E25: Walking Through Winter with Faith and Support (with Ethan Bennett)

Why do the winter months feel heavier for so many?

How can faith support us during seasons of depression, grief, or transition?

What difference does it make when mental-health care and faith work together?

In this month’s episode of Catholicism 101, we’re joined by Ethan Bennett of Abba Healing Services for an honest and hope-filled conversation about mental health during the winter season.

Together, we explore:

• Why the “winter blues” are real—and what’s happening beneath the surface
• How to lean on faith without spiritualizing away depression or grief
• Why integrating therapy and counseling with our faith can be deeply healing
• How to support loved ones walking through seasons of depression, loss, or transition

Whether you’re struggling yourself or walking alongside someone who is, this month's episode of Catholicism 101 aims to offer wisdom, compassion, and practical encouragement through the lens of faith for taking care of your mental health.

Counseling Services & the CAP Program | Diocese of Owensboro

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Catholicism 101, Forever Learning and Living the Faith. And today I am especially excited for our episode because I'm here with Ethan Bennett. Ethan Bennett is the owner of ABBA Healing Services. So, Ethan, why don't you go ahead and tell us about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Yeah, well, uh I've been a counselor for almost 10 years now. Uh and so have had a lot of experience helping other people who are dealing with different mental health concerns. Um, and I also own my own business, ABBA Healing Services, as you mentioned, uh, where I've got uh over the last year, I just added two new therapists who are also Catholic. And so ABBA Healing Services is dedicated to helping people from a Catholic or Christian perspective. Um, we're not exclusive to just Catholics or Christians, but what that we definitely take that uh perspective in account whenever we're helping people with whatever mental health concerns or relationship concerns that they have. Um I guess just a little bit about me personally. I grew up in Fancy Farm, Kentucky, which is a small town of 500 people.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Western Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, yeah, far western Kentucky. So it's uh um, you know, it was a great place to grow up, small town, very Catholic. Um, and uh, but also had some struggles uh early on in my life because my parents were divorced uh when I was three and a half. And um, so I grew up without a dad throughout most of my life. Uh had a stepfather for a couple of years, but then that relationship also fell apart eventually. Um and then uh there were different issues within my family, like depression, anxiety. Um, my father uh he struggled with bipolar uh alcoholism. Um and so that's sort of the backdrop that probably helped set the stage for me going into counseling and psychology, although it wasn't even something that was in my path in the very beginning. I wasn't thinking about it. Um actually, I started off thinking about engineering and I went to the University of Louisville for engineering my first year. Um pretty quickly found out that calculus was not my thing. And so uh so that took a different path. Um but I uh because my faith was always important at that time, uh I really started to take a deeper dive into my faith, and and uh it led me to the seminary. So I was in the seminary for two years, um, studied philosophy and Catholic studies. Uh, and then um once I discerned that I was actually called to married life rather than priesthood, uh that got me thinking, well, what what do I need to be doing? Where's my heart being called at this point? Uh and I had really found through my time in seminary that I had a heart for being uh in ministry to other people, and uh that philosophy background really helped me to think about the way people's minds worked. Um, so that led me to psychology, and I happened to run into Dr. Jill Duba Sauerheber. And she was a professor at Western Kentucky University at that time. Um, I met her through pre-Kana whenever Jesse and I were going through our wedding prep and all of that. And then uh she became the department head at Western of Counseling uh while I was there studying counseling in grad school. So long road, but all ended up here. So yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:37

And it's all it's all good things. And you know, just as you tell your story, I keep like I I'm remembering things that I have forgotten about you and like how parts of our stories overlap too. Yeah, and just reminded um how great of a blessing that you and your family have been to me. Yeah. Um thank you. Just over the past however many years. I mean, I have no idea. But um, so I'm I'm I'm especially excited for today and that you're here.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_07 4:03

Um so why you're here? Uh you know, it is freezing cold outside right now. I had to scrape frost off my car and I was not happy about it in this. Um so really just like it's that time of year, the sun's not out, you know, winter blues is a real thing, grief hits harder during these months, especially during and after the holidays. Um so yeah, what what's going on there? What's what's going on with the winter blues?

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah. So it's definitely something that a lot of people experience this time of year, and it's mostly driven by the fact that we l have shorter days during the winter. And because of those shorter days, it has this cascading effect where one thing affects another. So what I mean by that is number one, those shorter days mean that our our circadian rhythm, our sleep cycle is off. So that means that uh normally when the sun's up, our brains are telling us it's time to get up, it's time to move, it's time to work, it's time to do things. And when it gets dark, our brains are telling us it's time to chill, it's time to relax, it's time to not do anything and just rest. But when you have a shorter day, now it's like the the sun goes down around 4:30, 5 o'clock sometimes, and and you're waking up, the sun's all still down when you wake up in the morning, when you go into work uh many days. And so it really throws our minds for a loop. So uh a couple of things that that affects within the brain are the the neurotransmitter serotonin, and serotonin is the happy neurochemical. So it means that we have less serotonin in our brain, which means that we are feeling less happy during the winter months. The other thing that it affects is melatonin. There's an increase in melatonin in the brain, and the melatonin is that neurochemical that causes us to feel kind of groggy, sleepy, fatigued. That's why you might feel more tired during the winter months because there's more melatonin in your brain. Yep. Uh and so uh all of those things are are affecting us, and then the last thing is vitamin D, because in the winter months, most of the most often we're not outside as often because it's cold. No one likes to go outside in the cold, and we get less sunshine, which means our bodies have less vitamin D. And vitamin D is really important for uh our just our health in general. It does cause us to feel fatigued when we're low in vitamin D. Um, it's also responsible for the absorption of nutrients in the body. So it's almost like we're malnourished during the winter months because we don't have enough vitamin D because we have less sunlight. So all of these things are just compounding on us to make us feel worse during the winter months. That's just on a biological level. But then think about during the holiday season, that's when we're we begin to face some of the more um the psychological or mental things that are going on, the emotional things that are going on. For example, uh, we typically have family gatherings. And for some of us, that's a great time when we get together with our family. And for others, it's more of a struggle because we all maybe come from broken homes in different ways, uh, or maybe we've experienced loss. Um, if if you've recently lost a loved one, or if maybe you lost someone that was very close to you, uh, you know, maybe it's a husband or wife, maybe it's a child, maybe uh it's a parent. And when you gather together with your family, you can't help but notice that they're missing. So you start to feel that sense of grief and loss in a more concrete way than you would throughout the rest of the year. Um so you just have all of these things kind of slamming together to where it makes the winter time usually more difficult for people. Um, rather than, you know, in the heat of summer, you're out, you're busy, you're doing things, usually people have different sports going on, and so they're not thinking about whatever's on their mind. They don't have a lot of downtime. So uh winter just really has a way of forcing us to confront things that um are are maybe more the challenging parts of life.

