulate, what best here would probably best for you for you guys.
Patron saints of loneliness, Saint Rita of Cassia, known for the saint of possible causes.
She is also recognized as the patron saint of loneliness, suggesting that god can provide comfort and healing to those who are feeling alone.
And Saint Thomas More.
Okay.
Even while in prison, he wrote works of combat oh, sorry.
Works of comfort and solace for others, demonstrating that even in isolation, one can find ways to connect with others and share God's love.
Alright.
Very good.
And having said that, thank you for your patience and my gabbing this whole hour with you.
We are open for questions if people have any, and you can put them in the comment section.
I'm not sure.
I've it's 07:40.
I'm sorry.
It's been long.
If people need to go, totally get it.
Those who wanna stick around can ask questions.
And if you don't have questions, that's fine.
Very valuable.
Please, we'll take a few moments and answer these questions.
Thank you.
So, Peter, I will read off the questions to you.
Beth is asking what is, in quotes, your truth?
Is it your experience, feelings, and beliefs, question mark, or something else, question mark?
Yeah.
Good question.
Your truth is your reality, what you perceive as true for you.
It it could be doesn't have to be a moral position.
It can be.
It doesn't have to be.
But you are speaking your subjective experience, your subjective reality.
I am angry.
I am sad.
I feel alone with this with you, or whatever.
I I I I'm able to put words to my truth, my pain, my struggles, who I am as a person.
I'm able to express that within myself, my subjective experience, and put it out there to someone I can feel safe and trust toward.
Okay?
The truth would be the truth, which would be objective reality, from God's standpoint and the church standpoint, but my truth is my experience just like with Gabor Mate, that I can be able to be authentic to be able to express not, you know, my subjective reality, my pain, my happiness, my joy, my struggles.
That make sense?
So next question, Peter.
Can you speak to EMDR, and how long can sessions take to make a, quote, unquote, breakthrough, surrender, healing in the patient?
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Eye movement desensitization reprocessing.
Okay.
That's EMDR.
That's gonna vary.
There's a lot of supporting research on EMDR.
It depends.
Everybody's different.
Okay?
I mean, I I haven't done EMDR in a while.
I haven't done it.
But once you do the steps properly, the eight steps for EMDR, and you do it properly best you can with the eye movement.
So, basically, eye movement, you right?
You're you're you're having the eyes move, which stimulates the brain.
The corpus callosum in the brain separates both left and right hemispheres.
Information gets sort of, pruned and reintegrated.
So that can take it could be three months.
It could be six months.
It could be even less.
It depends on the trauma.
You gotta be very careful because you can retraumatize somebody when information gets, jumbled up and then they get overwhelmed with emotion.
So I'm a little cautious to do MBR.
I once traumatized one of my pay one of my clients about ten years ago, and it was hard for her.
So we had to try to reintegrate that.
Why?
First, you gotta learn skills of emotional regulation before you do EMDR.
You gotta make sure you know how to process those emotions.
Let them be felt in the body, physiologically, somatic experiencing.
All these things have to happen.
And then when you practice those skills, then you can move into the EMDR.
So it'll take three to six months.
It could be less.
It could be a year, but it's probably a year's too long.
And it depends how many times we have sessions once a week or I mean, it could be depends on even what will be authorized by insurance companies.
I mean, they'll probably authorize 20, 20 sessions for for the year 23 sessions for the year, and that's all you have.
So you can bring healing if there's real trauma that is occurring.
Now if there's multiple traumas, or complex trauma, the, Bessel van der Kolk says EMDRs is not gonna really treat it because you have so many multiple traumas.
Single incident traumas would be more it can heal more quickly because you are working through the single incident trauma.
Example, shell shock, whatever.
Okay?
Friend blows up, when you're next to him, bomb goes off or IED goes off, whatever.
That's a single incident trauma.
That can be worked through pretty reasonably well.
Okay?
So complex trauma, more difficult according to Bessel van der Kolk.
He's a trauma guru, you know, pretty much in the world.
He's one of the trauma experts.
But single incident traumas, that's much more easy to reprocess through EMDR.
So next question, Peter.
Can you comment to, quote, unquote, loneliness of faith question mark?
I read this in a book by Henry Nouwen.
Oh, Henry Nouwen.
Repeat what was it again?
Loneliness repeat the question.
You comment to loneliness of faith.
That's father Henry Nouwen's words?
Mhmm.
Loneliness of faith.
Good question.
Yeah.
So I met father Nouwen at Madonna House.
Okay.
The man is a saintly man.
Okay?
Just a gentle soul.
Low okay.
So loneliness of faith.
Yeah.
That can happen where God allows the loneliness to to to be there.
I'm not sure what he means by loneliness of faith, what what he actually means by that.
If you have faith, you're gonna be lonely, and god's gonna let you be lonely, and you can stay faithful.
Maybe that's what he means.
I don't know.
I have to see the context of what father now meant by that.
But, I don't know.
I'm I'm only assuming that you maintain your faith, but god will the loneliness will persist.
It could be there for a while.
