Interior Integration for Catholics

Real love (agape) is given freely -- but it is not received freely in our fallen human condition. Join me in this episode as we discuss the costs of opening our hearts to love\and the price of being loved fully, of being loved completely, in all of our parts. We review why so many people refuse to be loved -- and we examine the psychological and human formation reasons for turning away from love. Finally we discuss what we can do to get over our natural-level impediments to receiving love.

Show Notes

 
  1. Summary:  Real love (agape) is given freely -- but it is not received freely in our fallen human condition.  Join me in this episode as we discuss the costs of opening our hearts to love\and the price of being loved fully, of being loved completely, in all of our parts.  We review why so many people refuse to be loved -- and we examine the psychological and human formation reasons for turning away from love.  Finally we discuss what we can do to get over our natural-level impediments to receiving love.  
  2. Lead-in  
    1. I am a rock I am an island
I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship -- friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain
I am a rock I am an island
  1. I am a rock -- Paul Simon wrote it in 1965 and Simon and Garfunkel  Released it as a single in 1966, and it rose to #3 on the charts -- why because it resonated with people.  It was popular because it spoke out loud what many people's parts feel.   The desire to become a rock, the impulse to build the walls, to keep everyone out, to repudiate love and laughter, to not need anything or anyone.  
  2.  Kate McGahan -- untitled poem 
 
I don't need anyone, I said.
Then you came
I need I need! 
I NEED YOU. 
I needed you.
What did you teach me?
Not to need you.
NOT TO NEED. -
 
  1. I don't want to be in love, anymore. I just want to be left alone. And no, I am not depressed or something. No suicide is happening here... I am fine. Trust me. Sharmajiassamwale
  2. So you want love.  But you also don't want love.  But you want love.  But you don't.  You do.  You don't.  You're conflicted.  How do you understand this conflict within you?  Can you and I understand this push-pull, this attraction - avoidance, this Yes and No within us more clearly.  Yes we can.  And we must.  Or we will wind up always skating along the edge of love, never really entering in.  And there are consequences for that -- and no one put it more succinctly than the English poet and playwright Robert Browning, who said: “Without love, our earth is a tomb”  
  3. Intro
     
    1. We do want to be loved, but we don't.  Why?  Because we want the benefits of love, but we don't want the costs
  4.  
    1. The Benefits
       
      1. To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.  David Viscott
    2.  
      1. If you don't have that memory of being loved, you are condemned to search the world for something to fill you up. -- Michael Jackson

    1. The costs.  
      1. Real love is given freely, but it is not received freely in this fallen world.  
        1. Almost no one talks about the costs of being loved.  I find that so strange.  People don't think this way. 
        2. There are costs to receiving love, to accepting love, to allowing love in to our hearts.  
        3. It's painful to be loved in this fallen world.  
          1. this is not well understood by many people, especially those who are not in touch with trauma, or who haven't suffered as much as others 
            1. Bernard Brady's 2003 book "Christian Love: How Christians Through the Ages have Understood Love 
              1. Second sentence of the book, in the preface:  "Loving seems entirely natural and being loved seems wonderfully good."
              2. Not to many people
              3. RCC member -- so glad you can discuss tolerating being loved.  
 
  1. Real love -- Agape -- burns away things that are sinful within us -- it doesn't coexist with the vice within us.
     
    1. Bernard Brady: Christian Love, p. 16:  "…love transforms those who love and those who are loved."  

    1. Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”   ― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
  3. Change is scary
     
    1. “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 

 
  1. Real love also purifies us from anything that is not morally wrote, but that is disordered or dysfunctional or imperfect
  2. Real love is the greatest good.  And because it's the greatest good, it requires us to give up lesser goods.  Perceived good and actual goods.  
    1. Coping strategies, crutches that helped us in the past
    2. Analogy of the safe -- limited room, silver and gold. 
  3. Vulnerability
  4. I will lose what I have
  5. I will lose to possibility of being loved in the future
  6. I don't want to find out I am unlovable.  I can't bear that.   
  7. Because for love to be real, for love to be agape means me allowing you to love all of me.  All my parts.  My entire being
     
