#142: How to Break the Cycle of Your Broken Family

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Has your parents’ divorce or broken family brought pain into your life? Do you fear repeating the cycle of dysfunction or divorce?

You’re not alone—millions face these often unspoken struggles: hidden wounds, emotional problems, broken relationships, and destructive habits. Thankfully, you’re not destined to repeat your family’s dysfunction. 

In this episode, you’ll hear a breakout talk from the SEEK25 conference where you’ll discover the two keys to breaking that cycle and learn actionable tips to build healthy relationships.

About the Speaker:

Endorsed by Jason Evert and Dr. Bob Schuchts, Joey Pontarelli has spoken across the U.S. and internationally.

He is the author of the book “It’s Not Your Fault” and hosts the podcast, “Restored: Helping Children of Divorce,” which has helped thousands of young people.

He has been a guest on EWTN’s TV and radio shows, Dr. Bob Schuchts’s “Restore the Glory” podcast, Jason Evert’s “Lust is Boring” podcast, and Relevant Radio’s “The Drew Mariani Show.”

Joey is married to Brigid, and they love life with their two kids, Lucy and John Paul.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey: [00:00:00] If you come from a divorced family, you're 103 percent more likely to get divorced than someone who comes from an intact family. But if you were to marry someone who also comes from a divorced family, that number goes up to 189%, almost 3x. And if you're like me, hearing all this can be a bit discouraging.

If you're like me, it can leave you feeling like the odds are against you. To the point where so many of us, we give up on love. We give up on marriage and we just settle for the counterfeit. Or if we do try to build love, we end up building unhealthy relationships, weak marriages, and broken families. And the cycle that we badly want to break gets repeated in our own lives.

And so what's the solution? I would propose to break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce, two things are needed. One, we need to heal our brokenness. And two, we need to build virtue. Sounds simple, not as easy to do,~ but if we do that, then as healthy, virtuous people, we can go on and build healthy relationships, strong marriages, and holy families.

~

Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panerelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help [00:01:00] you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life. Question for you. Has your parents divorce or your broken family brought pain into your life?

Do you fear repeating that cycle of dysfunction and divorce? If so, you're not alone. There's millions of us who face these often unspoken struggles, hidden wounds, emotional problems, broken relationships, and destructive habits. Thankfully, you're not destined to repeat your family's dysfunction. In this episode, you'll hear a breakout talk that I gave at the SEEK25 conference, where you'll discover the two keys to breaking that cycle and learn actionable tips to build healthy relationships.

Now, if you're not familiar with the SEEK conference, it's a conference of 20, 000 people, mostly young people, mostly college students. And I had a Breakout session at that conference in a room of 2000. Now they actually had to cut off the line and not let more people into the room since so many people wanted to be there because of how relevant this topic is.

And we got a lot of solid feedback from the audience who with multiple people saying they took five pages of notes [00:02:00] that it was their favorite talk of the day or even the entire conference. And it was such an honor to build and deliver this talk for the college students at the conference. And so. If you're from a broken family, where things are just really dysfunctional, or maybe your parents are divorced or separated, this episode, this talk, is for you.

Now, I do mention God and faith a little bit in the talk, because the audience was primarily a Catholic Christian audience of college students. Now, if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone listening to this podcast for a while knows that this is not a strictly religious podcast, so wherever you're at, I'm really glad you're here.

If you don't believe in God, my challenge to you is just this. Listen with an open mind. Even if you were to skip or take out the God part, you're still going to benefit a lot from this episode. With that, here's the talk.

So good to be with you guys. Let's start with the prayer in the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Jesus, I ask you to be here with us. Lord, speak through me so that what I say may be helpful. Give us all the graces we need to become saints, brokenness and build virtue so we can build the [00:03:00] healthy, beautiful relationships that you want us to build in our lives.

And we ask all this through your mother as we pray, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, for through thy womb, Jesus, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and of our death, Amen. I send you humble and great, blessed pure Giorgio, and holy family, in the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

When my friend Mary was just a little girl, she would watch her parents fight all the time. Their marriage was a mess and they needed help, but they never got the help that they needed, and so the dysfunction just continued on for years. Fast forward to when Mary was in high school, her mom decided to divorce her dad.

And what honestly seemed like a solution to a really bad and messy situation just made things worse for Mary. It was just one trauma on top of another. Now up to that point, she didn't really act out. She just held her pain inside. But that all changed when she went to [00:04:00] college. She got into the party scene, she started drinking heavily.

That led to dating the wrong guy. She ended up marrying one of those guys who was a drug addict and alcoholic. And as you'd imagine, their marriage was a mess as well. That only led to more problems and more trauma. And eventually, she divorced her husband, repeating that cycle. And once the dust settled, she fell into a deep depression and started dealing with a lot of emotional problems.

Whenever I think of Mary, whenever I tell her story, I can't help but ask, could that have been avoided? Or was she somehow doomed to repeat? that cycle of dysfunction in her own life. Like Mary, I also come from a broken family. I'll never forget the day when my mom shared the news that dad would no longer be living with us.

In fact, they were getting divorced. As a 10 year old boy, I didn't know what to do with that news. I couldn't cope with it. And so I remember just hiding in the closet and crying. And sitting in the closet, I couldn't have put it in towards then, but it felt abandoned. I felt unwanted. I felt like I just wasn't good enough.

And in the months and years that followed, I dealt with all sorts of pain and problems, like emotional problems, anxiety, depression, loneliness, a lot of anger for me as a boy. [00:05:00] I dealt with bad habits. One of my buddies at the time introduced me to pornography, and so that became my drug of choice, my way of numbing the pain that I felt.

But the biggest area of my life in which I struggled was in my relationships. I remember after my parents split, swearing that I would never get married. Because if this is where love and marriage leads, why in the world would I want to go down that route? And so I was really afraid of love relationships.

And when it came my time to, you know, start dating and building love, I felt super lost. I felt really incompetent at it. But it wasn't really until high school when this whole fear of repeating the cycle. hit me in the face. I just started liking this great girl, like, good Catholic girl who I could see myself marrying one day.

But I was terrified that my relationship with this great girl would one day end the way that my parents marriage had. And so the question on my mind was, how do I avoid that? How do I not go down that path? But what I saw around me wasn't very encouraging. I knew well at least five families that were falling [00:06:00] apart going through a divorce.

Eventually, the studies I saw weren't much more helpful. One study found that if you come from a divorced family, you're 103 percent more likely to get divorced than someone who comes from an intact family. But if you were to marry someone who also comes from a divorced family, that number goes up to 189 percent according to this one study.

Almost 3x. And if you're like me, hearing all this can be a bit discouraging. If you're like me It can leave you feeling like the odds are against you. To the point where so many of us, we give up on love, we give up on marriage, and we just settle for the counterfeit. Or if we do try to build love, we end up building unhealthy relationships, weak marriages, and broken families.

And the cycle that we badly want to break gets repeated in our own lives. And so what's the solution? I would propose to break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce, two things are needed. One, we need to heal our brokenness. And two, we need to build virtue. It sounds simple, not as easy to do, but if we do that, [00:07:00] then as healthy, virtuous people.

We can go on and build healthy relationships, strong marriages, and holy families. And you guys, this is so doable. I've seen it. I've seen really beautiful couples where one or both of the spouses come from broken families, and they're working hard with God's grace to build really beautiful marriages and families.

And that's what I'm working on in my life as well. Thankfully what you heard of my story wasn't the end of it. I was able to, you know, just work through a lot of healing and building virtue to the point where I no longer struggle with bigger, constant emotional problems. I was able to get porn outta my life and start living a pure life with the help of Jason Everett.

And when it came to my relationships, it definitely didn't happen overnight, but I was able to work through a lot of the fears and struggles and insecurities to the point where I was able to pursue my wife. We were able to get married, start a family. I want to introduce you guys to my family. That's Bridget, my wife.

Uh, that's Lucy, our daughter. She's three. And that's John Paul, who's, uh, six months old. He's, he's here right now. Bridget and John Paul are actually here right now. So we've been married. Thank you. [00:08:00] Thank you. We've been married almost seven years now. And I'll be honest with you guys. Marish has been hard for me, but it's definitely been good for me and has made me a better man.

And I absolutely love being a dad. Like I freaking love being a dad. It's so good. I want to show you more pictures of the kids. So this is Lucy at a local farm nearby. They have this thing called farm school. So she literally goes to farm school. It's the cutest thing. This is a picture of her there.

That's Jean Paul. He's actually in training to become the next James Bond. Couldn't tell. But absolutely love. I love being a dad and I say all that not to brag, God deserves the credit, but just to show you guys like if someone like me can do it, like you guys can certainly do it. And so in this talk, you're not going to get a lecture from someone with a PhD or a psychologist.

That's not me. But just a few really practical tips that have been super helpful for me in my life. And so some of those practical tips are going to be just on how to heal. [00:09:00] We're also going to talk about how to build virtue, because once we've done that, that enables us to love better. And then we're going to talk about the three relationships I think that are most impacted by coming from a broken family, our relationship with our parents, we're going to talk about romantic relationships, and then we're also going to talk about our relationship with God.

And so we have a lot to cover. Um, but does that all sound helpful? Then let's dive in. Before I dive in, I just want to tell you guys, there's a lot of, uh, resources that I'll mention if you guys want to go deeper. Uh, at the end of the talk, there will be a way for us to just email you all those resources in case you don't want to spend the whole talk writing things down.

So I'll tell you at the end, uh, how to do that. When it comes to healing, where do we start? Just like in the medical world, I think we first need to start by diagnosing our emotional wounds. For so many of us, we're kind of a mystery to ourselves, right? We don't really understand why we think, feel, and act the way that we do.

But what controls so much of our behavior is our subconscious, right? Especially the untreated wounds within our [00:10:00] subconscious. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said it this way, he said, unless you make the subconscious It will rule your life, and you will call it fate. Unless you make the subconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.

That act of making the subconscious conscious is self knowledge. That's where healing begins. But it doesn't stop there. Self knowledge leads to self awareness in our relationships and everyday situations. Self awareness leads to self mastery in the way that we think and the way that we act. And self mastery is meant to lead to self gift.

So essentially we grow in self knowledge so we can increase our capacity to love. That's the goal of healing. The goal of healing is not some sort of perfection, it's not creating some sort of utopia in which you never suffer again, that's not realistic. The goal of healing is really becoming more virtuous, becoming like Jesus, and being freer to love.

And so we're going to talk about relationships later, like I said, but we have to start here with healing. And so to grow in self knowledge, it's really helpful to hear what researchers have found [00:11:00] about how divorce affects the children. So they found that children of divorce are more likely to struggle with things like social problems, behavioral problems, they're more likely to struggle in their relationship with their parents, in romantic relationships, they're less likely to get married, less likely to have children, more likely to get divorced, like we discussed, they're at higher risk for suicidal attempts.

More health problems, more emotional problems, and lower self esteem. Dr. Judith Wallerstein was one of the researchers who worked on this problem for many, many years. She studied children who were divorced for 25 years at UC Berkeley. Two main takeaways from her research. One, she said the full effects from your parents divorce actually aren't experienced until adulthood.

She called it the sleeper effect. It doesn't mean you're not affected beforehand, but she found in her research has the full effects, the most serious effects come out about college age and beyond. The second thing she said was the biggest area of your life that's impacted by your parents divorce is your romantic relationships, especially your future [00:12:00] marriage.

But perhaps you're thinking, Joey, my parents divorce was pretty civil, right? They weren't throwing cats and plates at each other. It was pretty civil. Dr. Paul Amato is a researcher at Penn State. He's a sociologist there who studied children of divorce for many, many years. He says that when marriages end in divorce, they typically fall into one of two categories, high conflict or low conflict.

He says high conflict means that the problems within the marriage are very overt and obvious to the children. It might include things like abuse, violence, a lot of bad conflict, and a lot of just visible dysfunction. He says less than 30 percent of divorces actually fit within this category. On the other hand, we have low conflict, which means the problems within the marriage are more covert.

They're more hidden from the children. And he says that more than 70 percent of divorces actually fit within this category. And so a model says that low conflict divorces are typically the most traumatic to the children. Seems kind of [00:13:00] counterintuitive. Why is that? In high conflict families, the situation itself is traumatic.

And while a divorce can certainly be even more traumatic, it can add to the trauma. Typically, the children do benefit from some sort of a separation as a protective measure. It's kind of the lesser of two really bad options, even though, as a church, we'd say, the goal is to heal the family and bring the marriage back together.

But in low conflict families, right, things seem to be fine to the children until they're not. And then the parents separate, and it brings a lot of confusion, a lot of pain, a lot of trauma into their life. But why are divorce and these high conflict families so traumatic? Here's why. Each child deserves their mother, their father, and stability that is built upon their love.

But so often what happens in these situations is that our parents love for each other usually vanishes. We're often physically and emotionally left without mom, without dad, or maybe without both. And as a result, instability reigns [00:14:00] within our families and even within ourselves. Divorce is especially traumatic because it's truly the death of a family.

We don't talk about that a lot in our culture, but it's truly the death of a family. And so if you've struggled, if you felt hurt because of what you've been through, to me it makes perfect sense. One girl told me, she's like, Joey, after my parents separated, like, it was super painful for me. Everyone at school knew my parents had separated, and everyone acted like it wasn't a big deal.

In fact, some people maybe just said, oh, it's for the best, everyone's happier. And she said, it was so confusing to me, because it was so painful for me, that it led me to think, maybe something's wrong with me for feeling this way. But the Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, had the perfect response to this.

He said, an abnormal response to an abnormal situation, Is a normal behavior. In other words, there's nothing wrong with her with you for feeling that way. Your pain, your struggles make sense given what you've been through. Now while that validation is helpful and even healing, what are some other things that we can do [00:15:00] in order to heal?

I want to share four tips that you can start immediately. That have helped me. One, engage your story. Each of us has a story as if it were a novel or a movie and to engage your story means to reflect on it in an active and constructive way, especially to reflect on the relationships that formed us and nothing forms us more than our relationship with our parents.

And neurobiologists have actually found that this act of reflecting on your story is healing on a neurobiological level. They say that one measure of brain health is neural connectivity. Think of your brain as a web of neurons. The more connection between the neurons, the healthier your brain is. This act of reflecting on your story increases neural connectivity, thereby making your brain healthier and making you healthier.

If you take that a step further And share your story with someone who can receive it with empathy, like a competent therapist, a good friend, maybe a mentor. That's also healing on a neurobiological level. Next, write about emotionally significant events in your life. Dr. James [00:16:00] Penbaker and his wife, early in their marriage, they were really doubting that they should have gotten married at all.

And he was, he was really struggling in particular. He was super depressed, lonely, and he would kind of lock himself alone at his house. And at one point he just decided to start writing about everything that he was experiencing. Just no filter. He did that for three days. After those three days, something amazing happened.

His depression just left him. And so he spent the rest of his career studying this link between writing and healing, writing and emotional processing. And what he'd do in his research is you take a group of people, he'd split them into two. He'd say, group number one. You guys just write about emotionally significant events in your life, things that have been painful and emotionally heavy to you.

Group number two, you guys just write about mundane, everyday things like your shoes, the weather, whatever. Just do it for four days, for 20 minutes each day, that's it. After doing tons of these studies, they found that the people who wrote about the emotionally significant events in their lives were healthier, happier, less depressed, less anxious, had higher quality relationships, [00:17:00] better memory, and more success at work, among other things.

And apparently there's been thousands of studies to confirm these findings. Now Dr. Penbaker, he actually has books to guide you through those writing exercises. It's not the same thing as like, mindless journaling, and those books have been super helpful for me. We can send you links to those in that email I mentioned.

Find someone to guide you. Dr. Gaber Mate, who speaks and writes a lot about trauma, said this, Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside of us in the absence of an empathetic witness. And so in order to heal, we need an empathetic witness. We need a guide. And so I'd encourage you guys find a competent therapist, find a trained spiritual director, find just wise mentors in your life who can guide you because healing happens in relationships, right?

Healing happens in relationships. Love. is the antidote to trauma. And I've personally benefited from like 15 years of spiritual direction, then seven years of counseling. And I, I'd have to say that the most healing that I've ever [00:18:00] experienced aside from my relationship with God has been in these mentor relationships.

So I definitely encourage you guys to do that. And it's especially helpful to, uh, if you're dealing with maybe heavy emotional problems like anxiety, depression, or maybe, you know, an addiction, something like that. And if you need help finding someone, we have some recommendations through my apostolate.

And finally, ask God to heal you. All these healing tactics that I'm talking about, these human healing tactics, they're good. They're helpful. But eventually we're going to hit a ceiling. God can heal us in ways that we can never heal ourselves. And so we need his grace, his life inside of us. But since, you know, here at Seek, you guys are getting so many good talks by people way smarter than me on spiritual growth, spiritual formation.

I'm not going to go too deep into it, but just one tip that's been helpful for me, adoration. Adoration has been so helpful in healing for me. When you're there, I just encourage you guys to say this simple prayer, Lord, I want to be well. Lord, I want to be well. And then let Jesus as the divine physician do his slow work of healing.

All right. So in summary, we need to heal so we don't repeat that cycle of dysfunction and divorce, but that's only half of the equation, [00:19:00] right? We need to very intentionally build virtue as well. But how do we build virtue? In essence, like virtue means building good habits and breaking the bad ones, right?

We all know that. But a few tips that have been really helpful for me, one, develop emotional agility. So often when we feel pain, when we feel difficult emotions in our lives, we turn to sin as a quick fix. Just like I turned to porn, right, to numb my pain, even though it was damaging my soul, and it was destroying my ability to love.

That's why we need to learn how to properly navigate our emotions, which isn't an easy thing to do, but Dr. Susan David from the Harvard Medical School says to do that, we need to develop what's called emotional agility. Emotional agility is the ability to feel and face your emotions. We're not ignoring them, we're not stuffing them away, we're not denying them, we're feeling them and facing them.

And then choosing your response. In a way that aligns with your deepest held beliefs. We would essentially call that virtue. One tip she shares to do that is to create a space [00:20:00] between stimulus and response. Again, she quotes Viktor Frankl, who I quoted earlier. He said that between stimulus and response, there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and our freedom. I'm going to say that again. Between stimulus, the thing that makes us feel something, and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Essentially what we need to do is we need to lengthen that space. We need to pause, we need to slow down, we need to take a deep breath and detach from the intensity of the emotions so we can choose our response with our minds. Next, fill your human needs. So often we fall into vice, we fall into sin because we're not filling our legitimate human needs.

I've seen this again and again in my own life, and it's kind of tempting, I think, to over spiritualize this stuff, but I think it's this simple. If we take care of our human needs, we're going to remove so much temptation. And so we need to take care of ourselves in four areas. Our bodies need good sleep.[00:21:00]

College kids aren't great at that, but our bodies need good sleep, right? We need seven to eight hours according to, to the expert. I wasn't good at that as a college student, I should say. So seven to eight hours, good quality sleep. We need good nutrition. We didn't unprocessed clean foods, right? And half a gallon to a gallon of water every single day.

And we need exercise. We need movement. Walking is a great place to start. There's a lot of good research behind that. But eventually there's more and more research coming out that says like weightlifting is so good for you, especially as you age, it helps you stay young. Our souls need God's grace, right?

God's life inside of us, which we primarily get through the sacraments, through a deep interior life and through good deeds. But we also need experiences of goodness, truth, and beauty. And it's not just limited to church, right? We need it with our friends in nature, through music, stories, the list goes on.

Our hearts need intimacy, right? We need relationships. We need people to love and people to love us. And our minds need challenges, essentially. We need to learn new things and have new experiences. And so my question to you guys would be like, what's just one area where maybe you're lacking a little bit?

Make a simple plan to just [00:22:00] start improving there. Next, practice the virtues. The Catechism says that to be virtuous We have to learn the virtues and then practice them very deliberately, just like we'd practice any sort of skill. When it comes to learning the virtues, I'd probably just recommend Father Mike Schmitz's Catechism in a Year, especially the parts on virtue, you'll learn a lot there, but for hacks on practicing the virtues, I highly recommend actually a secular book, which you guys have probably heard of, uh, called Atomic Habits.

Atomic Habits by James Clare, great book, and in it, he breaks down the four parts of a habit. And this is super helpful if you want to build virtue to know these things. First is the cue, then the craving, then the response, then the reward. I'll explain each. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior.

The craving is the desire that you have for the reward. The response is the actual habit, the behavior you perform. And the reward is, of course, the satisfaction you get from the habit. Now imagine that you maybe have the habit of grabbing your [00:23:00] phone every time it buzzes, right? Buzzes with maybe a notification for a text message, let's say.

The cue is your phone buzzing with the new text message. The craving is that you want to know what the text says. The response is you grabbing your phone and reading the text message. And the reward is that you feel satisfied now knowing what the text message says. But let's say you want to break that habit.

James Clear says that you need to do one or more of these things. He said, make the cue invisible. unattractive, make the response difficult, make the reward unsatisfying. So in our example of grabbing the phone, I think the easiest and simplest switch would be to make the cue invisible, turning off all of your text message notifications maybe, or just putting your phone on do not disturb during certain hours.

That's how to break a bad habit, right? To build a good habit, he says make the cue obvious, Make the craving attractive, make the response easy, and make the [00:24:00] reward satisfying. And we can talk about more of what that looks like during the Q& A if you guys want to. But one more tip from the book, the two minute rule.

The two minute rule is where you perform any habit that you're trying to build for just two minutes and then you stop. And do this for a period of time. In the book, he tells a story about one guy who would go to the gym. He really struggled exercising, so he'd go to the gym and perform a two minute workout, that was it, and then he'd leave.

He did that enough times to where he got in the habit of going to the gym and working out, then he started doing full length workouts. Within a year, it sounds kind of silly, right? But within a year or so, he lost a hundred pounds. Next, refuse to be a victim. One of the biggest barriers that I see to building virtue is victim mentality, right?

It's something that's really plaguing our society right now. Building virtue requires a ton of action, but victim mentality keeps us feeling stuck, feeling powerless, waiting for someone to rescue us and do the work for us. One guy who absolutely destroyed victim [00:25:00] mentality is a guy by the name of Ryan Jobe.

Ryan Jobe was a Navy SEAL. He fought in the Middle East and Iraq, and one day when they were clearing buildings, he got hit in the face with a sniper's bullet. He survived, but he would never again see. He was completely blind. Absolutely devastating. What Ryan could have done As he could have been totally debilitated by his wounds.

He could have just given up. He could have just remained a victim, because he truly was a victim in that situation. But he refused. He said, losing my vision will not stop me from living a good and meaningful life. And so as a blind man, he did some incredible things. He summited Mount Rainier. If you guys aren't familiar, Mount Rainier is a mountain out in Washington State.

It's 14, 000 feet high, not an easy climb. Every year on average, like one to two people die climbing Mount Rainier. He did it as a blind man. He trained for a triathlon, he earned his bachelor's degree and got a 4. 0, he successfully hunted an elk as a blind man, he married his girlfriend, and they had a baby together.

Two lessons I learned from him. One, his pain. Became a [00:26:00] catalyst for growth instead of a barrier to it. And I think the difference between Ryan and people who just give up is that he's simply standing on top of his pain and his problems instead of being crushed by them. Next, Ryan was so resilient. I think the reason he was so resilient is because he did hard things, right?

Obviously as a seal, he was like constantly doing hard things, but he suffered in those smaller ways so that he can handle that big suffering. And so we need to do the same. And so I actually challenge you guys this week at seek. Take the stairs. Take a cold shower. Like if that's kind of intimidating, one thing that I've done is do 30 seconds of like cold water at the beginning of your shower or 30 seconds at the end.

Give up social media for the week. You know, do a hard exercise. Don't kill yourself, but do a hard exercise. Just do hard things, get tough. But one of the biggest areas of bad habits for people like us is in unwanted sexual behavior. Dr. Patrick Carnes, an expert on sexual addiction, he found that 87 percent of people who struggle with a [00:27:00] sexual addiction come from a broken family.

Almost nine out of ten. I learned that from Jay Stringer. Jay Stringer is a Christian therapist who's studied almost 4, 000 men and women who struggle with sexual compulsion or addiction, whether it's porn, masturbation, cheating, buying sex, the list goes on. By the end of his research, they were able to predict the type of trauma that someone endured, especially in their families, based on the type of sexual fantasies and porn searches that they sought out.

In other words, it wasn't random. There was actually a pattern to it. Because of that, he says if you want to break free, you have to listen to your lust. Sounds kind of odd. What does he mean? He's of course not encouraging us to fall into lust, but rather to deeply understand it. Why? Because lust is just a symptom.

It's just a symptom of a deeper wound. It pinpoints where more healing is needed. And so I'd highly recommend checking out his book called Unwanted. We did a podcast episode with him as well, [00:28:00] but a few other resources at the conference. That will help you in this area. Matt Fradd and Jason Everett wrote a great book called forged.

It's a 33 day challenge for men to grow in purity. You can get that at the chastity project booth. If you're interested, the books didn't show up yet. There's a problem with the shipment that we had. Uh, so there'll be there tomorrow at some point. So you can get the forge book. If you want to Magdala ministries, perhaps you guys have heard of them.

They're a great ministry to help women who are struggling with sexual compulsion or addiction. They have a booth here as well. And so check that out. Rachel Kulaki, their leader, one of their leaders, she wrote a book called love and recovery about. her own struggles with sexual addiction, sexual compulsion.

So check that out. Um, Kelsey Skok is another one who, speaker, author, who wrote a book on her struggles with sexual compulsion. So you can get that one at the Chastity Project booth as well. And the Magdala Ministries is here as well. They have a booth not far from Chastity Project if you want to check that out.

And there's a lot of other resources we can send you guys in that email as well. But just to kind of summarize again, to break the cycle, again, we have to start with our own healing and building virtue. So we're freer to love. But how do we [00:29:00] practically build strong, healthy relationships? Again, I want to talk about three types of relationships.

Our relationship with our parents, romantic relationships, and our relationship with God. In college, I really struggled in my relationship with my dad. Like, he was in a really tough spot, and he was just acting out in a lot of ways that were harming people that I cared about. And so I felt convicted that if I were to continue my relationship with him, almost pretending like this stuff wasn't happening, I would kind of be tacitly approving that behavior.

And so again, I felt convicted to cut off communication with him, not an easy decision, but I didn't want to just ghost him. I wanted him to know why I was doing it. And so I wrote him a letter talking to him face to face at that time wouldn't have gone super well. So I wrote him this letter and I said, dad, I love you.

I want a good relationship with you. But as long as you act in this way, unfortunately that isn't possible. But as soon as I see your behavior start to change, I'll be more than happy to restart the relationship with you. We didn't talk for a year and a half. That was hard. But eventually his behavior did [00:30:00] change, and we were able to resume the relationship.

We're in a much better spot today. And so I'm not encouraging you guys to just, you know, cut off communication with your parents. That's an extreme. That takes a lot of discernment. But for any relationship to be healthy, boundaries are needed. And boundaries aren't just good for you, they're good for the relationship and the person on the other end as well.

But so often boundaries can kind of feel mean, especially if you're not used to, you know, using them in your life. Because it's true. It's true. Boundaries sometimes hurt. But there's a difference between hurt and harm. Hurt is pain that doesn't damage the person. It might even help them, like a life saving surgery.

Harm is pain that damages the person, like abuse. But to be a little bit more specific, so often boundaries are needed in a few areas, parents especially who are, you know, are going through a lot of pain through their own divorce or a lot of brokenness in the family kind of struggle in these areas we've learned.

One, bad mouthing. So often mom and dad just kind of speak badly about the other in our presence. Two, the middleman situation. So we're often expected as the children to maybe relay [00:31:00] information between mom and dad because they're not on speaking terms. And then spousification. Or mom or dad kind of rely on us as their emotional support and confidant.

And during Q and A, if you guys want to talk a little bit more about some tips on how to set boundaries in each of those situations, I'm happy to go into that. We also have a podcast episode on boundaries. If you guys are interested, we could send that to you. Next, if possible, deepen your relationship with mom and dad.

Now, if the relationship is abusive, or, you know, it's damaging to you, or maybe mom or dad don't want a relationship with you, which is super hard, obviously this isn't going to be realistic, but if you can, a good relationship with mom and dad is super important. Here's why. There was a study they did on high school students in Turkey.

And as you'd expect, they found that the students who came from divorced families were more likely to struggle with things like anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But if they had a good relationship with one or both parents, they were much less likely to struggle with anxiety, depression, and so it's definitely worth a shot to deepen your relationship with your parents.

Again, during Q& A if you want to, I [00:32:00] can throw out some ideas for how to better bond with your parents. Next, work toward forgiving your parents. Forgiveness isn't the first step of healing, it often comes later, but it's so freeing, like I've experienced that in my own life. Here's my definition of forgiveness though.

It's a continual decision to release someone of a debt they owe you for a past wrong they committed. And it involves a process. Two places to start, Father Mike Schmidt says that before we can forgive, we have to count the costs. We have to assess the damage, we have to tally it up before we can release them of the repayment that they owe us.

Father John Burns, he says too that the Latin word for mercy is misericordia, which literally means to be moved by the misery of another. Kind of a scary thing to do. But we need to ask the question, like, what was going on in their life that caused them to harm me in this way? That compassion is the start of forgiveness.

But a few final things, quick things about your relationship with your parents. If you're worried about your parents souls, remember that people can change, you [00:33:00] can't change them. People can change, you can't change them. Instead, just focus on living a holy life. Be an example to them and entrust them to God's mercy.

And remember that God desires to save them even more than you do. And one tactic that I've heard Jason Everett recommend is To ask all the religious sisters like here at Sikh to pray for your parents. You can write their name on a piece of paper, cut it up and hand it to them if you want to. And just, Hey, would you pray for this person?

You pray for my mom, my dad. But as much as we might struggle in our relationship with our parents, romantic relationships are really the hardest for people like us. Why do we struggle so much here? Our families are meant to be the school of love, right? And in broken families, essentially we get really poor training and how to love and how to build a relationship.

And so when it's our turn to be love. We often feel lost. We feel incompetent at it. We fear that our relationship will one day end the way that our parents did, like I experienced. And healthy relationships might even feel foreign and boring because we're so used to drama and dysfunction. But to build love that lasts, [00:34:00] the starting point is what we've been talking about, right?

Healing your brokenness, building virtue. Because if you want a great marriage, it starts with you. It has nothing to do with your relationship. Why is that? It's simple. You, and eventually your spouse, are the lid on your marriage. Your marriage will only be as healthy, happy, and holy as each of you are individually.

And what I've seen in the great marriages I've been blessed to know is this truth. The more virtuous the spouses, the happier the marriage. The more virtuous the spouses, the happier the marriage always. But beyond healing and building virtue, a few quick tips. Find a virtuous spouse. One guy said that marriage is the type of game where you win or lose the championship in the draft.

So we need to find virtuous spouses. But what sort of virtues should you look for? Obviously you want someone who has all the virtues, but I'd highlight a few. Find someone who's humble. Humility is the foundation of all the virtues. And within marriage, it's so helpful because it gives you the ability to apologize and to forgive your spouse.

And that [00:35:00] happens a lot. You can ask my wife. She's a pro at forgiveness. Find someone who's selfless, someone who has a heart for others. The best way you can tell if they have this heart for others, how do they spend their time and their money? Are they doing that selfishly or are they doing that to serve others?

That's one of the things that actually attracted me to my wife. Like, she's a nurse and she was always involved in ministry and just clearly had a heart for other people. Find someone who's living the virtue of chastity. We hear a lot about chastity. Why is it so important? A big part of it is because at the core of chastity is self mastery.

And self mastery is just an essential skill within a marriage because it gives you the ability to die to yourself and do what's best for your spouse and your children. Find someone who has empathy. Empathy is so helpful because within marriage, conflict is going to happen, and the goal is just to make that conflict healthy.

And empathy is so helpful because it gives you the ability to step into someone else's shoes, to see things through their eyes. Find someone who has a growth mindset. A growth mindset is basically just the belief that you can change, you can grow, you can get better. A fixed mindset is the opposite. It's the belief that you just can't change, can't grow, you're kind [00:36:00] of stuck the way that you are.

Why is this so important? Because you don't just marry the person that they are today, you marry the person that they will become. And one of the greatest indications of who they will become is their action and attitude toward growth, and so pay attention to that. Find someone who you could be friends with, someone who gets you, because marriage is so much more than romance and sex.

In fact, it probably could be said that the quality of a marriage is best measured by the quality of the friendship between the spouses. Not their sex life, not the romance, not the feelings that they have for each other. As good as and important as all of those things are, it's not the ultimate measure.

Find someone you want your children to be like. Just ask yourself this question when you're dating someone, do I want my children to be like this person? Find someone who's on the same page with you in these areas. God, money, parenting, in laws, and intimacy. So God, someone who ideally shares your faith.

Money, someone who has a similar vision of how you want to manage and spend your money. Parenting, someone who obviously wants to have kids and has a similar vision for how to form them and raise them. [00:37:00] And then in laws, someone who can, you know, good boundaries and have a healthy relationship with their families.

In intimacy, someone who can set healthy boundaries, you know, around sexual intimacy, especially, you know, outside of marriage, but then even boundaries within marriage and obviously some effort towards keeping, you know, intimacy, emotional, sexual intimacy in your marriage is super important. If you're on the same page in these areas, researchers say that the likelihood of you having a successful marriage just like shoots up.

And when marriages fall apart, if you notice, like it's usually because one or more of these things aren't aligned. But when discerning all this, we have to be careful. John Paul II said that as a rule, we exaggerate the goodness, the virtue of the person that we love. He says as a rule, we all do this. And so we need to ask the question, is this person actually virtuous?

And we shouldn't discern alone, right? Because love is blinding. We all know this. And so involve your family if you can, involve your friends, and actively ask for feedback. Okay, do you guys see any red flags? Like, what do you think about this relationship? Don't wait for people to bring feedback to you because they might not.

And it might be scary. You might not like the [00:38:00] answers that you get, but it will save you a lot of heartache. I really wish I'd done this sooner in some of my relationships. I remember after one of my relationships ended, uh, one of my best friends was like, Oh yeah, I saw this happening like six months ago.

I'm like, bro, like would have been helpful to know that. But to be fair, to be fair, I probably wouldn't have listened to him. But most of all, place all of this in God's hands. Like trust him. Like, he'll provide for you to the degree that you rely on him. I know the dating world right now is kind of a hot mess, like, it's really tricky out there for you guys.

I do not envy you, and so make sure to just trust God above all else. And take to heart the words of Curtis Martin, who said so well, he said, don't pursue your soulmate, pursue God, and after a while of running after him, turn to see who's keeping up with you. Next, set healthy expectations for marriage.

Perhaps you've heard of the Paris syndrome. The Paris syndrome is a psychological condition where when tourists go to Paris, France, they suffer extreme shock, disappointment, and other symptoms. This isn't a [00:39:00] joke. It's been documented by medical journalists. Like, they get so disrupted that they have to either go home or get medical attention.

What's going on here? Basically, the messy reality of Paris did not live up to the romantic expectations they had, and as a result, they were greatly disappointed. Similarly, if our expectations for marriage are unhealthy, if they're off, it's going to cause a lot of problems. And one popular unhealthy expectation that so many of us have, even in the Catholic world, is believing that the purpose of marriage is happiness.

The purpose of marriage is not happiness. The purpose of marriage is holiness, and of course having children and forming them. But nowhere in the wedding vows is happiness promised. I know, super romantic, but this is important. This is important because underneath almost every divorce is this belief.

Consciously or not, we expect our spouse to make us perfectly happy. And when they don't, we tend to think, hmm, maybe I married the wrong person. Maybe I picked the wrong location, I mean, I might even be tempted to leave. And so, your marriage will suffer to [00:40:00] the extent that you expect your spouse to make you perfectly happy.

Only God can do that. But does that mean there's no place for happiness within marriage? No, of course, of course there is. It's a good thing to make your spouse happy, to just enjoy all the happiness that comes with marriage. But don't be fooled. Marriage is hard work. It doesn't come to your door in a prime box.

We've been so conditioned in our culture that if we want something, we click a button and it shows up in a few days. Not so with marriage. Marriage is more like farming. It takes time to see the fruit of your labor, but we all know this. We don't know that the best things in life take hard work. Ask any Olympian how they won a gold medal.

They're not going to say they did it by sitting on the couch and watching Netflix. They put in the work every single day, especially when they didn't feel like it. If we want great marriages, why should we expect any less? And so one of the most helpful tactics that has worked for me and a lot of other people to set healthy expectations for marriage is just spending time with good couples, with good families.

Like, just soak in the presence of like their healthy, functional family. It will be so healing and helpful for you as well. And we can talk [00:41:00] about more how to build those relationships during Q& A if you guys want to. And again, I've like benefited from those two families in particular that were just super helpful and healing for me.

Next, prepare for the temptation to quit. This is probably the most unpopular thing I'll say in this talk, but be prepared for this. Expect things within your marriages to get difficult. Expect times where you just don't want to be married, where you'd rather quit and walk away. It might be days. It might be seasons.

For some of you, it'll maybe happen right away. For others, years down the road. And if you're shocked, if this is kind of scandalizing to you, think about it. Why do we make the vow? Why do we make the vow? If we were never tempted to quit, the vow really wouldn't be necessary. Desire alone would hold the marriage together.

And so when you or maybe your friends struggle within your marriage, just remember that you shouldn't believe the lie, that there's only two options. To stay married and be miserable, or get divorced and be happy. There is a third option. You can heal your marriage. You can make it strong. And there's a lot of great resources out there.

Again, during Q& A, if you guys want to, we could talk about [00:42:00] that. There's obviously so much more to say about relationships, but we can email you guys an entire talk we've done on this topic. There's a guide we have on it to building healthy relationships. And I also recommend Jason Everett's book, how to find your soulmate without losing your soul.

Such a good one for women. And then for men, he has the dating blueprint book, which is super great, super practical. And you can again, get those. But the final relationship in which so many of us struggle is in our relationship with God. Why is that? As children, the most powerful creature that we know are our parents.

And so we tend to think, well, if they're like this, then God must be like that too. We project their image onto him. But in broken families, this presents a problem. We often walk away with this extra distorted image of God, which is a huge barrier to intimacy with him. And I would propose that like, if you feel far from God right now.

This might be one of the reasons. And so an exercise a lot of people have found helpful to kind of untangle that distorted image of God, is just making two lists. One list is all the things you've felt God is [00:43:00] like. You can say these are the lies, right? The next is a list of the truth that you've learned about God, right?

From scripture, from the saints, from the sacraments, from the church. But as helpful as that may be, the biggest struggle I think we often face in our relationship with God is just feeling abandoned by him, which often leads to anger. There was one guy who told me, he's like, Joey, I don't believe in God. He said, honestly, it's probably because of being mad at whatever divine being is out there because of all the mess of things that happened within my family.

And so if you're angry at God, I get it. I've been there. Just make sure to bring your anger to him. He already knows about it. And he can handle it, I promise you. And don't let it drive a wedge between you. That so often happens in our world. And I'm speaking from experience here. Like, I've had to deal with this myself.

I've had to ask the question, like, God, why did you let this happen? Why'd you let my family fall apart? And more importantly, like, where were you? Where were you? Honestly, it felt like he was just sitting on the sidelines watching as I got my teeth kicked in. So I had to ask God, where were you? And the answer didn't come quick.

It took years, a lot of adoration, [00:44:00] a lot of prayer, a lot of spiritual direction. But in time, I become so convicted that God was not just watching from the sidelines. He was actually right there with me in the midst of the pain. He was right there with that 10 year old Joey, sitting in the closet, crying too, saying, this breaks my heart.

I don't want this to happen. It's not supposed to be this way. And what I've learned is that sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence. Father Mike Schmidt said that. Sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence. And the best proof, of course, that we have that God is in the midst of our suffering is Jesus on the cross.

We can never say that we have a God who doesn't know what it's like to suffer. And so instead of pushing him away when you suffer in life, just try holding on to him. Try holding on to him in the midst of that suffering. But even with all of that, it can still be hard to accept why God allows suffering.