For whatever reason, remember, god allows loneliness to happen for a reason, for people.
Yeah.
Because of traumas or original sin, name it.
Okay?
Or rejection or abandonment, god allows that for a reason.
Okay?
Remembered, he allowed Jesus to experience this on the cross.
What he experienced, we do except for him without sin.
Okay?
But, so, we keep the faith, but God will allow that to happen for people in order to strengthen their faith, in order to make them turn back to God or whatever reason, to experience compassion for other people.
God sometimes will allow that as well.
Because if I know my loneliness and suffering, I'll have more compassion for everybody, for somebody else.
And bless judgmental, I'll have more compassion.
So it's a personal growth experience.
God is mystery, what you particularly need.
He knows exactly what you need.
And if he allows the loneliness, we want to accept that if we can.
Yes.
Try to alleviate it with contact with people best you can.
But if that doesn't work or no one's available, then with our faith, we have to, persevere in in turning that loneliness into solitude with god, I would say, so that there's a such sense of solitude and a sense of connection.
A a dark night of the senses, dark night of the soul.
These things of god allows.
Right?
But we and but if it gets too heavy, maybe God will pull pull back.
I don't know.
But sometimes this I mean, God is a mystery, so we don't know why he allows it.
But I think that's what probably what father now invented.
I'll tell you, he's a gentle saint.
When I met him, he was most loving and present to me, when we spoke.
So he I hope he should be canonized someday.
But so father Nao, beautiful.
He wrote very deep.
He suffered a lot, father Nao, okay, from loneliness, steep suffering.
Okay?
So I hope that helps a little bit.
That's the best I can answer right now.
So next question, Peter.
How do you handle a client who is a nonbeliever?
Well, I'll tell you.
I experienced that for twelve years.
I worked at the community mental health in Michigan for twelve years.
It was a highly secular environment.
Okay?
You you don't you have to beat them where they're at.
You can't you know, it's not your place to convert anybody.
All you can do is is be a witness or an example of gentleness and kindness if they have no belief.
And I've had many clients at at the community mental health I worked in, highly secular place.
Most of them I say, even the secular place, half of them or more were believers.
Okay.
Those who were not, we we love them where they're at, and we we don't have to convert them or try to change them or say, have we you know, I did that earlier.
I may I messed up a few times.
Okay?
Because the eagerness of wanting to know god.
But you have to resist that because they may not be able to receive the truth.
Alright?
If they can't and you get a sense of that, you hold back.
And there's people I never said god to anybody.
Even today, I have some nonbelievers.
You know, I would never go to god because I have a sense of where they're at regarding their faith or lack of or or no faith.
So we have to love them where they're at.
And, hopefully, by my example of being present to them, wanting to coregulate with them, to affirm them.
Well, it's yeah.
Affirming is being nuts, not a doing, is to be present to them.
Then, hopefully, they will that'll be a witness for them that, hey.
You know you know, they'll see my cross or or image of our lady in my office, and they'll go, oh, and tell me about the faith.
And then if he asks about the faith, would you believe, then I'll go there.
Then I'll gently go there and share them my experience.
Always gotta meet people where they at, always, where they're at.
And if they've never come to believe, you have to accept that.
It's not your role to save a person.
Right?
That's something between them and god.
Right?
If they open up to you, great.
And if they don't and if they can't go to their faith, you have to let them choose their life.
They have to come to God in freedom, not out of coercion.
Okay?
It's so critical.
Next question.
Can you speak about the effectivity of unbound, in parenthesis, as a healing process?
Unbound Ministries?
Michael, would you add a little clarity in the chat box for us?
I can't see those chat questions.
Can I, Natalia?
I've scrolled up pretty high up because I'm going through one by one.
Okay.
Do it together.
I guess we will wait for If he's referred to unbound.
Yes.
Unbound, I I would assume knee by Neil Lozano as a healing process.
Not familiar with that.
I'm familiar with unbound.
A little bit with okay.
I don't use it, but it's it's a form of of of, I believe, prayer, and, you know, saying prayers of, renunciation, okay, of any possible, diabolic influence in a person's life, whether a communal or in personally.
So that's it's like binding prayers.
You give a list of binding prayers.
There's a whole more way more to this than I'm able to give, but that's the general sense I have regarding Unbound.
It's pretty popular here, by the way, but I don't use it that much.
I do give, renunciation prayers for some of my clients, that I suspect may have something going on, and they can do that.
Alright.
They can go to father but senior, and senior Resetti, Steven Resetti's.
He does monthly, deliverance prayers.
He's a priest.
He's a psychologist as well, and he does monthly deliverance prayers every first Monday on on his on his video.
And people all over the world go there, and he does deliverance prayers, both in English and in Latin.
Okay?
So that's an option if that if you suspect something may be going on.
Unbound is good.
Okay.
I'm just not too familiar with it, but I think it's good.
Yes.
Michael Rowe, Unbound Ministries.
Yes.
Very good.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
Patricia asked, can you recommend preferred Catholic resources or treatments for food shopping addictions?
Food and shopping addictions?
Probably.
Well, it never hurts to go to twelve step meetings.