    1. Not just the acceptable parts of me in the shop window, those that I allow others to see.  

  9. The greatness of the adventure of loving can be intimidating
     
    1. Love, in some sense, is nothing other than an invitation to great joy and suffering, so they shy away from it.  Paul Catalanotto Refusal to love is also refusal to live  The Catholic Weekly
  10.  
    1. Dietrich von Hildrebrand those who "wish to linger with small joys in the state of harmless happiness … in which they feel themselves to be master of the situation … lacking any element of surprise or adventure.
  11.  
  12. Let's go on this adventure of being loved and loving together.  I want you to come with me into the themes of this podcast.  I want you to really engage with what I'm presenting to you.  Not just listen like the Athenians listened to Paul about the resurrection of the dead.  Acts 17:32: Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.”  But they weren't really that interested.  Only a few of the Athenians joined him.  Stay with me in this Episode 96 of Interior Integration for Catholics, released on August 1, 2022, and titled "I Am a Rock: How Trauma Hardens us Against Being Loved" I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, passionate Catholic and I am very pleased that we can share and engage with this information.
     
    1. Why do I think being loved is so important?   First because receiving love is absolutely essential.  It is our starting point in the spiritual life.  And second, because most people will not realxly allow themselves to be loved. Psychiatrist and Harvard Professor George Valliant wrote:  It's very hard, for most of us to tolerate being loved.-- That's been my experience as well.  The vast majority of people have chosen to severely limit how much love they will let in, how much love they will tolerate.  

    1. You can't love unless you are willing to be loved.  
      1. 1 John 4:19:  We love because he first loved us  Look at the order here.  God loved us first.  We can't generate any love on our own.  We can reflect love, we can channel love, but we can't create love out of nothing like God can.  We have to cooperate in love and be open to love in order to love, in order to follow the two great commandments.  
      2. That is what this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast is all about -- it's about preparing the way for you to have a much deeper, richer and much more intimate relationship with God in the three Person of the Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and with the Blessed Virgin Mary our Mother.  A deep, personal relationship with God and Mary.  That's what  I want from you.  And if you won't tolerate taking in real love, if you deprive yourself of real love, you are going to wind up in a de facto hell on earth.  The most miserable people on earth are the loveless people -- loveless not because no one will love them -- but loveless because they actively or passively reject love.  And so many people do that.  
      3. And there are spiritual consequences to cutting ourselves off from real love.  Our heart become small, they become hard, they become closed, they become fearful, they fester in wounds.  And if we persist in refusing to be loved and to love, there is no other place for us to be in the afterlife than in hell.  That's what I think hell is -- a place for those who have refused love.  That's how serious all of this is.  Eternal consequences of the highest order. 
    2.  
  14. Hallmark Movie Love
     
    1. What so many of our parts really want is what I call Hallmark movie love -- in Latin, this is rendered "Lovus Hallmarkius"  Hallmark love.  Yes, I've given it a ridiculous translation, but that because Hallmark love is not only a ridiculous concept, it's a dangerous one.  I mean it. 
      1. Really Dr. Peter -- all those sweet, feel-good Christmas movies?  What are you some kind of grinch, to criticize Hallmark movies?  I mean really, come on.. That's a bit much.  Hear me out, hear me out.  
      2. What is Hallmark love -- love is always just around the corner, painless, fun.  They are delightful.  Love is so gratifying and enjoyable, love takes away suffering. Clean and tidy.   It's a myth.  The Hallmark company is selling illusions.  Their movie production arm is peddling falsehoods about love to an audience who wants what they are offering to be true.  But it isn't.  
      3. Kristine Brown captured this theme in her online article Living in a Hallmark Movie  December 11, 2015

 
I want to live in a Hallmark movie.
 
 I want to walk down the cobblestone Main Street into the corner coffee shop where everyone greets you with a smile and a Merry Christmas. I want to move to a new town where you immediately become acquainted with everyone and your child makes instant friends at school and there’s always time to bake Christmas cookies and decorate trees and drink hot cocoa with peppermint sticks.
 
I want to live in a Hallmark movie.
 