And that's when we're challenged to just trust him. To trust that he can bring good out of it, to trust that he knows what he's doing, that he knows what he's about. St. John Newman said it so beautifully, he said, [00:45:00] Therefore, I will trust him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I'm in sickness, my sickness may serve him.

In perplexity, my perplexity may serve him. If I'm in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about. And so in closing, there's a real danger, guys, that if we don't heal, if we don't Build virtue, we're going to end up repeating that cycle. We'll pass our brokenness onto the people that we love the most, but that doesn't have to be our story.

If we heal our brokenness, if we build virtue, we can go on and build healthy relationships, strong marriages and holy families. And this is how we transform our culture. John Paul II said that as the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live. And so if we do all of that, I really believe that we can transform our broken culture into a Catholic culture where the human person flourishes and souls are saved and there's nothing More important, but maybe after hearing all of this, you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

So just remember you don't heal overnight. Transformation takes time. It won't be easy. It might even be harder for [00:46:00] you than someone who has had an easier life, but so be it. You're going to be okay, guys. If you make those like 1 percent improvements every single day, and trust in God's grace more than your own strength, you're gonna look up a year from now at the next seek, and be like, wow, I've grown a lot.

You'll be a better, stronger, more virtuous person with a greater capacity to love. And remember, you're not alone. Like, I'm right there with you guys, I'm trying to live this out in my own life as imperfectly as I might do that at times. And I'd say make sure to not just do this for yourself, don't just heal and build virtue for yourself.

Do it for the people that you love in your life. For me, my family is my motivation. I bring their picture back up. I want to spare them the pain and the trauma that I endured. I don't want to pass my brokenness onto them. I want to give them the family that they deserve. With God's help, you guys can do the same.

Not only can you do the same, but if God's calling you to marriage, this is your mission. And so my challenge to you guys is this. What's just one thing that really resonated with you in this talk, just one, [00:47:00] just take action on that one thing this week. That's it. Kind of my prayers for you guys. I have over a thousand sisters praying for you and, uh, just so honored to be here with you guys.

God bless you guys. If you want the resources mentioned in the talk, just go to restored ministry. com slash talk. or click on the link in the show notes, we'll be happy to send those to you. After the talk, I had the privilege of chatting with the college students, with the young adults, uh, one on one answering their questions, listening to their stories.

And the line was actually over two and a half hours long. And to me, it just shows how badly this message is needed. And so if you feel the same and you'd like your school, your university, church conference, youth group, young adult group to hear this message or any of the other talks that we offer, we'd love to work with you.

If my schedule allowed, and you can feel free to fill out the speaking form at restored ministry. com slash speaking, or by clicking the link in the show notes. So, I'm going to go ahead and start with the show notes. Now, by doing that, you're not committing to anything. Of course, you're just gathering more info.

There's actually an option to schedule a time to discuss your potential event with my team if you prefer that. And also, I can deliver a secular [00:48:00] version of my talk that doesn't mention God or faith if you have a secular audience. Again, that's restoredministry. com slash speaking or by clicking the link in the show notes.

Again, my availability is limited due to a bunch of recent requests for speaking engagements, but we'd be happy to work with you if my schedule allows. That wraps up this episode. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life.

And we're here to help. And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis, who said you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

I Felt Like We Were Living a Lie

5 minute read.

This story was written by Anonymous at 26 years old. Her parents divorced when she was 8. She gave permission for her story to be shared.

HER STORY

It's hard to know where to begin. My parents got married despite warnings from their parents and grandparents. I was born out of wedlock when they were both 19, as was my brother, who was born just after my parent's wedding. I think I grew up believing they got married because that's what you do when you have a baby accidentally. I couldn't think of any other reason, given that their families hated each other and never had a moment of peace between them. When I was six years old, we moved to another city so that they could attend a state school. I was already doubtful of their love for each other. Their constant arguing fed this doubt. I can count only one single instance of witnessing my parents being affectionate toward each other. Looking back, I felt like we were living a lie. I never felt settled in our home together.

Eventually, the stress of raising two kids and succeeding in college proved difficult for them. My 11-month-old brother went to live with my grandma to relieve them of some stress. After this, our family slowly ebbed away. When I was around 7, I begged my parents to let me live with my grandma as well. I missed my brother terribly, and I thought our life in Tallahassee was dreadfully boring. My grandma is also divorced. She became pregnant with my dad at 18 and was abandoned by my bio grandfather. She later married and had three more children. The details of her marriage are spotty for me, but she suffered many mental health issues in addition to the infidelity of my late step-grandfather. While living with my grandma, I learned of my parents' separation. I don't remember the moment I found out that well, but I don't think I was shocked. Due to a lack of financial resources and communication, they did not make their divorce official until 2022. Being raised by my grandma was extremely tumultuous. We lived below the poverty line and struggled to stay in stable housing. My grandma would constantly compare me to my mother in a derogatory way and made it difficult to communicate openly with her. Over time, my mom grew frustrated and stopped calling. My dad lived in another state and sparingly called. Eventually, my dad moved in with us, but we were still estranged from my mom and her entire side of the family. It wasn't until my grandma kicked me out of her house (due to false accusations) and sent me to live with my mom that I was reunited with her.

HOW THE DIVORCE MADE HER FEEL

It was not until very recently that I realized that my parent's divorce affected me. I think the circumstances surrounding it were so chaotic that I never saw it as the most impactful thing. When it happened, I was saddened but told myself it was the right thing for them to do. I never witnessed their love and felt so far removed from the dynamics of their marriage (besides their bickering) that I did not think I had much to grieve. I will say I grieved the togetherness of my immediate family. My grandma also painted such a poor image of my mom in my mind, that I thought being sad about the divorce would be akin to feeling sad that my dad was no longer "trapped" in a bad marriage, which felt like a betrayal. Today, I am grieved by my parents' divorce, as I see it as the catalyst to the various other traumas I experienced.

HOW THE DIVORCE IMPACTED HER

I have significant trouble setting boundaries regarding things that I feel will make the other person sad or angry. I am generally a hard shell to crack and keep my cards close, even amongst close friends. Marriage feels impossible and unattainable. I have no idea what it's like to belong to a healthy family dynamic. I have significant relationship anxiety and have gone about relationships in unhealthy ways to gain affection. For most of my life, I have felt unloveable and lonely, even when many people have shown me great love and granted me companionship. I have a hard time believing in love. My relationship with God has sometimes felt very transactional and rigid because I doubt His goodwill toward me, especially when I fail. I am also mostly estranged from my dad's side of the family and my younger brother. Being estranged from my brother causes me the most anguish. By the grace of God, I believe my experiences give me a higher tolerance for pain, and I am always learning more about suffering well, especially after my conversion to Catholicism.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHOSE PARENTS JUST SEPARATED OR DIVORCED

Be honest with your feelings with at least one person. There is no right or wrong way to feel. You don't need to justify the divorce because you feel bad for your parents. It is an injustice to you. But also know that they are human and may be unaware of the gravity of their actions. Ultimately, know that you belong to a family in Jesus Christ that can never be dissolved. Cast your cares upon Him often and as frequently as they arise because He cares for you!!

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#141: Good Can Come from Broken Situations | Dylan

At age 5, Dylan’s parents divorced. Visitation brought challenges, but he learned to appreciate the time it gave him with his dad, who really helped him grow. From that, he learned that good can come from broken situations.

In today’s episodes, we also discuss topics like:

• How we need father figures, ideally our dads, in order to become men, find our strength, and learn what to do with it

• The challenges and blessing of a stepfamily

• How your value isn’t measured by your performance or exterior qualities

If you’re from a blended family, you’ve questioned your value, you’ve felt unwanted, or you’re missing a father figure in your life, this episode is for you.

Visit Dylan’s website, RadicalLoveCommunity.com

Follow Dylan on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook

Buy the Book: God's Little Kiddo

View Restored’s Resources

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Dylan: [00:00:00] I remember my dad leaving the house. That was a vivid memory. The memories that most children probably have at that point of get the bag together, put all of your things together and go out the door and take a drive and then come back home the next day.

Joey: Going through that whole visitation thing. Was there anything that was helpful for you to know, or ~you to hear~ any advice that you would give to someone like that?

Who's maybe just struggling through that whole bouncing from mom's house to dad's house, back and

Dylan: forth. And I had a real fear that. Even if I want to be married, I won't be married one day. Like, just thinking that there is, like, something wrong with me. I've learned that each person has been, like, intentionally designed to be a gift in a unique way.

And it's taken a lot of healing to be able to see myself as someone who could be a gift to someone else.

Joey: Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

My guest today is Dylan. He's a native of Des [00:01:00] Moines, Iowa, product of a blended family, and has always been driven by a profound question. How does Jesus address the human heart? That question fuels his creative passion as a writer and founder of Radical Love, a dynamic brand he established in high school, actually.

Radical Love's innovative products, including clothing, fragrances, and books designed and written by Dylan, have garnered international support from celebrities, professional athletes, clergy, and renowned artists. At its core, Radical Love seeks to ignite Eucharistic amazement. And Dylan's book, God's Little Kiddos, celebrates the sacredness of human life, and is shared in homes throughout the United States.

I'm really excited for you guys to get to know Dylan. At age 5, Dylan's parents divorced, and as you can imagine, visitation brought a lot of challenges, but he learned to appreciate the time it gave him with his dad, who really helped him grow as a man. And from that, he learned an important lesson, and that good can come from broken situations.

And so in today's episode, we discussed topics like how we need our fathers, uh, in order to grow as men. And if we don't have our [00:02:00] fathers, we at least need a father figures in order to find our strength as men and learn what to do with it. We talk about the challenges and blessings of a step family, how your value isn't measured by external factors or by your performance or by external qualities.

Uh, he shares his desire to learn how to build a really healthy relationship and one day a beautiful future marriage. And we both share how, We've struggled believing that people really want us for us. And so if you come from a blended family, maybe you've questioned your value. Maybe you've felt unwanted, or you've missed out on having a father figure in your life.

This episode is for you. By the way, we do talk about God and faith in this episode. If you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone who's been listening to the show for a while knows that this is not a strictly religious podcast. And so wherever you're at, I'm glad you're here. If you don't believe in God, my challenge for you is this, just listen with an open mind, even if you're to skip or take out the God parts, you're still going to benefit a lot from.

this episode. And with that, here's our conversation. Dylan, so good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Dylan: Thanks for having me.

Joey: I remember when we met in Florida at Ave [00:03:00] Maria. I was really impressed with you. Just, yeah, there's so much about you to be impressed by, but, um, we, I know we talked business and different things like that.

So I'm excited to hear more of like this side of your story. I know a little bit of it, but if you would take us back in time a little bit, what was, I know you were young, but what was life like from what you've been told or what you remember in the years and months before your parents split?

Dylan: My parents split when I was five, so I don't have a lot of memories that are vivid that I think back to at that time, but I do just remember a lot of time at home together.

I knew my dad was really a hard worker and he would come in late at night. At one point he was working at Firestone with tires, so sometimes he'd be covered with like marks from the tires or he would get his hands dirty for the kids, I'd say, for us at home. So I just remember. him in that way, at least at that time of his work and the time he spent in that.

And then my times at home are just really warm memories. I remember I live in the [00:04:00] Midwest, so it gets really cold. So I remember just nights by the fireplace playing Lincoln logs with my older brother or just times with us as a family. And I had grandparents close by too. So I was really blessed with some, some warm memories as a toddler in that time.

And I remember my dad leaving the house, that was a vivid memory. I still have of kind of coming to consciousness at that point of what was happening around me. And I have memories of then after he was out of the home, how. I would go my time to go see him. I remember just the memories that most children probably have at that point of get the bag together, put all of your things together and go out the door and take a drive and then come back home the next day.

And so those are kind of my memories of the early stages of my life.

Joey: No, that makes so much sense. That sounds like you had a. You know, good memories of like early childhood and then the divorce obviously brought some challenges and one of them is the whole visitation thing. We don't talk about that a ton on the [00:05:00] show, um, like the reality of visitation because it can be so tricky for kids.

I remember going through it myself and then when I was over 18 and my younger siblings were going through it, that brought like a new dimension to it. Um, yeah, I'm just curious like maybe to anyone listening right now who's going through that whole visitation thing. Was there anything that was helpful for you to know or you to hear any advice that you would give to.

someone like that who's maybe just struggling through that whole bouncing from mom's house to dad's house back and forth.

Dylan: For me, I was living primarily at my mom's house and it brought me comfort that I could come back. And sometimes I wouldn't know, I wouldn't like know what I wanted as a child. And I think sometimes that's the conflict is you have is you want to be with dad, you want to be with mom.

And so to make that decision, even if like where you lay your head and where you sleep can be really, really challenging, I think for, for children in that position. And I. I would do my best. At the time, I remember just once I walked in the door at my dad's place and said my hello and dropped my bag. I felt [00:06:00] a little bit like, well, now I need to stay rather than having to turn the car around after I was just dropped off and then go back to the other house.

So I think that's a challenging point. But then at some point I kind of gave myself the permission or my dad was really tender with me and telling me It's okay, like you can go, you can go to your, your mom's house. You don't have to leave, you know, and I can take you back home if you need, and you can come back another time.

So I think just that I had. A little bit of the space and the permission from my parents to decide that because I think as at least for me as a young child, I didn't, I wasn't really capable of making that decision of where I wanted to sleep. I would want to spend time with my dad and I didn't realize, well, if I go back home tonight, that might mean that I don't get to go back for another few days or until the weekend or something.

So I think I wasn't really fully comprehending that decision, but it was really helpful to have the permission to say, I want to go home at [00:07:00] points.

Joey: That's helpful. And I think that's such a great tip to parents listening. It sounds like your dad and your mom too, were very respectful of like your wishes, your wants.

Sometimes what we've seen as parents, because they're hurting so much, they can. Almost like feel like they have a right to their child being with them. And it can turn into like a very intense experience for the child, even though maybe mom and dad don't intend that by any means, it can just be like, well, now it's my time with you and you need to be happy here.

And, um, it's like kind of an impossible situation to be in, because like you said, you're kind of in one way or another, you're forced to choose between mom and dad. And you should never really have to do that. It's like they're both your parents and you should be able to love both of them, not say like, no, I only want to live here, only be here.

Now, sometimes there's realities that cause, you know, people that like need to live only with mom or need to live only with dad, like whether it's abuse or just really dysfunctional and broken situations. But yeah, it's, it's definitely a, like an impossible task to ask like a, you know, five, six, seven, eight year old, whatever age to be like, who do you want to live with?

It's like, it's not an easy thing. So that sounds like such a good [00:08:00] thing that you're. Mom and your dad were respectful. They gave you the space. They allowed you to kind of go where you needed to be. And, uh, did you feel the need to like become a different person? Feel free to comment on any of that as well.

But did you feel the need to like become a different person when you jumped between the two houses? Some people do, some people don't. Just curious what your experience was.

Dylan: I don't have that experience. I think it might've been due to me being so young was just, I was who I was and I didn't really. Um, have a lot of time where I thought I needed to put on a mask or change where I was.

And I know my memories of visiting my dad are really fond memories for me because he really nurtured creativity in me. And so. It might be us going to a craft store or us doing different things that I wouldn't necessarily do at the other house where he would just give me so much time to draw or we'd build things together or things like that.

So I think those early memories of visits with him, even just shortly after the divorce are really fond memories of me because he [00:09:00] would help me with my homework and spend time with me. Then just so I could get to the stuff I wanted to do, like throwing the football around or building things or drawing things.

And so I felt like I was able to be genuinely myself in both houses, but I think each parent kind of had their unique perspective on who I was as a child and what my gifts are. Even if they agreed on what my gifts were, they helped nurture those in different ways. So I have really fond memories of those visits with my dad and just those experiences together.

Joey: That's awesome. No, I think that's a good thing. I, um, we've heard a lot of like kind of broken stories about that, but it sounds like your parents were like very present to you, which I think is again, a great lesson to new parents listening right now to like implement some of these things in your family life, especially if there's visitation going on.

Um, but even for maybe any children listening, especially who maybe are a little bit older and in a spot to maybe communicate some needs to parents where you can say like, Hey, this is what I hope it can be like. So I think there's a lot of lessons in your story. You mentioned how old you were. I'm curious, how did you learn about the separation and divorce?

You [00:10:00] mentioned that your dad left one day. Was there any specific memory you have of like being told by your mom and your dad or one the other about that? And what was that like for you to learn that?

Dylan: I remember having an understanding before the separation actually happened logistically. I remember having an understanding.

The divorce and knowing what was happening, uh, whether it was my family explaining it to me, I was already in therapy at that point too. So I think it was just from, from my parents explaining to me what was happening. I knew what was happening. At least I knew what it would mean. I knew that. Dad would be living somewhere else.

I knew that he was no longer married to mom. And I knew I had an understanding of that.

Joey: That makes sense. And was there anything that mom or dad said to you that helped you kind of deal with that? It sounds like they were very proactive with like getting into therapy and everything like that. But curious if there was anything that you look back on like, yeah, that was actually really helpful that they did this or did that.

And that's okay. If not, I'm

Dylan: just curious. One thing that I do remember that really helped me and brought me at ease was that my dad wasn't leaving far. He actually, for [00:11:00] the first portion of it, was very near and accessible. So it brought me peace to know he's not leaving me. He's not leaving my brother. Or I knew that my mom and my dad were still communicating often, and we're still parenting both of us together in terms of, like, deciding how we were raised and making decisions together.

So I didn't, I didn't necessarily have to grieve a loss of a parent because I knew he was still there for me, just not necessarily under the same roof.

Joey: I hear you there. And that sounds like a good principle for parents listening as well. So a lot of good stuff. So I can make a guess here, but I want to hear what you have to say.

Would you describe the, You know, the marriage and the divorce is high conflict or low conflict. And just a reminder for everyone listening, high conflict would be a situation of abuse where there's a lot of visible dysfunction. There's maybe violence. Just think of, you know, really bad conflict. And just from the children's point of view, that's like all apparent, how broken and dysfunctional the family is.

Low conflict would be the opposite where the problems are more covert or not as obvious, [00:12:00] and there might be, you know, real problems behind the scenes, but to the children, things seem mostly stable and fine, um, until, you know, they've learned one day that, oh, well. Okay. Mom and dad aren't going to be married or living together.

So I'm just curious, low conflict, high conflicts, a mix of the two.

Dylan: It was low conflict. There was no violence or abuse involved. And I was not, I was five. So I didn't understand necessarily even really. Why it was that people might not stay in a marriage, but I didn't, I didn't see necessarily, I definitely didn't see any abuse or I wasn't there for any fights or anything of that nature.

And they were very communicative with each other throughout that part of our story. So. It was low conflict.

Joey: Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing all that. And was there anything else that you wanted to share? Like that was happening during the separation and the divorce? Um, you've already gone into it quite a bit, but I'm just curious before we move on, if there was anything else at that part of the story.

Dylan: I just remember being In the house still with my older brother and my mom and it was the three [00:13:00] of us and I just remember just looking at them for my strength and my comfort with my dad as well. Of course, when I would be alone with him or with my brother and him. I looked at my mom and looked at my brother and felt in my heart that I was going to be okay and everything is going to be okay.

And I would feel the same when I would just look at my dad. And so I think there was a sense of, yes, this is a difficult thing that we didn't plan for or wouldn't have expected for us. But I had a sense that. This isn't the end

Joey: and that, yeah, there's still like a lot of good that can come from like your family relationships.

There's still a lot of love that can be, you know, shown experience, all that. I've definitely seen that in my family too. I know often on the show, we're talking about like the. the really difficult parts, the, the hurt, the pain that come from the family's falling apart. And that's certainly, there's certainly a lot there.

I don't mean to take away from that, diminish it at all. But I think, you know, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot [00:14:00] of things that can result in being like, just like how, you know, God can bring good out of evil. Like, I think there's like a lot of good that could come out of really messy situations. And I definitely seen that.

I think like me and my siblings, one, One thing has been me and my siblings have gotten a lot closer, I think, because of that experience. Absolutely. Yeah. And I know I even look at other families and that's, I guess, judgment by any mean, but even families that are like intact and relatively healthy, um, the siblings aren't as close.

So that's kind of interesting. And, um, you know, not, not to say that every broken family, the siblings were close and every intact families are not, not the case, but yeah, you, you get what I mean. So yeah, there, there's that. And then I think even, um, You know, there, I think that the whole term that like children are resilient sometimes is overused, especially when maybe it's being used to say that like the family breaking apart isn't a big deal at all when, or as we believe it is.

But I think there is, when you go through just any difficult, painful thing in life, um, especially if you had people loving you and supporting you and encouraging your resilience, you actually can become. pretty darn resilient. And there's a lot of virtue that can come from that later in life, whether it's in, you know, [00:15:00] school or health and fitness or, you know, in the, in your career, in the business world, things like that.

Um, so, so I think there is like, you know, like I said, there's a good that can come from like really broken, messy situations.

Dylan: Absolutely. I agree with that. And you mentioned how it gave an opportunity to grow close with siblings. I see that as well for both of my parents too. It's just, it's not a situation that you plan for or anticipate.

And projected ahead of you, but when it was our reality, it was difficult for every relationship. I know it was hard for my dad and for my mom. I know it was hard for my mom and my brother's relationship. So we're all experiencing the same thing, but we all have our own different experiences. Like my brother was.

Older than me, so we don't have the same experience or memories and the memories I have of my dad of that when our story I think has helped us grow closer as father and son and for my mom and myself as well. So, I think sometimes it's not necessarily okay to dismiss what happened or say that it wasn't a [00:16:00] huge event that will, I think it's an event that affects you for the rest of your rest of your life.

It might affect you at different points, but I think it wasn't all. It wasn't all dark. I think there was a lot that we took from it and gained from it.

Joey: Yeah. No. And I think that, that whole power of like transformation, like instead of saying crushed and down on the ground, like you can get up and you can like push forward.

And even on a human level, but especially if you add like, I know not everyone listening believes in God, but if you add like that kind of supernatural strength and grace to it, then there's a lot that can happen that maybe it wouldn't be humanly possible, but there's so much good there. And I, one thing I wanted to say is that, uh, There was a study they did in Turkey.

I've quoted this on the podcast before, but they looked at high school students who came from divorced families and they found that as you'd expect, those students were more likely to struggle with things like anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But if they had a good relationship, if those students had a good relationship with one or both parents, they were actually significantly less likely to struggle with anxiety, depression, or loneliness.

And so the lesson in that is like, you know, if you can have a health. the relationship with [00:17:00] like one or both parents, it's actually really good for you personally. And so I think your story really exemplifies that as well, because it seemed like you have a good relationship with your parents and had that even during those like really difficult trying times.

I'm sure there were bumps in the road, but um, I think there's like an important lesson in all that. So thank you for sharing so openly. I'm curious, kind of going beyond the separation, the divorce, like after it was done, did you at any point like realize like, Oh, you know, as much. Good that could have come out of this and how I got stronger in different ways.

Did it affect you negatively? And like, when did you, I guess, realize that, that it was affecting you negatively?

Dylan: I think I noticed it just growing up as a young boy without living under the same roof as my dad, most of the time was just that. After that separation too, I think it can be difficult for grandparents and extended family and for the family as a whole to make sense of how we're going to carry on, because if I'm not under the same roof as my dad, then maybe we're not talking about him as much, or maybe we're not giving that same [00:18:00] opportunity for me to learn about that side of my family, and I think I struggled at points to say, Hey, Like, what is my identity and what are the strengths of masculinity?

What does it mean to be a growing boy and what does it mean to be a man when I grow up to be a man one day? And I think that took a lot of intentional time and conversations with my dad that. I kind of saw the danger of that being taken away from me if I didn't go looking for it, because I think for a lot of young people, especially in my generation, if we grew up with not a lot of time with our dad in person, then here's the internet and here's all these people.

Trying to tell you what it means to be a man or how to be a man, or you go into the schools and most of the teachers are female, which is, which is wonderful. It's just unless we have great coaches or people were looking up to people. I think young boys will look for a father figure if they don't find that in their dad.

And so I definitely kind of saw that as just like a darkness that I didn't want to [00:19:00] be enveloped and I didn't want to be lost in. thinking that he wasn't there for me and he wasn't my dad just because he wasn't in my house.

Joey: Really good. What did you do with that then? How did that play out over the years?

Dylan: I think it can be tempting, especially if you're, for me, my visit to my dad was often on Sundays. So we go to church together, we come back and we watch football and we have a meal, but it can be tempted I can be tempted to leave it to that, to just, okay, let's come, let's sit on the couch, let's turn the TV on.

After the episode's over, I'll be headed to the door again, you know? And I think it really took a little bit of digging deep, some vulnerability, to be able to say, hey dad, I'm really struggling with this, what do I do? Like, hey dad, I like a girl, what do I do? Hey, hey dad, I, I'm having trouble in, in this sport, I feel like I'm not tough enough, what do I do?

Or even simple things just like homework. My dad would sit with me and help me study for tests. And I think things like that, maybe I could have, like I said, for people [00:20:00] of my generation, maybe I could have found someone online to show me how to shoot a jump shot. I wanted to ask my dad, you know, and I think taking that time to, I'm going to ask in person to my father rather than, well, since these days of the week, I'm not with him.

I'm going to just, I don't know, go on YouTube or go talk to so and so from the school.

Joey: It's easy to do that. Yeah. Especially now, like with AI and everything, it's like, you basically have all the, you know, a lot of the answers at your fingertips. So I admire you for kind of being that disciplined. And I agree.

I think there's something about, you know, masculinity that we learn from other men. We don't learn it from podcasts. We don't learn it from books. We. Really just have to be in the presence of like real men, like good men, men who, you know, have like masculinity to pass on. And so, um, so I think there's like a really powerful lesson in that, that we can't get it through like a screen.

And you make me think of too, how, you know, in a lot of like inner city situations, there's just so many broken families. There's so many homes that were just mom or just dad, or, you know, they don't [00:21:00] even know dad and just really difficult situation. And so many young people are fatherless and in those situations, especially in like.

very broken parts of our cities here in America and the rest of the world. It's really easy to fall into like, uh, gang activity, right? To, to join a gang. And it's really interesting that the, the gang leaders from what I've heard, never been in a gang, is, uh, they're like actually really, um, great leaders in some ways.

Like they understand that these boys especially kind of need that masculinity. They need that father figure. They need to belong, to be a part of something. Kind of like a family. It's like a pseudo family. And so they join like with that in mind. And these leaders, like these gang leaders, um, I've heard people talk about this.

They're so effective that they actually make these people like want to do these insane thing for them and even perhaps die for them. It's wild. And so I think it just shows, especially on a masculine level, like that drive that you had, that I've had, that all men I think have for like to have that father figure in your life.

And when that's void, man, yeah. We will search it out in [00:22:00] ways that can be really destructive and unhealthy. And on the flip side of that, not that everyone who is fatherless joins a gang, but on the flip side of that, I think so often we could actually take that yearning to women. And I've heard John Eldridge, um, the guy who wrote while that heart talks about this too, where instead of going to a woman to like offer our strength, we go to her to find it.

And that is just a recipe for disaster because she was never meant to like, make us masculine, to give us strength. Like we were meant to find that with other men and then offer it to the women in our lives. So yeah, I think you make so many good points and you just made me think of all that as well. Any thoughts?

Dylan: You made me think of it just when you were speaking about joining a gang. I also have never been in a gang, but you talked about that desire they had to die for a cause. And I think for a lot of us men, at least I can speak for myself. I feel that innate desire to give myself for something, for a purpose, for something higher to myself and find my identity in something more powerful than just me.

And [00:23:00] it really hit when you said either trying to find your strength in women rather than offer your strength to women. And I, I've never heard it described in that way, but I think that's a really, really powerful way to put it.

Joey: Yeah, when I read that from, I can't remember if it was John Eldred's book Wild at Heart or the sequel to it called The Fathered by God, but he mentioned that and that just like hit me between the eyes too, because I remember just experiencing that and a little bit in middle school, but definitely in high school and even a little bit in college.

I'd grown a lot more at that by that point, but yeah, just like, It's almost like you have this experience of just almost like wanting something from the woman that you're with, like if you're dating her, you have female friends that she can never even give to you. And I don't know, I haven't thought about this in a while, but it leads to like really, I think, unhealthy dynamics in a relationship.

And again, it could, I think the way it played out in my life was it kind of made me a little bit clingy and even finding like disappointment in some relationships where it was like I wanted more than was maybe even possible, if that makes sense, where again, like I was hoping for it to be kind of [00:24:00] this cure to a lot of the pain and kind of to fill the void of this.

Father's listeners that I had experienced to that, you know, maybe it was seeking in like a wrong way. So one of the antidotes for me, just to kind of close the story was actually finding men in my life who could step into that mentor, like father role. And that was super healing for me. Oh my gosh. Like there are multiple men, whether it was like.

Just a general mentor or even like a spiritual director on the spiritual side, or just, you know, people who were just in my life for like little periods of time who like taught me lessons or they affirmed me. They left me through all that. That was, that was super, super helpful and healing to have that.

And then even like growing in my relationship with my own dad has been, you know, helpful as well. I don't know if we'll ever be like super, super close or be able to have like all the deep conversations that maybe I once longed for. But um, but I'm really, um, we're in a better spot now and I'm definitely happy about that.

But um, yeah, I think that, you know, taking that to other men has been definitely part of the solution for me.

Dylan: That resonated. So deeply with me. When you bring up finding that strength with other men and then being able to offer it yourself. 100 [00:25:00] percent true. I think taking that effort to grow with my own dad has been really the most important step I've taken and then also you mentioned spiritual direction.

You mentioned time with other men and I actually I have a short story if, if you don't mind. I was, I think it was my sophomore year of college. I was on two sports teams at the time. I was in a household with other men, which at my university worked as a small group that you were meeting with to live together, to talk about God and the Bible together.

So it was really a tight knit group. And I was also talking a lot with my roommate. So I thought at the time, I thought, okay, I'm doing well, there's not anything big to be worried about. my childhood or thinking about coming from a blended family because my parents were remarried at that point it's just like divorce that was something from childhood put away but i met with a spiritual director and by the end i was weeping on his shoulder and when i walked in i [00:26:00] thought i was happy so i think that just showed me just like you i had thought of myself as a healed person and then realized there's so much healing still to do there's so much work that can be done in my heart to accept the love of God, to accept my worth and identity, not from finding it in someone else, but finding it in God and finding it and just being a person of value just for who I am and not in what I'm doing or not by relationship of someone else in my life was so incredibly healing.

And I was just so shocked that I wept that much, like on someone's shoulder, like, uh, Like a toddler when I walked in thinking I'm doing great, like my classes or whatever on the surface. I'm, I'm happy. I'm good. And so that was something that really woke me up to say as much as I might feel healed, that might just be a sign that I'm scared to go deeper.

Joey: Wow, so good and don't [00:27:00] feel pressured to share it at all But like you alluded to the fact that you kind of learned that your value didn't come from like your performance It didn't come from the things you did but just like inherently and who you are as a man as a human you have dignity of value you have worth but was there anything in particular that was said in that session in that spiritual direction session that really like Hit a nerve with you, if you want to share.

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Dylan: I am comfortable sharing this, but I do hope that it does, does resonate with someone because this is vulnerable for me. But I was, at this point in my life, I mentioned the sports at that point, I was not eating like I should be, I was spending so much time fasting, not for a spiritual reason, but for wanting to lose weight, and I would tell myself, I'm doing this to get ready for basketball season, and I was torturing myself essentially, and it was all a body image issue really, and thinking that, well, if I look [00:29:00] like this, then I'll be worth it, or if I, Business wise, if I make this much more than I'll be worth it and just trying to stack things on top of each other to make myself worth it and alter my personality or kind of wear a mask and just being so insecure at that point to try to like manufacture and put together worth and one thing he said to me was you are not a product and that just hit me to my core was I wasn't something That was waiting to be created and put together.

I was already created as, as I am, and I didn't need to make something of myself to be worth it.

Joey: Wow. So powerful. Just that whole fact of like, you're not a product. That's really good of like, you don't need to like add things to make yourself more valuable. Like, obviously, we always want to grow and improve and be better, you know, more virtuous, I should say.

But I love that fact that, like, you performing better on the court or being leaner or looking better, whatever, making more money is not the measure of your value as a person. So good. [00:30:00] Wow. I, the question that came to mind was, like, what was driving all that behavior, do you think? What were you afraid of?

Like, why did you put in all that effort to maybe look a certain way or perform a certain way? Like, what were you going after there? What'd you want?

Dylan: I really wanted to have a sense of, a sense of identity that I was strong and I was wanted and I was loved. And I was really comfortable telling other people that, especially in the church, telling other people.

Like, uh, this book, for example, it was like a children's book, telling People, how much God loved them and how they were made uniquely delightful from the beginning of time, from an all powerful creator. But I really didn't believe that for myself. And so I think it took a lot of, took a lot of healing and it took a lot of time and prayer and laying my burdens down to accept that God really loved me and that my family really loved me and that my friends loved me for me, and not because of any like surface level.

Um, not from an [00:31:00] external thing, I learned that it wasn't the externals that made me valuable and it, it wasn't actually the love of friends or it wasn't attention from anyone that changed or altered my value and, and the slightest, whether to make it higher or lower, it was just simply my value didn't change.

I was, I was chosen by Jesus. And then I was also supported by family and friends. And then I started to grow confidence in myself to realize if I really become who I am made to be, then I won't have to worry about gaining affection or earning love because it was love that caused me into being like it was God himself who caused me into being it was already decided what I was worth.

And that's not changed by my mistakes and failures. And it's not changed by my. Successes.

Joey: So good. Wow. Thank you. You're so articulate and I definitely appreciate hearing that too. I am, I definitely have struggled, you know, in some ways. And so that's really, really good. [00:32:00] I appreciate that. I am going back to your story.

I'm just curious over the years, you've already shared so much, but if there's anything you'd add in the, in terms of just different ways you saw yourself struggle, whether it was like directly or indirectly related to the, you know, the breakdown of the family. But yeah, I'm curious if there were like, Problems in your emotions, um, if there were maybe bad habits that you had fallen to, or maybe a relationship circle.

So like emotions, you know, habits and relationships, how did, how were those affected? Could you see from what you went through when you were younger?

Dylan: Uh, and thinking about childhood, both my parents remarried. So then I gained three step siblings from my stepfather. And at one point we were all living in the same house.

And so that presented its unique set of challenges with learning how to communicate with these people, some of them a little older than me, some of them near my age, and just navigating what it's like to gain new people in the house and gain, gain a stepfather in the house. And I think a lot of children who come from blended family might be able to relate to that of [00:33:00] trying to build a relationship with the new people that are, have been introduced to you and what that looks like.

Especially if like, it's not your biological father, but it's a man who's moving in or it's not your biological mother, but it's a new stepmother moving in with your dad. I think that can be, it's been a really beautiful thing in my life, but it's definitely taken similar to what I said of bringing things to my dad to be able to grow in relationship to him.

I think it's taken the same with my stepfather or stepmother to say, I'm just going to go to your house right now or I'm going to come meet you and let's just talk and spend time together because we're in each other's lives now. Like, you know, there's the blessing that comes from a marriage, but that's a forever commitment and we're family now.

And regardless of what disagreements or differences we may have, I really wanted. a loving relationship with every new person who is coming into my, to my home of my dad or my mom.

Joey: I love that desire you had. And yeah, no, I personally have limited experience with the step [00:34:00] family, blended family situation.

So it's helpful for you to talk into that. Was there anything that was like helpful for you aside from what you said, or in addition to what you said that maybe it would help someone who's maybe struggling with step siblings or step parents? Yeah. Any, any lessons or advice that you would pass on that were helpful for you?

Dylan: I'm an expert by no means. I'm just a kid working on figuring it out. But I mean, some things, for example, that have helped me have just been showing up when I know that it's important, when I know that maybe it's not the top thing on my list to go to this graduation or go to this dinner or go to this games night or something.

But then I realized that selfishly important for me and In a selfless way important for me, because just like you said, it's a great benefit to you as a child if you have the opportunity to cultivate that relationship with your parents, which everyone's situation is different. And that might be more easily possible for some of us.

And I just found that. If it was [00:35:00] taking that time to bring a difficult question that I had to my stepfather to my stepmother or to go like to travel to like celebration somewhere, go meet for a meal with my step siblings, or just kind of taking that time, I realized was going to be benefit to all of us because we are all part of each other's story at this point, and we are going to continue to be in each other's life.

So I just wanted to at least have. An open door to communicate was my like lowest goal. And then my highest goal was like, let's be best buds. But it's, it's tricky, but I think I haven't given up. And then I also recognize that life is unpredictable and we don't know what might happen next year or in the next coming years, but we do have the present moment.

So anything I can do to. Maybe it's apologize for some of the ways I've hurt them in the past or say like any way I can increase the piece even a [00:36:00] small degree or just to kind of bring us closer I think can be really valuable today because I think some of those, some of those small sacrifices that we make for other people might have big consequences in the future and big rewards in the future, not to say to do it for the sake of rewards, but It helps to be kind and it helps to apologize when that's needed.

And for me, I've recognized that even though we might not be related by blood, the things that I do and the way I live my life will affect them and the way they live their lives affect me. Because regardless of even like when I am living out of state, the things I do affect my mom, the things I do affect my dad.

They think about me whether they want to or not, and for my brother as well, just we're all together and we're all part of each other's story, and I think that's helped me recognize that I'll try to reach out. I'll try to show up and sometimes I won't show up, but I'll at least be cognizant that what I do does affect my step parents.

It does affect my step siblings, [00:37:00] and if I have the hope to have healthy relationships with them. It does take work to have these healthy relationships, even when our family is intact and all together in the home.

Joey: 100%. Yeah. Even again, in like healthy, intact families, like this stuff takes work. So that's, no, those are really good lessons.

I love if I'm hearing you right, you're Saying that gotta put in the time, prioritize it, show up, even if you don't feel like it. That's kind of underneath what you said. I kind of heard that. Not to say that you have like a disdain or don't want to be there, but it's easy in life to just like put other things ahead of relationships.

I've definitely seen that myself. Um, but then also, yeah, like trying to You know, cultivate that closeness if the other person's willing, we can't force anyone to do that. And then what I heard you two say is like, basically like try to build each other up and kind of live your life in a way that would maybe like make them proud or bring, you know, good things into their life.

Cause like you said, I think the way I've heard it said too is, yeah, even if we're like removed from our families, who we become is kind of formed by like what we think about and how we act. And [00:38:00] so we're going to affect them by the way that we think, the way that we act, even if we're not with them in the moment, because eventually, you know, we're going to be interacting with them and that will definitely have an effect on them if that's clear.

But yeah, it's definitely a lot of good lessons and what you said. So I appreciate you sharing all that. I was curious if, yeah, anything else to add in terms of the emotions, the habits or relationships before we move on.

Dylan: I think that was really a big, like, childhood thing of, like, when there's new people coming into the home.

I know, at least for myself, this is how I was as a child. I was very, like, resistant to new people coming in, and I, I would put unnecessary obstacles ahead of them. And, you know, whether it be, like, gossip about them or, like, just say, like, almost just, like, cover them with like lies or just think about them without actually having the conversations face to face to build the relationship.

So I've kind of recognized that since marriage is lifelong and family is, is lifelong, I don't think it's too late to try to, whether it be to repair or to forgive or to apologize. And sometimes I [00:39:00] still find myself apologizing at times to my, uh, step parents and saying like, this story came to mind. Did I really do that to you?

Okay. Maybe I'll do the dishes tonight or something like that. It's like, um, yeah, it's definitely not a, not a perfect or smooth story at times, but. Yeah, I found everyone appreciates if you can make small active, small active kindness, that's kind of just been one of my ways of trying to keep those relationships going in a way that I want them to.

And for me, I think later in life, then it became more of a challenge when I was starting to think, well, do I want to be married 1 day? And what does that mean for me? And what married couples am I looking up to? When my own story from my biological parents, I don't see that marriage that I want for myself.

So I kind of started to think more deeply about what is making their, their marriages healthy now with both of their spouses. And then whether it be like my grandparents set a wonderful examples for me, or just. [00:40:00] Starting to think and I had a real fear that even if I want to be married, I won't be married one day, like just thinking that there was like something wrong with me, even that I couldn't see for myself.