SPEAKER_07 8:30

Yeah. Dang.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:34

That yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. Um I'm just as you're talking about this, I'm just sitting here, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, that that that checks out.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah, it's like you could see a puzzle piecing together, right?

SPEAKER_07 8:47

Um, and you know, the well, I'm sure we've all been in the place where it's like we're experiencing that uh in a heavier way, maybe one year more than other years, or um but sometimes a lot of us um are blessed with the fact of you know, we haven't experienced that kind of loss in a very long time. Um and so the the the pain of that grief kind of subdues for a while, but maybe some of your other family or friends are experiencing that really, really close loss. Um and so something that I think is especially important um that we we kind of pay attention to is you know, how do how do I help someone realistically, practically? Um, especially, you know, in in our Catholic faith, we don't want to say like you can pray away grief.

SPEAKER_06 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_07 9:42

That kind of thing. You know, we don't want to um we don't we don't you know you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah what what would you have to so so a lot of times what we can unintentionally do when we're trying to help others is we can bring kind of a hallmark moment into it where we try to glaze things over with positivity. It's like, oh well, be not afraid, you know, like it we we we tell somebody maybe we're well intentioned behind that, but it has this way of dismissing that person's feelings, it has a way of invalidating the experience that they're going through, and ultimately it helps that person feel more isolated than they otherwise would feel. And so we want to be mindful of that when we try to help people, when we we when we offer encouraging words, that I'm not turning people away from offering encouraging words and bringing in the faith, because I do that every day in my practice. But we want to be careful about the way that we do that so that we're not just dismissing somebody saying, Oh, well, you know, you really shouldn't be sad. You know, the Lord's risen for us. Yeah, that has a way of just dismissing it's true, but it dismisses the pain that that person's going through. So instead, we we want to approach that with when we share it with somebody, there has to be a heartfelt connection that they can see that when we're sharing that little bit of wisdom with them, that like we're saying it from a place of love, that they can feel in our hearts that we're there with them. Like, yeah, I know you're going through a really hard time right now. I know it's hard to get out of bed, but I know you can do this. And and I know that the Lord has good plans for you today. And let's try to do, let's walk this together. So you hear how that just the even in the way you speak it, it's saying, I'm with you, we're in this together, and the Lord's with you. Um, when we say it in that sense, it's not a hallmark moment, it's not a let me just passively uh share with you a Bible verse that'll just get you out of feeling bad. It's like, no, I'm coming into that that dark place with you, and we're gonna journey our way out of that darkness.

SPEAKER_07 11:57

Goodness. Yeah, that's that's beautiful. And that that is even just you saying that now that that is so consoling, um, in a very different way that that's much deeper. Um yeah, me being just like a uh, I would say like a perpetual people pleaser or positive person and all of this. Um I've definitely been guilty of those moments where it's like, oh, I see you're in pain. I just want to fix it, and I just want you to be happy.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Um it it'll even happen to me as a therapist. There's sometimes where I'm in the office with somebody and I just so badly want them to be in a good place that I'll I'll catch myself saying something or doing something, and I can always tell because I can see it written on the other person. They may not say anything, but I can see it in their body language. They're just like, oh, he's he's just like pushing me somewhere where I'm not ready to go. And I if I can catch that, that's great. You know, we're we're allowed to make mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Like for anybody listening who's like, oh man, I have a bad habit of doing that. It's okay. Like you're allowed to make some mistakes. It's okay if you you find yourself doing that quite often. You just want to notice it and try to redirect it, try practicing something a little different. Um, you know, um uh one of the things as I was preparing for today, I was uh reminded of uh in just in the Bible, how uh I think it's St. Paul who he he asks us in Romans to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep. Okay, so it's um it's this reminder that we as Christians are called to be people of community. Uh and that means that we have to be with our community wherever they are, and that means that they're not always living, you know, on they're not living at the top of the mountain at that moment. Um and so when St. Paul says, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, he's really reminding us that there's a time and place for all emotions. And uh when we're connected on a heart level, uh, when we live as love as Christ, as the Father's love to one another, we're gonna meet people way where they are at. We're going to meet them if they're in those dark places. We're also gonna meet them when they're at their highest. You know, it I don't want to be the fuddy dud when somebody else is celebrating and kind of damp their time down. And at the same time, when somebody's down, I I want to be there with them and bring them up, but not from a place of, hey, I'm up here and you're down there.

SPEAKER_07 14:43

Yeah, yeah. That's that's uh I'm really glad you said that.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 14:47

Um, definitely the whole idea, you know, we always say like, I love you too much, like I love you so much. I'm gonna meet you where you're at, but I love you too much to leave you there. Oftentimes, I know I'm I'm I I this is my own experience. I am often too quick to be like, all right, get up, let's go, let's go.

SPEAKER_06 15:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 15:03

And it's there's something sacred about sitting with someone just in a deep, dark valley.

SPEAKER_06 15:10

Right.

SPEAKER_07 15:11

There's a sacredness in it, even though it is the most unpleasant thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:16

Um, that's that's an understatement.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah. But and you know, that that's the story of the gospels when Jesus He when He comes to encounter us here on earth, he has to condescend. Yeah, he has to come down to us on earth because we're not capable of getting up to him. Yeah, right. So he joins us and he joins us in our lowest places. There's story, there's stories over and over again where he meets us in our lowest places, the woman caught in adultery, right? He meets her where she's at. He doesn't hide away from her nakedness as she's there before everybody. Uh, the woman at the well, you know, who's had multiple husbands, and she's probably feeling ashamed that she has to come out in the middle of the day to go to the well when no one else would want to be around her. He chooses to meet her in that place. Um, and ultimately that he ends going to the cross as the lowest of the lows, the most shameful kind of uh death you could experience. So he provides that model for us. That when we are doing this in our ordinary day-to-day life, we're trying to model our lives after Jesus. That means that we go to those low places. That means that when when people are encountering um dark places in their life, whether that's trauma, whether that's depression, whether that's anxiety, we want to meet them wherever they are. And oftentimes that means we have to listen before we start talking to them, before we start giving any kind of advice. But first we have to seek that kind of understanding. First, I have to go, I think I know where you're at. I can relate to that. Maybe I've been in a similar place before, but I don't know exactly where you are right now. So first tell me like, yeah, tell me what's got you down. Tell me, tell me what's burning, burning your mind. Like, what are you consumed with at the moment? And I'm just gonna be quiet and listen. Um so yeah, that's a a good first step for anyone listening who's saying, How can I help? First step is just listen. First step is just be willing to listen because you'd be surprised how many people are just starving for someone to listen, starving for somebody who's willing to hear them out. Um and I think uh just the fact that we live in a busy world it it's kind of rare for somebody to pause and slow down long enough to listen. We're all just going, going, going, busy all the time. So for for you to just be a listening ear for somebody and and say, you don't have to have all the answers, but say, okay, I don't I don't quite know what that's like. Can you tell me more? Like, what is that like? Okay, I get that. Okay, I th I think I understand what you're saying. That and then offer some empathy. Wow, that sounds awful. Like I can't imagine what it would be like to to have to go to these holiday functions and not have your mom there. It's like there's an empty chair in the room. You know, you can say something like that that that just helps them go, okay, they get it. That's what we're aiming for is when we listen and then we respond. We want the person who's being heard to feel like, oh, they get it. I'm not alone. And that that has transforming power beyond any amount of advice that you could give most of the time.