Okay?
Those are good.
Right?
Good twelve step meetings.
There's another one called that might be helpful.
It's called Catholics in Recovery.
And, I think, Michelle, one of the present the presenter, the founder of Catholics in Recovery is gonna be speaking at the Philadelphia conference.
We're going to.
So it's called Catholics in Recovery.
And this is kinda like a a thing taken off in all over the world.
It has largely to do with addictions.
Remember, there's chemical and behavioral addictions.
Okay?
Food is, I think, both.
It's a behavioral addiction, but there's all these are really our chemical addictions.
There's an alteration of neurotransmitter neurotransmit excuse me, neurotransmission activity in the brain.
Okay?
So, I think the 12 any 12 step groups, but I if I think, the founder of Catholics Recovery, focuses also on addictions.
He does.
I think that's his primary thing is addictions.
So that's something you wanna wanna look into.
I think it's Catholics in Recovery dot org.
I think you can try that.
And there are other groups.
I mean, people at parishes and certain therapy, agencies will probably one run the groups on, food addictions or gambling or shopping addictions.
But I think largely, they they run a 12 step model, which is good.
It's accountability.
There's community.
It's put you're putting yourself out there.
So those can be very helpful because they all know everybody knows the suffering of addiction and how many times people relapse.
We're talking a thousand times or thousand and one times, okay, that people relapse.
And and they get so discouraged and despairing.
So, so but, again, we have to persevere one day at a time, all that stuff.
12 step is good.
Calculus in recovery, give that a give that a whirl.
Peter, could you share that resource again so I can type it in the chat?
Peggy is requesting I do.
Yeah.
Catholicsinrecovery.org.
I think it's capital c.
It doesn't matter.
You gotta you can Google search it, catholicsinrecovery.org.
All over the world.
Okay?
There's people all over.
It's all it's virtual, and it's in person.
Okay?
So he's doing a marvelous thing here.
Okay?
This this guy.
I forget, Michelle, I forget his name.
I know he's he's he's doing one of the breakout sessions, but I forget his name.
But catholicsinrecovery.org.
Okay.
Next question, Peter.
What are some of the factors that lead to loneliness in children?
What role does bullying play?
Are there any therapy classes for school children as part of the curriculum?
I don't know of any therapy classes around here, that that I'm aware of.
Bullying school children.
Yeah.
A lot of them will definitely isolate.
They they in in school kids, they wanna fit in.
Okay?
Their main goal is to fit in.
That attachment thing is is critical.
Alright?
So they wanna fit in.
So they compromise their authenticity, okay, to some degree, especially the ones that are bullied.
Okay?
They're really going to they're gonna kind of fit in with doing everything right so they don't get bullied, okay, or they try to find the right click to to hook up to.
But they they suffer deeply, and there should be more group therapy for children, that people who are gifted and giving that.
Group therapy or, you know, even teachers that would be aware.
I think some schools do that.
You know?
They talk about your feelings and not bullying.
All these parameters that they they teach, they will probably some schools do provide that.
I don't know anything specific to give you, regarding that, as far as you have to do kind of a search on that.
Okay?
But the kids suffer tremendously.
Okay?
And bullying bullying, I mean, that's the the deepest insecurity.
Okay?
And they've been so hurt.
They have to, with their ego, be number one and feel a sense of empowerment because they were so humiliated or or inferior to people above them.
They sort of flip, and they become the superior abuser.
Okay.
No one's gonna hurt me again, so I gotta be top dog.
Alright?
Happens in prison all the time too.
Okay.
So next question, Peter.
How can we build connection in a world where their deception is becoming almost a norm?
Exactly.
Well, that's what I that's why, I said, if we remove God, this is gonna be the consequence.
We remove God from culture, from society, and we don't come back to basic principles of moral teachings and a sense of, you know, godliness in our world, yep.
That's going to happen.
And it's probably it's it's it's probably going to be this is this is this king this world is not remember, this is, they some say the kingdom of Satan.
Okay?
This is not god's domain.
Earth is is is God's footstool.
Okay?
And, true happiness and joy will be in heaven.
So we can't expect that to happen on this earth.
And we also don't wanna pull out the weeds, right, with the wheat.
Because in case, god forbid, we pull up the wheat along and and as we try to pull up the weeds, we can't do that.
We have to be very careful.
That's why the lord said we have to wait till the end of time, so that the angels can gather the weeds and and burn the darnel and and and the wheat go to eternal life.
So, that's a kind of a philosophical question there, theological too.
So I guess one person at a time.
It begins with yourself, building a relationship with God in prayer, meditation, commune contemplation.
That's a gift, by the way.
But you make time for prayers so that yourself right?
Before kingdoms change, men must change or women must change.
Okay?
We so we we need to always focus on first with the self and God, and then when ourselves are integrated enough.
So we have a prayer life regular prayer life with God, not just throughout the day praying, but a set morning time of prayer so that you can commune with the Lord.
And then you get yourself together.
You feel what you need to feel.
You work through the psychological issues.
You're not in denial.