I want to walk my child to school holding hands and have him tell me how much he loves me and what a great mom I am. I want to live where kids don’t make bad choices and parents don’t make mistakes. Where the toughest decision is whether to stay in the small town where you grew up or chase after a promising dream in the big city. Where things always just work out.
 
And the movie always ends with a kiss from your true love and snow. Always snow.
 
But life isn’t a Hallmark movie, not even close.
  1. Example of the life of Christ -- the greatest lover ever, who died in making the greatest act of love ever, and it was nothing like a Hallmark movie. 
  2. We assume that we want love -- and we do.  Or parts of us do
     
    1. Made for love and in love -- That's a beautiful line in the Litanies of the Heart, written by Dr. Gerry for Souls and Hearts -- "Lord Jesus, you created me in love, for love."  

    1. Colossians 3:14  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
  4.  
  5. Discussion of Parts
     
    1. Reference Episode 71: A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others
  6.  
    1. Definition of Parts:  Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view.  Each part also has an image of God and a whole religion developed around its understanding of God, self, and the relationship between God and self.  
    2. Parts have different roles within the self system.  Narrow slice of experience, very limited vision.  
    3. Some parts don't care about being loved.  They are focused on never being hurt like that again.  They are focused on protection from harm, defending the self system against threats from others, very protective.  IIC 89:  Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection
    4. Conflict
“I wished I didn't need an ocean of space to feel comfortable. I still wanted to be loved. Yet again I felt like two people: one who desperately needed a hug, and one who would break apart at the slightest touch. How could I get people to keep their distance without leaving completely? How long would it take for them to get tired of the way I flinched and evaded?” 
― Ruby Walker, Advice I Ignored: Stories and Wisdom from a Formerly Depressed Teenager
  1.  
 
  1. Using a metaphor to describe how trauma hardens us against being loved
     
    1. Overview
       
      1. Roots = unresolved trauma
    2.  
      1. Single trunk -- shame
    3.  
      1. Five Main stems -- acronym CRIES -- as in cries for help.    C R I E S -- Each of these main stems is driven by shame in the trunk, shame that results from the unresolved trauma in the roots.  
        1. Cognitions
        2. Relationships
        3. Identity
        4. Emotions
        5. Spirituality

      1. Each main stem has branches -- branches that cross and interweave in this big bush
    5.  
      1. And the branches have fruits.  


    1. Roots -- Unresolved trauma
       
      1. This includes the original trauma, original sin.  

      1. Underground, not seen -- 

      1. Check out Episodes 88 and 89 -- a lot about the nature of trauma in those episodes
    4.  
      1. Primary effect of unresolved trauma is shame.  


    1. Single Trunk -- Shame
       
      1. Discussed shame at great length in Episodes 37 to 49 of this podcast. 

      1. Definitions of shame in episode 37:  Shame is:  a primary emotion, a bodily reaction, a signal,  a judgement, and an action.  

      1. I encourage you to go through those episodes again -- really get a grip on shame, because understanding shame is the key to understanding almost all psychological dysfunction, and understanding shame is the key to really comprehending why you have difficulties with your human formation.  Can't stress that enough.  

      1. Shame -- the central role of shame. Issue of survival.  Life and death.  Deep assumptions that my shame is so bad that it will kill me.  Our protector parts assume they have a need to defend against our exiled parts that have burdens of shame -- protectors believe they have to keep the shame out of awareness, keep it buried, distant.  They don't know that we can work with shame and the parts that carry the shame in collaborative, cooperative, constructive ways.  Our protector parts don't know that shame can be resolved -- the burden of shame can be lifted and there can be healing.  
      2. “When you're a child trapped in a situation of physical or psychological deprivation, you learn shame as an efficient, elegant mechanism of survival: shame simultaneously shields you from the reality that danger is out of your control (since the problem is not that you're unloved and deprived; it's that you're Bad) and prevents you from doing or saying anything challenging that might provoke a threat.” ― Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World
      3. Go back and really get the shame piece of this.  