Like, oh, there's something other people can see that I can't and almost just overthinking marriage, which I don't know if that was Due to how my story went, or that was just a real fear that I experienced, but that's been something as a young adult where I was just thinking, it's absolutely impossible for that ever to very quick, even if I want to, it's not going to happen, like, so I don't know exactly where that fear came from, but that was a real.

It's a real struggle.

Joey: Yeah. No, I can relate. I felt that really strongly in high school It kind of hit me in the face then of I remember I'd started liking this like awesome girl And she was just like the type of girl I could see myself marrying one day But I was just terrified man that you know My relationship with her was one day gonna and the same way the same way my parents marriage had and so I definitely had to start Like facing that of like am I even capable of this because I felt incapable I felt kind of incompetent at [00:41:00] love and relationships and, you know, definitely fell into some unhealthy relationships, friendships, things like that.

And when I started dating, I was like, I really don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to build like a healthy relationship or I don't know how to, you know, pursue a woman properly. Cause I never really saw that growing up. And, um, I can relate so much. I think so many people like us have that fear of like, like, I don't think marriage actually lasts.

And if it does, then. That wouldn't last for me, and I definitely feel your pain there. I'm curious, feel free to say anything else you want about that, but I'm curious, like, what did you learn from those, like, healthy examples in your life about, like, what it does take to build a healthy marriage? Were there any lessons that kind of stick to the top of your mind of, like, yeah, like, you really need to do this or do that, or this is, like, a good reminder principle?

Dylan: That's something I'm currently watching and just like paying attention to, or even just, yeah, that's just something I'm looking at for the future of just, or even just looking around me and saying, how are these people happy? Because I, I started to wonder too, was it really even about happiness? [00:42:00] Like they seem happy, but it also doesn't look like they're making decisions based on happiness.

And so that's just been something that I've been thinking more about and especially like just in paying attention to my, my family or the people I'm close to. I just, in my experience, what I've seen is Sometimes they have like personality differences that it's on the surface. It's like, how is that, how is that working out so well, but they definitely.

And the marriages that I've seen that I look up to, they, they sacrifice for each other, they pursue each other and their unique ways of like uplifting each other and affirming each other's worth and their ideas. And it's really, I've, I've seen like beautiful ones where they're just like collaborating in life pretty much of just.

Growing together. And so that's, that's something I really admire in seeing that around me.

Joey: I love that. I love that whole like fact of like, they're working as a team. They're kind of going beyond their sacrificing, beyond maybe their comfort level or their sacrificing in order to like help the team win, so to speak.

Like, it's [00:43:00] not about individual personalities and not about like an individual person winning. It's about like the marriage or the family winning, which I love. I love seeing that in marriages as well. And it sounds like to like you mentioned pursuing each other and like the way that maybe makes the other person feel loved.

That's a principle I've noticed in really healthy marriages too. It's like each spouse loves. The other spouse and the way that they want to be loved in the way that they feel loved. And especially using like the love languages and things like that. It seems to be like a principle. It's true throughout really beautiful, healthy marriages.

And so, yeah, there's so many other lessons, but I love the ones that you mentioned. And I, for whatever it's worth, I don't mean to preach at you by any means, but just to affirm you like, dude, you're totally capable of it. You're totally capable to. Build a really healthy, beautiful marriage and family.

You're totally capable of even, yeah, just being the father that, um, you want to be and building again, the family for your own future children that you desire, like truly. And I know, I know you outside of this podcast, so I'm not just like making this up, but yeah, I'd say the same to [00:44:00] anyone listening to it's like, we're capable of that.

Like, it's not beyond reach. We feel like it might be at times, but the virtues that are needed to make that a reality are within reach. Like, we can't do it all on our own strength. We need other people in our life to help us get there, but it's possible. It's not something, like, so impossible we can't achieve.

And if you think of just anything in your life, not just talking to you, but everyone listening, where maybe you thought you couldn't achieve this, or you thought you couldn't achieve that, and then you did. And then you look back and be like, wow, okay, like, I really thought that was out of reach, but I stretched myself.

And again, with the help of other people, maybe with God's grace, I was able to do that. Marriage is the same thing. And I know people like us, like we feel really intimidated by it. We fear it. We don't, maybe we want it yet. We don't want it. And it can be this really like confusing, difficult thing, but like, really, I'm here to tell you guys, like you can do it.

Like, especially if someone like me can be married, I've almost been married seven years now and it hasn't been perfect. It's been a lot of challenges for me, but, but it's been really good. It's been really beautiful. It's like definitely made me a better man. If I can do it, like you guys certainly can do it.

So for whatever that's worth, I just want to give you a little bit of encouragement there and I appreciate you sharing so [00:45:00] much and I applaud your just desire to kind of pay attention to the lessons that you can learn, the principles you can learn from the marriages around you. That was super helpful and healing for me too.

Dylan: Thank you so much. Yeah. Those words are. really healing for me. And that really means a lot. And I'm sure it does for maybe someone else who's going through similar struggles of fear of marriage or fear that they are incapable of what they want for their life is that they can do it. So I think like that's really powerful.

Thanks for speaking that into me.

Joey: If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more. All of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue, so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

And so, if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, Just go to restoredministry. com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely bro. I'm happy to. And we've [00:46:00] covered so much ground. Maybe we'll kind of close it there. I guess I, I guess the one question though, before we get to the end is like around healing and growth, you mentioned some things that have been helpful or healing for you.

I'm just curious if there were any other like tactics or anything that you found really helpful in your journey to like help you heal and becoming like the better, stronger, more virtuous you.

Dylan: One thing I was thinking of, this just brings me back to the point when we were talking about navigating romantic relationships as an adult child of divorce, and you're talking about maybe insecurity at first, or wondering how to pursue a woman in a romantic interest.

And I remember being so terrified of even the word date. Like, I remember just being terrified of just the concept of pursuing that one, pursuing someone like that. And what really healed for me is almost like a rehabilitation of that word, almost of just that's time spent getting to know someone else's world or a time where you get to just enjoy each other's company.[00:47:00]

And so I think something that's been really healing for me is just outside of the romantic context is just like a date with my stepmother or like. Date with my like just those times when we were just like, oh, let's let's go get coffee in the morning or you're going to get groceries. Let me go spend that time with you.

And I think it's or in friendship as like becoming a young adult and spending those times with friends. I've learned that each person has been like, intentionally designed to be a gift in a unique way, and it's taken a lot of healing to be able to see myself as someone who could be a gift to someone else, and to see other people as a gift.

A gift, and I think that's been just healing for me, even just like viewing the word date differently is like, you're someone worth spending time with. I'm glad that I'm able to have this conversation with you. And even if we don't like, like, in a situation of coming from you. Divorce or separation or those circumstances.

I think [00:48:00] there's so much left to the story. That's not the end of the story. And we don't really know what people, we don't know what gifts are going to come in. I would have never met my stepdad or never met my stepmom. Most likely, you know, and yeah, so that's just something I think about sometimes.

Joey: I love that I love that that there's like so much left in the story that we haven't like gotten to yet that we haven't seen I think that's really powerful and I like like that kind of redefinition of a date too because I agree I think I don't know exactly why but it almost makes me think that our experience of like Marriage and romance from our parents can often feel like really broken and heavy.

And so we almost like tend to project that on our future relationships and even something as simple as going on a date, that we almost like think that like, oh my gosh, this like little thing of like asking a girl out or going on a date can be like this big heavy thing when it's really supposed to be this really like really Beautiful thing.

This thing that, yeah, maybe there's nerves involved. Of course, that's something that's natural, but I would hope, you know, that that's not a bad thing because it shows it like, wow, I [00:49:00] think something of this person, like, I think they're special. And I, I like think highly of them. I want to kind of live up to, you know, what I think of them, whatever.

Um, but yeah, I've maybe I've seen that in my life too, where like romantic relationships can just feel like really heavy. Can really feel really big, maybe partly because of what we experienced growing up. So I think that's like a cool lesson. I love that thing you said about like feeling, knowing that you're a gift too.

I remember, um, in college, like sharing with a friend of mine, I was telling her, I'm like, you know what, if I'm just honest, I was vulnerable with her. I'm like, I honestly feel like a gift that's like not worth giving, or at least like not worth keeping, like I can do kind of like the surface level, the flashy, the like kind of keep someone interested for a little bit, but, um, I'm afraid that like once they get beneath the wrapping paper, they're not going to really like what they see.

And, uh, and then they'll want to leave. And, and I definitely feared that, like, abandonment. I feared, like, someone walking away, kind of like I saw in my parents marriage. And so, um, so yeah, I was definitely like, again, going back to what I said before, like having men in my life and just friends, like guys and girls who just loved me, even with the imperfections, that was like super healing and showed me, proved to me, [00:50:00] like, no, you're worth loving.

You are a gift. You have a lot to offer, not just from what you can do, but just like in your presence as a human. Like, just being in people's lives and the goodness you can bring into their lives through the way you love them and build them up, um, you can certainly be a gift. And, and now, you know, thank God I'm at a point where, like, I do feel that.

You know, it took me a while, like, it was just something in my head that I kind of repeated, but then again, through the friendships and the love that I experienced, now it's like something I definitely, like, feel. like deep in my bones, like at my core. And I really want that for everyone listening as well.

So yeah, I love the fact that you, you brought that up and I think it is possible to, you know, for anyone listening who maybe isn't in that spot where you like really believe at a deep level that you're a gift, like I'm here to tell you you are, and you have so much to offer more than you can even imagine.

So I thank you for bringing that up. It's such a good point.

Dylan: Yes. For the listener, you, you are a gift. And like we were talking about earlier of trying to manufacture worth or put things together to. Appear like a gift worth giving or a gift worth keeping. It's actually. useless because you were a gift before you tried to do any of [00:51:00] those things, a gift now.

And I think that's, yeah, likewise, that's what I hope for, for all of the listeners to feel in your bones, like you said, that your gift worth giving and keeping.

Joey: I love that, man. That's a great note to end on. There's so much more we could say, and it'd be awesome to have you back another time. I wanted to ask if you would tell us a little bit about your business, um, you had mentioned your book kind of in passing and I have to say like Dylan gave me a copy of his book for my daughter and uh, Lucy is three years old at this time.

I think she was like two at that time or something. And so I've read it to her multiple times. It's on her shelf and it's just, it's a really amazing, beautiful book. And I really enjoyed it. So thank you for that gift. And I'd love to, for you to tell everyone, especially maybe people listening who have young people in their life, like kids or maybe they're a new mom or a new dad or, you know, Yeah.

Anyone with kids in their life. I think your book is like a great gift and a great, just a great story. A great, great content that kind of shows a lot of what we're talking about. Like you have inherent value. You're, you're worth dying for. Like you are a gift. So tell us a little bit about your business, how people can get the book, how they can [00:52:00] find you online.

Dylan: Yes. Thanks for mentioning that. I'm glad that you have the book for, for Lucy. I started this in high school. I think a lot of this could stem back to my story, and a lot of my childhood was spent being pretty quiet, and so I would be often the one in the classroom drawing pictures and writing, and so that's what this, actually, the book came from, was I was in class, and I drew this and wrote this, and this is kind of directly from the notebook without any Eraser or anything, this is just one of those days in the classroom that came to life when I learned how to do graphic design, but I learned how to do graphic design.

Then I, I grew up playing basketball. So I was like, alright, now I'm making shoes. Now I'm making shorts for basketball players to wear. Now that now that I'm drawing on a computer. Now, I want to do this, like, as much time as I can. So I started a business called. Radical Love is the name and you can find it on RadicalLoveCommunity.

com and I'm just really passionate about sharing stories like this book [00:53:00] or I draw and create clothes for, for babies, for young people, for athletes. I have a lot of priests that wear the brand, a lot of professional athletes or people from so many different diverse communities. So I really. I'm just passionate about sharing this, sharing this story about how all of our stories is the story of being radically loved into existence.

So, so worth it that God became human and died for us. And so worth it that we're invited to spend forever in paradise. And that's just my passion with radical love.

Joey: I love it, man. So good. We'll make sure to throw the links in the show notes and remind me the full name of your book, just so everyone can hear it.

Dylan: My book is called God's Little Kiddo.

Joey: Love it. And can they get it on Amazon or do they buy it through your website?

Dylan: They can do it either way. Amazon, my website. I'm working on getting it in more libraries and more schools across the U. S., but it's always available for quick shipping on Amazon. It's probably the easiest way.

Joey: Cool. Love it, man. Just in your spare time when you're not in college and playing [00:54:00] multiple sports and doing all the things. So you're such an impressive dude. I, uh, it's really good to talk with you. A couple of final questions before we close out. If your parents were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

What would you say to them?

Dylan: I think there's just so much that I didn't see. So many conversations, so many sacrifices that I didn't see that they would have had to make it. As peaceful as possible for me, and I really appreciate that, that they took the time to say, all right, you're taking him to school.

You have him on these days, even if there was hurt behind whose family I was with, or if I'm spending more time at 1 than the other, they really made those sacrifices for me to make sure that both of them were there for me and make sure that. I didn't have to see a conflict. I didn't have to see a lot of, like, arguing or yelling back and forth or any of those.

I was really, I was spared from. And I was just given support from both sides, and I can't really [00:55:00] calculate how much that's, that's helped me. And I also don't know what that took from either of them to make that, make that happen. That's just what I have to say to them is thank you for, thank you for that.

And if there's hurt behind which family I was with more or hurt behind, you know, how things ended up. Like we're still here now and I think there's so much growth yet to come for us.

Joey: Beautiful. I love that man. Yeah, I know. And from everything you said about your parents, I definitely admire their ability to like put you first and even kind of look beyond some of their own pain.

It sounds like they did a lot of that. So really, really, really good. Thank you again for being here. I really appreciate it. I yeah, love your story and you're again such an impressive man So excited to see you at some point in Florida. And yeah, thanks for all the good work You're doing with your business as well.

And I just want to give you the final word What advice would encouragement would you give to someone listening right now? Who maybe is the younger you like they're listening to you know, and in those shoes of where you were some years ago But what would you say to them?

Dylan: I would [00:56:00] say Especially if they're a young man listening, or also for the girls as well who are growing up, whether it be in a blended family or a family of divorce, is that that part of your story will affect you and it's not something to do.

Like, forget about, but it's because I think as a young person growing up, you can be tempted to say, Oh, that was, that was a while ago, or it's been some years now. So I'm not going to think about that. But I think giving yourself the permission to be able to think about it to wonder, how am I, how am I really doing?

Some of that work in healing, whether it be healing in relationship with your parents, or offering some more forgiveness for just how the things, how things went. I think it can be really valuable to not hide from that pain, but sort of see what, what life is teaching you right now and understand that.

You're a young man of worth, you're a young woman of worth, and you're going to be a blessing in so many people's lives, and don't try to [00:57:00] get your worth from your story, or don't try to, like, look for random role models. Instead, just try to, try to do the healing within yourself and with your family when it's safe, and with positive, healthy role models that You would actually want to be like, and actually have a life like theirs, not just going for wherever the validation or the intention is.

Joey: That wraps up this episode, by the way, if you want to share your story with us, if you come from a broken family and you want to just tell someone about what you've been through, we'd love to hear it. You can do that anonymously at restored ministry.

com slash story, or by just clicking the link in the show notes.

And if this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe or follow on your podcast app, whether that's Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, whatever. Not only is it the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more that the apps will actually suggest our show to people who are looking for help.

And it only takes a few seconds. And if you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We always appreciate that feedback. And that also helps people find [00:58:00] the podcast as well.

In closing, always remember, you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life, and we're here to help.

And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#140: Hardest Part of the Divorce: Seeing My Siblings Struggle | Anthony

The hardest part of your parents’ divorce or family breakdown is seeing the people you love suffer. 

That was true for my guest today who happens to be my older brother, Anthony: Watching our siblings struggle was the hardest part for him.

In this episode, you’ll hear us compare stories about our parents’ divorce from our perspectives as siblings, plus:

• How Anthony had a sense of, “This is not how things ought to be” and a little about how a family ought to be.

• How he was automatically made the man of the house when he shouldn’t have been and the effects of that.

• How healing is not a one-size-fits-all, the imperfections of certain types of therapy, and a new healing method that’s been effective for him.

• To parents listening: Tips on discussing your divorce with your children without oversharing.

If your parents are divorced or struggling in their marriage and watching your siblings suffer has been hard for you, this episode is especially for you.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey: [00:00:00] What was life like for you during the separations, the divorce?

Anthony: It was kind of hell, if I'm being honest. So like that whole time was like the hardest times of my life. Like the tapestry of my life or our family's life is being torn apart. And at the same time, like I couldn't do anything about it. And that was like, incredibly helpless.

I was kind of an intermediary. I remember a lot of times kind of getting in between mom and dad and trying to like talk them to the other person's side. As a child in that situation you had this like gut instinct that this is not how things ought to be.

Joey: You mentioned anxiety, you mentioned like pressure, stress, but were there any other emotional problems that you experienced through all that?

Anthony: I think as a child What you want to know is like that things are secure, that you're safe. I remember looking out the window and there being like these police cars. And you're like, Holy shit. Like what, you know, like what's going on here.

Joey: Welcome to the resort podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you.

We help you heal your [00:01:00] brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle. And build a better life. My guest today is actually my older brother, Anthony. He grew up in the Chicagoland area as the oldest of six kids, where he played every sport imaginable. Uh, he double majored in philosophy and theology at Franciscan university of Steubenville, where he captained and starred on the baseball team being awarded the Kuzma cup as an outstanding scholar athlete.

After graduation, Anthony taught theology. He did youth ministry and coached baseball for several years. He now works in the golf industry as the director of food and beverage operations at a golf club in Illinois. Anthony is a proud uncle and loves spending time with his niece and nephew, actually my kids, and he still enjoys sports traveling and in his words, it's a degenerate fantasy football player.

Really excited for this conversation. If you come from a divorced or broken family, the hardest part is seeing the people that you love. Suffer that was true for my brother, for Anthony, he said, watching his siblings struggle was the hardest part for him. And in this episode, you'll hear us compare [00:02:00] stories of our parents divorce from our perspectives as siblings.

And you'll hear us talk about how divorce is almost always a lose lose for the children, how Anthony had the sense of this is not how it ought to be. And we talk a little bit about how a family ought to be, how he was automatically made the man of the house when he really shouldn't have been in the effects.

of that on him, how he, uh, his experience healing, but how healing is not one size fits all and the imperfections of certain therapy models, certain therapy types, and a new healing method that's been effective for him, uh, to any parents listening, we talk about some tips on how to talk with your children about your divorce without oversharing.

And then Anthony shares how he struggled in his relationship with God and what he learned that has helped him heal. And so if your parents are divorced or struggling in their marriage and watching your siblings suffer has been the hardest part for you, this episode is especially for you. Two things before we dive in.

You'll hear me share details about my parents divorce that I don't usually go into as much detail about. And without changing my story, I often simplify it on this show to make [00:03:00] it a little bit more concise. Um, but I'm really glad that we were able to dive into those details and I'm able to share those with you guys.

And also in this episode, we do talk about God and faith. And if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone who's been listening to the show for a while knows that this is not a strictly religious podcast. So wherever you're at, I'm glad you're here. If you don't believe in God, my challenge to you is this.

Just listen with an open mind. Even if you were to skip or take out the God parts, you're still going to learn a lot from this episode, still going to benefit you. And so with that, here's our conversation. Welcome on the show. Good to have you here.

Anthony: Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me, bud.

Joey: You are the first family member to come on the show.

So I'm excited to, uh, just see things through your perspective. One of the things that I've always heard is like, as a parent, you're never the same parent to each child. And I think it's true, like as a sibling within a family, like. You each perceive the family and even your parents differently. So I'm really interested to like learn from you and see maybe how you perceive things differently.

And I perceive things differently. So yeah, with that, I'm curious from your perspective, what was [00:04:00] home like in the years and the months before mom and dad split?

Anthony: Ooh, I guess like, so there was kind of this, you know, kind of waves of, cause the original time that, you know, about 10 years prior mom and dad had split for a while or been separated for a while.

And then they got back together and it was kind of like this miraculous reconciliation to some degree, or at least for a while. Right.

Joey: Totally.

Anthony: But in terms of like the months. The months prior, maybe not months and years, the months prior were pretty strenuous. I think it all started like when our uncle died in August of 2012.

And it kind of put our dad, understandably, in a very difficult place, you know, dealing with like the second traumatic death in his family in his lifetime. And so, you know, kind of You know, re triggered all that trauma and you know, so it brought it up to the surface again and I think, you know, kind of put him in a, in a whirlwind and then so fast forward, like six months later when mom and you [00:05:00] know, when mom and dad ended up, you know, the filing for the divorce was made, you know, the months before we're tense.

I remember Like when that finally went through, or it finally, like there was finally a separation, just remember realizing, like feeling my body shaking and realizing, like, I think I've been shaking for like months, you know, I just remember this distinct moment of feeling that. And it was, yeah, it was just like, it's just like, it was a very difficult period.

Like it's, you know, when you're a child in that situation. And I mean, at that time I was. You know, I was older. I was in my twenties. So an adult child, you can say, but as a child in that situation, you had this like gut instinct, this like intestinal fortitude that this is not how things ought to be. And like in that whole time, well, pretty much for most of my life, but especially in that whole time, like I really had this, this is not how things ought to be.

This is not how things ought to be. And it's like this disharmony or this, what do you call it? And what do you call it? When music, when the notes don't, you know how [00:06:00] the notes go together, but then there's a time when the notes don't go together. I can't think of the term. Yeah.

Joey: Discordant or disharmonic or

Anthony: something like that.

Discordant. Yeah. I think it's discordant or something along those lines. Yeah. It's like, you know, musical notes were, you know, like C, A, you know, D minor, all these things were made to go together. But like in, And different types of music, they play like discordant notes. And that's how it felt like that period is just like this, like discordant notes.

It's like intestinal sense that like, this is not how things ought to be.

Joey: That's really good. I think part of the reason that people miss how. traumatic divorce and the dysfunction that precedes it can be is because they don't have this like understanding of how things ought to be. Because if family life is whatever you want it to be or whatever, yeah, whatever you define it as, um, there's no like objective standard of what it like should live up to.

Then I think there's often this perception that like, well, that was just Not a big deal. It's not a big problem. But obviously the stories that we hear all the time and the [00:07:00] research show that, so it's really interesting that you kind of had this thought, this is not how it ought to be. Did you have an idea or understanding of how things ought to be?

Anthony: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, like, we were blessed to grow up with some families, particularly one family, right? That I think really, like you just looked at them and you're like, this is how it's supposed to be, you know, and it kind of was like a, they're like a beacon of peace amid like the storms of like a troubled marriage, you know, and, um, so having that, and then also seeing a bunch of other couples, like I can think of a couple off the top of my head that you're like, look at that and you see that and you're like, I want that because that's not what I grew up with.

But you just know, like, you don't, you know, it's almost like self evident truth, like, you don't need anyone, it's like the little kid who just knows that something isn't fair. That kid couldn't define justice, but they know that something isn't fair. And it's the same thing, like, kind of, I think, in those situations.

You couldn't define what's wrong particularly, or you couldn't maybe put it into words, [00:08:00] but you know it when you see it. Um, that, that being the right thing. And I think that was like very much my experience growing up.

Joey: Yeah, no, that's super good. Wow. I definitely see what you're saying. And I thought it might be helpful for everyone listening to maybe go through the timeline as an overview and feel free to correct or add anything you'd like.

So for everyone listening, so our parents actually separated twice and they actually began a divorce on both occasions. To my knowledge, you can correct that. You're right. Yeah. Yep. So I was a 10, 11. When it first happened, and then you would have been what, 13, 14 at that time, about? Yep. Yep. So then, um, that was the first instant they were separated for what, a year and a half, I think?

That's the knowledge that I had. That's what it sounded about, right?

Anthony: Yeah, it was pretty much spring of when I was 14, I would say, until like December of when I was 15. Okay. Yeah. So that makes up about a year and a half. Yeah.

Joey: So spring of 2003 to December of 2004.

Anthony: Yeah, exactly.

Joey: Okay. Yeah. I [00:09:00] remember it was around their anniversary actually that dad came home.

Yeah. So that was like, Anthony mentioned that it was a kind of a miraculous event. They went on this retreat. Um, some of you might be familiar with like the retrovive retreats. And that was from, to my knowledge, like pretty instrumental. It would, maybe it wasn't the whole picture to, um, To bringing them back together because they, like I said, had started the legal divorce proceedings, whatever, and, um, and then they kind of changed course and got back together.

Um, the way I always explain it then is that it was good that they were together, but things were very broken, you know, at home within the marriage. And that's not to like pass judgment on our parents. I think they would both describe it that way if they were here right now. And then fast forward about 10 years, so I am, I think, 20 at the time, or I guess 19 going on 20, and it was August, like you said, of 2012, so I'm 19 at the time, you would have been, what was it?

Anthony: Uh, 23, 23, sorry, you to

Joey: turn 23 and I was about to turn 20. Yeah. Anyway. So, so for, just for [00:10:00] context, like I was at home, I was, I went to junior college. I took the semester off ironically when our uncle passed away and that's when, you know, understandably so it just really weighed on my dad and that's kind of put the things in emotion like Anthony said before.

And then later that. So that was the fall, that was August, so go into like the spring, and March was when the divorce was filed, if I'm remembering right. So that was kind of just the timeline of how things went down, and then they, our parents, um, went through, uh, actually a three year divorce process, if I'm getting that right, too.

Yeah. It was very, like, I remember someone saying, like, you know, a year is about average, two years is, like, very long, three years is, like, insane, and that was the process. Um, so in some way, we went through this twice, and both each kind of had their particular, like, struggles and details, which we may or may not get into in depth.

Um, but certainly both really difficult and traumatic, I would say. So anyway, with that kind of timeline in place, hopefully that helps you guys understand kind of where we're at in the story. So I'm curious. Um, yeah. So, so you, [00:11:00] you went through kind of what led up to the separation, the divorce. Is there anything else you'd like to add in that?

Or do you feel like we're at a good spot?

Anthony: No, I, I think we're at a pretty good spot. Yeah. I think it was just, you know, you know, of course you can't limit it to like those. And, you know, nothing is, or almost nothing is, you know, just only sparked by one thing. There's usually a lot of things that play into it.

So I don't, I'm not as simplistic as saying like our uncle's death started all this. Cause obviously with the timeline you described it didn't.

Yeah.

Anthony: But you know, there's always kind of, um, I think there was, you know, things happening before that, that definitely contributed. So

Joey: yeah. Cool. Okay. So just to, again, reiterate, you were originally what?

14? 15? 15. When mom and dad split and then you were 22 when they divorced or when they started their divorce, at least, and then, um, and how old are you now?

Anthony: I am. I'd rather not reveal that. I'm just kidding. I'm 35.

Joey: Okay, cool. Yeah, that's helpful for context. And for the record, I [00:12:00] did know that. And so I guess we'll kind of maybe treat both instance separately.

Well, separation separately. So how did you learn about the separation, the divorce, and what was your reaction to it?

Anthony: So I learned about it. Mom came to me and told me that she was going to get a divorce, you know, because she was scared. She didn't feel safe. You know, basically she had kind of reached her wits end.

And so I was Kind of a little bit shocked, but a little bit not surprised. And I actually, I'm pretty sure I told her like, yeah, like after a long time of her, like talking about it and me saying, don't do it at this time, I was like, yeah, I think you should do it because things had gotten that bad and I didn't.

I just remember overhearing some like just conversations that kind of made my blood, you know, like gave me chills, you know, they were kind of just that disturbing, you know, and not something a kid should be hearing or of any age. And so I was remember thinking like, well, you know, it couldn't, couldn't get any worse [00:13:00] than this.

So maybe a, you know, a separation or divorce is, you know, not a terrible idea.

Joey: Yeah, and I think, um, yeah, I know we're kind of being careful with some of the details just to protect mom and dad for everyone listening, because we don't want to disparage their names, but we're also we're trying to be honest about it too.

So it's definitely a difficult line to walk. But, um, so that was like that later instance. And I'm curious about the one earlier on how you learned about that, because I have a kind of a version of the story in my head, but I'm curious if yours, like when you were 14, how did you learn about that? What was your reaction to it?

Anthony: Yeah, that one. I don't remember. I mean, of course it's like similar buildup in a certain sense, but I just remember that one kind of crescendoing and, you know, well, I remember dad, like basically kind of like had somewhat moved out and then one day, you know, mom was decided she didn't want him there. And even though he had been coming and going and not really there for a while.

And so I think I just have this memory of like, I don't know, like. I don't know, [00:14:00] like bags of clothes or like, you know, things being gone. And so that, you know, as a kid, that's hard, like to just like the ambiguity is hard, right? Cause like, I think, I think as a child, what you want to know is like that things are secure, that you're safe, that, you know, things are going to not change that much in that radical of a way.

Right. And so like that, you know, the kind of like the coming and going the, you know, where's dad or, you know, why are his clothes out? That's like, that's, that was really hard. And, um, yeah, so that's what I remember of that, like beginning. Right. And then there was, I think there was an incident and then it, it led to, you know, it led to basically after that.

Um, basically, yeah, the separation for a year and a half. And then I think mom had like a restraining order and that, you know, that was kind of a tough dynamic. Cause it's like, you couldn't talk to your dad and then things like that. So yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to go on [00:15:00] and on, but that's, that's what I remember of that.

Joey: Okay. Yeah, no, I have similar memories. I, um, I think one difference, which is interesting to highlight is that. I don't think I was aware of, like, the beginning stage as much. I think it was a bit of, obviously, you were older, but I think it was a bit oblivious to it. I don't know if we were told something else was going on or what the deal was, like, if that was just, like, out working or something like that.

But I do remember very clearly, I think it was, like, a Saturday. I remember I had a baseball game. I remember our neighbors took us out of the house. to like the park and that's when there was I guess this situation where like that was dad's like official exit from the house without going into many details I don't think it was violent or anything by any means but like the police were involved to just like

Anthony: yeah it wasn't violent at home at least but I think it there was some other situation that that had kind of led to the police being there and that yeah and so also like you mentioned that point as a young kid That's like tremendous.

I, cause I remember, I, I remember looking out the window and there being like these police cars and you're like, holy [00:16:00] shit, like what, you know, like what's going on here and that, you know, that is like very confusing as a young child.

Joey: I remember that. I remember that, um, we were, yeah, we were intentionally taken from the home and we, we'd kind of grown up like around police officers and firemen and kind of looked up to them and understood that their job was like serious.

And, um, there were even some instances earlier on where we were like. We help the police with certain things. We won't go into that. Um, but, but, uh, so, so we kind of understood like

Anthony: we even had a nickname. Do you remember that?

Joey: I do remember that. Um, what was the nickname that you mentioned? People are wondering.

It

Anthony: was, uh, it was the Ponerellic Crime Stoppers. Cause we, there were like these two instances where we like, we caught like crimes in the act or, or people in places they shouldn't have been.

Joey: Yeah.

Anthony: And so this officer, um, said, man, you guys are the Ponerelli Crime Stoppers.

Joey: And I think they happened pretty close together, which is funny.

And then there's Yeah, it was within

Anthony: a Short window. Yeah, yeah.

Joey: At, [00:17:00] at the risk of making it sound super heroic, there was like nothing else that happened, in our life, like outside of that.

Anthony: It wasn't, it wasn't that big of, it wasn't that big of a deal, but Yeah. Yeah.

Joey: We probably thought we were Batman, but it was No, that, that was, yeah, I remember that there was like, um, we actually lived in like a pretty nice area.

It wasn't like high end area by any means. I wouldn't say that at least. But it was like, you know, middle class and there was a house across the street where there was like some sort of drug activity going on. It was kind of an anomaly for the area from what I remember. And um, and we kinda helped them.

take down that house. So yeah, pretty like we didn't do anything crazy, but we kind of fed information and reported on it. So anyway, I did not expect to go into that in this interview, but, um, yeah, so, okay. So yeah, so we had like this context of like police being serious. And then, um, yeah, we went to the park that day.

The neighbors took us. And then we came back too soon. I don't know if you remember that, but it was like, we weren't supposed to come back that soon because that's when we saw the police and the driveway and we're like, what is going on? Like we thought maybe someone was hurt or something happened. Um, and then I don't think we got many [00:18:00] answers from the neighbors.

And I remember me, like we went to another park and we're like. Trying to play. And it was just like, obviously top of mind, at least for probably you and me, maybe Gerard. Cause for context too, we've there's six kids in the family. I'm number two and Anthony's number one. So Anthony's one, I'm two. And then Gerard would be, um, right under us and the other siblings won't go into as much right now, but anyway, that, yeah.

So that day, I remember when we came home that day, um, that's when mom kind of explained what was going on. Did she explain anything to you prior to that? I'm curious.

Anthony: Yeah, she did. And, um, Yeah. So I had kind of known, I think, honestly, I had known for years that there was trouble brewing and, um, which I don't really think was a blessing.

Um, I think it was more, I think I was kind of. given too much at too young of an age, but, but yes, I knew, I knew that something was wrong for a while. And, uh, so I don't think, you know, from my perspective that day, it wasn't as shocking in terms of like the, what it was happening, but it was more shocking, like how it was happening.

Joey: I see. That makes sense. What advice for any [00:19:00] parents listening or young people who like maybe want to convey information to parents, what's your advice for like. How much they should share with their kids. And I know there's maybe two scenarios that I'm asking this. And one is like kind of an ongoing sharing of like seeking emotional support from your children, which we've talked about a lot in the show.

It has like a lot of dangerous pitfalls. Um, but maybe more specifically with the actual. Event of like a separation or a divorce like what's appropriate to share what's appropriate not like what you shouldn't you share sort of thing I'm curious if you have any principles or advice because it is tricky because like on one end if you don't share anything It leaves the kids sitting there like I have no idea what's going on.

I want some level of understanding. On the other end, if you share too much, it can be a huge burden too. Um, I felt like there was, in our instance, to no malice of mom or dad, I felt like there was maybe too much that was shared where I felt like I wish I wouldn't have known as much, but I'm sure there's other scenarios of people listening [00:20:00] where they like feel like they're even more so in the dark.

So I'm curious if what's the balance between the two, especially as it relates around the Event of like a separation or a divorce beginning.

Anthony: I think a couple of things. I think like, well, I think it's a difficult for parents because I was definitely an inquisitive kid and I wanted, you know, I like want to know why mom was upset.

I wanted to know what was going on in different situations, but that also ended up knowing those things at that age became a huge burden on me. Frankly, to some degrees, you know, still has remained to this day. So I think a couple of guidelines, I think you shouldn't share anything that isn't like age appropriate, that they're not ready to like here or to maybe not even here, maybe to deal with at that age.

You know what I mean? And so like, and I also think that to some degree, like as a parent, you can't be just confiding in your child. You know what I mean? At a young age. And I also, I think at any age, but I think particularly at a young age, like that your children shouldn't be the people you go to, to [00:21:00] discuss these things with because.

You know, a they're affected on both sides, right? So it's, it's kind of not fair to only give them one side, but also I just think it, um, you know, it gives them, it kind of puts an undue weight on their shoulders where they're already like carrying a weight, you know what I mean? And so, so I just think like, you know, there's other terms that come in here, like triangulation and things like But I think like, those are real things and like When parents do that, it definitely can make it harder on the child than it needs to be.

Joey: If you'd like to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. You can do that in three easy steps, but first, some of the benefits of sharing your story, reflecting on your story and sharing it with someone who can receive it with empathy is actually healing on a neurobiological level. It makes your brain healthier according to neurobiologists.

Writing your story is also healing. Studies have shown that people who write about emotionally significant events In their lives are less depressed or less anxious. They're healthier and they're happier. And finally, it can be really helpful to someone who's maybe on the [00:22:00] same path that you're on, but a bit far behind you, uh, to just hear your advice and to hear your story, since you're going through things that you've been through.

And so if you want to share your story, just go to restored ministry. com. You can fill out the form on that page that will guide you in telling a short version of your story, and then we'll take that and turn it into an anonymous blog article. Again, if you want to share your story now, you can do so at restored ministry.

com slash story, or just by clicking the link. In the show notes. I totally agree. Yeah. And I love what you said about like the age appropriateness. I know sometimes parents may struggle to know what's age appropriate. Um, one thing that I've heard said in different contexts is, is that you kind of let them ask questions.

You maybe give them basic, simple information. And then if they're curious, you make an opportunity for them to like ask the questions and then you kind of satisfy their curiosity. And then leave it at that. You don't share more than that. I've heard that as kind of a guideline. Is there anything you would tweak or add to

Anthony: that?

I think that's a great guideline. And I also think you have to like kind of moderate your own desire to be heard with balancing that with [00:23:00] like your child's innocence, essentially, you know what I mean? And their, their right to be protected from, you know, what is bad in this world. Um, not that you're going to perfectly insulate them, but I think when you let them know too much, too young, it has kind of this.

You know, or can have this like, I don't know if the right term is eroding, but this effect of where it, you know, it kind of matures them too quickly. And they miss out on some of these experiences and kind of like the carefreeness for lack of a better term of youth that I think is essential. And I think when you put too much in too young of a kid, they grow up too quick and then they spend some of their adulthood, you know, yearning after that.

Carefreeness of childhood that they were somewhat robbed of

Joey: couldn't agree more. And we've seen that a lot, um, with the different young people we've worked with. And it is, it's really a tragedy. And what we've seen too, is that kind of to go a little bit deeper into that whole dynamic of like triangulation or spousification where like one of the parents relies on.

Usually one [00:24:00] of the children, or maybe multiple children in a way that they shouldn't, in a way that their spouse is really supposed to provide the support, but since they're not there, the children are kind of like the next convenient option. And so they, yeah, share things that normally they wouldn't share, they shouldn't share, in an attempt to like, fill that very real need that they have.

And so I like what you said about, you know, kind of moderating your own desire to be heard, or what you said before, like you can take it to another source, which maybe isn't as convenient, like a relative, a sibling, maybe parents, a counselor, a pastor, friend, like someone like that. Um, it's not as convenient because your children are right there.

And you can like share things with them, but I think it does more damage. And I think it's often, um, what I've heard on this topic, we'll link to an episode from the awesome podcast, the place we find ourselves or Adam Young, the therapist, he goes into this a little, in a little bit more depth and he quotes some research and authors.

Um, but this whole idea, like it really can be so lethal because. The way he explains it, and you can jump in here at any point, he says basically like, yeah, mom or dad have like these real, real emotional [00:25:00] needs and then children are just, they're kind of wanting to help because they love their parents. And so they jump in and they listen and they empathize and maybe even like do things in order to help them.

But then they're, yeah, this unhealthy dynamic forms. And then over time, if that continues down that path, you, you know, have this really dysfunctional relationship, this unhealthy relationship that often leads to the. Child needing to pull away because they're like, this isn't healthy, but I don't really know what to do except like maybe leaving.

And then the parent is hurt by that. And then often there's then resentment that seeps in and then the child doesn't really want to talk to the parent so that it destroys the relationship. And that's like over, if you look at it on like a longer time horizon. So we'll link to that episode. He says it more articulately than I can, but, um.

But yeah, I thought that was like really interesting. And I think there's a lot of danger there that parents like really need to be aware of, especially if they're going through these like murky and painful waters of like separation and divorce.

Anthony: And I sympathize like with our parents and with parents in general, because like you said, it's like the people you care about the most are your [00:26:00] kids.

And so it's kind of tempting because they're in it with you, right? Like nobody else is like in the war if you will with you, right? They're in the foxhole with you So it's like very tempting I think to just like unload on them and then you probably feel like well, you know It's like they deserve to hear it.

They deserve to know it this and that but that being said I think You know, kind of, as you mentioned, you're putting your child in a very difficult situation, not only for that short amount of time, but for, in a certain sense, the rest of their life, because they're going to have to navigate this difficult relationship that essentially had too much of a burden on one person.

For years and years.

Joey: Totally. Yeah. And I like what you said, like, I think parents probably feel that burden of like, they deserve to know this, but I think what we would add is like, not all at once and not all the details.

Anthony: Right, right, exactly. And, and I think that like, listen, there's in different stages of youth, we expose kids to different things, to different responsibility, [00:27:00] right?