You're accepting accepting the reality of your cross, the cards that the lord allowed in your life, your hand, and you work with what you have best you can.
And then when there's enough integration with trying to co regulate with others, building relationships, real relationships with people, that's how we can change the world.
But but only by the grace of god can we do that.
Okay?
It's impossible without God.
Impossible.
And this is not God's kingdom, by the way.
It's Satan's kingdom.
That's the reality.
That's kind of a bit old school, traditional, but that's that's what they say in the old schools, in the old church, pre Vatican too.
So next question, Peter Carlos, thanks you.
One of many thanking you for your wonderful presentation.
His question is, though implicit in much of your content, how or where does forgiveness in parentheses of self and or others play a role?
Oh, man.
Huge.
I mean, that's yeah.
I didn't go there.
Forgiveness is absolutely thanks.
Whoever you said bring that up, that's so critical.
So forgiveness is something that the Lord we need to do that as well in our personal formation development, in our relating with other people, people that hurt us.
God what god asks of us is that we choose to forgive people.
He doesn't say you're gonna feel forgiveness.
Okay?
He he wants us to you forgive one another as I've forgiven you.
He wants us to choose to forgive.
Now that doesn't the the feelings aren't gonna go away.
Okay?
You can still forgive someone.
Okay?
And you're never gonna forget it.
You don't have to forget it.
It'll still be there.
But you can choose to forgive this person.
And, eventually, you can forgive, in the heart level.
Okay?
You may not at first, but it's the will that the lord asked.
We have to choose.
Lord, I don't want to forgive this person.
Help me to choose.
Again, we have to turn to god for everything.
Lord, help me to choose to forgive the help me to forgive this person.
And it may take a year.
It may take a minute.
Who knows?
But you're choosing.
It's your will that the lord is asking you to do.
His command to forgive one another.
Okay?
Not your feelings, you'll still be hurt, and you don't have to reconcile the person either.
It's not necessary to reconcile.
If you can, using 12 step principles, fine.
You that'd be great.
If if all the best, then you're reconciled.
Okay?
And god wants us to reconcile with one another, but that doesn't always happen because it takes two parties to want to reconcile.
One wants to reconcile.
The other one says forget it, and then they leave.
Okay?
But forgiveness is in the will.
The emotions may come later.
The reconciliation may may never come, but that that's ancillary.
That's that's separate.
If it that happens, wonderful.
If it doesn't, you've done your part by forgiving this person.
That's a huge issue because a lot of people have deep hate and hurt hate, okay, and hurt, for being abused, neglected by their parents, whatever.
Okay?
A partner, multiple relationships gone really bad, like we talked earlier, but forgiveness is in the will.
And it's gotta be the right time.
Okay?
You don't have to don't feel like you have to as a sense of obligation to forgive in the sense that, okay.
I gotta forgive because god will, you know, God'll okay.
I I God said I have to forgive.
Okay.
Alright.
So there's gonna be a time for that.
Yep.
You want to be able to freely choose that time.
It has to come through prayer.
Lord, help me to forgive this person.
That really, really hurt me.
And if we don't reconcile, please, if it happens, thank you.
If it doesn't, I'm okay with that.
Okay?
Or and you pray for that other person for forgiveness.
Spouses.
Okay?
Deep hurt between spouses.
They carry their pain for years.
Okay?
And they can't communicate because it's everything's so trapped inside.
There's there's, like, they're fighting.
They're all emotionally reacting to each other like a pinball machine.
All this emotionality just spews out between couples.
Okay?
The hurt goes so deep.
Okay?
So what you have to step back, bring God into the center of it.
Lord, help me to forgive.
It may take a while, but God will answer the prayer.
He answers our prayers.
Alright?
But you have to choose at the right time in your freedom to forgive that person.
So thank you for bringing that up.
I shoulda had that in the slide.
That is absolutely critical, this forgiveness.
So next question, Peter.
How do you cancel p counsel people who have borderline personality disorder who do not think nor want to take medicine?
Oh, interesting.
Well, that's that's, that's a difficult thing.
But they don't wanna take medicine.
I mean, look.
Medicine is it's an it's it's an aid.
Okay?
It doesn't get to the core of your problem, but it does alleviate the intensity of the emotional pain.
That's what medications do.
They also numb out people.
So I have reserve reservations regarding medication, but I I think, the right medication you gotta find the right doctor with the right medication to find that that sort of that fine point.
You know?
It can be helpful for therapy and for helping someone get connected to themselves and work and to heal through things.
Now it comes to the borderline.
If you don't wanna take medication, not much you can do about that.
You can only offer that.
And if you don't want to, then you just have to rely on what are the resources they're willing to do.
Therapy.
I mean, look.
I have a I have a 70 year old borderline right now.
She's 70 years old.
Okay?
And she suffered tremendously.
She's not taking medication.
But I'll be probably seeing her for years.
You know, pay me Amy till she passes.
Okay?
Because there's a denial with the borderline person.
They're they're unable.
The hurt is so deep with them.
They cannot trust anybody.
Okay?