SPEAKER_07 18:58

Yeah. Just that communion and suffering. Um, and I like I just get this visual in my head of like what's the experience like when you go to a doctor who is like the the bedside manner, you know, is just off the charts. And maybe they even like share with you that they've been through this or they have family that has had this happen before. And the just like the trust that you have in that doctor, and it's like, I don't care what your degree is at the right point.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Right.

SPEAKER_07 19:28

You know, um Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Well, we we we probably have had experiences with doctors who they're maybe very intelligent, but maybe they assume they know what they're talking about and they're not listening to you. Yeah. You're saying, Oh, I've got this pain here in my arm. Oh, well, that's probably just you know, you're sleeping on it wrong or something. You're like, no, no, I know that's not that's not what it's like.

SPEAKER_07 19:51

I'm never coming back here again. Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_07 19:55

Oh man, wow. Wow. Um just yeah, that communion, man, that I I feel like that can't be understated enough.

SPEAKER_06 20:05

Right.

SPEAKER_07 20:06

Especially in in a society where we are just like just fix it, just fix it, just fix it. Like we uh just want to fix everything.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah. Um and you know, to to go back to something you that you were saying, how how can you help them practically? So once once you've listened and you've taken the first step of just connection and love, which I said, like I said, is probably 80% of the battle. Yeah. Um, once you do that, sort of the next steps that I might say to someone who's struggling in the winter, um, there are some practical things that you can encourage them to do. And then I I always find that people really need some kind of accountability. And accountability isn't saying, like, do this or else, do this or I'm gonna punish you. It's really saying, hey, do you mind if I check up on you and make sure that you've done whatever it was that you committed to? Yeah. So let's say if someone says um they want to commit to trying to spend more time going to the chapel and praying, it's like, okay, yeah, that's something that would be new for you. And maybe it'll be difficult in the beginning for you to to just start off doing that. So can I call you in a week and ask how that went?

unknown 21:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

That's that's all accountability has to be.

SPEAKER_03 21:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

It doesn't have to be, well, you got to do it, or I'm gonna make you do 10 jumping jacks or 10 push off. It's just saying, Hey, I want to check up on you in a week and and hear how it went. And when you do check up on them, maybe they're like, Well, I got there maybe three times this week, but I didn't get there every day. Okay, don't go in like, I you gotta get on this.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

You say, like, okay, three times. Wow, that's three more than you had last week. That's great. You're moving the needle, you're getting there.

SPEAKER_03 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

You think maybe we can get up to four next week.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

I bet you could get there. Right. So so there's in the middle of that, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to beat up the person any more than they already are beating themselves up.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah. We we we do that to ourselves way too much. Like we're already beating ourselves up every time we don't do just the perfect thing. So we don't need somebody else to tell us that. We need someone to go, okay, that's great. You got that far. How about a little tiny bit further? I'm not gonna give this this uh unrealistic expectation of, hey, you said you wanted to do the whole week. You only did three days. I think you can do the whole week now. It's like, well, a whole week might be too much. Let's just start off with a couple more and get there and then see how that feels. And then you're gonna notice, like, okay, yeah, you went you went to the chapel a couple more times this week. Did you notice any difference in how you felt this week compared to the week before? Maybe they're like, Yeah, it felt a little bit better. Okay, good, great. Is there something else besides spraying that you'd like to do? Um, so uh, you know, a couple things because I had mentioned the vitamin D, the serotonin, uh, melatonin, those things are being affected in the winter. So a couple of things that you can do is uh making sure that you're getting some amount of exercise, because we've we know that exercise has a way of lifting serotonin levels in the body. And so we're already dealing with that less, not enough happy chemical in the brain. Uh, if you do a little bit of exercise uh in and maybe it's 30 minutes three times a week or something, and it doesn't have to be huge. I think when when we're first starting off, we're thinking in our heads, uh, I don't know, I gotta run, you know, so many laps, or I've got to train for this marathon in my head, you know. And that's it's it's not realistic for us who are just starting out. So maybe at first I'm just gonna go to the horn center and I'm gonna walk the track. Uh and I'm gonna walk the track for 15 minutes. Okay, great. That that's a start, and that's gonna get you moving in the direction of building up serotonin, the happy chemical in the brain. Um something else that I would recommend is for people to find some kind of hobby or interest that they have. Um because in the summertime, in the spring, and in the fall, we usually have sports, we have a lot of activities going on, there are school activities going on, and so we're we're our minds are preoccupied with lots of different tasks. But in the wintertime, those things tend to slow down, and so it's good to have a hobby that is meaningful to you, okay. It's just leisurely. Um, it's something that uh maybe nobody else would really care about, but you kind of like. So it could be crocheting, uh, it could be if you're if you're someone who likes to just carve with sticks or something like that, just get a knife and a stick and carve with a stick. Um if it's uh doing puzzles, it's doing puzzles, uh drawing, painting, um anything that just kind of gets your mind occupied and your and your your hands moving. Uh it's sort of a slow release, fun experience is the way I describe leisure activities.

SPEAKER_07 26:02

Oh man. Or even like, what would you say about like learning a new instrument?

unknown 26:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 26:06

That's kind of like a I feel like that's kind of overwhelming sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 26:10

Um, but I honestly I think of something as small as like, hey, get you a ukulele.