    1. Main Stems off the trunk:  Cognitions, Relationships, Identity, Emotions, Spirituality -- Acronym CRIES
       
      1. Emotions  Stem:  Five aspects Grief, Anger, Fear, Flooding, Shutdown  -- GAFFS -- so many of these emotions are generated by the shame that results from unresolved trauma
         
        1. Love is affective -- Bernard Brady -- discussed this at length in episode 94  Love is a movement from your heart, your soul -- a movement from the innermost depths of your being.  From your core self.  So the emotions are intimately involved with love
      2.  
        1. Grief 
          1. Emotional reaction to deep sense of loss.  
          2. Sadness about what you don't have that you need.  
          3. Parts want to be seen and heard and known and loved by the one who might love you.  All of you wanting to be loved.  All of you wanting to be healed.  So parts surge up, wanting to come to the surface.  
          4. Parts that carry grief have never been loved -- never been connected with in an emotional way, never been included in relationship with your innermost self or with others.  Never been seen.
          5. Anticipatory Grief -- if I allow myself to be love, I could lose that love.  The one who loves me could die.    
        2. Fear -- this is an emotion that drives so much fleeing from love.  This really is the big one.  
          1. Philophobia -- fear of love  All of us have parts that fear love. 
          2. Being loved arouses anxiety because it threatens long-standing psychological defenses formed early in life in relation to emotional pain and rejection, therefore leaving a person feeling more vulnerable.  Robert Firestone
          3. Fears of being revealed
          4. Fears of vulnerability
          5. Fears of loneliness
          6. Fear of the unknown
          7. Fears of being hurt one more time -- like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football, winding up flat on your back again.
             
            1. Fears of betrayal
          8.  
            1. Fears of abandonment
          9. So much of this fear is driven by shame.  
          10. All this fear is a barrier to being loved.  
          11. “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”  Betrand Russell
          12. All the bruised lives, searching hearts ... Everyone wants a love story but few will risk what it takes to live one. - Donna Lynn Hope
        3. Flooding:  Emotional overwhelm -- flooding.  Emotions become all dysregulated.
           
          1. Hyperarousal -- moving into fight or flight mode.  Intensity of emotions because very great. Often because old emotions from previous unresolved trauma are welling up -- parts that carry the burden of intense emotions want to be seen, heard, known and understood, they no longer want to be exiled, banished into the unconscious -- they want a voice, they want relationship they want redemptions.  
            1. Paul Simon



 Don't talk of love
Well I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried
I am a rock I am an island
 
  1. “Our biggest challenge is that we have an overwhelming desire for an extraordinary love story but low capacity to hold space for it in our nervous system.”  ― Lebo Grand
  2. Dietrich von Hildebrand:  Fear of losing oneself in intense joys or griefs
 
  1. Anger
     
    1. So much of this anger is driven by fear driven by shame
  2.  
    1. Our protector parts can use anger to distract from fear and grief.  

    1. Behind every angry soul is a wounded child that just wanted you to love them for who they are. Shannon L. Alder 

  5. Shutting down
     
    1. Avoiding inner experiences is one of Nathanson's four defensive scripts for avoiding shame.  

    1. Hypoarousal -- moving down out of the window of tolerance to the freeze mode.  

    1. Example of an electrical panel, or breaker panel v-- metal box with a door down in the basement or utility closet
       
      1.  with the main and the circuit breakers
    2.  

  9. Fruit: We have a very difficult time tolerating being loved when we are not in our window of tolerance.  Fight or flight mode or freeze mode -- we move very much into self-protection, to a focus on survival, on just perpetuating our existence.  
    1. We're not open to love -- we've moved into survival mode, not seeking connection.  
    2. We're not open to God.    Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace:  The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His grace acts through us.  On the other hand, if our soul is agitated and troubled, the grace of God is able to act only with much greater difficulty… God is a God of peace.  He does not operate except in peace, not in trouble and agitation.  
      1. We need that emotional regulation, that sense of being in our window of tolerance to be able to connect with God. 
    3. So many times fear is identified as a barrier  
      1. Fear as a result of shame drove Adam and Eve into the bushes -- hiding from God
      2. John 14:27:  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
  10. Cognition Stem
     
    1. Perceptions
       
      1. extremely sensitive to stimuli
    2.  
      1. Very vigilant -- scanning for threats in the environment
    3.  