And they try to, they've been hurt so many times when they try to open a door just a little bit for a person, and then they got ghosted or they were broken up, and they have repeated hurts over their lives, over decades.
And that weighs heavily on the soul, on their psyche, that it's almost impossible to learn how to trust.
Okay?
It's possible by the again, by the grace of God, they can work through their their issues therapeutically without medication.
It is possible.
But, boy, that's a task for the therapist.
I had many I had quite a few borderlines working, and it's very, very difficult.
And they're not bad people.
They're not bad.
They're hurt.
Okay?
They're hurt.
They're deeply wounded.
Okay?
And there there's no authenticity.
The need for attachment is so great.
They compromise themselves in order to be accepted, and yet they push.
So they're like this.
The borderline come here, but stay away from me.
Come here, they stay away.
So because they don't know what it means to be loved and attached to another human being.
You see?
This is archaic.
This happens in infancy or or childhood or somewhere along adolescence or even in their adult lives, they were so deeply hurt.
Okay?
And that's a personality issue, personality disorder issue.
Very hard to treat that.
It is possible without medications.
I do I've seen clients with borderline without medication, but most of them were on medication.
Okay.
So, yeah, challenge to you, my friend, if you're seeing someone with borderline, if you're a therapist, but stick with it.
If there's no match, if there's no connection with the borderline, they're probably they'll probably do therapy excuse me, therapist shopping.
You know, they're gonna go from one therapist to the next.
Right?
Because they get the therapist says something, get really close, and then the wall comes up, and then they say and then they attack the therapist.
Right?
The time okay.
And then they take off.
This happens a lot.
Look at Cartman's drama triangle.
Okay.
That's why I recommend this person ask this question.
Look at Cartman.
Cartman drama triangle, k a r p m a n, drama triangle.
The Cartman drama triangle.
Persecutor, rescuer, victim.
Okay?
Look that up, and that might help you, to help with someone.
I read I I have it on my wall.
I refer to this all the time with my war line people because you can get sucked in.
Okay?
You get sucked in and want to rescue them, and you can't.
You cannot do that.
Okay.
So, anyway, I'm kind of being tangential a little bit here.
But, long short of it, they can be treated with that medication without medication.
But a lot more, it'll expedite much quicker their healing if they turn to god.
Again, the lord being the center of their lives.
And if god is not, you do what you can each session at a time without being sucked in.
Okay?
Get the Cartman drama triangle, and that'll help you.
Okay?
Next question, Peter.
One of the most common forms of isolation in adolescence is ostracizing.
How can you address that with a suffering child that feels ostracized?
Yeah.
Suffering child feels ostracized.
Well, look.
I mean, well, it depends if they're open to therapy or some form of rehabilitation.
You initiate and you ask them and you invite them if they want that.
Some of them refuse.
Some of them, my parents drag their kids in when they're teenagers, and they don't wanna be seen.
And I tell a parent, don't bring him in.
He's not ready.
He's not ready to look at himself.
If he's open to it, then we'll give it a whirl.
But if he's not, there's nothing we can do.
He he's gotta come to want a therapy at his own terms.
He has a rational mind.
Okay?
His brain is still developing.
Fine.
But he has to wanna come on his own.
We wanna respect the freedom of our teenagers.
Now if they're suffering, yeah, it takes the parents to be educated on these things.
So parents need to be educated on how to, again, receive their child nonjudgmentally by listening to them, by loving them without so much correcting the behavior.
Look at what's underneath behavior.
There's always something.
Like we said, there's always something underneath.
The behavior is just a symptom, a manifestation of of inner pain.
Okay?
And that gets crystal.
It it gets crusted over, and then that's where you get your acting out.
So parents need to be educated, especially, on how to parent their teenage children or children.
Okay?
That means letting them be what they need to be.
You have to you can't change them.
If you if you're too authoritarian as a parent, yeah, you're just gonna lose your kid.
Right?
If you're too authoritarian, they're not gonna listen to you.
They're gonna shut you down.
Yeah.
And you may not be able to do anything because the the wound has been so deep, so great.
So, anyway, parents need to be educated at an early age to learn these principles that we're we discussed here and others.
The two other presenters, I'm sure, are gonna present valuable information to help the teenager.
Okay?
The adolescent in their suffering because I'll guarantee they're suffering, and they act out.
Don't punish them for acting out.
They're not freely choosing to be bad.
Okay?
They're reacting to an internal pain system in within them.
Okay?
Wounded little boy, the inner child, alright, that is is acting out.
And the only way a lot of these people get attention is by acting out.
If I act out and behave and that manifest my behaviors, hey.
I'm being noticed.
Okay?
At least I'm being seen.
At least people are seeing me.
At least I'm being noticed by by acting out behaviors.
Okay?
And they resort to that.
Harry Styles Sullivan talks about the good me, the bad me, and the not me.
The good me, good.
Right?
They have to be good.
That that could be a problem.
The bad me, I have to act out my behaviors.
Okay?
I have to be bad.
And then I the only only way I get attention is by being bad.
I'll be incarcerated.
I'll have detention.
I'll be expelled.