SPEAKER_06 26:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 26:16

And like just start plucking around, and then all of a sudden you're like, suddenly I might want to play guitar. Like if I can get this down, yeah, maybe step up to the guitar. That's right. Or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Um and probably in the beginning, um, if maybe you've you've desired to start an instrument, uh, you know, it can help if you've got the ability to have someone who can teach you. Yeah. Uh again, that's that built-in accountability. It's it's like having someone to give you guidance on what to do. But even if you don't have that, the ability to do that, like you said, just playing around with the instrument. Um that it's like have fun with just making some noise. Yeah. And now you're like to somebody else's ears, this would sound awful. But I'm having fun because I'm just making some noise on this instrument. And and eventually you make something that sounds good to you. Um, yeah, I think that's that's a great way to go. So don't uh, I guess for any listeners, don't put so much pressure that you have to to turn into, you know, Sebastian Bach or you know, some kind of great composer at the at the end of a couple of months. Like, no, just just start having some fun, get into a um kind of a flow mind state where you're just being creative, you're just having fun. Um and that's really the best place you can be to change your mindset. Um there's a there's a saying that uh the neurons that fire together wire together. Okay, and so what that means is when we feed our brain, what we feed our brain affects how we feel and the way that our brain responds. Okay, so if if we have a pattern during the winter months for our brain to start feeding us all kinds of negative thoughts, like I'm not good enough, I'm lazy, uh you know, the the world is a terrible place, I don't want to go outside. If I continue to feed those thoughts, I can expect that those thoughts are gonna come more easily. But if I choose to redirect myself towards more positive things, whether that's leisure activities, whether that's I'm gonna enjoy what it is that I'm doing right here, right now, um, that's going to have an effect on the brain, where those neural networks that are positive feelings are going to be the stronger ones. They're gonna show up more easily. And those negative thoughts that are naturally there because of the things we talked about that the winter brings on, those will gradually fade to the background. It'll be overwhelmed by those stronger neural networks. And that's true for anything that we're doing in psychology and counseling. The whole process is just trying to get your brain to change the way that your neurons are firing. Okay, so that you can live in a way that's more useful to you. And then ultimately, from our Christian and Catholic perspective, to help us be able to live more virtuously, to be able to do actions that are good, to be able to love more perfectly, right? So that that's the end goal uh of when we have this kind of Christian and Catholic perspective on counseling. It's not just do these things so that you know you can have this mental health and you can be, you know, the best version of you or something like that. Although that's good, the end goal is really to bring about more common good, good for all, good for ourselves and good for others. And then ultimately that's all good for God.

SPEAKER_07 30:18

Yeah. Wow. But um, I wanted to go back real quick to what you said, um talking about the neurons that uh fire together, wire together. Yeah. Um and just as you were explaining that, my mom has always said to me, what you focus on expands. Um so that makes perfect sense. Um and just talking about um all of this, like how our our our virtues and our vices are tied right in with this, you know, the more you sin, the easier it is to sin. You know, the C.S. Lewis, the road to hell is a slippery slope.

SPEAKER_06 30:53

Right.

SPEAKER_07 30:54

Um but like the more good you do, the easier and more natural it becomes. Um and so I guess my my question would be if we're whenever we start at like, okay, we're we're we're starting with our mindset, you know, we're we're starting with the way we speak to ourselves, um, those kinds of things. What what some what's some practical advice you would give um for like the bare bones stage of like, okay, I'm ready to make a change. What do I do?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah. So I think that you want to think about what you can do through three lenses. So there is how you feel, there is how you think, and there is how you act. Okay, so these are three levers that you can pull and you can adjust. So that means that uh if I find my thoughts, for example, are the thing that's really bothering me. I've got these constant flood of thoughts that are telling me like I'm not good enough, or um, I'm so lazy, or uh don't do that, that might get out of control, don't go there. Um no, don't don't even try that because you're gonna fail. Uh we can have these automatic thoughts. We want to ask ourselves, how can I adjust this thought so that it's actually more useful to me? So I might say, Um, uh if I have the thought, uh, don't do that because you might fail. Uh that looks really scary to me, but I'm gonna give it a try and see how it goes. And if it doesn't work out, then I'll learn from how that went. Okay, so you see how changing my thought to that makes what would have been a non-starter. I run into a brick wall in my mind. I just I'm not even gonna try because I'm gonna fail. And maybe I do try and then I do fail, and I say, see, there you go, you failed. Instead, the other thought, I'm gonna give it a try, and even if I mess up, I'm gonna learn from that. That says, Okay, even me failing is still good for me. Even me not doing well is gonna teach me how to do something better next. So it it changes the way that I I have an outlook about what I do. So that's just changing a thought. Let's say action, because a lot of times um our our thoughts can get out of control and uh our feelings feel overwhelming. So the best place to start for that kind of person might be action. Okay. Um I can't control how I'm thinking about this, I can't make myself feel good, but I can go exercise. Okay, but I can uh do this crochet. Um, but I can call one of my friends, okay. So it's saying, uh I don't have the ability to stop my thoughts being how they are, and I don't have the ability to magically wave the wand and make myself feel any different. So I'll at least do the thing that I think is going to be better for me. Maybe that's calling the friend, right? And I know if I call that friend, they typically have a way of making me cheer up, making me feel better about where things are. I'm gonna call that friend because uh I I know that they can do something that I can't do for myself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 34:33

Yeah. I yeah, I'm real this is this is so interesting. Um, I think something that like I've personally learned um over the past whatever, however many years, probably like three and a half since I moved here, is you know, the the term self-care and stuff. And how I just keep realizing over and over again is how oftentimes self-care is really just doing the things that I don't want to do when I don't want to do them.

SPEAKER_06 35:00

Right.

SPEAKER_07 35:01

So sometimes it looks like there are dishes in the sink that are really grossing me out. I don't want to touch them, but I know I'm gonna feel ten times better if I just get that taken care of. Yep. Or like, man, I don't, I do the last thing I want to do is some strength exercises right now. But I know I'm gonna feel 10 times better if I do. And it's just, you know, getting over that hump of just like, just do it. Just do it. Like I I've gotten in this habit lately where it's like, okay, three, two, one, and like I just quit thinking, I just say three, two, one, I just jump. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 35:35

Now convincing myself to do that.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Yep, yep, yep. So, so it's funny because you're you're describing a process that in psychology terms is uh related to something called act or acceptance commitment therapy. So, what acceptance commitment therapy says is that sometimes we just have to accept things are the way that they are. I don't want to do the dishes, and I'm not gonna want to do the dishes. So I just need to accept that. No, no amount of me thinking or trying to will my way or you know, is gonna make that any different. But then I can commit to whatever positive value that I have. So in this situation, I think doing the dishes is actually going to be better for me in the long run. Uh, you know, I could have practical reasons for that. Maybe I don't want bugs, maybe I don't want ice or whatever. But maybe I've got uh uh, you know, maybe my my family, they're depending on me to clean the dishes so that we've got some for the next meal, whatever it is. But I recognize that it is the thing that I need to do. I commit to it, and then the the T is the sort of this this taking action on um taking action on that value, whatever that value is. So I'm just gonna do it. I'm going to do it because nothing's going to change it. I just need to accept it. Um and sometimes we do have to make those sorts of decisions. Um I know personally for me, this is where a little bit of bringing our faith into it does help. So, for example, if it's the dishes example, uh, I really, really do not like doing the dishes. It's probably my least favorite chore.