    1. Negative self-talk
       
      1. I am unloved
    2.  
      1. I am unlovable
    3.  
      1. I don't deserved to be loved -- bred in families where there is conditional love -- unattainable ideals of perfection 

      1. I will be seen and I will see myself.  

      1. I might contaminate anyone who would love me with my badness.  

      1. I won't live up to the love.  


    1. Doubts fostered about goodness in the world, about the nature of others
       
      1. Skepticism about who actually makes the effort to love
    2.  
      1. Demanding perfection from others before trying again.
    3.  
      1. To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

-- Jo Nesbo
  1. Pessimistic evaluation of the future
     
    1. No one will love me
  2.  
    1. I will be deceived, tricked and then betrayed, rejected, abandoned
  3.  
  4. Distractions
     
    1. Paul Simon:
  5.  
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
 
  1. Fruit
     
    1. we can dwell inwardly, on our own damage -- we can focus on our wounds.  Direct our attention to all the things that are wrong with us and pull inward -- self-absorption, ruminating and obsessing about our defects, curling up inside to protect ourselves, not letting anyone in.  So common.  

    1. Or we can reach out and embrace love anyway.  We can trust that parts of us may be seeing things inaccurately, thinking about things in ways that are distorted.  

  4. Identity Stem
     
    1. Drawing from Robert Firestone's  Why Do So Many People Respond Negatively to Being Loved? article on psychalive.org
       
      1. I am inadequate, unworthy of love
         
        1. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”– Stephen Chbosky
      2.  

      1. Being valued or seen in a positive light is confusing because it conflicts with the negative self-concept that many people form within their family.  Firestone
      2. Being loved can provoke an identity crisis  Firestone
         
        1. Your identity, at least for some of your parts, can be very bound up in being unloved and unloveable
      3.  
        1. Parts may not know who you are if you were loved -- such a radical change
        2. Very disconcerting to lose a sense of who I am, even if the identity is a negative one.  

    1. Comfort in the familiarity of the dysfunction I know -- so I accept and even seek out rejection and failure -- they are familiar and harmonize with my life narrative.  

    1. Deep sense of having to earn conditional love.  But that is not what love is about
       
      1. “Love is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.” ― Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living
    2.  

    1. Little or no ordered self-love -- we will be discussing ordered self love in the next episode.  
      1. One of Nathanson's four strategies to cope with shame is to attack the self.  

    1. Internal disconnects to survive the trauma -- horror of abuse
       
      1. Love relationships pull for integration
         
        1. Love is never fragmented; it's an inseparable whole which does not delight in bits and pieces. John A. Andrews 


      1. And that integration will bring up the parts of ourselves that we have rejected as too scary, too unacceptable, too unlovable, too dangerous, too overwhelming, too much in some way to be allowed a seat at the table of our consciousness.  
    3. Takes a lot of courage to really be loved.  
    4. Ursula Wirtz, Trauma and Beyond: The Mystery of Transformation
       
      1. “I consider love to be the matrix for this transformation, which calls new being into existence. Love has the power to reawaken and bring to the fire what has been entombed or distorted by traumatic forces or has retreated out of defensiveness and self-protection. Without love and compassion for the fragility of human identity in the face of death and the reality of evil, the madness found in these barren spaces of the soul might not be meaningfully encountered. For the stripping away of the constricting cocoon of traumatic fixations and the untangling of what has become distorted and convoluted during painful traumatization, love is needed.” 

― 
  1. Fruit -- will we let our burdened parts define ourselves-- will we let those traumatized parts of us, and the parts that guard us from those traumatize parts be the ones to determine who we are -- with their limited vision and their narrow slice of experience -- or can we work gently with ourselves and allow ourselves to be seen through the eyes of those who do love us.  
  2. Relationship
     
    1. Love affirms the other, love responds to the other, love is unitive -- love is steadfast more of Bernard Brady's characteristics of Agape, of real love described in episode 94
  3.  
    1. Effects of Shame
       