At least I'm getting noticed.
Okay?
That's how that's what these people resort to.
There's so much suffering.
The not me are the invisible ones according to Harry Stock Sullivan.
The not mes are they're invisible.
Talk about loneliness.
That's probably the deepest form of loneliness is the not me.
Okay?
And these people, they need to be nonjudgmentally in their freedom, respect their space to listen to them if they are open to your initiative of wanting to help have them put words to their feelings.
It's gotta be nonjudgmental.
You have to really sit back.
And if they're willing to, either parent or therapist or teacher or whatever, that they are able to put words to how they're feeling.
It's very, very hard.
Teenagers are suffering tremendously.
Okay?
I don't know if that answers your question, but that's a huge, huge problem.
But I think a primary education is with the parents, and they're not being educated on this.
Okay?
They're just they did throw they they just you know?
The schools I worked in not the schools, the kids that I worked with, when I was in Michigan, they would send the kids to me, and they say they cannot come back to class until they're gone until they're on medication.
Okay?
Or they have a behavior plan or the judge says they're willing to ready to come back, whatever.
Truancy, all these things.
So and then they're constantly in the system of being corrected and corrected and and told this do this.
Don't do this.
Alright?
This top down, top down parenting approach is is just not working with kids because they have no sense of freedom.
They have no sense of of self, and because their emotions are all jumbled up with thought within them.
They can't make sense of what's happening inside them.
So they have no choice but to act out.
So do not punish your kids.
Now if they are acting out impetuously, they will.
Those who are deeply wounded, they're gonna act out, or they're gonna internalize their pain.
So they act out or they're gonna internalize their pain.
That's where you get your depression and isolation and back to the, Gabor Mate principle of authenticity and detachment, out of whack.
So, yeah, long short, parents have to be educated on this.
There's gotta be more groups on this.
There's gotta be more education on with parents.
Yeah.
It's it's, like, terrible.
But there's hope.
God is this an answer to everything.
Three last questions, Peter.
Yeah.
Leslie writes, thank you so much.
And do you know of any great parenting programs for Catholic schools and or parishes to help parents to have courage to put everything aside and affirm their children at her at home so that in the home and outside the home, their children will not feel lonely.
Peter, are you familiar with Theology of the Body that doctor Sodagren is putting in a lot of schools?
No.
Yeah.
No.
I'm kidding.
I am.
I love theology.
Theology of the body is amazing.
So who's putting that out?
Doctor Sodagren.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
To all the Catholic schools.
But in answer to her question, you know, I know that they're doing it at a lot of different schools.
She can Google it and that it's really a beautiful program.
One of the gals that used to work for Divine Mercy is actually, educating people in the schools, the teachers, and it's just become amazing.
Yeah.
I have also a resource list here.
I'd have to find it.
I gotta find which PowerPoint presentation I have that in.
But, yeah, theology of the body is excellent.
That's that's that really does get to the, the nitty gritty of of proper human anthropology, as God created.
Okay?
Theology of the body is excellent.
It's beautiful.
So that would be helpful when it comes to, you know, dealing with emotional problems, psychological problems, I mean, I would say I'm biased, but get born only once.
Have parents read that, to read that.
What there's other, good stuff out there.
Born only once is just a nice simple introduction to people who are unaffirmed.
Parents need to know this.
As far as other programs that Michelle mentioned, I'd have to find, my PowerPoint that explains that.
I'm sorry.
I don't have it pulled up right now.
But I I Google search you can do a Catholic Google search too on that, to answer that question for you.
So education is key and then loving presence, giving allowing space for the child to, you know, for these teachers and, to let them have a voice.
Right?
Parents are too quick to give instruction.
Okay?
Way too quick, and they need to allow a space so that the child could formulate his thoughts and feelings to somebody.
Right?
But we're too quick to interject and get results.
We're very result oriented, way too result oriented in our world today.
Okay?
That's why I'm recommending you guys look at Conrad Barrs and Anoturu's work.
Self psychology by Kohut.
Just beautiful, very good systems theory.
Okay.
You look at, Murray Bowen too.
Murray Bowen, systems theory is just excellent.
Parents need to know this.
Okay.
There's a through the website.
Just type Google Marie Bowen.
Okay.
Doctor Marie Bowen, systems theory, family systems theory.
Okay.
Or emotion focused therapy by Sue Johnson.
I mean, these are very good teaching tools, but I don't know of any specific schools that are doing this.
I I I really don't see any in our area that are doing this in the school system.
Right?
And kids are suffering, and they're they're carrying their pain alone.
Okay?
They are walking deserted islands.
So that's what's happening.
So, yeah, Gabor Mate said that don't don't be so quick to give solutions to your kids.
You have to step back and don't don't don't say, how?
What do you what do you want me to do?
How am I supposed to fix this child?
That's the wrong question.
What's going on?
Why is it going on?
Why is this happening with my child?
And then we have to sit back and let's, hopefully, by the grace of god, the parents step back and take a listening approach without interjecting, without allow that's that sort of uncomfortable silence, okay, so that the child could formulate his thoughts and feelings.