SPEAKER_07 37:30

Wet food. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah. So so I I have to remind myself, I can think of it like, oh my goodness, I have to go do the the the dishes. And it's just the drag, it's this burden on me. Or I can think of it like I've got this service that I've got to do for my family. And in this service, I want to unite that to Jesus and what He's done for me and for all the world. So I'm going to unite the suffering of me doing the dishes for the next 30 minutes to Jesus' suffering on the cross. And I'm going to say, God, I can't make this do any good other than me just suffering. But you can use the suffering and then turn it supernaturally into grace. So use it however you want to. And that helps to for me to change my perspective of it's no longer this burden where uh oh no, I gotta go do the dishes. It's saying, okay, I'm gonna do the dishes now. I don't like it, but I'm gonna choose to do it and unite this to Jesus. Right. This is that's what it means when you know people say offer it up. Yeah. That's that's the offer it up that's actually really useful.

SPEAKER_07 38:47

You know, sometimes when we offer it up, it's not suck it up. Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Offer it up is not suck it up. It's not like toughen up, get over it, you baby. It's it's okay. Yeah, we we really do have the ability to unite our own sufferings to Jesus. And when we consciously do that, it has this way of taking what would normally just be this meaningless suffering and making it something meaningful.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Um, so that that is somewhere where our faith offers something that really we don't have any other any other way of dealing with that other than to just feel bad.

SPEAKER_07 39:24

Yeah. So there's there, yeah, there's something really beautiful there. Um and what comes to mind too is you know, John Paul II's quote from Gaudimet Spaz. Um, I think it's Gaudyman says, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna really get mad at myself for questioning that. But uh, you know, you we only find ourselves in the true gift of self.

unknown 39:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 39:44

And so that's like a very profound way of giving ourselves, even if we don't see the person that we're giving to right in front of us in that moment.

SPEAKER_06 39:52

Right.

SPEAKER_07 39:53

Um, it like something that comes to mind too is like in these seasons of transition that often happen during the winter and things like that. There's a lot of babies born this time of year. Um, and you know, we see things on Facebook of like meal trains and like you can send people gift cards and you know, and I think back to Jesse too. Yeah. Um, which now that was a bit of a different situation too, because you can really be around people. Right. Um, but I think of like uh a really good friend of mine about a year and a half ago had a baby and I got to go home. And while we were there, we like just went to their house, cleaned up while they were still in the hospital, um, cooked them some food and all of these things. And it's like, there are things that you can do. It's like, hey, that is a very like, I don't want to clean my own house. I maybe don't want to cook food sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 40:43

Right.

SPEAKER_07 40:44

But if it's like, man, I can rest in the facts knowing that someone I love is gonna come home, they don't have to worry about cleaning. They don't have to worry about cooking for the next two weeks.

SPEAKER_06 40:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 40:53

Um, if they want someone to like hold the child while they try and take a nap, right, whatever it is. Um yeah, there there's some really concrete things you can do, like where you can literally see the people you're helping right in front of you.

SPEAKER_06 41:07

Right.

SPEAKER_07 41:08

Um, but I don't I don't want that to overshadow like doing the hard things because you have to do them. Right. And you need to do them and you know you need to, um, and letting that be a grace.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Yeah. Well, it it that reminds me, you know, Jesus' words of uh no greater friend has uh has he who would lay down his life for his friends. Yeah, right. So what it it is this voluntary sacrifice for others can be really helpful. Um, and it's also backed up by psychology. Um one of the main people who's influenced me from a psychology counseling perspective is a man named Alfred Adler, and he was in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and he had um his understanding of psychology was he thought that the thing that brought true happiness to people was to be engaged socially. Okay, so um he he says that without feeling connected, without feeling like you belong, you cannot feel psychologically happy.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Okay, and that was different than he was a companion of Freud, and most people who are listening have heard of Freud, right? Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud, his was based on pleasure, okay. So he thought we uh we act based on drives that lead us to comfort or pleasure, which is also what made him fiercely atheist and anti-uh religious because he thought it was a wish fulfillment. Religion was just this grand thing to make us all feel good about ourselves. We we can all thank Sigmund Freud for that.

SPEAKER_07 42:56

And sometimes we do try to turn it.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Right, right. But uh, but Alfred Adler, he actually eventually separated from Sigmund Freud because he had a different view on that. He said, no, like people aren't just motivated by pleasure. Like, sure, we try to avoid pain. Nobody likes to feel pain. Yes, we like to feel comfortable, we do seek comfort. Those are true, but that's not the main thing that drives us on a human level.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Alfred Adler says our social uh uh our social button is what really gets us going. And so um one of the things that he said uh to the people that he helped was that you know, if you're feeling really negatively about yourself, uh he's the one that coined the term inferiority complex and superiority complex. Oh, really? Yeah. So if you're feeling inferior, which is just a way of saying you feel less than, yeah, like you evaluate yourself as less than others, you feel down. He said, Go volunteer at a Soup kitchen. And you'll notice that you start to feel a little bit better. He said, partly because you're serving other people and doing good for other people. And you can't help but feel better in that situation. But also because you look around and you see, huh? Actually, there are a lot of people who have it a lot worse off than me. And maybe my perspective is a little bit skewed. Like I'm doing okay. I'm all right. Like uh, but it's only in serving others that we can begin to see that. That actually I'm doing okay. Like, yes, I have that's not to say that I don't have my struggles. That's not to say that there aren't bad things that I'm experiencing and have experienced. But you know, all things considered, I'm doing all right. And that's just a a felt sense of um I'm all right, superiority, I'm I'm good. Superiority, not in an arrogant sense, yeah, but in a I feel good about myself sense.