      1. Lack of trust in others
    2.  
      1. Lack of confidence
         
        1. How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved. Sigmund Freud 


      1. Fear of exposure
         
        1. To myself
      2.  
        1. To the one who loves me
      3.  


“To be deeply loved, means a willingness to cut yourself wide open, exposing your vulnerabilities... hopes, hurts, fears and flaws. Hiding behind the highlight reel of who you are, is the real you and that person is just as worthy of love. There is nothing more terrifying or fulfilling, than complete love, it's worth the risk... reach for it.”  ― Jaeda DeWalt
  1. Fear of rejection
     
    1. The fear of rejection makes sense: If we’ve had a steady diet of shame, blame, and criticism, we learned that the world is not a safe place. Something within us mobilizes to protect our tender heart from further stings and insults .The Hidden Reasons We Don't Let Love In  -- John Amodeo Ph.D., MFT
  2.  
  3. The one who loves me will hurt me.
     
    1. It's inevitable
  4.  
  5. Fruit in the Behaviors -- all focused around protection from the other leading to relationship sabotage
     
    1. Undue criticism of the other --you are not enough for me.
  6.  
    1. Withdrawal and isolation -- one of Nathanson's strategies for coping with shame. 
      1. Paul Simon

Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock I am an island
And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries 
  1. Avoidance 
  2. Pursuing unavailable people
I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with trauma and death.” 
― Zachary Quinto
  1. Pushing others away
     
    1. Basically, love is scary when it contrasts with childhood trauma. In that situation, the beloved feels compelled to act in ways that hurt the lover: behaving in a punitive manner, distancing themselves and pushing love away.  Robert Firestone
  2.  
    1. “You push people away, Marley. You don't realise it, but you do. You close yourself off to anyone and anything that doesn't fit in your perfect little hamster ball of life. But you can't experience love only on your own terms. It doesn't work that way.” 

― Kate Lattey, Dream On
  1. Aggression -- Fueled by anger.
     
    1. Attacking others is one of Nathanson's four strategies of coping with shame.  Why do we attack?  We are afraid, we are struggling with shame.    

    1. “Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.     St. Francis de Sales
  3.  
  4. Emotionally disconnecting from the relationship
     
    1. Out of anger. Harden my Heart -- 1982 Hit Sung by Quarterflash  … I'm gonna harden my heart, I'm gonna swallow my tears, I'm gonna turn and leave you here
  5.  
    1. Out of fear and shame  

“Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the ‘off’ position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - ‘the lost child’ - who is forced to ‘choose’ and habituate to the freeze response… Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type’s defenses develop around classical dissociation.” 
― Pete Walker
  1. Dietrich von Hildebrand -- shrinking away from commitment.  
  2. Difficulties receiving partial, incomplete, imperfect love -- as replacements for God's love
     
    1. Glazed carrots.  Side dish, not the main entrée.  

    1. Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons And Everyday Spirituality :  Allow people to love you as they must love you, not as you want them to love you. Even God does not love us as we wish Him to. Learning to love is learning to accept love as it comes
  4.  
  5. Spiritual
     
    1. Disconnecting from God, who is love.  
      1. Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.  Blaise Pascal
         
        1. We to love God to know Him
      2.  
        1. And so we have to find him lovable -- and so often parts of us don't find him lovable.  

        1. Need for Faith and Hope -- Infused virtues.  

      5. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. Timothy Keller

    1. everyone wants perfect love... no one wants to be a perfect lover... - Author: Brijesh Singh  

    1. Being loved by God is often even more difficult
       
      1. I John 4:8  "…God is love."  Issues around God images (IIC 23-29)
    2.  
      1. God is not as tangible, immediate
    3.  
      1. Transferences to God
    4.  
      1. Projections onto God.
    5.  
      1. Edward Vacek:  Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics.  The sequence in loving and being loved.    (1) God affirms us; (2) God receives a; (3) we accept God’s love; (4) we affirm God; (5) God forms community with us; (6) we cooperate with God in loving God in the world; and finally (7) we grow in a limited code responsibility with God. p.. 177
         
        1. Problems with the sequence -- not tolerating enough contact with God  to be affirmed, to understand him in a totally different way.  