He may not open up.
He may not even open up.
Okay?
It it does take a village to raise a child.
It really does.
Both parents, if possible, family, friends, teachers.
Okay?
Behavior plan, probably good thing, or an IEP would be good in the school system for these kids.
They would need an IEP, an individualized as individualized educational plan in the school system so they can team up and help the child in their suffering and not just give all these rules and regulations.
And if you do this, you know, we're gonna force you to take medication.
A lot of coercion.
That's why I recommend bars in two because they take an inside they take a not down not a top down approach, but a bottom up approach so that we see what's going on in the inside of the person and their deep suffering that they've repressed.
So next question, Peter Sorry.
That was a bit long winded, but hope that No.
It's okay.
Yeah.
Can you speak about scrupulosity?
What function does it perform within a person's psychology?
Oh, lord have mercy.
Yeah.
That's a huge topic.
So, believe it or not, I'm not writing a paper on this right now.
This is for scrupulitis form is obsessive compulsive disorder.
Okay.
It would fit that diagnostic DSM category of obsessive compulsive.
And it has to do with the fear and let me just pull this up.
Gosh.
I wish I could show you guys here.
So it has to do the with the fear of sexual feelings.
Okay?
So it has to do with the fear.
Scrupulosity.
First of all, they're self absorbed in their scruples, and they have to go right away, to a priest for confession.
They're they're self absorbed in their in their fear of offending God.
Okay?
And, it's important gosh.
What did that priest say?
There was a presentation on this recently.
So, okay, wait.
So how can I say this?
So this is such a huge topic.
So what happens is what people do is they repress their sexual drive.
It it could be in their emotional life.
It could be their anger, their hate, their their god forbid they feel hate because god says don't hate, so they repress it.
And that gets trapped inside the self or their sexual feelings get trapped inside themselves because they are afraid of offending god.
Okay?
So this is the nuts and bolts of mortification therapy by, again, Anna Turo and father Willam Dunstie is the repression of their sexual drive.
And because of the fear of offending god, they have to repress.
It's an automatic reaction that they repress the sexual drive.
This happens because somewhere along the way, the parents, either educated that sex pleasure is sinful, okay, or they felt remember we talked about co regulation.
They felt the parents' disapproval of of anything sexual related.
Okay.
I'm using sex as an example.
So they repress her because their upbringing.
They taught, you know, Baltimore catechism.
Okay.
Alright.
And they repress her sexual.
Their normal, natural, God given sexual drive.
They repress it.
Alright?
So this gets trapped, buried alive inside the person.
Alright?
And if they have, any movement of sexual feelings or, god forbid, masturbation, which is a sin.
Yep.
Mortally.
Sinful.
Yep.
In freedom.
Okay?
But if they do that, they panic.
Even if they have the feeling or if they even end up masturbating or whatever it is, they have to right away run the confessional because they because that natural sexual drive that god gave each human being has to be experienced in the body.
Remember, we talked about somatic experiencing.
These have to be felt in the body.
And if it's not, it gets cut off because of fear of offending God or fear of God's punishment or God won't love me anymore if I do this.
Then it's gonna eventually, like a a kettle boiling and the lid is sealed shut, it's eventually going to come out.
It's quite the the theory is quite simple.
You repress something, eventually, something has to come out.
Right?
And it does.
It comes out in the form of of addiction.
And if they're raised in a very scrupulous, rigid Catholic upbringing environment that was hyper religious, a little bit too where the body and the emotions were not accepted.
And sexuality was, you know, taboo, and and they were taught not to experience or feel sexuality.
They weren't educated on this by the parent.
Parents can't be blamed for this.
They just don't know.
Okay?
They don't know because of the environment of centuries of of the the fear of the fierce and sin.
Yeah.
We have to avoid it.
But they would repress all these emotions, anger, sadness.
Okay?
Talk about the inauthentic self.
They are not authentic at all because they repressed their sexual drive.
So whenever they ever they act out or they feel something that will be contrary they think would be contrary to the will of God, they run to the confessional.
Okay?
Or they, they're just terrified, and they can't even approach God.
Okay?
So they shut it all down.
So they they live like a robot as a as a Catholic person, but in a robot in a robot type form.
They're disconnected from cells.
So they and so you live this way.
This is the nature of of the scrupulous scrupulous person.
Okay?
Remember, reason is meant to guide the emotions.
Okay?
Reason and will is meant to guide the emotions.
This is Saint Thomas Aquinas one zero one.
Okay?
Emotions are subservient.
Sexual feelings, all these.
These are good things that god gave us.
Our emotions are good.
Remember, our sexual feelings are good, normal, healthy.
What we do with it, that's that's the that's the issue.
And if we feel it too intensely and the scrupulous person raised in a very rigid scrupulous neurotic environment growing up, they're gonna repress their sexual they're gonna repress it.
And if they act out on it or feel it, they're going to have or there's your DSM, your anxiety disorder.
Your major anxiety disorder.
Okay?
That's where your anxiety comes from.
That's one of the sources.
Anxiety largely has to do with repression.
Okay?