SPEAKER_07 45:02

That's very interesting.

unknown 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:03

It's yeah, it's a you know, like the saying, count your blessings. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:09

It's sometimes it can get twisted, but like I feel like at the heart of that, like that hits it.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

And actually, it's one of my favorite uh Christmas time traditions that we'll watch White Christmas at my house. And there's a a scene there where Bing Crosby's character is is singing uh to the woman in that scene where he's saying um, you know, count your blessings. Like that's the main point of the song that he's singing. Uh he's saying, if you're having trouble sleeping, don't count sheep, count your blessings. All right, a really heartfelt sentimental uh thing, but it's true. When when we count our blessings, it really shifts our perspective on things. Um and I know that that's true from my own experience, although I briefly described in the beginning this broken experience that I came out of personally, my family life, all of that. Uh, and and my grandparents were very poor, extremely poor. Um, grandmother didn't have a job. My grandfather he was a butcher in a small town, and so he didn't make a lot of money. Um, they had one vehicle, a tiny house, 13 children. Uh, so there there wasn't a whole lot of money to go around. Um, but the one thing that they did have was they had this really strong emphasis on family and one another and loving one another uh in the middle of that poverty. They didn't have material goods, but they cared about each other. So I think that um that probably helped me to have this perspective of I don't have to have a lot of things, I don't got have to have what everyone else has to be happy. Um usually having all the things complicates being happy.

SPEAKER_07 47:03

That's right, that's right. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

But I uh, you know, I what you said about or what I was saying about Adler that reminded me of, you know, for the people who are listening, they may come into thinking about counseling or psychology in a skeptical way. And and I can understand that because uh historically there has been a lot of hostility between the field of psychology and counseling and uh faith traditions. And even now there um even though it's beginning to change, there's still a bias within the field of counseling and psychology that that tends to not be aligned with people of faith. Um the origins of that I could get into a ton of it, but essentially it came out of uh 16th century skepticism, led into enlightenment period, ultra-rationalism, yeah, rejection of of anything that wasn't material. But then um, and then that all led those philosophies led to Freud, who was the father of psychology, uh and he took on a lot of that those same philosophies. Um but the irony is that the more that we've gone along in studying the field of psychology and what psychology means, it comes from the word psyche, which means soul, mind, or spirit, which is kind of ironic, right? Because soul, mind, and spirit are not something that can be measured, it's not material. It's it's actually speaking to the thing that the church has been speaking about for thousands of years at this point.

SPEAKER_07 48:59

So we really have full circle, full circle.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

That's right, that's right. But modern neuroscience is is backing up these things that the church has known all along because the more that we've studied the mind, we're realizing oh, for some reason, it's not like what the the atheist modern philosophers believe that everything could be reduced to just a bunch a bunch of neurons in the brain. No, actually, we have a mind that seems to go beyond what our neurons can do. It's not just this electrical activity in the brain, and that's all we are. No, like the we have a soul, yeah, and that's what neuroscience is showing now is that okay, we're not reducible to just what's going on in the brain.

SPEAKER_07 49:54

I'm getting like goosebumps. Right.

unknown 49:57

Right.

SPEAKER_07 49:58

Yeah. Uh just especially being like a TOB enthusiast, you know, um, my my neurons are firing in 14 different directions right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm firing in all on all cylinders. But um, yeah, the I think whenever um I think about the season of winter um between mental health and like mental emotional health and spiritual health and just like physical health, it's like this is when everything's like getting rough and tough. Um I think so often we forget that the like the Lord, our our our good Father Jesus, you know, um the the church doesn't just care about our spiritual health, yeah, you know. Um and I think oftentimes we forget that. Or we maybe have not realized that.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

Right.

SPEAKER_07 50:53

Um, or even maybe we haven't even been told that, you know, the the church cares about you on a holistic level. The church cares about you as a whole and entire person.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah. Yeah. And it I'm glad you mentioned that because uh, you know, as I was preparing for for us to meet today, I was really reflecting on that, and uh I was able to find in the catechism uh a few paragraphs that really talk about that. So uh it's in the catechism. This is uh paragraphs 1769 through uh you can find this throughout, I won't read all of it, but through 1775. But it speaks uh about in the Christian life the Holy Spirit Himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being with all its sorrows, fears, and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. In Christ, human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude. Okay, so I'm gonna pause here and we'll carry on. Yeah, but it it it's really awesome because it's saying that um, you know, it's I think sometimes we think of our feelings like they're enemies because we get dragged around by our feelings a lot. You know, it's like uh I think St. Paul is it, St. Paul that says, I do the things I do not wish to do.

SPEAKER_03 52:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

And so it's like our passions can really lead us to places that aren't helpful. So we can see them as enemies. But what the the church is saying here in the catechism is no, actually, Christ also came to purify and unite our passions, our feelings, our emotions. Also, they're not the enemy. Actually, uh, when we can when we can put our passions in in the proper order, they actually help us. We should feel sorrow, we should feel joy, we should feel anger. Um, and you see that throughout the gospels and the life of Jesus, that he is a man of many emotions, right? He expresses anger when he flips tables in the in the temple. Yeah. Uh, he he experiences sadness whenever he's finds out about the death of Lazarus. Okay, so uh it's not like Jesus is just this happy-go-lucky character who's who's going throughout, skipping, uh skipping through life. It's like, no, he feels all of the emotions with us and he experiences those emotions in a right way. Yeah. Okay, so he again, he provides the model for us that we don't want to do away with our emotions.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

And we probably, you and I and the rest that are listening, we've grown up in a culture that rejects emotion for like rational thought. And so, and so, like, yeah, we we have this tendency of going like, oh, quit your crying, quit crying, you cry, baby. Right? Yeah, but really it's like, no, there's a time and place for crying.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

And in fact, sometimes you should be crying, and if you're not, that might be a problem.

SPEAKER_03 54:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Um, and yeah, uh, sometimes you should be angry and you should allow yourself to be angry. Yeah. And and uh other times you should be afraid. Uh, you know, not not that uh that has to direct what action you take, but that you should let yourself feel the fear, yeah. Um, and know that it's reasonable for you to feel that way.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

So uh yeah, just that that points to that. I'm gonna go on. It says uh in 1770, paragraph 1770, moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good, not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm, my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Okay, so here it's saying, uh, again, like uh maybe our American American mentality just like just get it done, just do it, you know. It's the church is saying, not by your will alone. Yeah, you can't just force it.

SPEAKER_07 55:08

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

But our we have to use our sensitive appetite, and that's kind of ancient language going back to Thomas Aquinas. But for anyone that's listening, all that means is the felt experience, the felt sense, the the the feelings that you have. Um that includes emotions, that includes bodily sensations. Um but all of those things are are to bring us to this place, this heartfelt place of singing for joy to the living God.