Like whatever your opinion of sex ed or of the birds and the bees talk is, and who should give it, take that away. But at a certain point, you deem that your child is ready for that, right? At a certain point, you deem that your child is ready to babysit, that they're ready to drive, that they're ready to have a phone, all these different things, right?

That they're ready to stay out past a certain time. And so, it's um, it's a gradual thing. It has to do with maturity with responsibility. But you don't deem it all at once. And sometimes, in these situations, I think our parents just Essentially break a lot of those barriers all at once and on a young mind on a young heart It's a lot to bear at you know, the age of 10 11 12 13 years old.

Joey: I agree I think if you want the best healthiest relationship you can have with your kids and that you need to put a lot of like Thought and prudence into what you're gonna share before you share it. I think that's another good principle of like Before you just kind of shoot from the hip and share something like really give a thought, is this something that they need to know?

And to what level do they need to know it? [00:28:00] And do they need to know it now? Maybe those are good questions.

Anthony: And is it going to be good? You know, good for them. And we're not, I think I can speak for you too, Joe, we're not advocating lying to your kids at all.

Joey: Like

Anthony: we're not supporting that. But I remember this, um, from my Christian moral principles class in college, I think it's from a book called the right and reason.

And this priest said, or I think he was quoting something. I think is. Name was Father Austin Fagothay, and he said, You always have to tell the truth, but you don't always have to tell the truth. You know, in other words, like, when you speak, you always have to say the truth, but you don't always have to speak, right?

Or you don't know what, you can just, you can just kind of say, you know what, this is not For this time.

Joey: Right. Would another version of that being like keeping things more general? Right. Exactly. Yeah. No, that totally makes sense. Um, all right. And I'm curious before we maybe go on in the timeline, how would you describe the marriage, the divorce?

Would you describe it as high conflict or low conflict? And just for everyone's context, who's listening. Uh, high conflict divorces typically involve abuse, [00:29:00] violence, maybe high degrees of dysfunction. And from the children's point of view, the problems are very overt and obvious. And so the children sometimes expect or even want a divorce or separation in those situations.

That's like high conflict where, yeah, there's a real like danger there that some needs to be done. Low conflict involves more covert. problems. Um, in these situations, children typically are like maybe blindsided by the separation of the divorce, or maybe they don't like fully see it coming. And so while they might know that mom and dad are facing some problems or some things that are wrong, uh, they typically wouldn't expect, um, a divorce, at least not like to the degree that you might think.

So I'm just curious from your perspective, maybe like separate both of those instances of when we were younger, when we were older. How would you pack those? Were they high conflict, low conflict, somewhere in between?

Anthony: I think it was kind of somewhere in between. Maybe, I don't know if there's a medium conflict, but kind of like, I think it fluctuated between those two, um, you know, certain periods of like high conflict.

I don't think violence was typically part of the [00:30:00] picture, but there was certainly a lot of like, I don't know, like I would say verbal abuse and just kind of like this overwhelming sense of like disease that kind of pervaded over it. And I think like, I think there was just like this like kind of underwhelming tension, not underwhelming isn't the right, like under, um, like kind of like under the radar tension that like you couldn't exactly quantify, but you could feel, you know, you could maybe put a name on it, but you could feel.

And I think I learned that years later. And so I think I would say, you know, for all those reasons, kind of like it fluctuated, but probably more towards high conflict, like based on the level of dysfunction.

Joey: The way I have seen it. Um, and this is just my perspective, so it's interesting, again, to see, like, even the kind of classification of low conflict versus high conflict might be dependent on the children's, like, perception, to some degree.

And I would say, like, the first separation, for me, was low conflict, because it truly came out of the blue. It blindsided me. It sounds like you were more aware of, like, it leading in that direction. Mom [00:31:00] shared things with you. She didn't with me. And so that like was blindsided me. And so that I would say was a little conflict.

Again, I knew there were some problems, but I didn't ever expect that to happen. Whereas when we were older and there was a second separation, that's when I would categorize that pretty clearly, in my opinion, from my perspective as high conflict, that's kind of, but if we were to average them out, I think like in between or kind of different waves, like you said before, that that would make a lot of sense.

Would you add anything to that?

Anthony: No, I would definitely agree that at the end, like it kind of reached its Peak, you know, at the end of the timeline we mentioned earlier, kind of, that was the worst of the worst, if you will.

Joey: Yeah, no, totally. So I'm curious, this is a kind of a big question, but like, what was life like for you?

You alluded to this already. What was life like for you during the separations, the divorce?

Anthony: Um, it was very difficult. Um, it was kind of hell if I'm being honest, you know, it was, you know, I think as the old, you know, I kind of had a, um, so like, as you know, the early separation [00:32:00] we mentioned, you know, at that age, I kind of felt from that time that I was kind of like the man of the house.

Yeah. And, and so it, that kind of like was hard, you know, obviously at that age, but then, you know, then dad came home and then it kind of was like a little bit of a relinquishing of those responsibilities or those duties. And then it kind of like came back into full. And I think like for me, I was, um.

Growing up I always wanted, like, I was like a fixer, right? I wanted everything to be okay. I was kind of an intermediary. I remember a lot of times, like, you know, kind of getting in between mom and dad and trying to, like, talk them to the other person's side. Um, so I guess, like, the image that I have to describe that time is that, like, your whole life I think it's kind of like a tapestry being built and what I, what I felt like, you know, when I was you know, 23, 24 and their, you know, their marriage was coming apart and [00:33:00] everything was ripped apart.

I felt like it was this tapestry that was my life that was built together and then, and kind of weave together. And then as they got divorced, you know, as it all happened, that it was like ripped, you know, kind of like straight down the middle and all these. different times and years that had been weaved together, um, were just kind of like ripped.

And I think that's a really, you know, a good, and, and, and with that ripping, it makes you broken and feel broken. And so, so like that whole time was like the hardest times of my life, you know, um, and kind of dealing with the fallout. And I think the hardest thing for me was wanting to, you know, when I've like talked to, um, different people about it.

You know, and in a lot of like family systems, there's a like hero child who wants to like save everybody. And I think I like identify with that a lot. And I think that it was hard for me because at that point I realized like I couldn't save everybody. And I felt like. You know, super helpless, you know, and to, [00:34:00] so it's essentially kind of these two things going on.

Like the tapestry of my life is being, or our family's life is being torn apart. And at the same time, like I couldn't do anything about it. And that was like incredibly helpless. And it was the hardest thing for me. It was like to see my siblings suffer and to feel like that. You know, I, I couldn't give them what they need at the time and that, you know, that was, that was difficult and yeah, and I think to, to another degree, kind of to take it to a different point, I think a lot of like how we reference God is, you know, through our, family of origin.

And, you know, a lot of those images we have of God is through that. And so for me, when mom and dad reconciled, I saw that as like a very, a great sign and like a fact, you know, kind of like a sign of that they were back together. And I considered it, you know, as we mentioned earlier, like a small miracle.

And then, so when that kind of fell apart, It was hard, like it, it was hard for me in my faith [00:35:00] because I was like, wait a second, like, I referenced this as like this miracle. And then, you know, it kind of ceased to be. So I, you know, it, it left me questioning God and questioning where he was and, um, you know, how he could let it.

Joey: Yeah. No, I've had similar struggles for sure. And it was almost like, without going into this too much, like each of those instances, like separation one, separation two was kind of like were difficult in their own ways and like were wounding in their own ways and brought their own, like any kind of types of brokenness, though there like was this continuum too along the way.

So that was kind of my experience of it. But man, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, like, it sounds like you were very self aware throughout the entire time, which is not true for everyone. I, I'm curious, kind of, was there a point when you realized, like, that all the dysfunction, the divorce, the separation were affecting you negatively, or did you maybe always know that?

Anthony: You know, I think I always knew it, kind of intuitively. I think, like, separation one, I had, I had a [00:36:00] lot of anger in me, and I knew it, you know, kind of as a, that's, you know, it was kind of a, You know, like we said the timeline earlier, but basically like 13 to 15, right? That's time of like in a man's life.

There's like, you know, introducing testosterone and all these different things. So I had a lot of, you know, kind of piss and vinegar and a lot of anger took out a lot of it, like kind of on the sports field and just in like competition, because that was like my, I think my way of regulating myself. And after you're like, yeah, I know I've played sports against you,

Joey: you're always the measured one, never the violent, but,

Anthony: um, but yeah, I think that, you know, that's kind of how it came out then.

And then, and then I think as a young, you know, kind of like, I've seen this in a lot of young people, a lot of siblings, I think like. There's a lot of fluctuation in life and a lot of growth and a lot of changing, right? Your brain doesn't stop growing until you're 25 or 26. [00:37:00] And so I think a lot of times you get to, you know, like after college and you think like everything's going to go like perfectly after that.

And then you realize like, wait, you know, I was actually talking to this with. Some mutual friends of ours recently, it's like, it's like you get to that age and you realize like, wait, you know, I have a lot of like unpacking to do from my, my childhood, my adolescence from my, you know, the family I grew up in.

And it's kind of, I think starts at that point to manifest. So, so I guess it was two folded to answer your question. Like. You know, a lot of anger as a youth and a lot of kind of like hiding from the pain. And then as an adult, um, it's a young adult kind of having that, all that trauma relived and not really being able to hide from it, you know, having to deal with that, I think I dealt then with like a lot of anxiety and a lot of just like a lot of pressure and a lot of stress.

And it just, you know, it manifested itself in a lot of different ways.

Joey: Thanks for sharing. I, uh, yeah, I know you've been through a lot, for [00:38:00] sure. I think, I think there's a special, like, for any firstborns listening, I think there's a special, like, burden, pain, and I don't know what the other words would be, that the oldest two carry, like you said.

Especially if dad left the house, which is statistically, I think that's, like, the most common occurrence. Then you step into that role. And I'd imagine whether it's a Boy or girl, they'd be kind of forced into helping around the house. And then I imagine, yeah, if like, if mom were to leave and yeah, that would kind of be a different dynamic of especially the oldest girl.

I don't know how that would play out. But anyway, that the oldest, I think definitely carries like a big, big burden and definitely saw you carry that over the years, which I appreciate, by the way. I know it's like a, it's really like a lose lose situation. Like in the military, they, when they're doing training with like, especially like special people in special operations.

And I think probably like. General like soldiers Marines and things like that They put them in these scenarios that are a little lose lose situations where their only intent is like to humble them and to teach them that sometimes like you can't win and sometimes you have to just like minimize your losses and that's the way I see the older children or any [00:39:00] child like being put into some of these like parental roles Is it's like, okay, there's some level of necessity here.

Like if that doesn't happen, then what's going to happen to the family and the kids. But at the other end, it's like, this really isn't good for them. This is, they're not meant to fill this role. They're not meant to like, especially for a long period of time, they're not meant to like be this type of person.

And so, yeah, I, um, definitely I'm sorry you had to go through all that, but, um, does that resonate with you?

Anthony: Yeah, it definitely does. And I, I appreciate your kind words, Joe. Yeah, I think it, it definitely does. Like I definitely have. You know, felt the burden of being in the firstborn. And I think, especially, you know, I think there's, you know, generally a burden being the firstborn, but in these situations, it kind of takes on a different meaning and it kind of, you know, really puts you in some of those, like almost, it feels like do or die situations.

You know what I mean? And that the definition of lose, lose. Is so fitting because like a lot of these situations when you're pitted against one or one of the parents [00:40:00] or in between both of the parents, right? Like a, the definition of a dilemma is a dilemma. It's between two things. You know, that is essentially what this is.

You're between the two things of your parents. And it's like, if you choose your, you know, the old saying, you're damned if you do, and you're damned, if you don't like, it's a bunch of those situations, just kind of like a continuous line of them. You just keep choosing and you pick one, you're damned. And you pick the other, you're damned, at least in your parents eyes.

And it's just like, it's the lose, lose. And so I think like, yeah, I think it is like, I feel very deeply when I see children in these situations and, you know, particularly the oldest, because I know that, you know, they carry a lot of weight and that a lot of like unfair things are put on them. And in a certain sense, like they're robbed of their, of what should be happening that age, like their childhood, their adolescence, their teenage years.

Where they should be, you know, not thinking of, you know, like I need to take care of all these things or take care of mom or take care of dad or take care of my [00:41:00] siblings, you know, or maybe I should go home now because my younger siblings like are missing me instead of just like being carefree and present in what they're doing.

Joey: Yeah. No, it's a totally different type of like upbringing

Anthony: that, uh, that really is.

Joey: Yeah, that it really does, like, stunt your growth in a lot of ways. There's some benefits that come from what I've seen, like some virtues that can develop, um, but I think it does stunt your growth in a lot of ways. And I experienced some of that as well.

And yeah, I remember a lot of people making the observation about, like, us, especially you and me. Um, I'd imagine that someone goes down the line even further too, but just, like, being, like, more mature for our age and that. And the one level you think of it as a compliment, but when you kind of dig into it, it's like, wait, wait, why, why are they more mature for the age?

It's like, well, actually that's not a great thing.

Anthony: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny you bring that up. Cause that was a common thing said about us. And at the time you think like, yeah, I'm so mature, but it's, you know, when you look at the reasoning, it's not as great.

Joey: No, totally. And I remember like getting along better with like older.

kids like even your friends or even [00:42:00] adults than I did like with kids my own age in some respect, um, because I could, I don't know if I could relate with them or yeah, there was like that. It felt like that we were kind of forced to that level. So without belaboring that too much more, um, I'm curious when it came to, yeah, just, you mentioned anxiety, you mentioned like pressure, stress, but were there any other emotional problems that you experienced through, through all that?

Anthony: How much time you got now? I'm just, I'm just good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I love her. Shout out to Sarah. Um, yeah, shout out to Sarah and Dr. Andrew. They're, they're a podcast with you is my favorite one.

Joey: They're great. And I know that they love you. They adore you, admire you.

Anthony: They're awesome. Um, so I think like.

Yeah, I think anxiety being the big one and I think, I want to be careful how I say this, but in, in those, you know, in those, in the situation of a family, like the father, like the role of the man, right, is to be the provider and the protector. And so when that, when that is [00:43:00] kind of inverted and you feel like you're protecting yourself from the protector.

That becomes an entirely different situation, and I think it's, like, mentally really hard to wrap your, wrap your head around that. And so, like, um, I think that that is a lot of, like, what I struggled with, is that, like, you know, and there's almost, like, some betrayal there, and some just questioning of, like, oh my gosh, like, like, wait a second, you know what I mean?

This person who is supposed to be protecting me is like, this is like, like, I feel like I'm having to protect people from this person and, um, and so that is like a very vulnerable thing. I think that, you know, definitely struggled a lot with anxiety and, but even I would say a lot of anxiety was kind of centered around like performance of, you know, I'm, you know, having to achieve a certain level to basically to get noticed.

Or to, to be loved and not that, not that my parents ever put me on that. I don't, I don't think that [00:44:00] was ever their intent. And I don't think that they even were, I don't think that was anywhere in their intention. I think it's just like when you're in a tough situation like this. You just think that like, Oh, like I better do something to get noticed and to, to be appreciated.

And so like, I, you know, kind of ended up in a lot of like, you know, sports or academics or things like being like, just driven to this like level of like high achievement. And then like that kind of not being that. Satisfying, you know what I mean? And it's almost like, was like, you know, like anxiety, you know, achieve the result and then it's just like onto the next thing, you know what I mean?

And so like that was, it was, and has been kind of a struggle for me and kind of to disentangle my identity from my performance, um, because those are two entirely different things and don't affect each other.

Joey: That's really good. Like what you do is not who you are. It doesn't measure your value, your worth.

Yeah, that's really good. If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more [00:45:00] resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more. All of our resources are designed.

To help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue so you can break that cycle and build a better life. And so if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, just go to restored ministry. com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes.

Anthony: And can I say something else about that joke?

Like, I just, uh, and to, to any, you know, I know that this is a highly listened to podcast, that there's a lot of kids, you know, and parents listening to this. And I would just say to them, you know, don't like, don't equate your worth. You know, it's, it's good to be a high achiever. It's good to do the best you can and everything.

Right. But I think it's either, it's somewhere in the wisdom literature to sound, it's like, whatever you do, then do that with all your heart. Which I, I believe wholeheartedly in, but I also think like that you, you know, you are not what you do. You are not your GPA. You are not your batting average. You are not any of those things.

Like you're loved by God [00:46:00] just because who you are, just because you are. And so like in these situations where you're, you know, your parents, your parents love seems very conditional because, you know, you're, you might be, you know, kind of a victim of triangulation. You might be in between, you know, in between those two parents.

But just know that, like, there is a love for you that is not conditional, and that's God's love, right? And that, that's not dependent on what you do, or not dependent on if you do what your parent wants you to do. That is, that is, love is free. And, um, just to, like, when you are, you know, caught in this web of kind of dependent love and people trying to buy love and things like that.

Just try to turn yourself the best you can to the, to the love of God in the way you understand that. And maybe you don't, but maybe, you know, all it really takes is just kind of just closing your eyes and just trying to turn yourself to him and just say like, God, like, I need your love. Let me feel your love.

Joey: Yeah, because if he's all powerful and unknowing, then he's going to be able to hear you in that moment and help you [00:47:00] too. So, no, I know there's a lot there and I know a lot of people do struggle in that relationship with God with me. We can go a little deeper into it in a little bit. But I, um, I think it's a really important point that I think by its very nature, uh, separation and divorce point to like the conditionality of love because it's like, Okay, you're on your wedding day, you're promising your love to be essentially unconditional.

And then, and feel free to disagree with that. And I think there's an importance between like unconditional love and unconditional maybe acceptance. Because we never like loving someone according to the kind of definition from St. Thomas Aquinas is like willing the good of the other, right? And so the question becomes like, what is that good for in the particular situation?

And how do I in my role do that? How do I will that? Love is not letting someone abuse you. That's not love. You could still love them in that moment or not. Maybe that moment's not the right word. And in that situation where like, you're maybe putting a restraining order in place or you're, um, you know, calling the police or whatever that looks like, right.

[00:48:00] That's actually might be doing what's best for them, but it's not allowing like any. Sort of behavior so I think that's kind of an important like side note when we talk about love because some people maybe think of love It's like accepting like any sort of behavior, but I think there is this like underlying message that like love is very fragile Love is very conditional love can end at any moment when you see your parents love shatter before you even if there were like decent Reasons for it for their togetherness to be like paused or separated.

Does that make sense?

Anthony: It makes total sense. Yeah. And I, I actually, I think that was kind of trying to articulate that before and I did a poor job and I think you did way better just, um, yeah, just this sense of love being kind of finite and kind of, you know, performance based, you know what I mean? Cause when you see your parents getting divorced.

Because, you know, one of them is behaving in a certain way, you start to think like, Oh, well, you know, if I am the best version of myself, am I going to essentially, you know, is somebody going to divorce me from love? You know, am I going to be [00:49:00] unlovable? And, um, and I think that's. I think all of us struggle with that to some degree, but especially kids, kids in this situation, because you're, you know, you see it crumble before your eyes.

And so it's hard, like, I know personally in my own life, you know, that, that unconditional love that I just spoke about, it has been very hard to accept God's unconditional love. Because, you know, it was not my experience of, And, um, so that's, that's a struggle. And so I think you really highlight something very true is because, you know, we experienced, we witnessed this kind of, what we understand is love or what we see is supposed to be love, like within a family, and then that ends.

or that is broken down, then we think, like, you know, we experience love as finite, or we experience it being cut off based on your, like, someone's failings, essentially. So then we are, you know, essentially, like, we feel that love is going to be taken away from us at any moment.

Joey: Yeah. And I mean, it makes it really hard to love in any relationship, including your [00:50:00] relationship with God, but also friendships, romantic relationships, like go down the whole list.

So let's go there for a little bit. Um, the relationship with God, I'm curious, kind of the particular struggles there for you, you mentioned them a little bit, but if you'd go deeper and then kind of, how did you work through that?

Anthony: Um, I'm still working through it, but you know, um, I think like trying to, you know, like my focus is trying to accept.

That unconditional love and to know that like, it's there. I didn't do anything to earn it and I can't do anything to lose it. Right? Like, I'm going to say that again. Like it's there. It's always been there for me. I didn't earn it. I can't earn it. And I, but that also means I can't lose it. And so I, I think that's like both beautiful and hard to accept for someone kind of, you know, who comes from a broken family because you're like, wait, love is conditional.

Like I always had to do things to get love, you know? So I think that is one thing. And I also think that kind of, you know, so accepting that love has been difficult. You know, one thing I've been kind of realizing is that [00:51:00] essentially in life, life is comes down to like what identity you accept. And there's this identity we all have from God, you know, from either as either like a son or a daughter and that is loved unconditionally by him.

And then there's these false identities that are, you know, pushed by the world or the devil or whoever you want to attribute it to, you know, I think it's essentially, you know, the devil through the world, but we are given these like lies about ourselves and one of, you know, one of your guests. Dr. Bob Schutz talks about this a lot, like, you know, these lies, like, kind of entrap themselves deep in our hearts, and then we kind of live out of this lie about ourselves and about our identity.

And I think, like, essentially what life comes down to is, like, which identity you choose to live out of, you know, either the true identity or the false identity or the lie. Um, I know one struggle for me has been A, to, like, accept that identity from God, and then B, to live out of that. And, um, you know, I think, you know, [00:52:00] You know, if you look at our world, you kind of just see, you know, a bunch of people struggling with identity and looking into all these different areas to try to find it and try to, you know, or in some cases craft it or change it or, you know, with surgery or whatever, what have you.

But like, essentially what we have is, you know, we have an identity from God that is not dependent on anything that we do. You know, it's just essentially like. Unconditional love. And that is the one we are all thirsting for, but in a certain sense is the hardest one to live into because it requires the most detachment from the lies that we have been told.

Yeah.

Joey: No, there's a lot there to unpack. I think it's hard to like figure that out all on your own. And I know we're going to get into kind of ways in which you've sought help, but I think it's like really important to like seek help for that from a mentor, maybe a therapist, spiritual director. Someone like that because I think that's one of the things I'm definitely no like academic when it comes to like identity So I can't say fully understand all of it But I think one truth is that your [00:53:00] identity is not something that you necessarily like create on your own It's like something that's given to you Um, you can think of a child like receiving a name from a parent, right?

Like they're literally in a very real way infusing an identity on you. And so I think like in a similar way Maybe there's some instances where we can kind of like create our own identity or like reach or discover an identity, but I think it's always in relationship with like another person that we do that.

And I think that's a really important component. Cause I think if you're just like sitting there kind of twiddling your thumbs being like, you know, I'm loved, I'm loved, I'm loved, or like whatever other kind of characteristic of your identity that you're trying to like fully like accept or embody, I think you can, it can be quite fruitless in my opinion.

If you don't like experience it on like almost like a, maybe bodily level isn't. The right term, but like in real life, tangible, tangible, not just in your head. Cause like you hear all these people in like the self help, like personal development space, you're like all into like these affirmations or like, you know, they look in the mirror and they tell themselves things and maybe there's a point to it.

I've never done all that stuff, but it's almost like

Anthony: [00:54:00] Superman pose in the bathroom,

Joey: but there's like two things to it. Like, it's like, one, is there any evidence to back up? what you're saying, that's really important, because otherwise you're like, kind of delusional and fooling yourself. Um, and two, you know, is there, like, I think it's better for someone else to say that stuff to you than you to say it to yourself.

And maybe there's not someone in your life who can say that, and so you need to, you know, kind of remind yourself of it, or maybe other people have said it, so you're reminding yourself of what they have said. So I think there can be some merit to it, but I think, yeah, I think it's really important to have that, like, other person who's kind of, you know, Somewhat infusing or imparting your identity.

That's why I'm such a big fan of like mentors. I think that's like, so, so helpful and fruitful.

Anthony: Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's a very good point. You know, we're made for relationship and that is, that is important and it kind of plays into, you know, some of these relationships have given us these.

you know, probably a combination of truth and lies about ourselves, about our identity. And so it's kind of, I think as an adult, it's kind of like choosing the relationships and [00:55:00] also choosing to like, try to, you know, engage in the relationships, which help you to live into the true identity of yourself, you know?

And so one of those relationships would be, you know, with God and trying to say, okay, like God. You know, there was this really holy priest I know, and he used to say when he was giving people, his name was Father Bernard Geiger, he died this past year, but he used to tell people to pray this prayer, and it was very simple, and he would give it at the end of confession.

He would say, when you're doing your penance after confession, he would say, ask God, God, who are you and who am I? You know, it's a question of identity, and so, like, when you start in his, what he was saying is that, when you start to understand who God is. Then you take on a different identity yourself because that God's identity affects your identity.

And so when you understand who God is and how much he loves you, that is going to help you answer the question of, you know, God, who are you and who am I? That is going to help you answer the question of who am I.

Joey: Dang, that's good. [00:56:00] I like that. You mentioned before like watching your siblings struggle has been the hardest thing.

I'm curious what you meant by that and if there are any particular like instances where that was kind of Maybe grueling or kind of hit you in the face.

Anthony: Yeah. Um, I mean a lot. Um, but yeah, just kind of seeing how, you know, I kind of, you know, being the oldest and being in the position I thought I was, you know, I was in a, you know, kind of in a sibling plus position, maybe you would call it like I felt like in a, you know, I don't think it was healthy in a lot of ways, but I think I was in this kind of position of like a sibling parent.

And so to see, you know, all of us. struggle of you guys, I should say struggle with the divorce. That was, that was very difficult. And then also, you know, to feel that I couldn't help it, you know, I think because of how the divorce affected me so deeply, I felt that I couldn't be what I needed to be to the rest of the family and that, you know, and I felt kind of in that time, like I wasn't what I needed to be [00:57:00] for all you guys.

And that, so that was probably the hardest part of all that for me is I wish that I could like just, you know, take away all that pain and to accept that I couldn't, um, was like really, really awful, you know, and I honestly, I still struggle with that. You know, not that I should have been able to prevent it, but I just, I wish that it affected me less.

And so then I was able to help more, you know?

Joey: Yeah, no, I hear you. I definitely felt that. And it's humbling to see like your own limits, especially when you're trying to like love and help other people. And I definitely had many. situations like you described where I wish I could have done the same for you and for our siblings.

Yeah, it's just such a sucky situation to go through. And for the parents too, just to make sure I'm not like, yeah, we, we don't like, we have a heart for our parents for sure. We love them dearly. And yeah, even if there's struggles or even if there's things there that, you know, make the relationships challenging at times, every relationship has their challenges certainly.

But um, yeah, it's, it's just a hard [00:58:00] thing for anyone and all of us to go through. So, but yeah, but I think in a particular way, the children. Cause so often they get ignored or the pain is not even like acknowledged, um, very rarely understood and given like the space that it deserves, which is what we're trying to do here.

But yeah, that, uh, I definitely can relate to it, but yeah. Any thoughts?

Anthony: Yeah, no, I've often thought that like in a divorce, particularly. That to some degree, like, you know, like there's a saying, you know, essentially like you were referencing earlier with the lose, lose, but in a divorce, like, I think that nobody really wins in a divorce, but just to a certain degree, the parents get some change and sometimes it is good change.

I, I do believe in the case of our parents, it was good change. In fact, for both of them, like, that's my personal perspective. Um, but. I think particularly, even though that is the case, I just think it's rare that it's better for the kids. Like, I think it's kind of the kids are particularly in a lose lose situation.

And, um, so I think that, that's [00:59:00] like very difficult as a child. It's cause, you know, we mentioned a lot of these situations where you're kind of a rock in a hard place. And that leads to this, like, I think one of the worst feelings you can feel as a human is helplessness, you know, and I think it leads to a lot of helplessness as a child.

Joey: I'd agree. I'd agree with that. Yeah. You don't quite know what to do with it. I want to get into like that, maybe happier, the better part of the story. But before we do, I'm curious if there were anything you wanted to add in terms of like struggles with bad habits or relationship struggles, especially. in romantic relationships.

I know there's probably a ton that we can say here, but yeah, just curious if there's anything you want to highlight.

Anthony: Yeah. Um, I, I definitely think, you know, I, um, you know, I've struggled with a lot of things. Um, but you know, I mentioned some of those before. Um, I think, you know, loss is one thing I struggle with because I, I think like in a lot of these situations.

You know, we're looking for escape and, you know, lust offers the allure of that escape. Um, but it's, you know, essentially it's at its core, it's a [01:00:00] lie and it leaves you, you know, and the interesting thing, I saw a quote from St. Josemaría Escriva and he said, you know, after essentially like, You know, essentially after like giving into lust or sensual pleasure, like what loneliness after?

And it's so true that it's like, if you think of your life and you think of a time that you gave into lust or use it as like a medication, like try to think of a time when you felt happier after. And the truth is you won't because you weren't. And so I think that, you know, that has been something I think that a lot of people in general struggle with, but a lot of people in these situations.

But I would just encourage anyone struggling with that, that just know it's not, it's not your identity and it's also not, you know, it's not, um, it's not a cure and it's not helping you. It's just like making you more lonely. And I, so that's what I would say to like, um, the question of struggles and then to the question of like relationships.

I, I do think that it has definitely affected me a lot in, um, my romantic relationships and, you know, I'm, I'm 35, I'm unmarried and I think that's, [01:01:00] It's definitely part of the equation. Um, I think when you, you know, for me, like seeing, like seeing all that we have that we've mentioned in this podcast, it's, it's hard to like really kind of like, or it has been hard for me to really want to like commit to love and commit to opening yourself so much to another person that, um, you show them your flaws and you show them what's broken in you, um, because you also have seen.

You know the the negative effects of that and so so that has been very a struggle for me I'm trying i'm still trying to work through it still trying to essentially, you know Help god or let god help me through it. Um, and so that's definitely been a struggle and I think it is for You know, I see that trend in a lot of people who've been in similar situations.

Joey: No, thanks for sharing all that. And yeah, just one note on the whole last thing. I, uh, this, you guys have probably heard me talk about this in the show before, but Dr. Patrick Carnes is an expert on sexual compulsion, addiction, and He found that 89 percent of people who struggle with a sexual addiction [01:02:00] come from a broken family with what he called a disengaged family.

89 percent almost 90%, which is so wild. So I think it is such a common thing on that note. We do have a, I just want to give a plug for, we do have a podcast series on that topic. It's called healing sexual brokenness. We'll link to that in the show notes. Definitely encourage you guys. So check it out if you're in any of the podcast apps, if you go to our show and you just search healing, sexual brokenness, you'll find that there too.

But, um, it's such a big problem. I think all of us at some level or the majority of us have dealt with it. And so, um, yeah, thanks for bringing that up kind of switching gears a little bit and getting toward the end of our show. I'm curious, kind of when did you decide to ask for help and what did that look like?

Anthony: It took a lot of different forms. Um, you know, I, I've done different things in my life, like spiritual direction. Um, I've done some counseling. I've done some. trauma therapy. And then I've done other things that are kind of, you know, less traditional. Um, I did, so one thing that has helped me a lot, actually, maybe the most has been something called functional [01:03:00] neurology.

Essentially it's a treatment for like brain injuries. And so a lot of people who struggle with anxiety, even in a lot of addictions. Or excuse me, well, it's certainly addiction, but a lot of definitions for certain, you know, mental illnesses or certain things carries the designation that, oh, this is often, this is, this often ensues after a head injury.

So, so something I kind of in a just synopsis, I had a lot of head injuries, a lot of concussions. And, um, I, and I tried a lot through sports. Yeah, through sports, car accidents, things like that. And I tried a lot of different things. And, um, I, you know, through a friend, I ended up trying this thing called functional neurology, which is 0%, like has anything to do with counseling.

It's just essentially. Physical therapy for your brain. And I found that like emotionally and like physically for me, that has had the greatest effect in terms of like, you know, helping me improve, you know, how I felt and how I [01:04:00] behaved and things like that. And so like I would, I would encourage anybody, um, who, you know, there's providers all across America, but I think oftentimes we take all this.

And we think, okay, if I go in a room and I sit with somebody and I talk about it, it will change. And, and certain therapy is great. And I've had a lot of great experiences with therapy. I've also had a lot of terrible experiences with therapy. And I think a lot of people would echo that. So I think like there is this element of, you know, that therapy can fix everything.

In our, in our time, you know, like you hear all these commercials for better health and all these things. And where I think it's like very important, it's not the only thing. And so like, we are, you know, we are mind, body and soul. And, you know, the mind is, is just one of those. So, you know, you can use the body and fix the body and try to, or I should say, try to heal the body.

And so that has been something that is like, really helped me. Physical activity has really helped me, you know, working out is kind of a great way [01:05:00] to get unstuck. Doing some cardio, things like that are really good to kind of, you know, help yourself move along in life and get past some of these things that have become hurdles in your life, in my opinion.

I also, you know, I dealt with a really good trauma therapist, Margaret Vasquez. So I know you've had on the show and, um, you know, she does trauma therapy and that, that was, that was very helpful for me. So things like that, um, I think are good things. And I also think this. You know, it's, it's not a one size fits all for everybody, everybody, you know, just because something worked for someone else, it won't necessarily work for you.

And I think that it's important to kind of, you know, get to know yourself, you know, your struggles and kind of, um, in a patient way, you know, work on improving yourself. And essentially, I think that's what, you know, brings peace. And it's important to not have the attitude of like, I'm going to fix myself.

But I think it's the attitude of I'm going to open myself up so that God can heal [01:06:00] me. Cause you're, you're not a, you're not a machine to be fixed. You're a person to be loved.

Joey: Totally. And yeah, I think that that's a really good distinction about like how we're not machines. I. I can't say I fully understand it, but I've heard it said that, like, we don't actually solve our problems, we outgrow them.

And I, again, I don't totally, fully understand that, but, um, but I think there's a lot of truth to it, how, you know, when, yeah, whether it's, like, even a physical injury or something, um, we maybe don't go in and, like, fix the muscle tissue necessarily, maybe there's some instances where you do that, but you kind of, like, Build up the muscle around it and try to get like your body in a healthier space to where like you're better and healthier.

And that kind of like resolves the issue, but it's not necessarily like, yeah, just tighten this bolt and we're all done. That's not how we work. So I don't know. Yeah. I have to give that more thought, but I heard that said, and I think there's some truth to it. I'm curious how, um. If there are any other like tools or tactics, books, podcasts, anything else, events that you have made use of that have been maybe the most helpful in your own healing [01:07:00] journey of becoming like a better, stronger you.

Anthony: Yeah, a lot of things. Um, one thing I'm trying to think, um, I, I really liked Dr. Jordan Peterson. I think he has a lot of good things to say. So he has a lot of, you know, videos on YouTube shorts. You mentioned Sarah Swofford. Um, she's, she's kind of helped me a lot. And she has, uh, she has a bunch, I feel like her talks are pretty wide ranging, but she has a book called emotional virtue.

Which is good. So those are just a few resources that that are helpful. I also think there's a um, I'm kind of fascinated by the connect, you know, the mind body connection, you know, like we're we're not just our mind We're not just our body. We're the Unity and duality as it, you know, they say in philosophy.

And so I think it's interesting how, you know, you can like the body really affects, you know, the mind and the soul and vice versa. And so like, like for instance, one thing, you know, I, you know, I had a very, uh, hard winter. I was in an accident and, um, with my sister [01:08:00] who, and we were both hurt pretty badly.

And so. I was, you know, not feeling the greatest at all. And this one thing I found by this doctor, by Dr. Andrew Huberman, his name is, he's a neuroscientist from, from Stanford. He has this tip, you know, he kind of has his morning routine out there, but he has this tip of like getting into morning sunlight within half an hour of when you wake up every day.

And so for Lent last year, I did that every day. And it really helped like how I felt. Um, and it kind of was what I needed at that time. So I think looking for little things and trying little things like that that are going to help you is like, is really important. And I also think like one thing that I've noticed in my life is something might help for a while and then it might stop helping.

And that doesn't mean you're not doing it right. It just, you might've done all you can in that area. So don't just kind of like try to do it better or more perfect. If you've kind of exhausted it, just you, it could mean that it's time to try something else.

Joey: Totally. No, that's great advice. And, um, I love that connection you're making between like the [01:09:00] body and your emotions.

Cause on so many levels, like, yeah, your, your emotions like happen inside your body. And so there's certainly a connection there. It's not just like this random thing that happens like in your mind or some imaginary place. It's like very much so like a bodily based thing, especially anxiety. And, um, you certainly, you can feel it in your chest and your throat.

Like it's certainly like, there's certainly a connection there. I've found similar benefits. It seems like the kind of healthier and the more fit I get. Get the more calm and peaceful I am. And so I think there's something to be said about that, which I know it's can be hard for people to get started there, but if you can figure out some sort form of exercise that you really enjoy, that you kind of look forward to doing that could help you.

And it doesn't need to be complex, it can be simple. Um, that can really help you get in. You know, much better head space and if you even feel better emotionally, not just like physically, if you like me come from a broken family, you've probably experienced a lot of difficult emotions and it's easy to deal with them in unhealthy ways.

But one healthy habit that's helped me working out consistently and eating how my body was made to be fed. It keeps my buddy healthy. And the [01:10:00] endorphins helped me feel happier and better navigate tough emotions. But I know it's not easy to start exercising or to be more consistent with it. You might be thinking, I don't know what I'm doing.

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Anthony: Yeah, and here, you know, that's a great point, Joe. And like, and a really good, honestly, one of the best things and a really good place to [01:11:00] start is something that most people can do.

And it's just something that's very regulating. And Margaret Vespa has taught me this is just taking a long walk and just kind of, you know, just letting your thoughts. Um, wander and just like process what's going on within your life. And the act of walking, you know, you're using your whole body, you're using essentially kind of all your senses.

You are, it's very integrating for your body, and there's been so many times in the last couple years. Where I feel like very kind of frustrated or aggravated, very emotional. And I go for a long walk and I, and I'm talking like usually like half an hour to like an hour and by the end of it, I come home and I feel in a certain sense, like I worked out a lot of what was bothering me.

And, um, and I think it's because, you know, because you're moving, you're using your whole body and it's also giving your mind a chance to essentially like kind of run through or walk through everything that's going on.

Joey: That's really good. A similar process from my understanding of like [01:12:00] neurobiology happens when we sleep.

Like our brains kind of like process things and like file them away. Um, kind of like if you've seen the movie inside out, like that's essentially what happens when we sleep. Um, like our memories are being like filed away and long term memory and things like that. I don't understand all the ins and outs of the science, but that I I've heard.

Yeah. It's been helpful for me to walking and kind of like moving your body. Cause I think, especially today, like in years past, like we were so active as like, as humans, now we're just so sedimentary, like we just sit around computers and. And I think it's having like really detrimental effects on so many levels.

So I love that. I love what you said. And no, I think that just like this whole body based thing is like kind of that, that whole quote, um, get out, you know, like mind over matter. You've heard people say mind over matter. I've heard people say like body over mind. Where like, if you kind of like get outside of your mind and into your body, like there's something really good there that it's actually helpful in healing.

And that's like something, especially in moments where I've been the most anxious or even like sad or depressed, like that is incredibly helpful in healing. The other thing I was going to mention there too, is just [01:13:00] how I've been learning this more and more, whether it's through from guys like Huberman or others, um, like Dr.

Peter Attia, or I was recently watching this, um, series on Disney plus called Limitless. It's with Chris Hemsworth and. He has all these hacks, um, health experts, um, like Dr. Peter Atiyah, um, on the show kind of talking about like health and wellbeing. And one of the things I've learned from them is like this sleep is literally the foundation of health.

Like it's literally the foundation of all health. Like the other things are so sleep is like everything. More or less, and then you have like nutrition, and then you, which includes like drinking water, and eating like clean healthy foods, and then you have exercise. So like exercise is like super super helpful, and I'm a big proponent of it, but like we need to make sure we're getting those other two things right, especially sleep.

So if there's only one thing you can get right right now, if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do everything, try to get your sleep down. And that's going to help you. And you might need to exercise or like healthy eating to do that, which is, it's all, it all works together.

But I think there's some to be said like of that being like the focal point. Cause once you get that right, [01:14:00] your body and your brain can actually like heal itself, and then you can get into this better spot emotionally, and then you'll be able to, you know, maybe even further hone in like your diet, like what you're eating and the quality of what you're eating.