And repression is an unconscious process.
It's something that's automatic.
Okay?
And that's based on a faulty belief system that I mentioned a while ago, like, way back.
Okay?
On a faulty belief system.
Okay?
That somehow sex is dirty and sex is sinful.
Well, if you're raised with that mentality, that label sex is sinful or pleasure is sinful, what are the what are the if they are taught that, they're gonna internalize that.
And then if they feel it, they're gonna act out.
Or they're going to run to the confessional or they're going to beat themselves with a rod or whatever to do penance on whatever.
That does not doesn't have to be that extreme, but it's the it comes out as anxiety and tremendous fear.
And the sort the source of anxiety is is fear.
Okay?
Fear is the emotion.
And fear is not a bad thing.
Okay?
God gave fear to deal with situations that we need to react to immediately.
Okay?
Fear saving one's life or whatever.
Okay?
Fear has a purpose.
All emotions have a purpose that god gave them to us.
Okay.
So that's this is, through the works of mortification therapy.
If you wanna look at mortification therapy, I think that's probably the best treatment for this on dealing with scrupulosity.
There are others as well.
Santa, I think, wrote a book on scrupulosity, but I think the work of Anna Turo, father Dunstie on and Conrad Barres on how to deal with the scrupulous person.
And that's where you get your priest crisis because the priest many priests repress their sexuality.
They're not they're not there's no psychological chastity happening within them because they themselves are scrupulous.
They're lonely.
They act out their loneliness, and they seldom create, commit heinous acts against children, against seminarians.
This is what this is why this is happening because there's not enough education on this.
So there's the long short of scrupulosity.
So So Mortification therapy.
Mortification therapy.
If you wanna remember that, look that up.
Okay?
Good.
Yes.
Okay.
Good.
I'm sorry.
No.
It's okay.
Sorry about that, Peter.
Last question Okay.
Is is scrupulosity always based in sex or sexuality?
Is it based in any other religious beliefs?
For context, I have a client that experiences scrupulosity and has never mentioned sex.
Never it probably depends if the person never mentioned sex.
Maybe the sex is sexual feelings are repressed or the sexual issue is not a sexual problem.
It could be some emotional problem that's happening.
It could be anger.
It could be sadness.
It could be whatever that's repressed.
It could be their conscience that's repressed.
That can also cause a scrupulosity.
So if you're once in engaged in sin, they'll repress their conscience, and that'll bring about scrupulosity as well.
Or maybe this person not connected to their sexual feelings, and so they're not able to they don't need to talk about it.
But they're probably so deeply repressed that they're not talking about it.
But it doesn't have to be just sexual feelings.
It could be any of the emotions that can be repressed.
Usually, it's fear repressing anger.
Okay.
Fear acts as a repressing emotion.
Fear represses anger.
Fear represses, what, despair.
Fear can repress desire.
Example, sexual feelings or love or fear is the culprit that does the repressing, and then you get the repressed, e d, repressed emotion underneath that that is buried alive, and it's not integrated and regulated with the psyche, with the soul because the fear is so intense.
Again, it doesn't have to be sexuality, but usually, scrupulosity is the fear of sexuality because of the teachings that were not properly, explained or dispelled over this over the centuries.
I hope that helps.
Again, if maybe it'd be good if you guys looked at, barsinstitute.com, baarsinstitute.com, baars,basinboy,aarsinstitute.com.
And there's a section there on obsessive compulsive disorder, and that would be the the DSM almost equivalent to, scrupulosity, scrupulosity of a religious nature.
I hope that helps.
And that rounds it out.
Thank you for everyone for joining us this evening.
We've, been online for two hours now.
I'm so sorry.
I love it that everyone loved Peter's this is a series of webinars.
Peter was our first one.
We will have two more, one on the fifteenth and one on the twenty fifth.
We can certainly email everyone that has attended today's webinar.
It is part of our mental health awareness campaign of unlock loneliness, so we will touch on different subjects that have to do with loneliness.
We are also offering, prayer intentions that can be submitted anonymously through our website, and they will be offered in our livestream mass on May 15, which is the feast day of saint Dymphna.
She is the saint, the patroness of mental health.
And so I will be more than happy to share that link with you as well the livestream link of the mass where prayer intentions for either yourself or loved ones can be submitted anonymously, and I will be more than happy to share the upcoming webinars, one on May 15 and the other on May 25.
Please use the hashtag unlock loneliness, to support raising awareness for mental health awareness month, which is the month of May.
And thank you, Peter, for your time, your expertise, your experience, your wealth of experience, and, expertise that you've shared this evening with us.
And from all the comments, I will share them with you later, Peter.
Many praises.
This was amazing.
Please do this again with Peter sometime.
We certainly will.
Victoria, we will invite Peter again.
Lou Anne, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation.
Thanks, Peter, for staying.
We've had a lot of people hold, hang on, with us for these two hours.
Thank you, everybody.
It was amazing, Peter.
So any last words, Peter?
Just thank everybody for hanging in there.
I know it's long, and, thank you for your questions, and I hope I did some justice to your questions.