SPEAKER_07 55:36

Yeah. Um man this is this is very um, you know, on a on a personal level, honestly, um talking about like just having big emotions, you know. Growing up, I had big emotions and to this day. I still have big emotions. Um and honestly, it was I had graduated of college in 2021 and it was maybe a week to two weeks later. Um, had like decided I was like, I'm gonna go to therapy and um just try and navigate this transitional time in my life. Two weeks after I graduate college, they diagnosed me with bipolar two, because there's two types. Didn't know that before. Didn't know that. Surprise. And it was, you know, for the past how many years has it been? Over four. That's frightening. Um just like navigating through that of like, okay, you know, it's almost like you go through the stages of grief in a very strange way. Yeah. But um, in the past probably six, eight months, it has been a spiritual journey in a new way of like, okay, this isn't just something for me to overcome. This is actually like gas in my car that I have to learn how to drive the car.

SPEAKER_06 56:57

Right.

SPEAKER_07 56:58

Does that make sense? It's like, how do how do I I gotta learn how to do that? Yeah, how do I use this fuel? Um, like, how is this this ultimately? Like, this is not something that's a knock against me necessarily.

SPEAKER_06 57:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 57:13

This is just I have a different type of gas and a different type of car and maybe a different transmission. I'm not a car person.

SPEAKER_06 57:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_07 57:20

No, I'm doing what I can here, right? But it's um, it's like, no, that's actually in a strange way a superpower.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 57:28

That gets me to heaven. Doesn't mean it gets someone else to heaven.

unknown 57:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 57:31

Um, yep. But yeah, like that's how my car was built, and I've just got to learn how to drive it.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And and so it it's it's a really interesting thing because we all have temperaments or personalities that we bring into the that we were just born into. Um, some of it's some of it's genetic, some of it's by our being socialized around our family and the people that we grew up around. But we all have predispositions to react to emotions differently. So some of us feel big emotions as you described it, right? And so, like every little thing might set us off or make us feel something, and and maybe even uh affects the way we express ourselves more strongly. Um and others of us, maybe it's more muted, maybe it's more like uh you're living in black and white rather than living in color. Okay. And that's okay. They're like the the Lord has room for all kinds of people. Yeah. Um but the but another thing that that reminds me of is so this is again like coming into modern neuroscience and what our current understanding of how the brain, the body, and the mind all work together. So we now understand that in your nervous system, which you might just understand as your brain and your your nerves that run throughout your entire body. Okay, so every inch of your body is covered with nerves. And some parts of your body have larger groupings of nerves than others. Your heart, your stomach, for example, have more nerves than other parts of your body. Um, of course, the the brain is the largest grouping of nerves. Um but this nervous system, we we see it as uh uh how would I put it? Like a wave. You can have what's called a hyper arousal, which means that you are uh your your emotions are elevated, you're feeling on edge, you're feeling um sort of a fight or flight type of response. Okay, you're it's you're in go mode. Um that could be fear, that could be anger, lots of different emotions could could relate to that, but your body's in that go mode. That's called hyper-arousal. You might think of it as the the top of the roller coaster. And then there's this middle ground where you're feeling your emotions, you're in touch with your emotions, um, but they're not overwhelming. You just notice them, okay? And that's what uh psychologists would call the window of tolerance. Okay. And then underneath of that is hypo arousal. So it's below. It's like the bottom of the roller coaster. It's it's when we we're kind of checked out, we're tuned out, we're disconnected from ourselves, we're disconnected from others. Um, maybe we're so overwhelmed that we're now just kind of tuned out. Uh you know, some of us find ourselves there more often. So if you have big emotions, you might find yourself getting into hyper arousal a lot.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:57

I like to say that the Lord gave me a really sensitive piece of his heart when he made mine.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

That's right, that's right. That's right. So uh and uh so some of us have more of a muted kind of response where it's like, okay, you know, I should be feeling a little more here. Like I just feel numb. I just feel kind of like a zombie, like I'm just going through the motions, uh, and really I need to be more checked in. Um so there's space for all of those kinds of people, it just means if you're on the further ends of the extreme of that, you might struggle to try and find balance. And so you're trying to work towards balance. If you find yourself keyed up a lot of the time higher, then you you're trying to figure out ways to calm yourself, soothe yourself, relax yourself. Uh, if you're someone that finds yourself below, where you're checked out, tuned out, you want to do what's called grounding, meaning you just focus on your breath, notice your breathing, notice the sensation of breathing, notice the feeling of gravity holding you down in your chair. It's all these natural body-felt experiences that help you go, okay, I'm in the present moment. Uh, and one other thing that can get involved in this, and we don't have to go too deep into this, but it's uh uh attachment. So we all learned, like I mentioned, Alfred Adler talks about belonging and connection being the thing that drives human beings. But we also uh experience uh human beings in different ways throughout our life. So some of us maybe we had uh people, main our main caretakers, our family that were caring, loving, gentle, um compassionate people, and and we're doing just fine. We feel pretty good about ourselves. Others of us, maybe our our family members or our parents, they didn't have as strong of a foundation, and maybe they didn't have as much self-understanding. Uh, and so they either intentionally or unintentionally hurt us in different ways. And so maybe we're a little bit afraid of people, right? And we have different ways of dealing with that when when we feel insecure in our relationship with other people, we might demand the attention of other people, and that could feel like a sense of urgency. It could come out like criticism, like constantly criticizing others, it could come out like um demanding attention from others, like, hey, you're not paying attention to me. Hey, is everything all right? Are we okay? That would be a more anxious type, or it could come out more avoidant if it was more consistent that you didn't feel like your needs were met. And then you start to tune others out. And on the surface, it can look good because you might be really independent, you might be very successful, you might uh take care of yourself, you don't rely on other people, and maybe you're the one that's mostly reliable, other people depend on you. But when it comes to relationships, maybe you're kind of cold, maybe you're kind of distant, maybe it's transactional rather than heartfelt. Okay, and so we all have ways that because of our upbringings, we carry with us ways of relating to people automatically. And so we're we're we're trying to find our way into a place of feeling okay, feeling good about our relationship with others, feeling like I can call up a friend and rely on them and maybe share with them, hey, I'm really struggling right now. Can you just pray with me right now? Hey, I'm struggling right now. Could you come over and let us just talk? Hey, I'm um I'm struggling. Can we go out for coffee? Uh or or something like that, just seeking connection when we're struggling. We are uh the kind of uh the you might say like the kind of animal that we are as humans is we are social.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