And then from there, if you get those things dialed in and you add exercise, that's like the golden combo. So that's just wanted to throw that out. Cause it's been helpful for me in case that's helpful for anyone listening.

Anthony: Yeah. And I would just add to that, that it's kind of, um, like a snowball effect, or it has kind of an avalanche effect that once you start doing a little bit in one area, you know, it, um, it produces the dopamine that your body is looking for.

And, you know, essentially you want more dopamine, you go back to it and you get healthier and healthier. And so I think that is, it's like a very healthy process. So, so like sometimes all it just takes is just going to the gym once or going on a walk or going on a run or just. playing a sport, just doing something to move your body and then just trying to stack those days on top of each other.

And eventually you're going to feel a lot healthier. Like no one, have you ever had anybody heard anybody say like, man, I really wish I didn't go to the gym today. Like, no, you [01:15:00] had like, you haven't. And, and I think, and there's a reason for that.

Joey: That's really good. Let's talk a little bit about therapy. So I know you have some thoughts and.

opinions on therapy. So I wanted to make sure we spent a little bit of time talking about that. So you mentioned that you found help through therapy, especially trauma therapy in particular, but, um, yeah, what, what's maybe some of the nuance and any guidance for anyone listening on this topic as well?

Anthony: Um, I, yeah, so I, I have a lot to say about this, but I'll try to keep it short.

I think a couple of things, I think one important thing is fit, um, with you and a therapist. I think another thing is. It's not kind of that the goal of therapy is to help your life and it's not to like center your life around the therapy Which is something I've kind of struggled with and then I also think that I think that essentially a good therapist is someone who's gonna Help you and is going to like refuse to like make decisions for you Or refuse to kind of, for lack of a better term, like kind of boss you around too much.

You know, um, I think [01:16:00] that especially as an adult, like you, you want someone who's going to empower you more to like, to, to live your own life and live it all. So I've, I've had, honestly, I've had kind of like a, almost like a 50, 50 spread of good experiences. and bad experiences. So some people have been very helpful, some people have been almost, like, hurtful.

But I think it's important to talk to somebody. So try it. If that person doesn't work, well, you can try another person. You know what I mean? Or try a different type of therapist or a different type of person to talk to. I also think, like, you know, having other people who you're not paying to talk to is helpful, and who you trust, and who know you.

Because I think a lot of times the struggle for therapists is like, you know, They, they've talked to you a couple of times. They don't really know you. And, you know, it's important to have a balance of that and people who know you and have seen you, you know, grow up or, or know your life and know who you are.

Um, and sometimes they can better advise you on what you need to do. But I, and I'm not, like, I don't mean to say this to dissuade therapy, but I. I [01:17:00] mean to say that it's one tool in, in a, you know, a whole tool belt of different tools. And so I think sometimes there's too much emphasis given on it. Um, and, and in particular, the, you know, there's this therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, which is essentially like the idea that if you think differently, you change your life.

And that is true. If you think differently, you do change your life. However, most of us think a certain way for a reason, and it's not just a matter, or as simple always as just changing our thoughts. So sometimes we have to change our behavior. And actually, like, so I've heard it said that the easiest way to change behavior is to change identity.

And so that goes back to what we were saying earlier, like, living into, like, your true identity, as, you know, a child of God, and as someone who's loved unconditionally, can really help you change your behavior. More than anything.

Joey: That's really good. You made me think of something Dr. Greg Bitaro said in a recent episode.

He was talking about how just kind of this whole day of like talk therapy is not enough. And I forget [01:18:00] exactly what, what words he put to that. But he did talk about like the role of our subconscious and the like kind of lame person understanding that I have of it is that the way that we think, the way that we act, the way that we feel is a byproduct of like what's in our subconscious.

So, like, that's essentially controlling our life, and there's a quote from, uh, this Swiss psychologist that we talked about in that episode who said something along the lines of, like, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate. And so, basically, the idea is that, like, that Like you're saying, I don't think, like, changing the way you think isn't as easy as it sounds.

That's the whole point I'm making, because what happens in life is, like, we go through these experiences, we kind of sustain these wounds, and they get lodged in our subconscious, like, below our conscious minds, the thing that we're, like, actively thinking about. And then they, those things, kind of like the mass below the tip of an iceberg, are there influencing the way, again, we think, the way we feel, the way we act.

And so, if we are just [01:19:00] staying on the level of, like, our, you know, trying to think differently on a conscious level, and we never go, kind of, into that mucky water of, like, the subconscious, and, like, figure out, like, well, why do we Think and feel that way. Or, you know, is there like trauma there? That's literally affecting us on a physiological level.

That's maybe preventing us from thinking and feeling in a different way. Then we're always going to be stuck in it. That's, that's my perspective. And so John Paul II actually in love and responsibility to everyone familiar, John Paul II, um, wrote this book when he was, uh, like a priest, a professor called love and responsibility on like relationships and sexual, like morality, things like that.

And he. Um, in the end of that book, Dr. Bitaro was teaching me that he had like this whole part about the subconscious because around that time when he was writing it, Sigmund Freud was very popular. And so Freud like really emphasized like the role of the subconscious. So JP2 actually took that and he kind of emphasized how, no, like we need to kind of take what's in the subconscious out, objectivize it, meaning like we need to inspect it and look at it and understand it in order to [01:20:00] be able to act, think, and feel differently.

Putting some of my own words to that. But, um, but I thought that was interesting. I haven't read Love and Responsibility cover to cover. I've read parts of it, but do you recall that from reading it? And, uh, any further thoughts? I

Anthony: actually, I don't recall that, but it sounds, it sounds very interesting. I want to go back and read it now.

Joey: Yeah. And I don't know the pages or else I would have said it, but I think it's towards the end and I was talking to Jackie about it and it was, um, found. So you can do that if you'd like. So, um, yeah, any final thoughts on that? And then the other question I had for you was just, yeah, I guess after kind of going through this process of like healing and growth, if, uh, yeah, how your life might look differently now, just in order to encourage people to push through the pain and the discomfort that often hits you in the face when you're trying to heal and to grow and to.

Be better, stronger. So I'm just curious if you have, um, yeah, just if you would kind of contrast how life was and how it is now, though, we're always a work in progress.

Anthony: We love comfort to a large degree. Right. And part of us, you know, is like our brain's [01:21:00] job is to keep us safe.

Yeah.

Anthony: And so a lot of times that our brain tells us is, you know, don't do anything scary or different or change or, you know, or change anything.

And that is the temptation for those of us. who have really been, you know, in, in these difficult situations because, you know, we, you know, change is scary and change has, you know, been very hard in our lives. But I would just encourage you to, you know, A, to go at your own pace, B, to seek ways to heal yourself because, or seek ways to, you know, dispose yourself to healing because, you know, we were made, we were made to be healed.

You know, I, I think a lot of our, Like our intuition is that you know, this is like I can be healed here I need to be healed here and I heard one of my favorite priests father James serby is a really good podcast called holiness for the working day And he said that you know in jesus time he did he performed a lot of healing [01:22:00] Because you know back then they didn't have a lot of physical healing.

He did a lot of physical healing He said but now we're pretty good at physical healing. So what we really need is, you know, spiritual healing, emotional healing and, and Jesus want, he wants to heal us, right? Like he wants that for us. He wants us, you know, he said in the gospel of John, I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.

You know, he didn't say I came that you might suffer and, you know, stumble through life and then, you know, die. He wants us to have abundant life. So I think like having the courage to see past your circumstances and to try to, um, Try to, you know, get better is important. I would also say that, you know, healing, and this is something I've had to learn the hard way.

I, I thought healing was kind of a destination and you get there and you're done and you kind of check the box and you put the file away and then you live the rest of your life.

Hmm.

Anthony: Um, . But I've learned that healing is a process and you know, you're gonna be on that journey the rest of your life. [01:23:00] But I think it is, you know, I think it is a process that is worth, worth endeavoring in.

Joey: Good stuff. Two final questions. If you could speak honestly to mom and dad, I'm curious, like, what would you say? And to whatever degree you're comfortable talking about that?

Anthony: Oh, wow. Best for last. Um, um, wow. Okay. So yeah, I think that, you know, I heard this quote recently and it's really stuck with me and it's that we're mad at our parents because their parents messed them up and then they messed us up, you know what I mean?

And it, and it's kind of like, I think that's like a pretty revealing quote. Because I know, you know, you think very often, you know, and now you're a father, so maybe you can speak more to this, but you think very often, if I were a parent, I'd do it this way, if I were a parent, I'd do it this way, if I were a parent, like when I'm a parent, I'm going to be perfect, or I'm not going to do all these things that my parents have done to mess me up.

But then, you know, as you get older in life, you realize that that's not really the reality and that a lot of, you know, our parents. You know, I would say to mom and dad, I know [01:24:00] they both went through a lot and I think that that is um, That that was very difficult for them And and I think that a lot of like what we've been through or they put us through as a result of that So, you know in in a large sense It's not their fault.

You know what I mean? So I would just tell them both that I love them and I'm thankful for them and for the love They have given me because they they have given me a lot of things and and they have loved me both of them And so like I would say thank you for that. And I think in the end, I hope that they heal as well as me You know,

I love that.

Joey: Well, thank you for coming on for going so long. I'm sorry this went so long, but you have a lot of wisdom that I wanted to make sure everyone was able to benefit from. And yeah, thank you so much for, um, just sharing so vulnerably and again, imparting all that wisdom. I just want to give you the final word.

You kind of went through some of this already, but I just want to give you one last chance. What advice or encouragement would you offer to maybe the younger you who's listening right now?

Anthony: I would just say to my younger self that I would say that, you know, you're, you're going to go through some difficult [01:25:00] things.

It's going to be very hard, but, you know, you're going to make it and it's going to be okay. I think that, you know, we've highlighted a lot of things that, you know, have gone wrong or have been hard, but we also maybe haven't mentioned, you know, that we're both here and we're both doing okay. And, you know, we're making it, you know, and things aren't perfect, nor are we perfect, but we're making it.

And so, so I would just encourage, um, you know, that younger self to not define itself by the lies. You know, that seep in from the world or from different moons. And I would also tell that younger self that, you know, to seek healing and to seek the truth and, you know, it's okay, it's okay to struggle. Like, I think it's okay to struggle and that.

You know, God, you know, one of the scripture verses that I hold to is God works all things to good for those who love him. And, um, and one of my favorite books, St. Augustine says, even their sins, you know, so God is using everything for our good, even our mistakes. And [01:26:00] so, you know, if essentially I think what life comes down to is just abandoning ourselves to God and letting him kind of scoop us up and essentially take us.

Take us where we need to go. And so, so I don't, I would also say, you know, that in, in different things that I'm proposing is like, I do not have it all figured out. I am very much, to be honest, I almost didn't even want to come on this podcast because I, I felt like a little bit of a hypocrite. I'm like, you know, I don't have this all figured out.

How can I go on and talk about my life or tell other people like this is how you should do it. But I, I guess what I would say. Say is that like, you know, maybe the importance is not like in the destination, but it's more like in the struggle to get there in the journey to get there. And I think that's what, in that way, we help other people, we help ourselves.

And I think God sees that struggle in us. And he is pleased with that.

Joey: A few final thoughts due to the time limit and the nature of this podcast. We didn't really get a chance to talk about the good things [01:27:00] about our family. And there's plenty to say. Uh, one thing I would say is all of us siblings are actually pretty close to each other.

Uh, we say as close as our lives will allow. We have good relationships and we love our siblings, Anthony and I, I know. I can speak for him saying that we really love our siblings. And personally, they're just a huge motivation for me for doing this podcast and the work that we do at restored. And although there have been struggles over the years with our parents, we really love our parents and we appreciate all that they've sacrificed for us.

Uh, for example, my mom has always just fought really hard for us to be physically healthy from a young age, even when it, when it wasn't. And then my dad always worked really hard for us to provide. And he really gave us a great example of a hard work ethic, which I totally see in all of my siblings. And that's just to mention a few definitely grateful for my parents.

And although in our story has some sad and heavy parts, there's a lot of good to it as well. If you want to contact Anthony, just see the show notes for his email. He's open to that. And lastly, we really hope that this conversation acted as somewhat of an experiment or maybe a template for how you might talk with your siblings about your parents [01:28:00] divorce or family dysfunction.

You could even send this episode to your sibling or siblings and invite them to listen and perhaps discuss it with you next time you guys see each other. And if you don't have siblings, you could always do this with a close friend, or maybe if you have a good relationship with one or both of your parents, you could do it with them as well.

Just an idea that we wanted to throw out to you. That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you feel free to subscribe or follow an Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast app you use. Not only is that the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for help.

And it only takes a few seconds. If you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. That also helps listeners find the podcast. And we definitely appreciate that feedback. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life, and we're here to help.

And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#139: Dating or Marrying Someone from an Intact vs Broken Family | Paul & Maggie Kim

So many of us from broken families end up dating or marrying someone from an intact family. But that presents challenges, which we discuss in this episode with an amazing married couple where one spouse comes from a broken family and the other is from an intact family. We also discuss questions like:

• What did you fear about marriage? Maggie opens up about her fear of someone cheating on her.

• How have you handled conflict and how has marriage brought you joy?

• How do you choose the right person who won’t change after the wedding?

If you’re from a broken family dating or marrying someone from an intact family, or vice versa, this episode is for you..

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey: ~One of the struggles that our audience has is that they've expressed this fear to us where they end up marrying someone they think is solid. They think is good, but then they change ~[00:00:00]

Paul: when we got married, we had to learn how to argue. Well, you know, arguments are not a sign that a marriage is in trouble.

It's the inability to resolve the conflict. That is the sign of trouble.

Maggie: It's only through arguing. In a healthy way and resolving conflict that we get to truly grow in intimacy and to learn more about each other.

Joey: I remember Father Mike Schmitz saying that in our culture, we've reduced love to romance and romance to sex.

Paul: Love is a decision. It's willing the good of the other. Happiness isn't an end in itself. And that's what most of Western culture is doing. They want to arrive at happiness like it's a destination.

Joey: How has marriage brought you guys joy?

Maggie: Marriage for me has been so healing. Knowing that I can be my most vulnerable, ugly self and this man chooses to love me every day, ~chooses to be committed to ~

Joey: Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panerelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and And build [00:01:00] healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

Today, I'm joined by Paul and Maggie Kim. Paul is one of America's top Catholic youth speakers, reaching audiences of all ages across 50 States and 16 countries for over two decades. He's the creator of the online course, a Catholic guide to adulting, a founder of the triumph men's conference, a musical artist.

And his videos have over 10 million views. With a bachelor's in philosophy, a master's in marriage and family therapy, and experience as a therapist, missionary, and youth minister, he impacts over 40, 000 people worldwide every year. Maggie is a Catholic convert since 2013 and a registered nurse who has a passion for fertility awareness and all things motherhood.

In her free time, she enjoys the thrillers, desserts, and movie nights with coffee. Paul and Maggie live in Austin, Texas with their children. So many of us who come from broken families end up dating or marrying someone from an intact family, but that presents a lot of challenges, which we discuss in this episode with an amazing married couple, where one spouse comes from a broken family and the other is from an intact family.

We [00:02:00] also discuss questions like, was it difficult for you to open up to Paul about the problems in your family? What did you fear about marriage? Maggie opens up about her fear of someone cheating on her. How have you handled conflict and how has your marriage brought you joy? How do you choose the right person to Who won't change after the wedding.

And finally, you'll hear about a resource for young adults as a new year's resolution or any time of the year. And so if you come from a broken family and you're dating someone or marrying someone from an intact family or vice versa, this episode is for you. In this episode, we do talk about God and faith.

And if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone listening for a while It's not a strictly religious podcast. So wherever you're at, I'm glad you're here. If you don't believe in God, my challenge to you is this. Just listen with an open mind. Even if you need to skip or take out the God parts, you're still going to benefit a lot from this episode.

And with that, here's the conversation, Paul, Maggie, great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Paul: Thank you.

Maggie: Thanks for having us.

Joey: As we usually do, we'll just dive right in. Uh, Maggie, when you came on the show previously, that was episode, uh, 64, for anyone who wants to go revisit that. You, you shared [00:03:00] really openly about how your parents divorce had affected you.

But Paul, I'd like a little bit of context on your family, if that's okay. What was your family like growing up?

Paul: Uh, I do not come from a family of parents who divorced, thankfully. But, you know, like everyone's background, my family was, You know, far from being perfect, right? Unless, uh, your parents names are St.

Joseph and the Blessed Mother, chances are it's going to have some problems, right? And so, yeah, I mean, born to Korean immigrants, just like Maggie was, and being born in Southern California, being raised Korean, growing up in America, having sort of like this bicultural expectation, which was very fascinating, very difficult to kind of navigate.

As I'm comparing myself to my peers and I'm seeing how my parents are raising me. And I'm like, why? And now as a, as a grown man, obviously I think I have a better appreciation for culture, for diversity, for things that frankly are good in every culture. And also identifying things that are not so good [00:04:00] and having a deeper appreciation from where I come from.

I mean, thanks be to God, my, my parents, they, they tried their best, like every parent is trying. I think as you get older, you come to realize that parenting isn't as easy as you thought it would be. Um, we have six kids now, and you know, when I give talks at parishes and events and things like this, when I'm talking about marriage and family, I always tell them, you know, the ever trending phrases that parents universally say.

When you become my age, you'll understand what it's like or what I'm saying. You know, my parents just sounded more Korean than, you know, Midwestern. But at the end of the day, yeah, there there's a truth to that. And so while, you know, I grew up. With some levels of resentment and frustration with my parents and maybe their, their shortcomings, failures, et cetera, I also see that one, they were trying their best and two.

I also see like the [00:05:00] things that they did well and the things that they wanted for me and my siblings. And, and so all that to say. I think the ever present challenge for parents, at least those who, who really want to be intentional is, you know, I'd like to do this better for my kids. And with the full realization that you bring along with you the wounds and the struggles and, and the brokenness that you experienced.

And so there's almost like this unspoken reality that when you become an adult, when you become a parent, when you become a spouse, You're also unpacking all of this stuff simultaneously. And it's, it's very difficult. It's very challenging. And not only that, but because we get so very busy in our culture, you know, working, raising the kids, doing all the things on the to do list, the noble task of really delving in and trying to heal from like certain issues or face the problems that you know, are kind of a feature of youth, you A feature of imperfect families to set the time and have the [00:06:00] wherewithal to be like, I need to work on this and I'm going to work on it is also another challenge.

And I don't know, depending on, you know, I think thankfully in 2024, I mean, despite all the rampant mental illness, which I'm convinced is a part of our, our culture, I'm not going to get too into that right now. But what I will say is the silver lining is people are aware that this is a resource. And I think people are more apt to maybe take advantage of this sort of thing.

And I think it's, I think it's very important, obviously I'm biased, but being a Catholic, you know, ensuring that the therapist has some sort of level of faith. Because even in psychology, the world of psychology, morally speaking, it can kind of be all over the place. Because like any other study, it's, uh, it was a huge spectrum of beliefs in that field.

Also,

Joey: thanks for sharing about your family. And I couldn't agree more with like the, just the messiness of our culture. And I think, I know you guys would agree, like so much of it does send back to the breakdown of the family. And so it's so important. I think like you guys are a beautiful example of this, that we, [00:07:00] you know, Try to heal our brokenness, seek healing to build virtue.

So we can go on and what I hear you saying, Paul build, you know, healthier relationships, beautiful families, strong families, holy families. And so I'm excited to dive into that deeper. I want to get your advice on some things as well that I know our audience cares deeply about. Um, but I was curious, I know all of our female listeners will want me to ask this question.

Like, tell us a little bit about your love story. If you can give us a quick version of that, uh, Maggie, I assume that Paul's. Dashing good looks were the thing that drew you to him, but I'm curious, like, it was his dashing good

Maggie: looks and his corny dad jokes.

Yeah. So we actually met at a wedding. Um, a friend of ours was getting married and, um, he had asked Paul to be the MC at his reception. And so he, yeah, he was on the stage, cracking jokes and performing music and just kind of charming the crowd. And I was. It's definitely charmed. And I was like, I hope this guy talks to me by the end of the night.

Um, and

Paul: I did, [00:08:00]

Joey: did you notice her earlier? Had you known like who she was?

Paul: You know, what's funny is at the wedding ceremony, she actually sat in the pew right in front of me. And, um, yeah, she, she walked right in front of, she sat down and I was like, Oh, she's kind of cute, you know, trying to be focused on,

Paul and Maggie: I only

Paul: got a side view.

I didn't see like the full, your full face. So, you know, profile pictures can be a little misleading, right?

But, um, she sat down and then, you know, the wedding ceremony started. Later on at the reception, I noticed her again and she had a beautiful smile and yes, she was laughing at my jokes. So I thought what a woman of great intellect and taste to acknowledge greatness. No kidding. I'm kidding. And so You know, I approached her and introduced myself and then later on, um, my pickup line, if you will, it wasn't really a pickup line.

It was just an [00:09:00] intro was, um, I noticed she had like tattoos on her shoulder. So in my mind, I'm like, this, this is going to go one of two ways. Either she's like a crazed party girl, which I'm too old for, or like, you know, I, or there'll be an interesting story. And so like, I asked what's the story behind your tattoo.

And that was kind of the intro.

Paul and Maggie: And

Paul: so, you know, I. Tried to hang out with her, get to know her, dance with her, and she was kind of like, acting so demure, so cutesy, and running off, you know, and playing hard to get, but little did I know that there was like an ex boyfriend of hers that was there, um, and so there was like all this drama.

Like, it was like a storm cloud that was brewing around me to the point where later on, a friend of mine who was mutual friends with all of the ex, also the ex boyfriend and some of his friends, apparently there was such a commotion for them seeing this rando, like, try to get with the ex girlfriend that one of the guys was like, should we jump him?

Should we jump him in the back? [00:10:00] So I am glad that I didn't get. sucker punched in the bathroom that night. Needless to say, um, you know, I asked for her number before the night ended. And it was interesting because on the way out, my faith was very important to me at that time. So as I was walking her out to the parking lot, I asked her what church to go to.

And she said like mosaic or something like this. And I'm like, that doesn't sound Catholic. And, uh, this might be a bit of an issue moving forward, you know? And once again, I have lots of friends who are Protestant and obviously like, I think there's a lot in common that we have with all Christian believers, which I think is great and important.

And I feel like, yeah, there needs to be a lot more dialogue because half the time when I post anything remotely Catholic, you know, all the people come out of the woods and with pitchforks saying, you know, you Catholics, you worship idols, you worship Mary, goat sacrificing, you know, that's not Save yourself.

You don't need Jesus. Blah, blah, blah. You know? And it's like, no, no, [00:11:00] no, it's not it at all. And so, um, anyways, our, our relationship began and, you know, we're having some really great dates and then naturally the conversation of faith comes up and she tried to break up with me a couple of times because, you know, I'm Catholic and.

Her bias was just so strong, but we had great conversations and, um, I was starting out my ministry at the time and she was coming with me to presentations and churches and prayer events. And, and honestly, God was kind of doing the heavy lifting, showing her that maybe her presumptions about Catholicism were.

Misinformed. And, and I think that opened up the door to just allowing also Maggie to experience the beauty of our faith and very long story short, she joined our CIA, became Catholic right before we got married. And, and, uh, now we've been married 11 years and we've just been blessed with our, our six little baby.

Yeah. Well, at the time of this recording, it'll be like almost half a year ago. And, and so, um, or at the time of. When people hear this in the future, [00:12:00] so we're blessed. Beautiful.

Joey: I love it. Maggie, anything you'd add about the story?

Maggie: I mean, yeah, that's kind of like the short version of it. I think, you know, along with the hurdle of figuring out how are we going to practice our faith as a married couple?

And as a family, there was also. just a lot of fears and wounds that would come up. And I think, you know, Paul mentioned that I had broken up with him a couple of times or tried to break up with him. Um, and it was the religion aspect was, you know, a part of that, but I think it was also me trying to for lack of better words, like take control of the situation and leave the relationship before it got too hard, before it got too scary.

And, you know, like just the fears of like, how will this work? Like, how will this marriage last if we do end up getting married? So a lot of those questions were also coming up for me and the way that I dealt with it was by trying to run away. And thank, thank God that [00:13:00] this guy wouldn't let me. And yeah, we learned how to deal with those fears.

Joey: Beautiful. And we've heard that a lot. I think it's a trend for people like us who come from divorced, broken families, where I remember hearing the story of a woman who I think she was engaged three times. So like good guys, like these weren't bad guys, but she had just such an intense fear of love marriage, like her marriage ending, like her parents had that she broke it off each time.

So that kind of element of self sabotage. So that's beautiful. We, as we're able to work through that, I want to go deeper on the fear theme. So Maggie had shared previously as well. In addition to what you just shared, yeah, you feared marriage. And I can certainly relate to that coming from the film that I did.

If you like me come from a broken family, you've probably experienced a lot of difficult emotions and it's easy to deal with them in unhealthy ways. But one healthy habit that's helped me. working out consistently and eating how my body was made to be fed. It keeps my body healthy and the endorphins help me feel happier and better navigate tough emotions.

But I know it's not easy to start exercising or to be more consistent with it. You might be thinking, I don't know what I'm doing. I have no time. I'm too unmotivated. That's why I trust and recommend [00:14:00] Dakota Lane. He's a nationally certified fitness. And nutrition coach who's helped a thousand plus clients from beginners to even pro athletes as a devout Catholic.

He creates personalized fitness and nutrition plans with 24 seven support and one on one coaching. And since it's online, you can literally work with Dakota anywhere in the world. One client said Dakota changed my life. His program is worth every penny. If you've struggled to change yourself for the better Dakota is your man.

To see what Dakota offers, go to dakota Lane fitness.com. Dakota is actually giving away for free his PDF Guide, the Biggest Fitness Mistakes to Avoid. You can download that@dakotalanefitness.com slash restored. Again, that's dakota lane fitness.com/restored. Or just click the link in the show notes. And so I'm curious, like, was there anything else in particular that you were afraid of when it came to marriage?

Maggie: Yeah, I think something in particular was this idea that I had been taught my whole life that men will always be unfaithful at some point. You know, that was the case for my parents marriage and [00:15:00] in a lot of, you know, my friends parents marriages. And yeah, it was just kind of like, it seemed like it was the norm, like if you watched.

Movies or TV shows or like, you know, a book, like a typical story. And there's seems to be infidelity involved at some point. And so that was a real fear of mine going into marriage. And it was something that I was just told growing up, but this is like just typical, a typical man's behavior that men have quote unquote needs.

And that they aren't capable of committing to one person. Like this was the message that I was told growing up by friends and family. So that was really ingrained in my head and in my heart. And I honestly, before meeting Paul, I never even like came across the idea of like chastity and purity and, You know, fidelity in marriage.

So that was, yeah, something that was hard to get over.

Joey: Totally makes sense to me. I mean, if that's like what you thought the future held for you, it was kind of your fate [00:16:00] then yeah. Why would you want to go down that path? But thankfully, like you said, there's another option. Paul, I'm curious from your point of view.

Was it difficult to kind of understand where Maggie was coming from with a lot of the brokenness within her family? And if so, you know, and her fears and struggles in particular, it was difficult to understand those and, uh, what maybe helped you understand and like help her walk through those?

Paul: Um, it wasn't so much during our dating.

That it seems like a particular issue for us. I think it's when we got married and you know, naturally marriage is beautiful and it's a gift, but there's quite a learning curve, right? Where, you know, we hadn't moved in together prior to marriage, right? The good old fashioned way.

Paul and Maggie: And

Paul: on a complete side note, there are studies that basically completely secular studies that show that the divorce rate goes up.

If they move in together prior to marriage, and it's very fascinating why that might be, but we wanted to ensure that obviously that we weren't doing things to weaken the foundation of our, of our future and present relationship. But, um, when we got married, we [00:17:00] realized, yeah, like most couples do, we had to learn how to argue well, because the reality is, even though you're on cloud nine and you get to live with this person you love, and you just got married.

It's like, wow, not only do we have to figure out what way the toilet paper is going, we also have to figure out, like, where is this anger coming from? Why is this person like flipping out about something that seemed inconsequential? But, you know, the reality is behind every trigger is a story. And that story often was a part of, you know, This person's life, my wife's life way before I even showed up and vice versa.

And so we had to learn that there were like wounds and there were, there were issues that stemmed from the brokenness that we now needed to unpack as a couple. And, um, you know, naturally in the moment, especially that first year. You know, it was kind of rough figuring out how to do [00:18:00] this. Well, trying not to take things personally, wondering like in moments of heated, like emotion, like, Oh my gosh, like, I don't know how to navigate this.

And then, you know, once the calm is there and, and there's more, uh, reason that sets in for both of us and we're empathetic and we're listening, it's like, Oh, that makes perfect sense. Why you felt that way. But here, this is the truth of the matter. And so we need to work this out. And, um, so I think that's a process pretty universally for every couple, but Maggie coming from her background and her family history, yeah, it made sense why she, you know, found certain situations or conversations difficult.

And, um, I'd like to think over the past 11 years, you know, we're not perfect, but we've gotten a lot better at being able to. Not only understand each other, but also to better argue because, you know, arguments are not a sign that a marriage is in trouble. It's the inability to resolve the conflict that is the sign of trouble.

And, um, the irony of [00:19:00] course is most couples get married. Like as a Catholic, the joke is, you know, if a person has a call to be a priest, he is in seminary for seven to nine, 10 years. formation on the daily, you know, and for the most important vocation of his life before ordination and married couples, you know, in their preparation for the most important vocation of their life, it's like four meetings with the pastor and one like lousy retreat.

And it's like, good luck. And it's like, I don't know how, yeah, I don't know how, uh, equipped a lot of couples are, and it just, it's a roll of the dice depending on what you were taught as a kid, how your parents modeled it for you, what you've done to like proactively go out and learn about. How do I deal with these issues in my life and in other people's lives?

Have I done the hard work of like identifying, wow, these are areas in my life where I really need growth and I need to stop medicating, self medicating, or running away, or whatever. And so this is why, you know, [00:20:00] like love and The emotions behind romance, they're very powerful drivers, obviously, for human beings to want to get married and procreate.

And I mean, this is how God designed us, right? It's how he designed humans, but sometimes the rose colored glasses, right? They prevent people from understanding what is the preparation that I actually need to make in order to make the marriage work beyond the wedding day. Because in our Western culture, it's like, Oh, it's about the dress.

I say yes to the dress. I'm like, Oh, the wedding's going to be amazing. And oh my God, honeymoon equally amazing. And then it's like, yeah, here comes real life coming at you fast. Yeah. And so like, obviously as people of faith, it's the understanding that Marriage as a vocation is meant to accomplish one particular thing.

And that is to help one look more like Christ. And the way Christ looked was best described in Ephesians when St. Paul wrote that husbands love your [00:21:00] wife, like Christ loved his bride, the church. And the way he did that is he died, died to self, he endured suffering and torment and incredible adversity. In order to not only save his bride, but to heal her, restore her.

And I don't want anyone thinking, oh, well, naturally that's the chauvinistic patriarchal way of thinking like you're at the savior, but no, that's not what I'm saying, but Christ indeed showed us men and women as a model, what sacrificial love looks like. And at the end of the day, if people are not aware that marriage takes sacrifice and love, which is not a feeling.

That's gas. Love is a decision. It's willing the good of the other. And it, you know, once again, that that's the real stuff.

Joey: No, so good. I love that. And I remember father Mike Schmitz saying that in our culture, we've reduced, uh, love to romance and romance to sex. And so I think like [00:22:00] you're saying that there's such this expectation that love and marriage in particular is just meant for your own happiness.

And I love what you're saying. Like, That's actually not the purpose of marriage. Like there's happiness within marriage and that's beautiful. It's good. Like I've experienced that myself in my own marriage, but it's not the purpose. Like the purpose, like you said, is to make you the best version of yourself, to make you holy and, and of course to have children from them.

So, so good. And yeah, feel free to jump in, but I love the two, the two takeaways I had from you when it came to like dealing with the conflict, we'll get into that maybe a little bit more later too, is like having a curiosity about your spouse. Like I think so often, especially if you've been dating for a while, it's easy to think like, You know, I know more or less everything about this person.

And then you get married and you know, you realize like, actually, there's a lot more I need to learn. And so that curiosity, I think is big. And then the empathy, of course, as well, some of the lessons I pulled from that, but you were going to say something.

Paul: Yeah. You know, it was interesting. I came across a quote recently from St.

Thomas Aquinas, who is one of the most influential philosophers and theologians of Christianity. And one of his quotes, it is happiness is secured [00:23:00] through virtue. It is not an end in itself, but a by product of the pursuit of the good. So I'm gonna say that one more time. He says, quote, happiness is secured through virtue.

It is not an end in itself, but a by product of the pursuit of good. Of the good. Uh, St. Thomas was all about figuring out, you know, especially giving props to the ancient Greek philosophers who were also asking these profound questions of what is happiness? What is the pursuit that truly fulfills human beings?

Um, how does one attain this ultimate happiness or this greatest good? Right. And even the Greek philosophers, you know, while they didn't have. Faith in Christ or an understanding of theology. They just based on pure human reason, kind of came up with the fact that it's through this practice of virtue and according to the catechism of the Catholic church, virtue is the habitual and firm disposition towards the good.

I love that. Cause virtue, it's not a feeling, right. You know, as St. Thomas Aquinas was saying, [00:24:00] happiness is in an end in itself. And that's what most of Western culture is doing. They're trying to figure out like they want to arrive at happiness. Like it's a destination. Like I just want to be happy, but they don't understand that happiness isn't just like a momentary fleeting moment of emotion.

And that's. Why I think so many people are disillusioned, even with sex, and even with like, the hookup culture, is that they're chasing this happiness, but they realize they have it momentarily, and then it's gone. It's like trying to catch water in your hand. And they equate happiness with sex, or love with sex, and then the sex is, is done, or maybe it gets old, or people just like use each other, and lust never satisfies.

And then they're just like disillusioned. They're disillusioned with all of it. Whereas St. Thomas is like, Hey, happiness is secured through virtue. And by practicing this firm disposition towards the good, as I try to be a better person, as I try to be more loving, more sacrificial, more self controlled, as I learned not to give into my base desires, as I [00:25:00] learned to be devoted, as I learned to make my life a gift to others, you realize, wait.

The very thing I was hungry for, the by product, right? This happiness is what I actually achieve. And, and so even in marriage, it's kind of like that. If you just want to be happy and, you know, sadly with a lot of couples who end up getting divorced, you know, what do they say? They say, I wasn't, I'm not happy anymore.

I'm not happy. And understandably, that's how they feel. The question is like, did they put in the work? Were they chasing the by product or were they actually doing the work? The difficult task of practicing that virtue and not giving up so as to then arrive at the very thing they wanted this whole time.

Because if we're just chasing the byproduct, namely happiness, which is fleeting, then it's just that it's fleeting. And so without really this kind of mature understanding of what love is and what commitment looks like. [00:26:00] And also just kind of this greater and this deeper motivation too of, of not giving up.

Because honestly, like without the grace of God and the grace of the sacrament that comes through marriage, like I don't, I don't particularly know how people do it. To be quite honest, like it's not within our human ability to like do marriage. Well, like without the grace of God, like forget about it.

Like it's, it's too hard. It really like, what's the point without the grace of God? So go I, but whereas when we have a foundation, a starting point, when we have an ideal, when we have a Lord and savior and God who shows us the way. And who is there not only to encourage us, but he's there with us, even in the suffering and the struggle, then like everything changes.

And even in those moments of difficulty, we find within ourselves, like the strength and the grace and the ability to forgive, to see the best in one another, to [00:27:00] remember, like, Hey, we made a commitment. And this isn't trivial. This isn't based on my feelings. This is like a lifelong thing. And I need to keep my mind and my heart focused on Christ so that I can indeed fulfill the vows that I made at the altar that day.

And, um, you may have heard this story, but in Croatia, there's like this particular town that has like a nearly 0 percent divorce rate and a particular ritual that they do at every marriage in that town is they pick a crucifix and when they exchange vows at the altar, they, they put the crucifix in their hands and they exchanged the vows.

Grasping the crucified Lord who laid down his life so that his bride, his spouse could live. This couple is now clutching that crucifix, that reminder of what Christ sacrificed for us while exchanging these vows to their beloved so that indeed in good times in bad and sickness and health, it is till death do they part.

And so, you know, the tradition continues where after the [00:28:00] wedding and the ceremony, they, they hang the crucifix up. in a prominent place in their home so that indeed in good times they can kneel before the lord and thank him and praise him for all the gifts and when they're having like a crap hits the fan fight they can also kneel before that crucifix and say lord if you don't help me we're gonna kill each other that's true i mean

Joey: no it's it's a marriage is a tall order and now i love everything you said So good.

So many things I could comment on, but I wanted to, um, ask a question I know is on a lot of the minds of our listeners going back a little bit. Um, Maggie, I'm curious if there was any sort of fear or hesitation to kind of let Paul in and let him see the reality of your family. Um, I know I felt this when my wife and I were dating, I kind of wanted to shield her from the brokenness and the dysfunction.

And I would even like on a practical level, maybe not tell her things that were going on. Cause I was like, I just, Don't want you to

Paul and Maggie: know

Joey: that that's at least the heroic, heroic version of the story. I was probably just too scared to tell her, but, but yeah, I had that experience. If you, you [00:29:00] know, kind of struggle with that and if there was anything that helped you then open up and show him the truth.

Maggie: You know, I, it's funny, I wish I had been a little bit more like you in that sense and been a little bit more wise about it because I think I did. Kind of have this tendency to just unload and share, you know, just really hard things are really terrible things that I had witnessed or, um, even like as I was, um, dating Paul and preparing for marriage, I was also kind of going through my own journey of healing and seeking therapy and processing a lot of what had happened in my childhood.

And naturally I'm coming to my. You know, boyfriend or fiance at the time and sharing a lot of these things. Um, and then even, you know, as we got married, a lot of that just kept unfolding and I had to be really careful and I had to learn to not share everything to every, you know, every detail and to really also protect.

I guess like the reputation of my parents too, um, because [00:30:00] there, there were moments where I did share things like this had happened to me when I was this age, or I remember witnessing this thing. And then while I'm kind of learning to heal and forgive them through the processing of like what had happened, Paul is like now experiencing it for the first time through, through my eyes.

And so I think we had to kind of find that balance of, Like sharing, but knowing how much to share so that he can also, you know, love my parents and, and see the best in them and not just see them through this lens of hurt and woundedness. So, yeah, so I think I kind of had like a little bit opposite of what you went through, um, where I had to learn how to like, relook back a little bit.

Joey: Totally makes sense how there's like kind of two ends of the spectrum and I maybe didn't share enough. And like you said, maybe there was some oversharing on your end, but yeah, I think if I had to choose though, there's something I think better about having the open communication, but I totally get the struggles that could come from that.

So, um, so no, that, I think that's helpful. And I, No, that our listeners could probably relate to both [00:31:00] experience, different listeners to different experiences. There's so much we could say about that, but I really want to get to like, kind of this lightning round of asking you guys advice. Um, so is that okay if we transition to that?

Sweet. Okay. So you can be as brief as thorough as you want. Um, one of the struggles that our audience has is that. That they've expressed this fear to us where they end up marrying someone they think is solid. They think is good, but then they change, they become not the person that you married. A lot of them have witnessed that in their own parents marriages.

And so I'm curious, like what's your advice for like really vetting the person and making sure that, um, you know, they are virtuous and they are the right fit for

Maggie: you. Um, man. Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's why the dating process and the engagement process is so important. And it's important to really ask the hard questions during that discernment period.

And yeah, I, I think, I think it was important for us to not just make a decision based off of our feelings at the time, but really diving into like, [00:32:00] what are your core beliefs? What, what is like, what is going to be the foundation of our family? What is that going to look like? And, you know, leaning on our faith and That helped a lot with, um, just discerning, like, is this the man that I want to marry?

I don't know. Do you have anything to add to that?