        1. 1 John 4:19:  We love because he first loved us  


  8. Active vs. passive refusal to be loved.  
    1. Active refusals to be loved are more obvious
    2. Passive refusals to be loved are more common.  
  9. Five attachment tasks
     
    1. Felt sense of safety and protection -- have to go through the valley of shame, fear, anger, grief
  10.  
    1. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood -- have to tolerating being in relationship, being present.  

    1. Feeling comforted, soothed and reassured
  12.  
    1. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in
  13.  
“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.” 
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
  1. Feeling the other has your best interests at heart
  2. Love heals
     
    1. The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love. — Bruce D. Perry
  3.  
    1. “Love alone brings a human being to full awareness of personal existence. For it is in love alone that man finds room enough to be what he is.” ― Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love
  4.  
    1. “Trauma ruptures and hollows. Compassion mends and fills; love heals.” ― Na'ama Yehud
    2. There you have it from a trauma researcher, a philosopher, and a writer -- 
  5. Example of Sr. Josephine Bakhita
     
    1. Born about 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was a member of the Daju people
  6.  
    1. Uncle was a tribal chief, well-to-do family
  7.  
    1. At age 8, kidnapped by slave traders, forcerd to walk barefoot 600 miles to a slave market
  8.  
    1. Over the next 12 years, bought and sold many times, at least 12 times
  9.  
    1. Trauma of the abduction -- Forgot her given name in captivity -- consider that - - a loss of identity
  10.  
    1. Owners varied in their treatment of her.  Some were sadists  Family of  Turkish general
       
      1. Josephine wrote that as soon as one wound would heal, they would inflict another.
    2.  
      1. another woman drew patterns on her skin with flour, then cut into her flesh with a blade. She rubbed the wounds with salt to make the scars permanent. She would suffer a total of 114 scars from this abuse. A total of 114 intricate patterns were cut into her breasts, belly and into her right arm
    3.  

    1. I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me --  I am awaited by this Love. 

  13. Action Plan
     
    1. You gotta pray
  14.  
    1. Point is to focus on developing the relationship with the Persons of the Trinity and with Mary -- as a little child, a little son or daughter.  
    2. Litanies of the Heart - the Litany of the Closed Heart the litany of the fearful heart, the litany of the wounded heart.  Soulsandhearts.com/lit
    3. Books
       
      1. Intimacy in Prayer -- Personal Prayer:  A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love -- by Frs. Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks. 

      1. Fr. Jacques Philippe -- Time for God -- excellent guide for learning pray from a more relational perspective.  I also like Fr. Jacques Philippe's book The way of Trust and Confidence
    5.  
      1. Fr. Thomas Dubay -- Fire Within -- more of a Carmelite approach. 

    7. If you haven't been to confession recently, go.  If you feel like you can't go, I want to hear about it.  
    8. Calling all Catholic therapists and -- Interior Therapist Community is starting our fall groups.  
      1. 80 therapists and graduate students in mental health fields in community -- each of us working on our own human formation, but not in isolation.  New Foundations experiential groups are forming -- and we have advanced groups.  
      2. 2022 Webinar Series: Of Beams and Specks: Therapist-Focused Consultation - Peter Malinoski  $30
      3. Soulsandhearts.com/itc -- call me at 317.567.9594 or email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com
    9.  Weekly reflection -- related to this podcast, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday --  
      1. We do get around to archiving them in the blog section of our website -- soulsandhearts.com/blog
    10. Conversation hours -- every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time call me at 317.567.9594 or email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com.  If I don't pick up, I'm on another call leave a voicemail.  
  15. Patroness and Patron.

What is Interior Integration for Catholics?

The mission of this podcast is the formation of your heart in love and for love, Together, we shore up the natural, human foundation for your spiritual formation as a Catholic. St. Thomas Aquinas asserts that without this inner unity, without this interior integration, without ordered self-love, you cannot enter loving union with God, your Blessed Mother, or your neighbor. Informed by Internal Family Systems approaches and grounded firmly in a Catholic understanding of the human person, this podcast brings you the best information, the illuminating stories, and the experiential exercises you need to become more whole in the natural realm. This restored human formation then frees you to better live out the three loves in the two Great Commandments – loving God, your neighbor, and yourself. Check out the Resilient Catholics Community which grew up around this podcast at https://www.soulsandhearts.com/rcc.