So like we we are designed to seek comfort from people whenever we're struggling, when we're suffering. And it's only when we've uh experienced hurt through trying to seek connection that maybe we stopped looking for it. Um, and so uh both for our own psychological health and just for trying to to live out what God calls us to, in that we know that in heaven Jesus is going to make all things right and we'll live in Perfect communion with one another. Our task on earth is to try and bring that about to the degree that we can here on earth. So it's not perfect, but we strive for loving each other more perfectly, for letting ourselves be vulnerable with one another. Um, and so yeah, I just uh you know, I just want to say appreciate you sharing just your own experience there because yeah, that that's helpful for for those who are listening too. They're experiencing the same thing. Like, yeah, okay, I'm not I'm not wrong, I'm not messed up. I'm like, I just yeah, this is this is something that I know about myself, and that means that um I have to to find a way to to use my nature for my own good and for the good of others.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:51

Yeah, yeah. The and a lot of people use the phrase like wounded healer and stuff. And it's like, yeah, you can think of it through that lens too. Um but man, yeah. Thank you so much. You know, um this is a really, really important episode. Um and you know, it's one that we've wanted to do for a while. Um, and you know, we we've talked a lot about a lot of stuff in it. Um and so there's there's no doubt in my mind that there's gonna be a lot of gears turning as people are listening. Um, and it's like there's we've we've touched on so many things. Um and so I guess my my last question to you is kind of two parts. You know, what would be your your parting words of wisdom? And then also on like a more practical level, um talking about like just going to therapy and maybe honestly, even for for our listeners in the Diocese of Owensboro, the CAT program that we have, if you wouldn't mind to speak into some of that too.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:09

Yeah. So uh I I think you know, just to summarize it all up, is just say like we all have brokenness in our own ways, and that's myself included. And it's important for us to just do what we can with what resources we have for our own good and for the good of others. And that that means sometimes taking care of our brains and recognizing that uh we don't we haven't we don't all have the time to study psychology, we don't all have the time to understand perfectly how our brains work. But once one step that I think is really helpful is for us to live in relationship with others because when we live in relationship with others, we are more holy and we are more whole, okay, mentally whole. Um and I and I just think that uh if anyone is listening and maybe they've been thinking about should I go to a therapist, I just encourage you to make that step because um it will help you. Uh there is a lot that a therapist would be able to help you understand and know about yourself. Um, it's good to have someone who, especially if they are willing to listen, they they kind of hold up a mirror for you to be able to better be able to see yourself.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:41

Even if you don't want to look in that mirror.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

That's right, that's right. Uh and so it's challenging at times, but it's always it's always uh it brings about more peace in the long run. Um and and yes, you know, you might struggle to fit in with a certain kind of therapist. If you find a certain therapist that you're like, I don't know about this, or this just doesn't seem right to me. Well, there are a lot of therapists out there, so so don't just give up at one. If you've had tried one before and you were like, that did not go well, there are plenty of other therapists out there. Um, we're all wounded healers, as you said, and so we all carry our own baggage as well. And hopefully any therapist you find is aware of their own baggage. Um but yeah, we do have a great resource in the CAP program that you mentioned. The CAP program for those who don't know, it stands for the Congregational Assistance Program. So within the Diocese of Owensboro, uh, the the priests, the presbyterate, they have put together this CAP program that allows uh members of this diocese. So if you're a member of a parish in this diocese, you're eligible for the CAP program. And what the CAP program does is it has set aside funds to assist in the payment of counseling services for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford counseling services. Uh it really dramatically cuts down the cost for them. Um and so uh the diocese has on their website uh the list of CAP therapists within the diocese, and there are some all across the diocese, uh down towards the Paduca area, and then all the way up here in Whitesville uh and all across. So um there should be a therapist in your area or close by, close enough that you could go visit, who's on the CAP list. Um they all have different trainings and backgrounds and that sort of thing, but uh you're welcome to research the list and decide who you want to go with.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:00

And I'll be sure uh that link will be uh in the description or show notes, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Um but yeah, I I was able to use that program while I was in college and especially thankful for it. And um yeah, it it it's it's that is such a gift to our people here.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:17

Yeah. Um and the CAP program is uh something that the diocese, they they spoke to all of the therapists that are on this list and asked them uh, are they willing to to counsel from a perspective that is not in contradiction of the Catholic Church's teachings? And so all of the the therapists that are on that list are ones who have agreed to that. Okay, so that's something that helps with it being pre-vetted. You know, you don't have to worry so much about okay, is this person going to say something completely radical and against my faith? Everyone that's on that CAP list should be agreeing to do what the Catholic Church teaches. Um and and sure, there are other therapists that are not on the CAP list. I'm not trying to discourage people from seeing other therapists. It's just that's an extra bonus that we have with CAP. Uh and so um myself and uh you know, we're we're the therapists that work for me, we're able to use CAP and that sort of thing. And so it's uh that's something that's helpful for those who aren't able to afford uh a standard fee of counseling.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:29

And then too, if if you are in the financial situation where you can afford that standard counseling fee, um, that doesn't mean those counselors or those therapists are off limits to you by any means.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:40

Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:40

That's still a good list to look at to know that they are um already vetted and do counsel in accord with the faith.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:47

Yeah. And and uh I'll just say one last thing. Uh just say uh for all of you listening, just remember that that the Father in heaven, that Jesus, he desires to be with you wherever you are right now, you know, wherever, whatever it is that you're struggling with emotionally, mentally, he's with you in the midst of that. And so in faith, you know, abide in the comfort of knowing that the Lord is with you, even if he doesn't feel like he's close, he is. Know that, and know that uh, you know, there are many opportunities and resources within the counseling community for you to have uh a little bit of the scientific basis, the psychology basis to help with what's going on on top of the things that you're doing with your priest, with your faith, with your spiritual directors. Um, they don't have to be opposed to one another. You can blend all of that together. And I would encourage you to seek counselors who are willing to do that because you're gonna find you reap a lot uh of benefits, more benefits, whenever you're open to that faith. I mean, I'm all the time surprised by I think I'm so smart. I think I I think I give somebody just the right thing, and then they come back to me the next week and they tell me something that the Lord revealed to them, and I'm like, okay, God. Uh thank you for the humility. Thank you for the humility. Yep. So uh yeah, you definitely need uh a therapist who's uh who's open and willing to let God do his work too.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:25

Praise God. Well, thank you again, Ethan, uh so very much. I know I'm gonna be going back and listen to this a few times. So um, but yeah, thank you again. And until next time, I hope all of you have a blessed day.