Paul: Yeah, I think I agree with everything she just said. And just, yeah, there, there are a couple like non negotiables for me. And that was like, one, I want to be able to raise our future family in the faith. Right. Particularly like I wanted us going to the same church and I wanted our relationship to be Christ centered.

I wanted to obviously know that we were in agreement with values. worldview, like obviously there, there has to be like a level of alignment with worldview. Otherwise it's going to be a pretty difficult road ahead, not only worldview, but just values in general. And so, you know, naturally there have been some like relationships dating wise, where there are some things that we aligned on, but then there were obvious red flags or things that we didn't align on.

And so the [00:33:00] reality is like, once those feelings and emotions fade, which they will, it's not going to be like a flamethrower of romance, like all the time in marriage, it feels that way sometimes when you're dating and it can really blind you from asking the more important questions of like, is this a person who I'm comfortable, like entrusting my future kids to, you know, like a question I've heard that, which is a really good discernment point for people who are dating, but If I had a future daughter for the ladies out there, would I be comfortable with her dating a guy like this?

And same thing for the guys. If I had a future son, would I be comfortable with him dating a girl like this? And um, it's a good question, you know, cause it's, it's one thing to just like each other or be able to just, you know, get along for the most part, have meals together, do fun things. feel romantic, but like for the marathon, which marriage is, it's like, you got to make sure that you're really aligned and not only your beliefs, but your expectations.

And obviously expectations can change beliefs can change as well in [00:34:00] different ways, but there just has to be a foundation. That's bigger than just like how you feel towards each other. There has to be a common mission, right? There's this really controversial Bible verse. Where St. Paul writes, um, wives, be submissive, be obedient, be submissive to your husband,

And most, uh, the most eye rolls that happen from women in the congregation probably happen on that Sunday. But if you actually take apart the, the Greek word of submit. It's not what most Western women are thinking. It's submissio, which means to come under the mission of to submit. Doesn't mean like he gets to tell me whatever the heck I need to do.

It's like, no, because I love, and I believe in this man. And I realized that he has a vision and a mission for our family and our future family. Like I am willing to partner with him in that mission. And that's, that's vastly different than this kind of skewed vision of [00:35:00] like, Oh no, it's just a domineering thing.

It's a power struggle and this, that, and the other. I mean, no way. Like the joke is like, you know, scripturally speaking, men are called the head of the household. Right. But But women are, are the neck, they can turn the head this way. And that way I can close off the air supply. They can, you know, very, very influential.

So this is a partnership. You know, the head needs the neck. The neck needs the head.

Joey: No, 100%. If you come from a divorced or broken family, and maybe, you know, someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more.

All of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue so you can break that cycle and build a better life. And so if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, just go to restoredministry. com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes.

Maggie: [00:36:00] Another practical thing that I wanted to bring up is the importance of addressing conflict in the relationship prior to marriage. And I, you know, whenever I would talk to, like, younger women who are dating or engaged and they'll say something like, Oh, I never fight with him. Like we just get along so well.

We never fight. We never argue while that sounds really nice. A part of me is also like, okay, but it's going to happen. Like it will happen in marriage. And what is that going to look like? How do you guys, how do you guys communicate? How do you guys resolve things like that is such a, it's a skill that needs to be practiced.

And you know, going into marriage, I viewed arguments and quote unquote fighting as. It's something that was really bad and a really bad sign and maybe like, I made a huge mistake and I really needed to flip my mindset and, and view arguments as a natural thing that occurs in marriage and see the good in it because it's only through arguing.[00:37:00]

in a healthy way and resolving conflict that we get to truly grow in intimacy and to learn more about each other. Um, and to, to do better, like the next time to anticipate what the other person needs and how they feel loved and. Yeah. So I going back to, you know, before marriage, when you're discerning if this is the right person for you, I would really highly encourage people to, uh, not just like look for a fight or pick a fight, but to really like go through that process of like, okay, we need to talk about some hard things or we need to address things that might be an issue and, and just, yeah.

And learn how to argue in a healthy way.

Paul: Yeah. Like the elephant in the room or. The inevitable conflict that the couple might very well see, but maybe out of discomfort, they don't want to like touch that with a 10 foot pole, right?

Maggie: They sweep it under the rug. Yeah. But

Paul: naturally you're, you're going to have to face that.

And so better for you to face that and learn how to grow through it [00:38:00] before you get married, then not deal with it, get married, realize that you guys have like overestimated your ability to do this, that now you're in a crisis. And so, once again, it's not to say that, like, you have to go through some, like, knock down, drag out fight in order to know that you're marriage worthy, but, like Maggie was saying, to not avoid the, um, the uncomfortable conversations.

Because like, yeah, in my experience when I was growing up to conflict was very difficult because there wasn't a whole lot of space, like growing up as a kid to be able to like verbalize my frustrations or disagreements with my parents. There was really no room in the culture that my parents grew up in, you know, they were just mirroring and modeling what they had experienced.

And so like, as a kid, conflict meant like, I just have to shut up and listen. I'm the one who's wrong every time. And so through different life experiences, through different formation, through different opportunities, living in community [00:39:00] with other people, like I had to learn rather quickly, you know, actually, like I have one of two choices.

Either I can be passive aggressive because I didn't really deal with the problem or address it, or I can just like straight up, like. Get into world war three with this person, right? I can go full on. Like I'm going to schedule an MMA match with you. Neither are necessarily helpful. Right. And so, and so even in marriage, it's, you know, like I said earlier in this, in this interview, like conflict, isn't a sign that your marriage is in trouble or your relationship, it's the inability to do so.

And so, yeah, there's a purely secular. Resource out there. That still is pretty good. Um, the Gottman Institute, Dr. John Gottman is like one of the foremost experts on marriage counseling. And he has like, basically pretty profound studies on being able to indicate whether a couple based on like one, one hour session are going to last or get divorced.

And the great indicator for him, you know, based on these couples he journeyed with for like decades was the [00:40:00] inability or the ability to In a healthy way, resolve conflict, and also the existence of what he called the four deadly horsemen in a marriage or a relationship. And based on the existence of those four deadly horsemen, he was able to indeed with over 90 percent accuracy, figure out if a couple was going to make it or not.

And so it was pretty wild, but once again, like resources like that, helping couples to like avoid certain pitfalls, uh, the four deadly horsemen, by the way, are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. And so like realizing that all of us, we, we might subscribe to one of these horsemen. And so in the context of an argument or disagreement, like if one person starts getting really critical, because maybe that was their upbringing and they were criticized all the time.

It just like as a defense mechanism to start criticizing, criticizing. And that's just not going to go well. Same thing with defensiveness. Like maybe they're just like, they're so overwhelmed in the conflict. They're like, I never did that. I didn't do that. You know, you're just, you're making up crazy stuff or stonewalling where a person gets so [00:41:00] emotionally flooded that they they're physically present, but they, they have left the conversation.

You know, they're just not engaging anymore. It's like a fight or flight thing. Right. And then contempt, which is kind of one of the most dangerous ones where just like all respect is gone for the other person. And so like, these are very easy things to turn to in the moment of conflict and during an argument and most couples.

They really, once again, unless you've done the work or you've had the practice or someone has mirrored or modeled this for you, or you've gone to counseling, or you've like not only read the books, but you've sought to put this into practice. This does not come naturally. It does not come easy. And so, like, you know, we just enrolled some of our kids in Brazilian jujitsu, right?

Everyone starts as a white belt and when you're like, I haven't really done it for an extended period of time either, but like, when you're a white belt, you're just kind of drowning the whole time. You're getting choked out left and right. You don't know what the heck you're doing and naturally, you know, through the [00:42:00] progression of showing up day in and day out and rolling and inspiring with these people, learning new techniques, you develop your skills to the point where you stick around long enough.

You're going to move up in belt class and you'll get it become a black belt. Eventually. And I think the, the simple analogy applies to marriage where like, when you get married, you just, you're like that white belt where you're like, what the heck are we even doing? Like, I know this is not the right move and I'm just using the move anyways, you know, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have said that, but it feels good right now to do and.

You

Paul and Maggie: know, you get,

Paul: you do the work, go to marriage counseling, if you need it, you read some books, you get some counseling, you know, you do this hard noble work and then you're like a blue belt. You're like, Oh yeah, I'm not going to fall into that trap that we're going to get choked out real quick if we do that.

Or, you know, or like, Oh, we've been in this situation before and I know what happened last time. And so instead of progressing and trying to just, Put all of my, my strength into it when really it's just a technique thing where I need to [00:43:00] take a different route instead of like exhausting myself and the other person.

Why don't we choose a different method? Right. And that can only be learned through experience. And so simple analogy, but yeah, very relevant. 11 years. I don't know what. Belt. We are

Paul and Maggie: not

Paul: a master at this yet, but

Joey: we sometimes just lose the belt. Like, I don't, we go backwards, but other times we're like, okay, I feel like we're getting the hang of this.

No, no, I think that's. There's a lot of lessons in everything you just said, like the aspect of patience with each other. Again, kind of going back to the curiosity piece, I think like asking questions in the midst of conflict is such a good thing to do, because otherwise you're making statements which feel like accusations.

I think, you know, I've heard the tactic of like, you can always speak from your own experience, like, you know, when this happens, like, I feel this way instead of saying you, like, You know, you just, um, so I think that's good too. Another, uh, I think Gottman taught this, we learned it from a therapist, but, uh, calling a time out.

We've heard that as helpful [00:44:00] where if things just get too heated, you know, have a preset time, whether it's 15 minutes or even 24 hours, somewhere in between usually, um, where you just kind of take a breather. And then you come back to it and that's another, I think, helpful tactic, uh, repeating back, like what you hear the person saying, uh, or what you think they're saying.

Like in the military, they do this in briefings, actually, it's called the read back and I've used it in the business world. And it's so helpful of like, Hey, like give me a read back. Like, what did you hear me saying? Like, what do you understand? And yeah, all those, I think tactics can be really, really helpful.

But, um, but yeah, I think it's the emotions can certainly. I get really, really hyped. So really good, really good advice, really good feedback. Thank you for going through all that. I, um, know we're running out of time here. So I just want to ask, um, I guess one more question that I want to hear about your course, Paul, how has marriage brought you guys joy and made you guys better?

Cause I know sometimes I'm guilty of maybe talking about trying to prepare people for like, Hey, it's going to be hard. It's not going to be a fairytale. And I think there's such an important point to that, but I also want to kind of balance it with like, no, there's actually a lot of goodness and joy. So I'm just curious if you want to share a story of Like, how has it made you better?

How has it brought you joy?

Maggie: I think obviously coming from a broken [00:45:00] family background, marriage for me has been so healing knowing that I can be my most vulnerable, ugly self, and this man chooses to love me every day, chooses to be committed to me and to our family. Um, that is so healing for me. And so that.

has brought me joy, just knowing that we are in this together, that through a lot of trial and error and a lot of, um, just learning about each other, learning just, you know, our, our own personal wounds, but also learning how to navigate life together. We have both grown so much. And yeah, I think just knowing that, like, I have.

This companion, this, my husband who is with me day in and day out through thick or thin till death do us part. Like, yeah, that has just brought me a lot of joy and healing.

Paul: Yeah. I find a lot of joy knowing that she is my only fan.[00:46:00]

Paul and Maggie: I couldn't

Joey: have said it

Paul and Maggie: better. It's relevant to this

Paul: conversation. I mean, you know, I'm like sharing my

Paul and Maggie: heart right now, going real deep. Can I throw that in there? Yeah,

Paul: it's good. Yeah, it's very good. I mean, seriously, like, I mean, I throw that in as a complete, like, tongue in cheek joke, but like, It's true.

Like our culture has like things so backwards and it's just so miserable and nihilistic and so unsatisfied to the point where like, I heard this crazy, like stab at the majority. Apparently of only fan subscribers are married men. That's terrible

Maggie: mom.

Paul: That's absolutely damning statistical evidence that like families in our culture are not in good shape, you know, marriages.

And so, you know, while I'm, I'm just being sarcastic and joking a bit, but, but truly like the way God made it [00:47:00] in the beginning, it was not. So, you know, the joy of knowing that, like, not only do we have one another, we have God on our side to give us indeed the strength to fulfill this beautiful, noble and difficult task.

And the joy is like, like Maggie was sharing. Like I have this friendship and Maggie that I have with no one else. And it is very beautiful. And, you know, scripturally, you know, it would say that people knew each other, understanding that it wasn't just like, they, they would describe the sexual act between couples as knowing one another.

And yes, there is a very intimate and beautiful and, um, exclusive knowledge that a husband and a wife get to experience with each other. But it's far more than just the sexual act. It's, it's indicative of like the whole, indicative of the whole relationship. Yeah. You know, the Marilyn Bray sex is just really just the icing at the top of the cake.

The cake is very big. And, you know, as we had mentioned earlier, like father Mike said, you know, people equate love with sex [00:48:00] and to, uh, to give a nod to another, uh, legendary priest, his name is father Benedict Rochelle. He passed away not too long ago. He was, he founded the CFR as a friars. And he was like a spiritual father to me for, you know, A season of my life.

And he had such a great sense of humor. So wise. But he said, he said in his Jersey accent, sex comes easy. Love is hard. That's true, man. Any, any fool with hormones can have sex. I mean, any fool. But like love, love, wow, that is not, is not for the faint of heart. Like love is willing the good of the other, and that requires all the virtues, um, to really make that work.

And so the joy I think has been knowing that like Maggie has my heart. I can entrust myself to her. I'm safe with her. I too can, you know, share my insecurities. I can be honest and real. But just knowing that I, you know, like Adam in the garden, right. There was like this original solitude, this longing that St.

Jean Paul II talked about in theology of [00:49:00] the body, where, while he was like really cool with all these like pets and exotic animals, there was still a longing to have a helpmate, a helper. You know, and then when he sees, you know, Eve, he says, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, he realizes that he had met his equal, that he had met, you know, and I want to be really careful to say the one who completes him because now the one who ultimately completes us as God, but in this life as not only a gift, but a consolation, like, yeah, this woman I have.

I can have and hold and, and to jury with. And the joy has been that as having this like very unique and beautiful friendship that I can rely on. And so, yeah, it's a beautiful journey. It's all worth it. It's, it's a lot of fun. You know, we laugh a lot. And. We share a lot of great memes with each other, probably the best, you know, I love it.

No,

Joey: so good. Well, thank you guys. And, uh, yeah, it's just been so good kind of watching you from afar. You know, I love [00:50:00] the content you put out and it's cool to see your beautiful family before we close on the conversation that I want to make sure that, um, people know about your course, because I think if they want more advice, like we're talking about here, you've built that, you deliver that through your course.

So tell us a little bit, what is it? How does it help people? How do they get it?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. So a few years ago, I created a course called the Catholic guide to adulting and adulting being that, you know, kind of pop cultural reference of all things having to be an adult and put my big boy pants, my big girl shoes on.

And it's true, like after college. You know, the young adult experience, it's rough because there's a lot of things being thrown at you. Everything from faith and finances to dating and discernment and my mental health and these issues that are coming up and these interpersonal conflicts that I keep facing at work and romantically and with my parents and siblings and ah, and it's a lot.

And so I was like, dude, I remember that feeling very well as a young adult. So what if there was a resource that could help people almost like a one [00:51:00] stop shop where they don't have to like Google search everything and try to vet these sources. But what if there was a one stop shop where they had. You know, a reputable guide where I'm not just pulling from my own wise thoughts, but I'm pulling from scripture.

I'm pulling from our faith traditions as Catholics. I'm pulling from the wisdom of the saints and frankly, just like the sage knowledge that I've also picked up through the years from wonderful counselors and pastors and friends. And that's why I created a Catholic guide to adulting. And so it's an online course where people can go at their own pace and basically tackle all of these topics that really matter to young adults, whether you're single, whether you're in college, whether you're a working professional, whether you're newly married, whether you've been in all of these things for a while, there's something for everybody because ultimately the end game of adulting well is to be.

a saint and to be like Christ. But once again, it's not just like a fluffy devotional that says nice things, but it's a really nitty gritty practical guide and [00:52:00] tool that I believe is changing lives and helping people to live their best life and avoid a lot of the pitfalls that frankly their peers are falling into.

So if people want to learn more about this course, they can just go to catholicadulting. com. Once again, that's catholicadulting. com. And for the listeners of the restored podcast, if you type restored, as you're checking out, you can get a little 10 percent discount just to say, thanks for listening. And, um, yeah, I hope people really benefit from it.

We have members from several different countries, um, several hundred people from all around the world who are benefiting already. And so I hope that your listeners will benefit too.

Joey: Love that. Thank you so much for the discount. And yeah, no, you have so much wisdom. And I love the fact that it's like packaged and something that people can work through at their own pace and maybe even do as a couple.

I think that sounds awesome as well, especially if maybe one of them is from a broken family. One of them is not kind of like your story, like mine and my wife's story as well. So, so good. Um, thank you for that. And I know what's your other website. I know you do speaking engagements and lots [00:53:00] of other things as well.

Paul: Yeah, sure. So I've been speaking full time for the past 14 years and Praise God. The ministry is taking me all around the world and I'm super grateful for it. Uh, if they want to find out more about my ministry, they can go to pjkmusic. com or just Google search, Paul J Kim, J period Kim, and they'll find my website.

And I'm obviously on social media. I'm most active on Instagram, but they can just look up Paul J Kim. I'm there. And Maggie's on Instagram too.

Maggie: What is it? I don't even remember. Maggie Kim, 49, I think.

Joey: I think that's it. Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll make sure to link to all this in the show notes, but that sounds about right to me.

And you guys know, I love, again, watching you guys from afar, because I think we need more examples of, yeah, just beautiful marriages and showing like the real side of it, how it can be a struggle, but then also how beautiful it can be. And I think you guys do such a good job of that and you're real about it too.

So that's why I wanted to have you on. So Thank you guys for being here. Um, I want to give you guys the final word, like what final advice encouragement would you offer? Especially to maybe the younger you guys, like when [00:54:00] you were a couple, again, one of you come from a broken family, the other one coming from an intact family.

What final advice, encouragement would you offer?

Maggie: I hope that your listeners leave this podcast with hope. I think for me, like I lived a lot of my life feeling hopeless about love and marriage and what that would look like for me in the future. And just, yeah, just from my experience, I hope that people view marriage in a hopeful way.

It doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. Um, marriage is tough. It's gotta be tough. Um, we have to choose to die to ourselves every day and to be committed to each other, but there's nothing. Anything that's hard in life, it's worth it. It's worth working towards it. So yeah, I just, I hope that I can express that there's so much goodness and growth and virtue and joy that comes from seeking marriage and working towards it.

Paul: Yeah. Amen. What I will say too, just kind of based on that is [00:55:00] regardless of your family of origin or how your parents marriage was, you can have the marriage and the family you always wanted. It's going to take work. It's going to take you deciding that certain traits, certain brokenness, certain problems that your family is influenced by, you have to make a decision that it stops with you.

But if you have the courage to do that, you can really change an entire generation and generations to come. And while that might sound a little dramatic, it is absolutely true. Because now we have kids and we're burdened with the beautiful task of trying to do it better than our parents did. And it's a battle and it's a fight worth engaging in.

And that battle is often interior. It's like, Hey, I have these things I'm working on. I have this area of woundedness that like I need to really unpack and bring before the Lord. And I want to be the best husband and dad. That I can possibly be and not just to feel good about myself, but for the sake of my bride and [00:56:00] my children.

And it's all worth it. It really, really is. It's a beautiful journey. So don't let anyone ever tell you that marriage isn't worth it and kids are too expensive. God will provide. And so that's what I, what I have to say about that.

Joey: Again, definitely check out Paul's course, a Catholic guide to adulting. If you use the code restored again, restored past tense, you'll get 10 percent off that course that wraps up this episode of this podcast has helped you.

Feel free to subscribe or follow on apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast app you use. Not only is it the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for help. And it only takes a few seconds.

If you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We appreciate that feedback. And that also helps people find the podcasts. In closing, always remember you're not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life, and we're here to help. And keep in mind the words of C.

S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#138: The Best of 2024: Restored Podcast Highlights

If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships, so you can break that cycle and build a better life. In this episode, you'll hear highlight clips from the podcast in 2024.

If you’re new to the podcast, this is the perfect way to sample our content and learn how it will help you. If you’re a longtime listener, this is the perfect episode to share with someone you know who needs to hear it.

View Restored’s Resources

Get the Book or FREE chapters: It’s Not Your Fault

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Episodes featured:

• #115: The Antidote to a Life of Emptiness | Dr. Andrew & Sarah Swafford

• #120: Freedom You Never Tasted But Always Wanted | Jake Khym, MA

• #121: A Cure for Feeling Needy or Helpless | Margaret Vasquez

• #123: What I Wish Never Happened, I Am The Most Grateful For | Jack Beers

• #126: Former Porn Actress: Over 90% of People in Porn are from Broken Families | Bree Solstad

• #130: An Exercise to Heal | Dr. Peter Malinoski

• #132: Why Your Wounds & Subconscious Are Ruling Your Life | Dr. Gregory Bottaro

• #136: Relationship Advice for Young People from Broken Families | Jackie & Bobby Angel

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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138_Final

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Dr. Andrew Swafford: [00:00:00] One of the greatest acts of charity you can do is enter into that healing work. Because ~as we all know, like~ if we don't, it's going to come out in other forms of dysfunction. It's going to transfer to all of our other relationships.

Dr. Bottaro: We have a responsibility to bring out the things from our unconscious and to put them into the light of conscious awareness.

Dr. Peter: What I love about internal family systems and parts of systems approaches is that it helps us to make sense of the chaos inside.

Bree: ~Yeah, ~there were many, many years that I think that I just completely hated myself, but I. I hated myself more when I was in amongst the detrimental behavior, when I was drinking, when I was doing porn.

Jake Khym: I think that's essential to recovery is micro goals. You have to break this whole thing down into realistic parts. Soon as you think about, I'm going to have to go seven years without ever struggling. You're done. It's too big. ~You're done. It'll crush you ~

Jackie and Bobby Angel: better. 14 broken engagements than one broken marriage.

Margaret Vasquez: I think if we wait to Want to do it or wait to feel equipped to do it or comfortable Doing it like we'll just keep on waiting.

Joey: [00:01:00] Welcome to the restored podcast I'm joey panarelli if you come from a divorce or a broken family this show is for you We help you heal your brokenness navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life To close out the year, my team and I wanted to share highlights of the restored podcast.

So you're about to hear short clips from episodes published this year. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. This is the perfect way to sample our content and to see how it can help you. Now, if you're a dedicated listener, we're just so honored to serve you guys. This is the perfect episode to share with someone, you know, who maybe needs to hear this content.

And by the way, if after hearing one of the clips, you want to listen to that particular episode in its entirety, but maybe you forgot the episode number, just go to the show notes to find all the episodes that we featured. There'll be listed there. First episode one 15 with Dr. Andrew and Sarah Swer titled The Antidote to A Life of Emptiness.

I absolutely love the Swafford. They're such an amazing couple and really an amazing example of what a marriage and family ought to be. They have such a [00:02:00] beautiful family, healthy marriage, and the main question in this episode and clip is what's needed to live a life of meaning and relationships that are filled with joy?

Dr. Andrew Swafford: Can prayer ever become selfish? And I still don't know exactly where this question is coming from, but I'm like, well, are you thinking in terms of like healing? Like, is it too self centered? I think number one, like entering into the deep work of healing of going, because in prayer you get to know God better, but you get to know yourself better, what's going on in my heart.

What's brought me to this place. That's not narcissistic. That's not selfish because the greatest act of charity you may ever, I mean, one of the greatest acts of charity you can do is. Enter into that healing work because as we all know, like if we don't, it's going to come out in other forms of dysfunction.

It's going to transfer to all of our other relationships. It's going to, it's going to inhibit our ability to really love and be present to others around us. So to me, the answer is relationship. It's with God. It's going into those places that we're afraid to look. It's being [00:03:00] patient with ourselves. We want this to be a quick fix, but it's often not we didn't get there overnight We're not gonna get out overnight But then also simultaneously relationships with other people we can have that love of god mediated to us We can be seen and known and loved and understood and and affirm for who we are as we are as wonderful and great But also a work in project, uh, in progress and not perfect overnight.

And, uh, so to me that, that healing, it's not selfish. It's going to be one of the greatest acts of charity anyone has ever do. And our family tree, whether it's biological or spiritual, like the people that cross our paths moving forward, that tree, that trajectory will be altered by whether or not we actually go deep with our own stuff and our own junk and actually enter that healing.

And if we don't, it'll be altered in a different way. So you can kind of. We're all like been thrown into this life. We've all had these like scars, good and bad, all these things. And we can just kind of keep passing that forward. Or we can like buck the trend. Like I know Joey, you know, you and I have talked about this [00:04:00] and uh, you know, we really want to raise our families in a way that's, I mean, we're grateful for what was given to us, but we also want to do some things.

I want to be some of what we didn't receive. Yeah. And I think of that as like, You're never divorced from your past, but you can buck that you can start a new line and it's not a brand new line, but like with Christ, he makes all things new and it's, it's, it's a new point. There's a before and after. And so the healing is not selfish.

It will transform all those that cross your path moving forward.

Joey: I appreciate that sobering reminder that if we don't heal. We'll likely pass our brokenness onto the people that we love the most, but that doesn't have to be our story. We can write our own story. We can write a new story like Dr. Swofford said, and we can really buck the trend.

As he said, we can break the cycle and you can give your kids, your future spouse, what you didn't receive and healing your brokenness and growing in virtue is really the best gift that you can give to your future spouse and your children. So more advice on how to do all of that in episode [00:05:00] 115. Next is episode 120 with Jake Kim, titled Freedom You Never Tasted But Always Wanted.

His story is absolutely incredible. Two years into marriage, he found himself enslaved to a sex addiction. He wanted to break free, but he felt super stuck, so he just hid his behavior from his wife and led a double life. And in this clip, he talks about a tactic to use to break free from sexual compulsion or addiction.

Jake Khym: So if you know anything about the Navy SEALs, he said, and he's been through hell week. He's been through hell week. So he has real life experience. And he said, I respect any man who has worked through an addiction, man or woman, but we're talking about men work through an addiction to pornography. He said, you are like us when you've done this.

Oh, that was huge motivation for me. But one of the things that they teach there is what's called micro goals. The principle is you will never make it through hell week. When you think about the entire week at the same time, you'll quit because it's [00:06:00] overwhelming. So what you have to do is draw your attention, which isn't easy, but it is possible.

Draw your attention back until the next thing you're focusing on is reasonable and achievable. And that might be. All I have to focus on is the next 30 minutes. And if that's the sobriety journey that you're in is all my goal right now is the next 30 minutes and I'm working hard because it's not instantly happening.

I'm working hard to hold my attention to being holy, being pure for the next 30 minutes. I'm breaking down this lifelong journey into a goal that's reasonable. And achievable it's micro goals. That's how they survive extremely difficult things like hell week. And they train that and they practice that.

And then they embody it. I think that's essential to recovery is micro goals. You have to break this whole thing down into realistic parts and that doesn't magically happen. That is intentional. Soon as you think about, I'm going to have to [00:07:00] go seven years without ever struggling. You're done. It's too big.

You're done. Yeah. It'll crush you. You got to think about the next 10 minutes, day, week, whatever is manageable to you.

Joey: So good. And proof that that work is the lone survivor story of Marcus LaTroise, a Navy SEAL, who you guys might know this story. He was essentially just left without a team in the mountains in Afghanistan.

And he actually using that exact tactic that Jake just taught, he actually crawled on his belly with like a broken femur, his nose was collapsed into his face, sorry, this kind of graphic he had. bitten through his tongue, he was on his belly, like running from likely hundreds of enemy fighters. He would take a stick and draw a line in the sand in front of him.

And he said, if I can just get past that line, I'm going to live. And he did that again. He did that for seven miles. He also shares how at the root of his addiction to porn and masturbation were just lots of brokenness and lots of selfishness, where [00:08:00] he thought if he could just have porn in real life, he'd be fine.

But he also shares tactics and principles in this episode that helped him break free from addiction and rescue his marriage. And so super helpful stuff in episode 120. Episode 121 is next with trauma therapist Margaret Vasquez titled A Cure for Feeling Needy or Helpless. Margaret, like I said, is a trauma therapist who's helped hundreds of people heal for the past 20 years.

And we got a lot of great feedback about this episode, since so often I think those of us who come from broken families are tempted to fall into victim mentality, the belief that we're just stuck and powerless and therefore we just perpetually wait for someone to come in and rescue us and do the work for us.

And so, in order to break free, Margaret says that we need to take action. Listen in. We're just comfortable in kind of the status quo, and I think it's really important to break out of that. So how do we break out of that and take action?

Margaret Vasquez: I think taking action is breaking, is how we break out of it. I don't, I don't know that there's ever a point when it just becomes easy [00:09:00] in the beginning, right?

It becomes easier by doing it. It's like lifting, right? Like lifting weights, the weight becomes lighter. The more you lift it, but if it's something that's going to cause you to grow when you walk up to it, it's heavy initially, right? You have to have to start pumping it. And anytime we, you know, especially going back to the sports analogy, having played sports as well, we don't have muscle memory of something yet.

Right. Feels really awkward. Right. It's like, am I doing this right? Like, you know, I don't know. It just, you're having to concentrate on, you know, batting, right. Your stance, where are my feet? How am I holding my elbows? How am I following through? Like, okay. Oh, watch the ball. That's a thing too. Like trying to put all these things together at the same time and not get beamed in the head, you know, and like whatever.

But the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. And to the point where it's just, yeah, you don't even have to think about it. You just get up there and you're, you know, it just feels right and flows, you know, actually becomes relaxing and enjoyable. [00:10:00] And then pretty soon you don't even, somebody else has to point it out to you that you're, that you're doing it, you know, and maybe not in terms of batting, but living in a, in a healthy place or from that place of wholeness.

So I think if we wait to. Want to do it or wait to feel equipped to do it or comfortable doing it. Like we'll just keep on waiting, you know, I think it's, yeah, it's just beginning to just, yeah, just starting, just starting and you tweak as you go and you grow as you go and learn more, but you gotta start.

Joey: I love her sports analogy and the reminder that we have to practice in order to be virtuous and healthy. And the more that we do that, the more effortless it becomes. And her challenge to us to just get started, I think is just so appropriate, but more advice and challenges from Margaret in episode 121.

If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online [00:11:00] community, and much more. All of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue, so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

And so, if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, Just go to restoredministry. com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes. Next is episode 123 with Jack Beers titled What I Wish Never Happened I Am Most Grateful For. Jack is not only just an exceptional communicator, but a man who has suffered a lot.

And through his suffering, he's become better, a better man. And no matter how badly we're struggling, we always have freedom to respond, as Jack explains in this clip.

Jack Beers: What can never be taken from a human being is the ability to choose their attitude in a given circumstance. The exception to that is, like, when you lose your mental faculties, so, so provided you have your mental faculties, you're not struggling from dementia or Alzheimer's or, let's say, multiple personality disorder, but if you have your mental faculties, there's literally no power on earth, [00:12:00] not even God himself has given himself the power To force you to respond in a particular way and to claim that freedom that you do have, like people have gone through a significant trauma or significant suffering.

It's like the 1st step is to acknowledge the pain and to acknowledge the storm that you're in or that you've gone through and to acknowledge its impact on you. But the 2nd step and arguably the most important one is. What are you going to do about it? You have the freedom to choose how you respond.

Your attitude, your outlook, how you look at it. You know, the first four years of me being sick, I got a terrible attitude. Victim, impossibility, bitterness, resentment, anger, you know, when things turned around, it was an attitude of possibility. Like, what can I control? One of the great images of this is Jesus hugging his cross.

You know, like when I didn't grow up with any particular faith, and I remember the first time I heard the story [00:13:00] of Jesus hugging his cross and him willing the suffering that was imposed upon him. It was like that, that's it. That's it. That's what I want to do. Like that is the most noble thing a person can do is regardless of their circumstances, regardless of what's being imposed on them to choose to embrace it.

To walk toward the storm and to extract as much meaning as they can from the experience so that they can go turn around and be something and someone extraordinary for other people, right? Like the story of Jesus from just a pure human perspective is I'm going to hug this cross. I'm going to brace it with everything that I have so that I can turn around and give abundant life to every other person on the planet, right?

It's like, okay, you have the actual ability to transform your suffering. Into something that blesses every other person that you meet for the rest of your life, like no one can decide whether or not that happens, but you and claiming that is, I think that changed my life and I think it changes anyone's life who's going [00:14:00] through a particular struggle.

Joey: His story is amazing. It's so inspiring how he went from feeling like a victim. to embracing his suffering and even seeing it as a challenge. And I spent time in person with Jack and I have to say, I just have so much respect for the man. He's just amazing. And so I'm excited for you to learn from him in episode one, 23.

Brie Solstad joined us in episode 126 titled Former Porn Actress, over 90 percent of people in porn are from broken families. Her story is absolutely unreal. She went from being a top selling porn actress to quitting her job and completely turning her life around. But her exit from that life didn't lead to immediate bliss.

She had to work through a lot of brokenness, including self hate. Have you been tempted to kind of hate yourself for your past? Um, and if so, how have you dealt with that?

Bree: Certainly. Like I said, it's not just about porn production. It's like all of us, you know, we [00:15:00] all have pasts, we all have sins, we all have regrets.

And I think really one of the best ways that I've dealt with this is, again, while talking to people who have been there, who Also made poor decisions and then have rectified, remedied their lives, you know, where like you can read again, you can read about different saints that, and they're not all spectacular, you know, Mother Teresa, like a lot of them come from certain backgrounds and then have changed for the better.

You know, a lot of people. Mary Magdalene to me and she was a prostitute and then, you know, she became one of Jesus's most trusted disciples. But also you can find those people in your life now. I can't stress the importance of, you know, talking to other people, especially in your own situations. [00:16:00] Initially when I quit drinking, AA was a huge resource for me.

And during that first year, it was really one of the best things that had ever happened to me. It was the greatest thing in my life. And a lot of that is because You know, I talked with people who were freely, openly discussing all the horrible things that they did when, you know, they were drinking and now, okay.

So not only was that like completely mind blowing that you're just like openly talking about how you got fired from your job or how you stole your daughter's lunch money. Like to buy booze. You're just saying that, like that is inspirational. And once you've told your rock bottom story to a room full of complete strangers, your life will never be the same.

And so things like that, I think are really helpful and they're helpful to understand that you're not alone. They're helpful to understand that other people have. I've done these things and worse, and it's helpful to see people who have done [00:17:00] these things worse and now are better because they've stopped doing them.

Yeah, I've definitely been tempted, you know, several times in my life to, and I've gone as far as to say that, yeah, there were many, many years that I think that I just completely hated myself, but I hated myself more when I was in amongst the detrimental behavior, when I was drinking, when I was doing porn.

And now that I'm out of it. I like the way that you said it's tempting to still hate myself, but I have a hard time hating myself these days. I don't know if that sounds like you go to school, but, um, it's a good thing. It's a good, yeah. Yeah. Um, because I just, I mean, the people that I engage with, the people that are in my life, my work is so rewarding.

I have all these incredible people and I have all these incredible resources and all this great love and beauty and just abundance, and it's hard to hate myself because everything's just, you know, I mean, you know, like there's still tragedy, [00:18:00] like I said, but I have this whole toolbox full of resources that I can go to when I'm, you know, in, when I'm in the dumps, or like, even when, like, something will trigger a bad emotion or a bad memory.

And, and then I can go to this toolbox and I have different people, different things that I can listen to, different things that I can read, different prayers that I can say. Whereas before when I was an alcoholic or when I did porn, my toolbox was like things that are just going to make me feel worse.

And they're not really helpful at all, you know, like alcohol or sleeping around, any of those things.

Joey: I, I hear you, and, yeah, I think it's a temptation for all of us in one way or another, like, to have, like, that proper love of ourselves, like, where it's not, like you said, on one extreme, egotistical, we're obsessed with ourselves, but the other end, it's a really bad and unhealthy thing to hate yourself, to think so lowly of yourself, so I love that you're in that, like, in that good spot now.

I [00:19:00] really appreciated Bree's vulnerability in that episode and especially her tip to just surround yourself and talk with people who have struggled with what you've struggled with and have accomplished what you want to accomplish, whether that's in person or through content like books, podcasts, and so on, their stories can really be fuel for us and a guide for those of us who, you know, again, are struggling, maybe where they struggle.

And so if you want more from Bree, listen to episode 126. For countless teens and young adults, their parents divorce is actually the most traumatic thing that they've experienced, but so many feel lost and alone in navigating the challenges. I've been there myself. It's really not easy and it shouldn't be this way.

My book, It's Not Your Fault, guides them through those challenges by helping them put their pain into words and begin to heal, work through the emotional problems that they face, cope in healthy ways instead of falling into bad habits, improve their relationship with their parents, navigate the holidays and other life events, and build healthy relationships and so much more.

One Amazon review said this, this book is packed full of really practical help. If you come from a broken family or even if you don't, but you [00:20:00] love someone that does, this book is so helpful. I can't recommend this enough. By the way, it's a quick read and it doesn't need to be read cover to cover since it's in question and answer format.

You can just read one of the questions and one of the answers. And so if you want to join the thousands of people who've gotten a copy, just go to restored ministry. com slash book. Books, uh, to get the book or download the free chapters again, that's restored ministry. com slash books, or just click the link in the show notes.

Episode one 30 with Dr. Peter Malinowski is up next titled an exercise to heal. And we talk a lot in this clip and in this episode about internal family systems. And he's just a wealth of knowledge on internal family system. And he's helped so many people to heal through his practice. And so in this clip, he talks about how we often feel.

Conflicted inside ourselves.

Dr. Peter: The central ideas within internal family systems or parts and systems work is that yes, we are one, but we're also many kind of like an orchestra is one, but it's also got these component parts [00:21:00] to it. Right. And so what I think is really helpful is to understand how different parts react to different experiences.

So let's just take the case of a divorce. I think there is many reactions to parents divorcing as there are parts within us. And these parts are, are often at fighting about that. They're polarized about this. One part, you know, is really wanting to connect with mom and dad and make peace. Peace in the family.

Another part's really angry at mom and dad and wants to be able to express that as a need to sort of get that out and to make them hear right. And another part is really afraid of what would happen if, if we were real. So there's this internal civil war going on with all these different factions, aligning and polarizing.

And what I love about internal family systems and parts of systems approaches is that it helps us to make sense of the chaos inside. And it helps us to be able to communicate that and to share it and to get it out and to understand it. And it ultimately, it helps us to love ourselves, [00:22:00] to love our neighbors, and ultimately to love God, to carry out the two great commandments, which is what really floats my boat about this is that it helps us to carry out the two great commandments upon which the entirety of the law and prophets hang.

And that's the summary of our Catholic faith.

Joey: Honestly, it's so helpful to hear that there's a tool out there like internal family systems to just understand all the chaos inside of us, especially when we're really stressed or struggling. And so listen to episode 130 with Dr. Peter for more information on internal family systems and other tips on how to heal.

Next is episode 132 with Dr. Greg Bitaro. Why your wounds and subconscious are ruling your life. Dr. Bitaro is just a wealth of knowledge as well. He knows so much about brokenness and healing. This episode was really fun, especially since we answered a lot of audience questions. And so in this clip we discuss how some people are actually skeptical about healing and think that maybe you should just move on with life and not spend any time healing.

[00:23:00] Some people who kind of have this perspective that if things are going well in your life, there's no use in digging up like past trauma and brokenness. That's like one school of thought I've heard. On the other end, um, people think that no, there is a lot of value in that because while you might be okay now, if there's stuff under the surface, it can grow and then you might be facing that in a few years.

Do you side with one of those schools of thoughts or neither altogether?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, I could totally understand why people don't want to look at that stuff and why people would get jaded About the value of digging stuff up and all that. But I mean, this is directly from John Paul too, that we become more human.

The more we become aware of the things that are buried in our unconscious. And the more that we dredge out the material of our unconscious, that's actually motivating and influencing us. Like Carl Jung also said. We're always going to be sort of enslaved to unconscious motivations, and so to become fully free, to become fully human, to become fully agents of our own self [00:24:00] determination, we have a responsibility to bring out the things from our unconscious and to put them into the light of conscious awareness.

So that we can see clearly why we're doing what we're doing and constantly move more towards a full ownership over self and ownership of the decisions that we're making. And if we just let the past be the past and never really look at it, it's ignoring a fundamental part of our anthropology of how God built us.

Our past is influencing the way that we are acting in the present. So we, we owe it to God and to ourselves to look at it.

Joey: Elsewhere in that episode, he talks about how healing happens in relationship, how we need other people in order to heal, especially mentors. And that's so important to remember, because I think, especially for people like us, we sometimes think that we can heal on our own, but that's actually not possible, but healing isn't a checklist, right?

It's not a checklist of tasks that we complete. It involves being seen, known, and even loved, uh, more than it involves checking boxes. And so for more wisdom from [00:25:00] Dr. But taro, listen to episode one 32. Last, but certainly not least is episode 136 with Bobby and Jackie Angel. If you haven't heard of them, you're in for a treat.

They're an amazing married couple and amazing speakers and podcasters who just give awesome relationship advice. And in this clip, we discuss how people like us who come from broken families often feel lots of anxiety about relationships in general, which makes it really tricky to discern whether the person we're seeing is the right one for us.

Jackie and Bobby Angel: And the problem is we always are trying to make the shoe fit. When we have the wrong person, we're like, I just want to make it fit. And we kind of know inherently like, no, we, I feel like I did that in so many other relationships. You're like, oh, but there were signs like this person's name I saw on the street side.

We just try to make the wrong shoe fit so often. I think that's where it becomes really difficult. And then when we find the person we're actually supposed to be with, it's like, Oh, like this, I really do have a friendship with this [00:26:00] person, but Bobby, what would you, What would you say to that and add?

Bobby Angel: Yeah, everything Jackie said, uh,

Jackie and Bobby Angel: just, just

Bobby Angel: rewind and listen to it again.

I mean, I, I think two of, we can have a part of us that just is tempted to self sabotage. And afraid of the thing that we want the most and what if it what if it falls through because how I've been wounded by divorce or or how I've been rejected. So sometimes there is that in a generalized anxiety sense that temptation to to self sabotage and maybe it's because a part of us thinks that I don't deserve this.

I don't deserve this relationship. I don't deserve the love of this person. I mean, my spiritual director told me. When I was tempted, I had a moment of like, this is too good to be true. Like when Jackie and I just really started to click in, he's like, don't refuse the gift. Like recognize what God is allowing to happen and what you've been praying for.

It's finally happening. And to know like, there's a part of you that is really quick to be self critical and think, I don't deserve [00:27:00] this. This is, you know, don't get my hopes up. And it's like, no, no, no. Just receive the gift.

Jackie and Bobby Angel: And on the opposite spectrum is that when you are with the wrong person, it's good to like talk to your family and your friends because you know, there are moments like I was with the wrong person and my friends like, yeah, we don't like this guy.

And, and then when Bobby, like Bobby was engaged prior to, and the girl that he was with, his own family was like, you're not yourself. And his friends were like, you're not Bobby. Like, you're not you when you're with this girl. Like you are not as fun. You're not as happy. And so it's also good to have our people outside of the relationship help to see maybe some blind spots that we can't see.

Bobby Angel: Even to risk the friendship because sometimes we've pushed away the voices of accountability in our lives because we don't want to be seen. We're not proud of what we're doing or the behaviors we're doing, or we don't want to be told. So I, I had friends put the friendship on the line and be like, you may not want to hear this, but we don't think this girl, like it's, it's, it's right.

It's healthy and you know, [00:28:00] it's stung. But at the same time, the part of me is like, like craving for like a smack on the face. You know, we, we know there's a better option here for everyone. And yeah, like sometimes we need the friends. To tear the roof off and lower us to Jesus, because we're just so broken.

We're so paralyzed with our own fear or our own addictions, whatever. Like we need the help of friends and family to bring us to Jesus to intervene. So if you're listening, and there's someone in your life that you've have felt the nudge to reach out to talk to, like, That, you know, might be the Holy Spirit.

Jackie and Bobby Angel: Yeah, please, for the love of God, do it. I've just had women reach out to me who were months away from a marriage, and even just them reaching out to me on Instagram, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you are just saying so many red flags, and they're like, no, but I can't imagine life without this person, and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, I'm just repeating back to you what you just said to me, and you know, it might take a while for them to kind of But it's like you wouldn't have reached out to me [00:29:00] if you, you know, you didn't kind of know at a deeper level, like this wasn't right. So yeah, marriage, I'm all about like, but again, better 14 broken engagements than one broken marriage.

And again, if this, if you guys know this, you know, this from experience, you know, what a broken marriage can do and how it affects generations, like how it affects you and it affects. And so we know. So I, I don't want that to scare you on finding the right person, but I think, listen to what, like what Bobby said, like when you're with the wrong person, there's a way that it feels and your friends and family can see it.

But when you're with the right person, don't self sabotage. And also there will be people around you who will see like, no, this person's amazing and really good for you and you can be yourself. You know, you don't need to second guess that you're attracted to them. And there's a beautiful friendship there.

Joey: A lot of solid and perhaps even sobering advice in that clip, but I think it will save you a lot of heartache if you take it to heart and to benefit from more wisdom from Bobby and Jackie, just listen to episode one 36. That wraps up this [00:30:00] episode. Again, if you want to listen to any of the episodes in their entirety, just go ahead and check the show notes for a list of the episodes that we featured from our team at Restored.

We're just honored to serve you guys and we wish you the best in the next year. And if this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe or follow an Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app. Not only is that the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for help.

And it only takes a few seconds. If you've already done that, feel free to rate or view this show. We. Really appreciate that feedback. And that also helps us to reach more people, more people to find the podcasts. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life, and we're here to help.

And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Holidays with Divorced Parents: Part 3

6 minute read.

Navigating the holidays as a child of divorce can be incredibly challenging. From juggling split holiday schedules to coping with feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and family conflict, this season often amplifies emotional stress for teens and young adults from broken families. Whether it's managing time between parents, dealing with the dynamics of stepfamilies, or battling holiday depression, we’re here for you. To help, our holiday articles offer practical tips for not only surviving the holidays, but making them less stressful and more enjoyable.

Tip 4: Communicate the Plan

By far, this is the most difficult tip. A fair amount of you will not complete it. Why? It’s scary and uncomfortable. I get it, I’ve been there. Perhaps you’ve never stood up for yourself like this or you’re unsure how your parents will respond. Just remember that inaction has a cost too. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. You deserve better.

When communicating, it’s best to do it well ahead of time. Already cutting it close? Don’t worry. Better late than never.

In crafting how you want to communicate, follow the advice of speaker and author Donald Miller. First, figure out what you want to say, such as the main points and order. Then, figure out how you want to say it, such as the words you’ll use and the form of communication.

In figuring out “what” to say, a few tips:

• Lead with your intentions, such as affirming that you want to see your parents and spend time with them.

• Make sure they know they’re part of the plan.

• You have every right to express your feelings to your parents. Be honest and tell them your needs.

• Brutal honesty and vulnerability might not give them warm, fuzzy feelings, but hopefully, they’ll respect you for your honesty. And if they don’t, at least you know that you spoke your truth.

• Naturally, this assumes you’re in a spot where you have at least a decent relationship with your parents and you can talk to them. Sometimes, that isn’t the case.

In solving “how” to say it, some things to consider:

• In-person is best, video or phone is next, then voice memo, and finally, email or text is last. At other times, a letter is most effective.

• Start with “I’m reaching out to set expectations and make sure we spend time together.”

• Be real by saying things like “I love you, but it can be really hard around the holidays to please you both and not offend you. I need you to understand my decisions, my boundaries, and that the tension in our family makes it difficult to enjoy the holidays.”

If you can’t see both parents, give the reason why, at least in a diplomatic way focusing more on yourself than them, such as “I can’t afford it,” “It’s too exhausting for me right now,” “It’s too much on me (or my family),” or “I need a break this year.”

What if your parent gets upset? Stay calm. Try to display empathy by placing yourself in their shoes, yet keep your boundaries. Keep in mind that your parents are learning to navigate the holidays too, so give them some grace. Then, speak the truth by saying what you’re thinking and feeling.

As part of that conversation, ask good questions. When people make unreasonable requests, FBI Negotiator Chris Voss suggests asking the question, “How am I supposed to do that?” The intent behind the question is to find an answer. But often, the request made is so difficult or impossible that the person who made it feels stumped by the question. You can also ask questions aimed at understanding and empathy, such as “In your mind, what did you expect this year?” or “If you were in my shoes, what would you do if your mom and dad were asking what you are right now?”

Whatever happens, don’t allow someone else to take control of your plan and adapt it at your expense. For example, if you get a request from your dad to attend a party or see him during the time you’re spending with your mom, you can simply point to the plan and remind him of it. Learn from it all too. Don’t feel the need to have the perfect plan or perfectly execute the plan. Instead, look at it as a sort of experiment to find the right balance between your parents. You can then make changes next year based on what you learn. See it also as an opportunity to become a better, stronger person. Think about the lessons you can use in the future, especially to build your own family.

To help, my team and I have developed copy-and-paste templates here to communicate with your parents via text, voice memo, email, phone call, video call, or even a letter.

Tip 5: Enjoy the Holidays

Ironically, forgetting to enjoy the holidays is easier than it sounds. Creating new traditions, especially if you’re married or soon will be, is a great way to reset and redefine the holidays. Serving others, such as the poor or elderly in nursing homes, is another way to break the cycle with selflessness.

If you’re like me, spending time with your friends makes the holidays much more enjoyable too. While it’s good to spend time with your parents, make sure you block out some time to spend time with your friends too. So often, since spending time with both parents separately can be so time-consuming, our other relationships suffer. Do what you can to plan some time with those people that you’d like to see. The extra effort will pay off.

Keep in mind that you might need to lower your expectations for the holidays, unfortunately. Holiday traditions in your family might die because of the divorce. You might not feel the same joy, safety, and security with your parents anymore. That’s hard to swallow. In the midst of that, try to focus on the deeper meaning of the holiday. For example, Christmas is a time to delve into the mindboggling mystery of God becoming a vulnerable, weak, human baby. Don’t let the stress and challenges distract you from things like that.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season. You can download our holiday guide for free below.

---

Holidays in a divorced or broken family can be stressful and exhausting. But there’s a better way.

Our guide, 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family, helps you:

• Avoid people-pleasing and burnout

• Manage stress and difficult emotions

• Plan time with parents thoughtfully

• Set clear, protective boundaries

Make the holidays less stressful and more enjoyable.

#137: You’re Not Doomed to Get Divorced | Samantha

If you come from a divorced family, research says you’re more likely to get divorced. But does that mean you’re doomed to that fate? My guest today says a resounding no. 

She and her husband, also a child of divorce, have built a 24-year-long happy marriage with 3 children. Her message for you? You can do the same. In this episode, we discuss: 

• How she’s overcome her fear of getting divorced and how marriage has actually been healing for her.

• How she felt her father’s absence as a young person and how she ultimately forgave him.

• How to become more confident and resilient or gritty

If you’re afraid of getting divorced, you want to forgive your parents, or you want to become tougher, this episode is for you.

Share Your Story

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Get the Book or FREE chapters: It’s Not Your Fault

Contact Samantha: samantha.hall328@icloud.com

Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success (The Scott Adams Success Series)

The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

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As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

===

Samantha: [00:00:00] My dad, um, he was an alcoholic.

Joey: Do you remember any particular situation or instance where you're like, Oh, wow. All my friends maybe have moms and dads who live together. And I don't.

Samantha: Some knowledge is just too heavy for children to just be able to bear.

Joey: What was most helpful for you when it came to healing and to growing into a better, more virtuous woman?

Samantha: I knew that there was a problem because everything that happened, I always thought was because of me, something that I did. You know, some, some fault that I had when you're in pain and you're suffering, it's not like you're saying, well, I'm going to make this poor choice now. Right? Like you're really just trying to survive something that feels really overwhelming to you.

Joey: I think so many of us feel powerless because we can't fix our families

Samantha: and we would get into a fight and I would just. I'm going to get a divorce. We're just going to get a divorce. And one day he said to me, Sam, I know that you get really angry, but it hurts me so much when you say that, because I never want to get divorced from you.

Like I'm never giving up on you.

Joey: Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a [00:01:00] divorce or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life. My guest today is Samantha.

She's a devoted wife, mother, and joyful advocate for God, family, and community with over 20 years in communications and a commitment to volunteer work in religious education and youth ministry. Her healing journey from the unintended wounds of her parents divorce began when she heard a quote that said, The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage.

And the family. Recently, she completed coursework in human and spiritual integration and trauma informed care. Currently, she serves in public education where she witnesses firsthand the mental health struggles of students and works to find solutions that address the root cause of those problems, learning how to heal the wounds caused by the breakdown of family systems.

If you come from a divorce family, research says that you're more likely to get divorced, perhaps even two to three times more likely. But does that mean that you're doomed to that fate? My [00:02:00] guest today says no. She and her husband, also a child of divorce, have built a 25 year long happy marriage with three children.

Her message to you? You can do the same. In this episode, we discuss how she's overcome her fear of getting divorced herself, how marriage has actually been healing for her, how she felt her father's absence as a young person, how she ultimately forgave him. Really beautiful story. And then the resolution that all of us from divorced or broken families can experience.

And it doesn't involve fixing your parents marriage or solving all the brokenness in your family. And finally, she offers some tips on becoming more confident and resilient or gritty. And so if you're afraid of maybe repeating your parents mistakes. Painting what you saw in their marriage. You want to forgive your parents and you want to become just tougher, stronger, more confident person.

This episode is for you. And with that, here's the conversation. Samantha, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here.

Samantha: Thank you so much, Joey. I'm so happy to be here today. Thank you.

Joey: I remember when we initially met, I was just so impressed with you and the wisdom you have and the way that you articulate that.

So I know this is just going to be more of that. So I'm really excited to dive into your story. Starting out. I'm [00:03:00] curious. What was life like at home in the years and months before your parents split?

Samantha: So my parents divorced when I was two. So I don't really, I think all of your memories kind of come alive after that two period.

So what my memory really was of my mom. You know, heading the ship on everything. I did not have siblings. So it really was just kind of me and my mom, my mom was the only child. So my grandmother was very central in our life. And so in so many ways where I feel that the family is really meant to be kind of that, you know, the balance of the mom and the dad, right.

It was kind of in our family, my mom and my grandmother, right. Um, and so I feel blessed that I was able to have those. Influences and that love, but also now, you know, looking at that all these years later, I can see that there was some stability that was missing just from, you know, not having my father around and being able to have that influence in my life.

Joey: Totally makes sense. Since you were so young, it makes sense that you have no memory of [00:04:00] what life was like before it. Have you heard stories or been told of kind of the. I don't know, level of dysfunction and what was going on prior to the separation.

Samantha: So it's really interesting. I don't know how many of your listeners have gone through this type of experience, but my dad, um, he was an alcoholic.

And so my mom, obviously when she married him, did not know that probably like anybody else. You know, he was drinking it, you know, it's a socially acceptable thing to do. But when they had me, um, they were in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and they moved back to Pennsylvania. And so my dad was a professor at Millersville college here in Pennsylvania and just through kind of different things, I guess there were some maybe red flags that came up.

And so my mom, I don't know if she must've gotten suspicious one day, but she went to his car and she opened up the back of his trunk and there were just. All these empty alcohol bottles there. So the reality of the situation, I think hit her pretty hard. And I will say, I mean, this would have been, I was born in [00:05:00] 1969.

So I still think it was a time where really they didn't know what to do with alcoholism. Right. So what do you do with that in the family? You know, how do you maybe get counseling for that? You know? Um, and so my mom's really first response, she went into kind of that flea mode, um, just to just. Get out of the situation.

My grandfather came to get her. So when you ask what were my experiences like, it really was a lot of my mom trying to share the best of the situation and in time, give me a little bit more of the truth, but I will say my mom was always just so gracious and always giving my dad the opportunity to reach out and to, you know, to connect with me.

But what was so strange is because we had such a, you know, he was. Absent a lot in the very early part of my life that when he would tell me these stories, it was just so hard to connect to it because it's almost like he was reading them out of a book. I didn't feel that they were me. So it was like I was hearing them, but I had no connection to them, especially with being, you know, so young, you just don't really remember those, [00:06:00] but you have your photos, you look back at that and you know, you try to weave together that story.

But I think that's really hard when it happens at that age and you just don't have those common memories to draw from.

Joey: Yeah, no, that is really hard. And I totally get that kind of like almost looking at it as if it were another person that that story hearing that. So I understand that entirely. Um, so you were two when that happened, if you're comfortable sharing, how old are you now?

Samantha: So I'm 55 now. And I did want to just sort of say, just kind of hold that question for a second, because I've had a long time over my life to sort of, you know, kind of look back and look at things. And I think that today, you know, just the message that I really want to get across. To anybody that's listening is I had zero idea of anything when I was in my young adult phase, I didn't know what having a family meant.

I didn't know how to get to having a family. I didn't know anything. And through just, I think the restoration of my life through. The journey that I've [00:07:00] taken, you know, I'm sitting at a place where I've been married for 24 years. We have three children, nothing is perfect, but we are tremendously happy. And somehow some way, even though we had, cause my husband comes from divorce as well.

We had no model to really show us. The love that we had for one another just prevailed above all things, and we figured it out together. And that is really the beautiful message that can be of marriage is that it might not be perfect, but as long as you're committed to loving the other person and elevating them, you will figure it out.

And that's really just what I want to really be able to share with people today is just that hope that I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't come from a perfect background. There's all sorts of, you know, things that happened that were traumatic in my growing up, but you can figure it out.

Joey: Yeah, such a hopeful message and that's such a perfect tone for this interview because we need to hear that I think even so often, you know, we try to go deep into kind of the brokenness to help people understand it, put words to it, which we've heard and found is really healing, [00:08:00] but I think there is a danger of maybe getting stuck just in the darkness.

And so you saying that I think is so good and so hopeful. So I'm really excited to go deeper into that. I'm curious. So since you were two when your parents split, when did you kind of become aware that You know, things were not the way that they maybe ought to be within a family. Do you remember any particular situation or instance where you're like, Oh, wow.

All my friends maybe have moms and dads who live together and I don't.

Samantha: Yes, I do. It was probably in second grade. I went to Catholic school at the time. And so. You know, my mom would drive me up and drop me off to school. And, you know, I would get invited to different people's parties. And I would say, I don't know what year that was.

Cause I'm really bad with sort of the math of it, but let's say that was probably the mid seventies or so there still were a lot of intact families that, you know, um, that may have been when divorce started to kind of creep in and creep up starting at that time. But. You know, in my growing up, a lot of families were intact.

And so I started to look around and realize like, okay, well, so this is different than [00:09:00] what my friends are doing. And I think another pivotal time when I really recognized it, cause you see it at school, but you see it in moments, right? You see it at a party or you see it, you know, mom and dad going to, you know, a football game or something like that, but where it really, where family life really made an impression on me.

And I realized what was. Missing is we had a place that my grandmother, she had a friend that lived in this place. And so across the street, they had a family and I would go over and play with them all the time. And so I would stay over the night there cause they had a daughter that was my age. So, you know, you do the sleepover things and every Sunday they would get up and they would go to mass together and they would cook breakfast together.

And I just. Really saw what having a two parent household would look like. And I have no idea what kind of, you know, family they had because you don't often know that, you know, at that moment, but just that was when I had really that immersion of saying, Oh gosh, you know, this looks really different than what family life at my house looks like.

Joey: Fascinating. And did you then ask your mom questions or was it just [00:10:00] kind of this thing that was there that you didn't really think too much about?

Samantha: I would love to be honest and say that I did ask questions, but I think, and I'm just going to share this because I feel that this was a very real experience for me.

I think that when you're a child, you pick up on things. And I think that you don't necessarily always want to burden your parents with things. Right. So asking her why it looked different or why, you know, my dad wasn't around, wasn't something that I wanted to, even at that very young age, I didn't want to burden her with that.

And I will say just sort of as part of my story, and we'll probably get into this later, but my mom did remarry after that. So, you know, I did have sort of that other experience, but yeah, I don't think I asked her because I just think I didn't really want to burden her with. You know, maybe what I knew would be a hurtful topic to her.

Joey: I think so many people feel the same. And I know I felt that in a lot of ways, especially if there's been a lot of like drama and a lot of tension around the divorce. We so often just like stuff away our own brokenness, our own hurt. Because we just don't want to, like you said, rock the [00:11:00] boat or add more onto it.

And I definitely understand that. I think, especially as we grow older, it can certainly be like a barrier to healing. And so was there, we're going to get into this a little bit later, but I'm just kind of, if you tease it ahead, was there any moment where you kind of came to the realization like, no, I actually need to, maybe not with mom, but I need to talk about this.

I need to address this a little bit.

Samantha: Yes. Many decades later when, um, so there was something that a priest had shared with me. And again, I know, you know, our audience, we have different people in different places, but I thought this was really helpful. And he had quoted, um, one of the early verses from Genesis in the garden when Eve ate the apple.

Right. And so when Eve eats the apple, she's confronted with God saying, what did you do? And I always heard that in a condemning tone. What did you do? And it never occurred to me that a father who should be the image of the child's first image of what God is like, that there could be a compassionate tone to that.

So instead of shaming [00:12:00] the person for what did you do, this is your fault. It could be, Oh my goodness, I love you so much. What did you do? How can I help you? And that was really the first moment where I knew that there was a problem in the way that I was processing and thinking about things, because everything that happened, I always thought was because of me, something that I did.

You know, some, some fault that I had. So, uh, yeah, then I went through a period of time of trying to really unpack that and to relearn hearing that voice in the compassionate way that the father means for all of us, which is really from a point of love and mercy and wanting to just, you know, help us get back to our whole self again.

Joey: Wow. That feeling of kind of responsibility or feeling like it's your fault is a really common thing we hear with the young people that we work with. I remember a dad sharing a story with me. He and his wife were separating. It was actually the day that he was going to leave the home and it was just really difficult for him.

He didn't want the separation, didn't want the divorce. His son, um, was really [00:13:00] broken up by it too. And he remembers before he was leaving the house, um, trying to find his son, his son was hiding in the bathroom. And so he goes into the bathroom. And, um, the Boy looks at him and says, Dad, is this my fault?

And thankfully the dad like just wrapped him in his arms and said, no, no, of course it's not, it's not your fault. Like this is between your mother and I, but there's something so fascinating about that. I think like, especially as children, we, we do shoulder a lot like that. I'm curious if you have any thoughts or insight into that.

Like, why do we go down that path? And is there anything that you think young people listening right now need to know so that they can kind of unburden themselves? From that responsibility. Yeah, that's

Samantha: a good question. I would say being on the other side of the experience of having children and just seeing how my children have reacted to me and to my husband, we were actually just talking about this in our family.

We had the opportunity to go back and revisit some of our childhood friends. My, my children did. And one of the things that really was impressed upon my heart is children have this very limited time of innocence. And I mean, pure innocence where [00:14:00] everything in the world is good. And I think that. They intuitively know when something is off with their family and their love is just so pure and they just really seek to love their parents so much that I think that they pick up on that in some way, shape or form.

And I think that what happens is. They begin to just model that not really understanding that that isn't their burden to carry that is really for the parents to be able to carry whatever it is that they're going through. But so often some of those things, you know, you talk about dysfunction in the family or you talk about, I mean, in my situation, it wasn't really dysfunction.

It was just. Absence. It was total absence. And then it was, you know, two women trying to, you know, my mother, my grandmother trying to, you know, sort of fill in the blanks with everything. And, you know, again, I loved them, right. I wanted to help them. So I think that's where it comes. I think, and I think that's why.

You know, when we go on and we talk about children and any type of abuse of them, or just even [00:15:00] being in this situation, I know that it's not intentionally abusive, but they are so pure and they are so just good in that period of time when they're young, that it's something that just really easily can get exploited.

Joey: Yeah, no, it makes so much sense. And one of the ways I've heard some people talk about it is, you know, imagine like, like there's nothing you could do to make your parents marriage like amazing as a child. Like, like you don't have control over that. So in a similar way, there's really nothing you can do to destroy it.

Another analogy that we've often used, um, is imagine that you're in a place in the country, maybe like Kansas, where there's a lot of tornadoes. And you're building a home. And let's say that the builder, like, knows that there's tornadoes, and they need to make the home stronger to withstand those tornadoes, make it tornado proof.

Um, but they don't really take that into account, build the home not tornado proof. And then the storms come, and they rip up the house, it falls apart. The way we think of it is that the children are the storm and the marriage is the home. And so if the home is poorly built and they knew that maybe these things were coming, is it the [00:16:00] storm's fault or is it the builder's fault?

And not to cast blame on parents, but I think that's been helpful for some of the young people that we lead realizing like, okay, yeah, like, yes, children do bring stress into your life. It's not intentional. It's not something they. Cause, but it's just, it's a lot of responsibility to raise children. I know that now I have two, um, but it's never their fault if I, you know, were to get angry and, you know, say something that I shouldn't say or do something I shouldn't do.

Or, you know, if I allow that, um, stress that comes from, you know, just all the things that come along with being a parent impact our marriage. So I think there's something there that is instructive that our young people have found helpful.

Samantha: Yeah, I want to how I arrived at that thought process. I want to share a quick story with you.

I don't know if you had ever heard of Corey ten balloon, but she was a survivor of the holocaust. And she wrote a book that I can't now remember, but it was basically just about her experience going through the holocaust and you know how horrific that was. And You know, her family, um, they were able to, you know, hide people and help people, but the story that I'm going to give you, isn't that I just wanted to give you context for [00:17:00] it.

So she, she was in the, you know, she was sitting, you know, with all the, the aunts and the, you know, her mom and, you know, just sort of a very female, I wouldn't say this was well during world war two. So she was sitting with all of these women and there was a man that had come in and I can't remember if it was, you know, a relative or something like that, but evidently this man had a lot of facial hair.

And so it was something that she had not. She had not really seen before and I don't really understand the connection of it, but basically she was trying to ask her mom some questions about, you know, him maybe being a man or going through puberty or something like that, basically sort of a topic that was at that time, a little taboo and the mom deflected from it.

And so she immediately knew that there was. Something there, but she didn't really know what the, what was because everybody was kind of evading it. Um, and so she was on a train ride with her father and she, you know, loved her father so much. And she wanted to ask him about this particular thing. And so he said to her, he said, Corey.

I need you to go pick [00:18:00] up my suitcase. You know, they're in the train, they have like the luggage place. So she goes over to pick up the suitcase and she's, and he had all these watchmaking supplies in it. So it was very, very heavy. And she said, but dad, it's too heavy for me to carry. And he said, no, no, Corey, come on.

Just try to bring that suitcase to me. So of course, as any young child would want to do, tries to tug that suitcase over to him. And she said, father, it's just too heavy for me to carry. And he said, Corey. And so too, it is with some knowledge, some knowledge is just too heavy for children to just be able to bear.

And she was content with that answer. He didn't tell her this thing, but he told her that in time. When she was at a time, you know, that she was able to know about that, that he would let her know. And that was enough for her. And I think one of the mistakes we make with children sometimes is we think of them as being little adults and we pour a lot onto them that they just neurologically do not have the ability to be able to understand.

And it's too much for them. So that's where that [00:19:00] knowledge comes from is. And I tell that with my kids, when they were young, they would ask me a question. I would be like, you know, Elizabeth, that's a suitcase. That's too heavy for you right now. We'll talk about that, you know, one day later.

Joey: I love that analogy.

Wow. So good. And I think so appropriate. And I think instructive even for parents listening right now, how I think there is that temptation, especially if someone listening right now is going through a divorce, maybe they just learned about it or they just chose to go down that path. And they might feel like their child deserves to know.

And I think there is something that, yeah, maybe your child deserves to know, but they don't deserve to know maybe right now. And they don't deserve to know All the details, anything you would add to that for a parent listening right now, who's maybe struggling with that balance between like oversharing and not sharing enough.

Samantha: I think it is really okay to let your children know that there, you know, there is information that in time you will let them know, but for now they have to trust you and be satisfied with the I think that one of the mistakes I've made, um, is trying to avoid some of those topics with my, you know, with my kids, when we've had difficult [00:20:00] situations come up and they, they will trust you, they will know that you, you know, when you say the time is right, that they will let you know.

So it's almost as if you're answering the question without giving them that, but they feel that satisfaction that they've been heard because, you know, just in terms of our anthropology as human beings, right, all human beings want to be known. They want to be heard, they want to be seen and they want to be valued.

And so we just have to do that with our children in a way that is appropriate for the information that we're sharing with them.

Joey: I love that. And, um, no, I think that's a really helpful guiding principle that where you can make decisions and you might not get it perfect, but I think it's better to maybe Aaron, the side of caution, because we've heard just so many stories of young people who were burdened with like the details of infidelity and affairs, and just like a list of.

Maybe sexual sins and things like that, that like they were just so young. They didn't need to hear all that. And so I think that can do so much more harm than good. So I love your advice. I, uh, we just looked at the book, uh, the hiding place. Does that sound right? Okay. Yes. Yeah. I'm excited to look into that.

Like what a beautiful lesson I'm [00:21:00] going back to kind of earlier on. I'm curious, um, would you describe your parents divorce as high conflict or low conflict? And I could define those for our audience. If that's helpful. Uh, the high conflict would basically be maybe there's abuse or violence or high degrees of dysfunction and.

The problems were very overt. And from the child's point of view, obviously you wouldn't have been able to make this determination then, but they maybe even expected a divorce or knew that something needed to change. Low conflict, meaning that the problems were more covert, a little more hidden doesn't mean there's not problems there, but they're a little bit more again, hidden.

The children are typically blindsided by a divorce, even if they might have some inkling or idea that mom and dad are struggling. So I'm curious. Yeah. And from what you've been told since you were two. High conflict or low

Samantha: conflict. I think it was low conflict. I think that my mom did, it could have been high if some of the alcoholism and the things that went along with that, you know, were disclosed to me.

And I think even how my mom navigated that, you know, post marriage after divorce of just trying to be the sole provider, you know, for, you know, for her child. [00:22:00] But, um, I never knew that we, you know, it was really only when I got to be a little bit older that I knew that maybe, you know, from a financial standpoint, we didn't have as much as maybe what other kids had, you know, just never even really occurred to me when my dad wasn't around that, you know, this whole idea of how you might have shared custody or visits.

I mean, when I was. Two, they divorced and I did not see him again until I was 12. Um, so it was a really, really long time. So he was very, very absent. So I say that it was no conflict just because he was absent. Um, and again, I have forgiven him. He went through all of his own, you know, alcoholism ran in his family, all sorts of things, but it was just, um, he was very absent.

And I think that my mom did. A really good job of trying to provide the stability of not letting me know things that probably, you know, as a mother now I'm like, Oh my goodness, how did she navigate all of that? You know what I mean? She had to do everything by herself. So I, yeah, so I think it was, I think it was low conflict, but I think it could have been the other, but for whatever reason, you know, he was away and she just was able to kind [00:23:00] of keep the knowledge to me at an age that was, you know, appropriate.

Joey: I'm curious, a little bit of a sidetrack here, were you afraid of maybe becoming alcoholic yourself? Yes. Were you afraid of getting divorced? Like, yeah, talk about that.

Samantha: Yeah. So, um, when I really understood, because when my mom shared that with me, I think I was probably Maybe in my team. So I understood it, but I didn't really understand it.

And then there was sort of, you know, all these confusing messages of, you know, I think I got really scared when I heard about, you know, could it be genetic? And I really, I can't offer any of what the truth is about any of all that. I don't know enough about the study of alcoholism and, you know, kind of what they're seeing with that.

But what I can share is that for my father, I think that there were very real wounds. That he was numbing himself out to. And so for him, it was very much, you know, not based in a genetic disposition for it, but really just, you know, some generational wounds that, that he was dealing with. Um, and so for me, [00:24:00] when I finally felt free of that worry was when I realized that it wasn't just this.

thing that was lurking that could come and get me. Right. Because, you know, I, when I was younger, I drank alcohol. And so it was sort of always like, Oh my gosh, is this, you know, am I going to become an alcoholic? What's going to happen with this? And then, you know, you get to have teenagers, right. And you start to remember what you were doing as a teenager.

And then the fear really hits. Sue, but what I really was able to lift myself to was that for my dad, at least it was definitely very much just a wounding and a way that he had to cope with it. And he did. Um, he was able, I think when he passed away, I want to say he was 30 years sober. So he had, you know, found recovery in all of the ways, and that was a very big part of his story.

And, and he would probably be the first one if he were still with us to say that, you know, that those were definitely. I don't want to say poor choices. They were made because when you're in pain and you're suffering, it's not like you're saying, well, I'm going to make this poor choice now, right? Like you're really [00:25:00] just trying to survive something that feels really overwhelming to you.

Um, and that's really what trauma is, is just, you know, when something. Affects your ability to cope with something normally, that's when that trauma comes in and then the level of trauma and how it can impact you, the severity of it really has to do with how well that trauma is handled. And so I just want to go back to my earlier point about knowledge and what you talk about with your kids and when it's appropriate, you know, just again, being able to share things with them in an age appropriate way, I think is so important because if you are going through that traumatic experience, right, you want to just be able to.

Not ignore the thing that's happening, because if you ignore it, that trauma, even though it exists, it's going to be exacerbated. But if you try to help them walk through it in all the ways that you can, I think that you'll mitigate the, you know, the effects of that trauma.

Joey: I love that. No, that's great advice.

And what you said made me think of an earlier interview we did with Jay Stringer, who's a therapist, and he explained essentially what you explained. He [00:26:00] said that. Whenever we go through trauma, there's this experience of fragmentation where we just, we feel very broken and maybe even at like rock bottom, but emotionally we're in like a very difficult spot.

And that pushes us into numbing. We use some sort of behavior. For some people, it's alcohol. Other people, it's sex. Other people, it's maybe drugs or, you know, shopping or anything. It could be anything under the sun. And then after that, we have this experience of like isolation because we feel so empty. We feel a lot of shame about our behavior that we just kind of, Sit in our loneliness.

We don't bring it to other people. We don't open up about it. And then that puts us in a really difficult spot, which can then lead to more fragmentation, just kind of go around the circle. So that really resonated with me when I heard him say that, teach that. And that seemed to describe my life. And it sounds like in some way that describes, you know, what your dad was going through.

Cause like you said, it's not like you said, you know, wake up one day and be like, today's the day I'm going to do this horrible thing. That's going to impact my life really poorly and hurt everyone I love.

Samantha: I think exactly that's right. I think that shame is overwhelming. And I think that's why he was absent.

I mean, he told me [00:27:00] later in his life that he felt that, you know, and I often wonder, was he saying this is just a rationalization for him being absent, but I do believe that it was true. And that was, you know, I think it was better for me to stay away so that I didn't, because maybe that could have taken us into that high conflict situation, right?

If he had been around and, you know, there was just sort of all this disruption in our relationship, I really didn't have that. So that was, I do think maybe he knew that he was, Staying away from it, but I do think there was a big part of the shame of just not knowing how to, you know, address that or deal with that, um, or anything, but I am so happy to share that we just had such a beautiful forgiveness before he passed away a lot before he passed away.

And he was able to meet my children, um, which was, you know, amazing. So he was their pop pop and they loved him a lot. And it's just, again, it's another one of those things where the story as it. started didn't look so good, but it had a really beautiful, peaceful ending with, you know, with just being able to have that forgiveness and that healing before he passed away.

Joey: So good. And I do [00:28:00] want to shift to that in a second before we get there. A couple more questions. I'm curious. Um, was there a moment, you talked about this a little bit already, but there was there a moment when you maybe realized that the dysfunction, the absence, the divorce, uh, was impacting you negatively?

Like, was there a time where you kind of woke up to the fact that like, Oh, this is like causing me pain or to struggle in this way or that way.

Samantha: So I think definitely going back to that story of Genesis and knowing that I was blaming myself for a lot of things. And then I think a second piece of that actually was within our marriage and not anything that my husband was doing, but I came from a very female centric household.

I didn't know how to let my husband lead. I had never witnessed that before. So there was a lot in our early days of marriage of, you know, me being in the marriage, the way that, you know, what I saw in my family, which was my, my mom and my grandmother. And so really just trying to take the lead on that.

And so just spiritually, and I think just the way that we are made, I mean, men are. [00:29:00] I believe, you know, when they become fathers and when they become husbands, they are really meant to be that protector, you know, of their wives and to cherish them and to adore them. But I, and again, going back to parents being that first image of God, I didn't have that.

So I didn't know what it was like to be cherished, right? I just knew how to survive and how to cope with things. And so it really, I often tell him that I feel that even though I did not have that level of image of God. From my father, when I met my husband and he was able to provide that to me in a more, you know, husband and wife type of relationship, it really was something that began to turn in me just in terms of being able to have that level of trust that somebody was going to be there for me no matter what.

And I will say as a child, when you're growing up in a situation, one of the most important things is that level of protection that parents give to you. And so just having my husband be that protector of me was. was just something that really switched things around. So I [00:30:00] think that was sort of another piece of it.

When I was thought to myself, okay, I have some wrong beliefs on this thing. I don't really know what marriage is. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do in this situation. I only know what I experienced in my family. And he had similar situations with his mom and dad. And so he didn't really know, but I just sort of go back to the most.

Simple definition that was shared with me about love. And that is to will the good of another. And I will say that in our marriage, that was always, even though we got a lot of things wrong, we always willed the good of the other to the point where, you know, if we had an argument about something or we didn't.

Agree on something that we could come to each other because we wanted the best for that other person. So lots of mistakes getting there, but that was kind of the common denominator, which helped us work through it.

Joey: I love that. No, I could relate on that. We definitely have not had a perfect marriage, but it's, it's beautiful to see how you can still love in the midst of the struggle and then even.

You know, begin to kind of level up for lack of a better term and like get to a better spot where there's more peace and you [00:31:00] work together more as a team and it's, it's totally possible. It's beautiful when you get there. And there will always be, I think, difficult seasons within marriage, but the good can far away the bad.

That's, that's been my experience too. Before we get to kind of the healing and the happier part of the story where I really want to go deep with you. Um, I'm curious. Yeah. What maybe emotional problems? Bad habits, relationship struggles, especially in romantic relationships. Did you experience that you would maybe connect with the breakdown of your family?

Samantha: So I think one thing that I really struggled with, and I don't even know that I have an answer for it, but there was a lot of self sabotage for me. Um, and I still don't really know what that was. I don't know. And I still struggle with it. Um, and I think it really comes from Avoidance of things that are difficult.

Um, maybe growing up and things being difficult, maybe one way of coping was avoiding. And so kind of that earlier question that I ever asked my mom, you know, why my dad wasn't there, what happened, you know, that was an avoidance thing. I'm not going to burden her with that. So. Somehow, I think I learned that and the struggle [00:32:00] with the avoidance is, and I've been thinking about this a lot, I don't know where this message comes from, maybe the culture, but kind of alluding to, you know, when you have problems in marriage or problems in anything, it just feels, you know, bad, but.

When you avoid things, it's almost like you're trying to live completely for comfort because you don't want to feel that discomfort. That's why you avoid things, right? And so where in my life did I get a message that life was supposed to be comfortable? Because I mean, I could look at my faith and say, okay, when we look at, you know, what we read about in the Bible, we look at Jesus, certainly not comfortable, but even if I'm not looking at that and we look at the world, right, what is comfortable about the world, I mean, it's an extremely uncomfortable place, right?

So. That avoidance I think is what leads to self sabotage. And it's really not, again, it's not waking up one day and saying, jeez, I wonder how I can self sabotage my life today. It really comes from, I don't want to deal with that thing. That's hard and things should be comfortable. And so I'm just not going to deal with [00:33:00] it.

And then you kind of don't have that long term understanding that. Eventually it's going to come back, right? It's going to come back and it's going to burble up and then you're going to have to deal with like even a harder thing. So I think that when you talk about, you know, sort of emotions and problems that I've experienced, it really has been, and I did this a lot with my friendships early when things would get really hard.

I would kind of just go very inward because I just. Didn't want to deal with it. I just, yeah, I didn't want to. So it's avoidance, which leads to this feeling of, you know, this understanding of thinking that things should be comfortable and then doing everything to sort of, you know, avoid all those things, which is where I think for me, self sabotage came from.

So I don't know if that's something that's ever come up with your listeners before, but I would say that's been a big thing for me to struggle through.

Joey: If you'd like to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. You can do that in three easy steps, but first, some of the benefits of sharing your story.

Reflecting on your story and sharing it with someone who can receive it with empathy is actually healing on a neurobiological level. It makes your brain healthier according to neurobiologists. Writing your story is also healing. Studies have shown [00:34:00] that people who write about emotionally significant events In their lives are less depressed or less anxious.

They're healthier and they're happier. And finally, it can be really helpful to someone who's maybe on the same path that you're on, but a bit far behind you, uh, to just hear your advice and to hear your story, since you're going through things that you've been through. And so if you want to share your story, just go to restored ministry.

com. You can fill out the form on that page that will guide you in telling a short version of your story. And then we'll take that and turn it into an anonymous blog article. Again, if you want to share your story now, you can do so at restored ministry. com slash story, or just by clicking the link. In the show notes, I heard the story of one woman who she had been engaged three times and she broke off the engagement three times.

And these are not like bad guys. These were like good men from what she said. And I don't remember the details and each of the engagements. But basically, she was just terrified that they were going to leave her that, you know, It was gonna be a repeat of her parents divorce. And so I think self sabotage, especially in relationships, like you're saying, is something I [00:35:00] think that's so paramount in our audience.

But I wanted to push in maybe a little bit more on a struggle that were that's being articulated by a lot of young people today. And that is like, in order to not avoid, you need a level of grit, you need some grittiness, you need to be able to like, be able, like you said, to push into the discomfort. I'm curious, how did you learn that?

Like, how can someone more importantly listening right now become tougher, like have thicker skin, become more gritty? Because from what I've seen, yeah, like you said, the world is kind of an unforgiving place, and it's really important that we develop that skill or virtue, whatever you want to call it, because otherwise I think we'll feel powerless.

And so I think that's something again that a lot of young people are hungry for today. But how do you develop that? How did you develop that?

Samantha: So I think you have to reframe your thoughts. And that was kind of one thing that I had to do was, you know, so much of it was trying to avoid problems, but really where the growth is, is encountering the problem and working through it, you know, how they have that same only way, the only way through is through or, you know, something to [00:36:00] that end.

And I, I do think that's true, but I think it really comes from an understanding of who we are in our identity. And so this is kind of where I go back to sort of our anthropology for, you know, for what reason do we exist? And so, you know, in the way that I think about it, you know, we exist. To be able to, you know, again, from my faith belief, be that extension of Jesus in the world that we live in.

And so being able to know, love and serve him, but even if you're not particularly religious, just that idea of being able to know other people and be able to hear them and be able to meet them where they are on their journey. There are so many people that I talk with that I just. Just really enjoy hearing their stories and even if their stories are wildly different from mine, but just being able to find that point of connection with each other and being able to kind of work those things through.

So I think, you know, again, knowing why we're created, what purpose it is that we're supposed to serve. Um, and if I would go even deeper than that, you know, knowing why we're created the, the, [00:37:00] the, just the most important aspect of all of that is. You know, the family, because that's where we come from. And so everything stems from the family and we're not, you know, you had given a couple analogies to, you know, just, you know, having a family or, you know, the storms or how you were talking about it with regard to children and parents and knowledge and so forth.

But another really good one that I heard was we do not have any ability of the hand that we're given. If it's a poker analogy, right? We have no control over the cards that we're going to get. But we do have control of how we're going to play those cards. And so that is what I think is kind of, when we go back to what our purpose is, you know, nothing's going to be perfect.

And comparison is the thief of joy. It's so easy to look at this person over here and that person, and they have this and they have that, and everything's easy for them because they had money or whatever, but that's not where we are. We're in our situations and we are all called in a period of time. To serve the way that we can serve and to give what we can give and to live in the way that we can, [00:38:00] because that's the purpose that we're made for.

So we can't look at what others are doing and we can't live in the past, right? We can't live in lament of the things that we didn't have, and we can't live in the future for the things that we're afraid may or may not happen. The only moment that we can live in is this present moment and to be able to just.

Be humans and to flourish in this moment. And again, can't control that hand that we were dealt, but we absolutely. And I think that's where the resilience is, is that knowledge of saying, yeah, I could look at these things. I mean, there are deeper things in my story, other things in my story that are, you know, very harmful that are very sad, but also I can't change that, but I can change who I am today and, you know, how we have a family and how we have a marriage.

And I think that the common denominator to it is. That's seeking, right? You might not get it and you might make a hundred mistakes before you get to the learning, but the learning always comes through the mistakes. And that's how I feel that you are able to develop that resilience is to have that knowledge that even though this is [00:39:00] uncomfortable, the greatest growth is always through the greatest suffering.

Joey: So good. You made me think of, I was kind of asking myself the question, like, how have I become grittier, more resilient, tougher? Not that I'm at any sort of pinnacle by any means, I'm trying to improve on that metric all the time. But, um, I think one of the things has been just like doing hard things intentionally, whether that's like through exercise or any sort of like, Kind of self control, right?

Any sort of mortification I know is a word that was sometimes thrown around of like kind of denying yourself small things. I think that helped a lot. The other thing, um, kind of maybe the opposite side of comparison being like admiration, like looking at people who maybe who have gone through harder things than I've gone through, and then seeing like in spite of that, they still push on.

And they accomplish amazing things and beautiful things in their lives. And so there's something inspiring about that that I think has been motivating for me. But I love what you said too, just about how I think so many of us feel powerless because we can't fix our families. And we almost are tempted to [00:40:00] think that that's the resolution of the problem that we're facing.

And what I hear you saying and what I would also propose is that that's actually not the resolution. That's not our job. It would be really great if we can maybe help and influence that situation, help to grow those relationships and do our part of forgiveness and all the things that we've discussed and we'll discuss.

But I think all we can do is, like you said, play the hand that we've been dealt and figure out how we can then go out and build strong families, healthy families, healthy relationships. And whether we do that directly, You know, in our own marriages and families or indirectly by helping the people around us have like healthy marriages and families to me, that seems to be the resolutions, your thoughts on that,

Samantha: I would completely agree with you.

And I think that, you know, one of the things that I have heard. And I don't know if it's, you know, I mean, I can test it out in my own theory, and that is you can't be simultaneously angry and thankful at the same time. And that's why there's always such a focus on starting with gratitude because those two emotions can exist with each other and where you get [00:41:00] gratitude.

Is not when you go inward, right? That's where the enemy wants us is to be isolated by ourselves, but it's when you go outward and you choose to help that other person, whatever that way is. I mean, for me, I was sharing with somebody yesterday that I'm an assertively friendly person. I genuinely love to meet with people.

I'm encouraging, you know, I will find, you know, something good to say about everybody, just because I genuinely want to be able to connect with that other person. And so whether it's just a kind word, whether it's a. Smile, whether it's, you know, being, you know, more formal and volunteering for something, getting yourself out of your own world and helping somebody and somebody else's world is pivotal because it does build that heart of gratitude and you can't be angry and you can't be a victim.

You can't be any of those things when you are in that state of gratitude. So I totally agree with you with that. And I do want to go back to one thing that you said, which I think is just. Beautiful. Because one thing that I have been learning about that probably is a little bit more of a secular kind of a solution is the ability to reframe our thoughts.

There's a [00:42:00] really good book by the guy that is the author of the Doonesbury Scott Adams, I think it is. Okay. Yeah. Um, and so it's called reframe my brain or something like that. And I've actually shared some of this with my kids, because I think it's a tangible thing for them to be able to understand. And you did a beautiful thing.

You took the concept of comparison and you reframed that to admiration, right? So instead of looking at somebody and saying what I don't have, look at somebody else and seeing what they do have and admiring them. For what it is that they have persevered through, right. And being able to get that from him, it's beautiful.

Just being able to reframe those thoughts. And another one really has to do with comfort, right? You know, why are we thinking that this world is comfortable? Let's get into the thought of, you know, suffering builds through it. Right. And I'm not saying that that's what it is, but just make it okay. That that's.

Suffering, which we don't want to do that. There is goodness that comes from that. And so reframing is a really good technique for being able to do that. And I do highly recommend this book. I think it's a really just a good, a simple thing to be able to do to, you know, look at things that maybe you might be [00:43:00] struggling with and be able to reframe those thoughts.

Joey: Okay. I love that. We'll link to that in the show notes. Thank you for mentioning that. That's super powerful. I've heard good things about his content. And so thank you for mentioning that. Um, you mentioned assertiveness. Um, you seem to be like a very confident woman, a confident person. And so I'm curious, were you always that way?

And if not, how did you develop that confidence?

Samantha: Um, no, I was not. And I still don't think that I am. I think that what I'm more comfortable with is kind of that thing that you said, where I'm going to take steps every day to do that thing that's uncomfortable because it just builds who you are as a person.

But I think that where I came out of that and I got a little bit more of that assertive friendliness is when I was. really young. I was very shy and just really hard to walk into situations. And I don't have like this great theological or philosophical solution to it. I will just tell you that when I was 15 and a half, I lived in Orlando and I went to go work at SeaWorld.

And I only went to go work there versus other theme parks because they hired at the youngest, right? They hired at 15 and a half, whereas most other jobs were 16. And I really wanted to get a job. [00:44:00] But I was exposed to so many different cultures, you know, people coming in, I worked in a little ice cream shop.

And so there were people that were coming in, you know, you had a lot of people that were coming in from Brazil or just different countries. And so it really put me in an environment. And this kind of goes back to what you said about doing the hard things. I don't think if I had not done that, I don't think that I would have learned that skill of being friendly and, you know, putting myself out there with other people, but you have to expose yourself to those things to be able to grow those.

skills. And so I really did it because I wanted a paycheck, there wasn't any virtuous reason for it, but it was a wonderful thing that came through. And, you know, it still is a struggle. I'm not always the most comfortable when I'm in a big group, but I just find that there's always somebody, I think that a common denominator for most everybody is you can just talk about your family and.

You know, not everybody has a great family situation, but somebody is usually proud of something, whether it's a brother, a sister, or even a pet, right? There's always something that even if you have differences, people are generally proud of some aspect of, you know, their [00:45:00] family or their family life or something of that nature.

So that's really how I walked through that is doing exactly what you said, just exposing myself to hard things. I

Joey: love that. It's funny. I've noticed with people who come across as like very confident, which in my opinion, you do, which it's such a beautiful virtue and quality, they often think like, well, I'm not that confident or not.

So there's something like there's humility in it, which I think is really good. And then the other thing you said, I thought, well, that was really good was just how, like, in order to become confident, you kind of need like evidence to back up your confidence. And that's what I hear you saying. When you went through hard things, you kind of put your neck out there.

And I think that's maybe where a lot of people get stuck. I remember. I was, you know, especially in my early teen years, more shy. I remember just being terrified by the idea of getting up in front of a room and, you know, speaking and any of that. And, you know, now it's kind of like laughable. It's such a joke to do that in front of like hundreds of people now and soon like thousands of people.

So, uh, so it's definitely a blessing, but, but I think like you just got to start, you got to kind of do the things that feel a little bit outside of your comfort zone, a little bit out. maybe stretching you a bit. And once you do enough [00:46:00] of those, you have this whole, like, kind of stack of evidence that you can say, Oh, actually I just did this thing and I did that thing.

And now I'm, I'm still standing. I'm here. And I, maybe I could do this next thing. That's a little bit more of a challenge and I can kind of keep, you can keep like leveling up. So I think that's what probably I would say to my younger self if I were to go back and be like, you know, feeling insecure and unconfident, being like, this is how you do it.

This is somewhat of the path. It's not a maybe straight. path up the mountain, but, um, by taking those little steps and having that evidence to fall back on, I think is, is really good. That helped me in sports too, thinking through like even sports psychologists talk about having like a few just memories where maybe you were nervous or there was a big moment, but there was a lot at stake and you came through, you know, it doesn't even need to be like earth shattering, but something that you can kind of like anchor on to so that when you're in a difficult moment or a challenging moment, you can then say, well.

I got through that. I probably get through this too.

Samantha: I would agree with that. And I would say on the other side of it, because again, when you have teenagers for children, you walk through the awkwardness that is high school, right? [00:47:00] It's just that place where you just are like, so first of it is you're trying to figure out what your identity is, right?

So part of it is just who am I? And then the other part of it is just this, you know, extreme self consciousness that everybody is Sort of looking at you and judging you. And you know, the thing that I always tell my kids, which I know probably doesn't resonate with them, but just as much as you're thinking, everybody's looking at you, they're thinking that you're looking at them and to go back to the, you know, the concept of doing things is that I always go, how much is this going to matter to me in a week?

You know. Two months, six months, and generally anything that would prevent me from doing something, if I really look at it, it's probably not going to be anything more than a momentary, you know, discomfort, not something that I will remember really in the longterm. And so that's another thing that helps me push past, you know, that barrier that you might have of, I don't want to do it, but one other, just.

Suggestion I would give to your listeners. Um, one thing that I heard and I practice and I think it's true, but you were talking about doing the hard things like the self discipline, right? The thing that they [00:48:00] say is one of the greatest determinants of being able to push forward in your day and to develop that self discipline.

Is that first heroic moment of your day to get up in the morning, to build that schedule, right? Not to lay there and, Oh gosh, like I'll just get up. I'll scroll on my phone. Like when you say that you want to get up, you get up at that time every day, because at that moment you are conquering from that sleep state, getting into your conscious state, that first.

Right. Feeling of like, ah, I don't want to, you're conquering it the first thing in the day. And it just this kind of builds your momentum throughout the day because you did it and it's hard.

Joey: Oh, it is. But no, I love that. And I, one thing that's been helpful for me in the last, like probably six months is like, yeah, having that first part of the day, like very structured and, you know, obviously like a routine people talk about having more routines, but for me, it's going to the gym and having people that are kind of holding me accountable.

Like if I don't show up, they're going to be like, text me like, where are you? So, so that's been great. It's kind of like that, you know, when people talk about like linchpin habits or like kind of cornerstone habits, habits that are just kind of like [00:49:00] bedrock and upon what you can build other habits.

That's been helpful for me for whatever that's worth for our listeners. But so good. I could talk with you forever. I know we're getting toward the end of our time. So I wanted to. Kind of get into, um, maybe some healing tactics and tools and just like what was most helpful for you when it came to healing and to growing into a better, more virtuous woman?

Um, were there any books, podcasts, any other tactics that you use that really have helped you?

Samantha: So I would say that one of the first things that I did was I didn't. So there are a lot of different ways that you can sort of approach healing through therapy or, you know, what, whatever those paths might look like.

For me, I had heard priests talk about going to spiritual direction. And so it was something that I thought was just only available for religious people. I was like, Oh, spiritual direction. I guess they sort of tell you how to be spiritual or grow in your journey. I didn't know. And so I went up and I was Said, well, you know, what is this?

And he said, he explained to me that it, you know, is basically somebody that has been formed and educated, you know, in spiritual direction, and it [00:50:00] really was different from therapy and that they were trying to help you be able to see where God was God's discernment in your life. So again, this is a little bit more of kind of a faith solution for it.

But I think that regardless of whether it's. Spiritual direction or it's therapy for me. I wanted it to be that cause I am definitely grounded in my faith and wanted to know where God was leading me, but I think it is that developing of that self awareness, right? And so I think both avenues can do that because you can't really address anything until you're aware of it.

And the thing with. You know, living in this world is, there are millions of messages out there and a lot of them are really wrong. Um, and you know, I know even in my marriage, you know, some of that was, you know, just watching, you know, it's so silly. I feel like, you know, this is something that would have been said a long time ago, but you know, it is the messages that you see in movies or that you, you know, you might read in a book and it begins to form what your beliefs are of how things are supposed to be.

So I think that one thing that's really important [00:51:00] is to know that anything that is out in the culture, it is a message, you know, you might not be picking up on it, but it is a message. And so you need to really be evaluating where does this belief that I have come from? And is it true? You know, is it a principle that I want to build my life on?

Um, because I think that, you know, principles are an important. Architecture for building our lives. What are our core principles? And I'm going to give you one that's been an important one for me. Um, and this came from ST thomas. And so, um, I'm going to paraphrase it, but basically, um, the way here, let's see if I have it and maybe I can read it.

The principle is whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver. So to put that in a very layman's terms, it's basically me saying, um, I'm responsible for what I say, but Joey, you're responsible for what you hear, right? Because how you hear me, how I come across a lot of that is based on what your belief systems are, right?

And so, so for me in any relationship, [00:52:00] Just trying to get to that place of, you know, I know that I am good intentioned, um, and hopefully in a relationship that person understands that I'm, you know, good intentioned, but at the end of the day, being able to be cognizant that people can hear you through a different way than maybe what you intended because of their beliefs, the way that they are brought up.

So it's kind of like, to me, a secret decoder of how do we get things so wrong? Sometimes it's because. You know, we're all formed differently. And so the way that we're formed can impact the way that we receive information from other people.

Joey: I love that. That's really helpful. And I think like within that, the lesson I'm learning from you is with the people who have kind of proven themselves to you, who love you, like we should assume the best intentions.

Um, it doesn't mean they're always act. From those best intentions, but we should kind of give them the benefit of the doubt in those moments, which I think is so helpful, especially within marriage, because there's so many chances for missing each other and assuming maybe that they're not on your team and they're, they're, [00:53:00] you know, trying to hurt you or something, which is, you know, usually not true.

So I love that. Was there anything else that was really helpful that you would want to impart to everyone listening when it came to like your growth and healing? It sounds like, I did want to ask you, feel free to answer that, but I wanted to also ask you like how marriage has been healing for you, because you've talked about that a little bit.

I would love to hear a little bit more about how has marriage been healing?

Samantha: Yeah. Marriage has been such a gift to my husband and I, because we really have been able to work through things together. And again, with that belief that we are willing the good of the other, when we do have those miscommunications of things, you know, I mean, he's been such a steadfast rock for me when we first got married.

Um, we got married in 2000 and we always joke, cause I can never exactly remember it. 2000. And I should be able to remember that cause it's an even number. Um, but we got married in 2000 and by April of 2001, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer and she died three months after that. And that, I mean, just hearing a little bit about my story and knowing how much of a matriarch she was to me, I felt like [00:54:00] I had been sucker punched.

And so we had a lot to deal with. I mean, we had not been married a year yet and, you know, this whole person that was the center of my world was, you know, was removed from me. So I don't want to say that he had to prove himself to me because I loved him and he didn't have to, but he really was my anchor of stability during a time that was completely, I just felt like my, my true North had been removed from me.

I just really didn't know where to look. I mean, my mom was everything to me and I got so much from her just in terms of her love and, you know, just advice. She was a living memory of me, right? Like she's a part of me. And so my mom has passed and my dad has passed. And so some of that living memory, because I'm an only child, you know, it gets really diminished, but being in a marriage with my husband has given me the identity of what we're really called to do, which is man and woman are meant to join together as one flesh.

You know, we, we have our families of origin, but really, you know, those are behind us. And this is really where the message of hope is, I think for the [00:55:00] listeners is again, Can't do anything about those families of origin, but we can play that card really well when we're, you know, with our person, with our, in our marriage, our, our spouse.

And so really just being able to come together and another definition of marriage is that we are constantly being like iron sharpening iron. And the purpose of marriage isn't to get a house. It's not to get a dog. It's not to, you know, be able to. You know, put all of your pictures out there it's to sanctify one another.

And if I want to use a less preachy word, it's just to make each other the best versions of ourselves. And there is really no other way to do that other than with somebody that, you know, that you are loved and that you're committed to. And even if by chance you get into a marriage, you know, and it doesn't work out that way, you know, God will make straight every path that you have.

I don't feel that I can make any mistakes because not, not that I don't want to ever try. Like I try to live a virtuous life, but I don't let myself get too hung up on the shame that I heard as the earlier version of myself, because I know that I'm [00:56:00] seeking to become the better version of myself. I'm seeking to that virtue.

And so I know at the end of the day, whatever mistakes I've made, if I am genuinely. You know, humble about them and I'm sorry about them that it will be worked to a greater good. And I have that confidence and that belief that, you know, that that is the plan for me. That is the plan for my husband and for our family.

Joey: Love it. Two other questions. How did you come to forgive your dad? You, you mentioned that before and I wanted to go back into it. That's one part. And the second part is how did you overcome that fear that you had of Divorce and maybe repeating what you saw in your parents marriage.

Samantha: The question about my dad, about how I came to forgive him, it's really ironic in the sense that I came to forgive him in the time where we were probably in the period of one of our greatest fights.

Um, my dad, you know, again, the mode of the receiver, right? And so sometimes the way that he would hear things that I said to him came from his brokenness. And so he would hear something in me that was. Not at all what I intended it to be. And so there'd be this [00:57:00] misunderstanding. And then of course my brokenness would be like, well, how dare you say that?

Like you left, you know, like, sorry. Um, so I don't remember specifically what the fight was, but he had really gotten very angry at me about something. And. I had committed that I was going to go visit him before this fight had happened. Um, and he remarried. And so I had told his wife, you know, I'm going to be here on XYZ day, you know, cause they lived in Colorado.

I should share that. I live in Pennsylvania. They lived in Colorado. So I had to actually go take a flight to go see him. Um, and I committed to being there this day and I said I would do it. And we had this fight and it was terrifying, but gosh, I just knew. That if I did not do this hard thing, remember that thing that we talked about doing this hard thing that by.

Any other reason I would have been right not to go see him right in the world standard, you know, he had hurt me and it would have been forgivable for me to not do that really hard thing to get on a plane by myself, [00:58:00] go get the car, go drive to them, right? Go see them knowing that my father was. Seriously angry with me, but he was dealing with, um, some Alzheimer's and I, I didn't really know, you know, I didn't know, you don't really know what that disease, how long somebody is going to, going to have with you, whether they die physically or whether they just lose their memories of things.

And so I really said, you know, I have to do this. And sort of what I told myself is. At the end of the day, I know I'm doing the right thing and how he receives me is not in my control, but what is in my control is being able to forgive him. And so I went out and I did it. And I actually ended up having a family friend, um, an aunt type person.

She had family that she was going to see in Colorado. So she went with me. And so that was an answered prayer because it would have been terrifying to think about going out there by myself, but I was committed to it. And so I just did it. I did the hard thing and it was beautiful. And I think that. You know, I think my dad was completely surprised to see me come through that door.

I think they both had thought she's not coming and I didn't even let them know I was, I just, I had told them [00:59:00] like weeks before that, like I'll be there on X, Y, Z date, never called to confirm, just showed up. It's like, hi. Um, so the element of surprise maybe worked a little bit because nobody could really think about it because I didn't really tell them that I was for sure going to come, but, um, it's just doing that hard thing.

It really is. You just, and you can't be dissuaded from it because all I can control is what I do. I can't control how other people receive me, but I would have felt bad with myself if I hadn't done it.

Joey: Love that. And there's something about when you do hard things to not think about it too much. You just have to like do it.

Um, which I found is like, is, is helpful. You kind of turn off that part of your brain to some extent. I know that you need to think through certain things, but, um, but wow, super good. And I know we're close to the end of the time here, but I just wanted to ask you this question about, um. Well, two more questions.

One about like, how did you overcome that fear of divorce? Cause I think that's something so many of us just feel so strongly. And we might even like avoid love relationships, marriage altogether because it controls us so strongly. How'd you work through that?

Samantha: I wish I had a better answer for you, but I will just say, um, the way that I was able to overcome it was [01:00:00] really through the strength of my husband, because.

My husband just, he showed up for me in every way before we were married. You know, when we were together, he called when he said he was going to call, you know, we did the things that we said that we were going to do when he said it, all of the inconstancy that I felt with my dad's absence was completely replaced by the steadfastness of my husband.

And so I was able to get past that because. Yeah. He spent a long time building up my trust. You know, he didn't ask me to come to him. He walked, you know, over the bridge to come get me and build that trust. And in building that trust, he was able to, you know, to lead me to him, to lead me to trusting that it was going to be okay.

And early on in our marriage, one thing that I would always do, because again, it was my brokenness and we would get into a fight and I would just. I'm going to get a divorce. We're just going to get a divorce. And one day he said to me, he said, Sam, he said, I know that you get really angry, but it hurts me so much when you say that, because I never want to get divorced from you.

Like I'm never giving [01:01:00] up on you. And it just hit me so much that, you know, that this was a person that had truly earned my trust. And even though we make mistakes, and even though there are times when I misunderstand him and he misunderstands me, like at the end of the day, we were really committed to each other.

So I would just say, you know. It's not easy to find who your person is going to be. I don't believe that that person is the only one person for you. I can't imagine being with anybody other than my husband, but we made a choice to be together and we made a choice to put the other before ourselves and in that choice and in that commitment, I think is how we were able to walk day by day, moment by moment.

To not being afraid of divorce because it was certainly present in the beginning, but again, you just take that one little step and it comes back to, you have to live in the present. You can't live in the future or in the past because the only thing that's there are assumptions and theories and things that are fearful.

And the best acronym I heard for fear is false evidence appearing as real. And that's what [01:02:00] happens when you live in the past and the future, right? It's that false evidence. It seems so real, but it's just your trust.

Joey: I love that. And what I'm learning from your story, I've heard this elsewhere, is like, action is the antidote to fear.

Like you said earlier in the conversation, you just have to push through it, move through it. You can't go around it, under it, over it. You have to like push through that fear, especially if it's something that's worth fighting for. And what I've found in my life, and I know others have found this as well, is like, when you overcome fear, you feel free.

And that opens up so many possibilities to, to love, to grow, to accomplish things, to go after your dreams.

Samantha: It opens up the door for you to keep going and experience the next thing. When you begin to shut the door to those things, you get very limited and your world gets really small. And so we never want our world to get small because when it gets really small, it's hard for us to have an understanding about other people because we're not experiencing other things.

Um, so I would definitely agree with that action. You know, action is the antidote to that. And again, it doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be that [01:03:00] first thing that you do in the morning where you get up at 5 30 because You said you were going to, or you're going to go take that walk. I mean, I think the greatest barrier that I had to my freedom was thinking that they had to be these huge heroic steps, right?

But oftentimes it's really the series of the small steps that you do every day on repeat that help you break through. And that liberation. It just feels like you're light that you just have all of those pressures and those burdens removed from you. And again, you might not get it perfect, but you're just taking that next step and you're taking those next actions and it is the greatest feeling.

Joey: Samantha, I have a hundred more questions for you, but we'll cut it there. You're so wise and so articulate and I just, I've really learned a lot from you. I appreciate you coming on the show. So thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and sharing your story. So openly, so vulnerably, I know we all learned a lot from you.

So thank you. I want to give you the last word. What final encouragement advice would you offer to maybe the younger you who's listening right now?

Samantha: I think the advice that I would give myself would be [01:04:00] really to remember that this life that we have, you know, is this one life and that all the things that we get hung up in our minds about really are inconsequential because when you start to move through them, you realize that that thing that you were worried about, like, you don't remember any of it.

I tell that to my kids all the time. I'm like, I don't remember. I mean, I remember my mom's death. I remember my father's death, but all the other stuff, it's really just. So momentary, and it is a way that can hold you back from things. And so I just say, take that next small step, you know, acknowledge, you know, where you are in life and be okay with that and just keep taking the next.

Small step and just living in that present moment. And if you can do that, I assure you all of the things will work out because our life is meant to be a journey. It's not meant to be perfect from the beginning. It's all a work in progress. We are all learning to become the best version of ourselves. But the only way that we can really do that is through those series of actions that we take each and every day.

So keep taking those steps.

Joey: If you [01:05:00] want to contact Samantha, you could actually do so through the email and the show notes or just click on the show notes in your phone, turn email there. And with that, that wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you feel free to subscribe or follow us on your podcast app, whether that's Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen, not only is that the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more.

Subscribers that we have, the more the apps will actually suggest our show to people who are looking for help. And it only takes a few seconds to do that. And if you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. That also helps other listeners find the podcast. And we really appreciate that feedback in closing.

Always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life. And we are here to help and keep in mind the words of CS Lewis, who said you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Holidays with Divorced Parents: Part 2

6 minute read.

Navigating the holidays as a child of divorce can be incredibly challenging. From juggling split holiday schedules to coping with feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and family conflict, this season often amplifies emotional stress for teens and young adults from broken families. Whether it's managing time between parents, dealing with the dynamics of stepfamilies, or battling holiday depression, we’re here for you. To help, our holiday articles offer practical tips for not only surviving the holidays, but making them less stressful and more enjoyable.

Tip 3: Plan Ahead and Set Boundaries with Your Parents

Think of it this way: To stop a fire, you can either fight it as it arises reactively or proactively install sprinklers, smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers. Time with your parents is no different. Making a plan proactively does require some time and effort, but it’s a smart investment that reduces stress, sets expectations, and protects you.

A good plan will naturally include when you’ll see your parents and for how long. It will also set healthy boundaries with your parents, informing them how to treat you. When it comes to the holidays, it’s okay to lay down those rules with your parents. For example, you can tell your dad that you won’t talk to him about your mom, or vice versa. Boundaries communicated in advance also give people the option to opt out of interacting with you, which prevents drama.

By the way, don’t feel guilty for setting boundaries. If you’re not used to this, it might feel mean. That’s not true. Boundaries are a sign of a healthy person. Read that again. Imagine not having boundaries and letting anyone do whatever they want to you. That would be extremely unhealthy and end very badly for you and them. Boundaries aren’t only good for you, but also for your parents. It’ll help you have a healthier relationship with them. If you have kids, make sure to protect them. Don’t sacrifice your kids’ sanity just to please your relatives or parents. Your immediate family is most important now. For more on boundaries, listen to episode 36 of the Restored podcast.

Don’t only set boundaries, but be ready to enforce them. If you tell someone, “This is the boundary,” and they break it, there needs to be consequences. Without them, they’ll ignore your boundaries next time.

As part of your preparation, be ready for the predictable circumstances that will arise, such as a conflict with a specific relative, your dad or mom bringing their new partner to the party, or whatever else. Prepare for how you’ll avoid those situations or how you’ll handle them, such as:

• When your dad introduces his new girlfriend, simply say “Hi, I’m Joey.”

• When that overbearing relative starts pelting you with questions, say “Sorry, I need to run to the bathroom.”

• When your mom starts badmouthing your dad, politely excuse yourself to grab food.

It’s crucial to remember that spending time with one parent is not a betrayal of the other; healthy relationships with both are essential. Many people like us benefit from spending separate days with each parent. By spending Christmas Eve with your dad and Christmas Day with your mom, here are the benefits:

1. It allows you to focus on each parent without (hopefully) worrying about the other

2. It gives each parent assurance that they’re going to have uninterrupted time with you

3. You can avoid burning out

If siblings are part of the equation, include them in the planning process, although the approach may vary depending on the nature of those sibling relationships. Hopefully, you can approach the holidays as a team. To start, create a group chat and start asking good questions to get the discussion going. If things get stuck, make a plan for yourself, share it, and ask them what they think.

Although a good plan is helpful, no plan is perfect. Don’t plan every minute. Also, allow some flexibility in your plan in case things change. A backup plan if things go badly is smart too, such as staying with relatives or friends if the time with your family implodes.

But what if your relationship with your parents is toxic? If it’s to the extent that you can’t see your mom or dad, that’s rough. I’m so sorry. I hate that you’re going through that. In that case, what can you do to experience some sort of community instead of your family? That might look like going to a friend’s house or even having friends over to your place. You’d be surprised by how happy it makes other people to host or receive an invitation during the holidays. Ideally, choose friends or a family that models what it means to be a true and good family—the kind you want for your future.

By the way, if you live at home with one parent, a plan like this is extra difficult. Do what’s within your power to set boundaries. You might be able to spend a little extra time with the parent that doesn’t live at home. In that case, speak with your parent who does live at home, setting that expectation and explaining why you’ll be spending a little more time with your other parent.

To solidify your plan and boundaries, write it down, whether on paper, an app, or a calendar. Feel free to copy this Google Doc schedule template and fill in your details.

Stay tuned for the final post from our holiday guide, or download the whole guide for free below.

---

Holidays in a divorced or broken family can be stressful and exhausting. But there’s a better way.

Our guide, 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family, helps you:

• Avoid people-pleasing and burnout

• Manage stress and difficult emotions

• Plan time with parents thoughtfully

• Set clear, protective boundaries

Make the holidays less stressful and more enjoyable.

#136: Relationship Advice for Young People from Broken Families | Jackie & Bobby Angel

The biggest area of struggle for young people from divorced or broken families is in romantic relationships. Why so much struggle? In short, we were poorly trained in how to love, so we feel incompetent at it and fear repeating our parents’ mistakes. 

So, how can you overcome that fear and relearn how to love? My guests answer that question and more: 

• How do you discern whether a lack of peace in a relationship is because of your brokenness or because the relationship isn’t right?

• What topics does a couple need to discuss and agree upon before marriage?

• What’s been the most helpful advice you’ve used in handling conflict?

If you’re from a divorced or dysfunctional family and you want to break that cycle and build a beautiful marriage and family, this episode is for you.

Follow Jackie & Bobby

• Website: JackieandBobby.com

• Instagram: @jackiefrancois

• Instagram: @bobby.angel

• YouTube: Conversations with Jackie & Bobby

• Listen on Apple

• Listen on Spotify

• YouTube: Ascension Presents playlist: Jackie & Bobby
  

Mentorship with Bobby: Schedule a FREE phone consultation with Bobby

If you need it, tell Bobby you heard him here and ask for a discount for your first month!

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Get the Book or FREE chapters: It’s Not Your Fault

Pretty Good Catholic: How to find, date, and marry someone who shares your faith

How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul

The Dating Blueprint

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before and After You Marry

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

===

Jackie: So just because someone's perfect on paper doesn't mean they're great for you or they're the person that God's calling you to. Should

Joey: you have a checklist of like qualities you're looking for?

Jackie: I see people make these crazy vanity lists of like, Oh, he has to be six feet tall, make six figures, have a six pack.

I'm like, that's ridiculous. So you have to like the person and be free to be yourself with the person, but you also have to be very attracted to them because there's a lot of love making in marriage.

Joey: What conversations, what topics do you advise couples to have before they. You know, even get engaged.

Jackie: People don't talk about like in marriage, like, Oh, I expect that you're going to cook for me. I expect that you're going to take out the trash.

Joey: What's been the most helpful advice or tactic that you guys have used in

Bobby: your own marriage? I'll say as the introvert, your spouse can't read your mind.

Jackie: Oh,

Bobby: so sometimes you have to be assertive.

Joey: Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorce or a broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships. You can [00:01:00] break that cycle and build a better life. My guests today are a married couple, Jackie and Bobby Angel.

Jackie and Bobby are Catholic influencers, speakers, and authors who focus on dating, marriage, theology of the body, and so much more, reaching over a million people online. Jackie's been involved in ministry for over 20 years and now homeschools their children. With over 20 years of ministry experience himself, including a decade as a theology teacher, a time as a seminarian, even a time as a firefighter, Bobby is now a trained mentor and teacher.

From the Catholic Psych Institute. You'll hear more about that in the show and together they share their wisdom through speaking engagements, videos, and their podcasts. Now onto the topic of today, the biggest area of struggle for young people who come from divorce and broken families is in romantic relationships.

A 25 year long study from UC Berkeley found that fact, it was all summarized by the way, in a book called the unexpected legacy of divorce, which we'll link to in the show notes. If you want to check that out, why so much struggle in relationships in short, those of us who come from broken families were poorly trained in how to love.

And so we feel [00:02:00] incompetent, might actually be incompetent at it. And we fear repeating our parents mistakes, and so often end up repeating those mistakes in our own relationships, in our lives. And so the question becomes, how can you overcome that fear and relearn how to love? And my guests answer that question so much more.

What are your top three tips to navigate the dating world right now? It's really messy out there. How do you discern whether a lack of peace in your relationship is because of your own brokenness or maybe because the relationship isn't right? What topics does a couple need to discuss and agree upon before marriage and perhaps even before engagement?

What's been the most helpful advice that you've used in handling conflict? And finally, a really neat way that you can do daily mentorship. with Bobby. And so if you come from a divorce or a dysfunctional family and you want to break that cycle and build a beautiful marriage and family now or someday in the future, this episode is for you.

Now, before we dive in, I just want to let you know that in this episode, we do talk about God and faith. And if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone who's been listening for a while knows that this is not a strictly religious podcast. And so wherever you're at, I'm really glad that you're here.

My challenge for you is this, just listen with an open mind. Even if you're to [00:03:00] skip the God parts, you're still going to get a lot out of this episode. And with that, here's our conversation. Bobby, Jackie, so good to have you guys. Welcome.

Jackie: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Joey: Yeah, great to be here. I'm excited to talk with you guys.

A lot of questions, so we'll, we'll dive in, but before we get to those questions, get your advice on some things, I have to ask you, otherwise all of our female audience members will kill me. How'd you guys meet? What's your love story?

Jackie: The quickest version is we met at the Theology of the Body Institute.

The first time we met, he was in seminary. I was just like, you know, any, you know, normal girl who sees a very good looking man who's in seminary. You're like, Oh Lord, come on, why do you take all the good looking ones? Um, so what was good about that? It just allowed us to be friends. And a year and a half later, we remet at another theology of the body Institute course in Pennsylvania.

Cause I'm from California. He's from Florida. And, um, At this point, he had been praying, um, just really feeling called out of seminary to marriage and [00:04:00] we jokingly, well, he jokingly says that

Bobby: not so jokingly. Mother Teresa said when you pray, be specific. So I prayed for a sign that was loud and blonde

Jackie: that

Bobby: I could not miss.

Yeah,

Jackie: and it was just very apparent. It was just so good. Interesting how like that week was way different than the first week. It just, it was very apparent, like, whoa, there's something here. And so after that week, you know, he went to a spiritual director. He went to his bishop and he kind of he told his bishop, you know, Bishop, I found the girl I think I want to marry.

And his bishop goes, Well, Bob, we all thought you were a crapshoot for the priesthood anyways.

Well, I think Bobby was just so open with he wasn't. Under any, you know, false pretenses or pretending like, like, Oh, this is like, I don't have any sexual desire or like, I don't have any, you know, I think he was just very open and honest with his spiritual director, his bishop. Like, I don't know if I can do this celibacy.

Like, I feel called to be here at this moment. But so they all kind of knew, like, We're not, we're not counting on, [00:05:00]

Bobby: we're not, we're not surprised.

Jackie: We're not shocked, you know? So, uh, that's kind of the short story. And he, he moved to California a few months later and then proposed a few months later and it was pretty, you know, people say, you know, when you know, and when you're single, you hate that when people say that, but it's kind of true, I feel like, especially when you're in your later twenties, you know yourself really well, it was really like, it was strange.

Like when that week we remet, it was like, Whoa, what? Whoa. Like this is the person. It was very, very quick.

Bobby: Yeah. And that was most of, after most of my twenties, hitting my head against the wall, treating God like a magic eight ball, just tell me what you want me to do. And like when I finally got to a point of surrender.

And letting it all go. It was as if God could finally say, finally, we can get to work and things fell into place very quickly. And yeah, moved out to California. I worked at an all boys school for about 10 years. And now we're in Texas. We've got five crazy kids

Jackie: under [00:06:00] the age of 10. We homeschool. We're crazy.

Bobby: And, uh, yeah, we're happy to be here.

Joey: Yeah, no, I love crazy people. This is awesome. I'm glad we're talking. And, uh, I, uh, no, I'm sure there's a lot we could talk about your story, but it's funny. I know a couple couples who have a similar story where one of the guys was in seminary and then, you know, went down a different path and just turned out of that and then ended up building a beautiful marriage.

So. I'm grateful that, uh, God led you down the path. It is so interesting how he leaves a sound like a path sometimes and it says, just kidding. Like go this way. But there's a purpose for that too. Oh

Jackie: yeah. I'm so grateful for the formation that Bobby had in those years. I kind of wish like every Catholic man had to go through, you know, those kinds of years of formation.

Like Bobby had to take a whole semester on, Like active listening. I'm like, that has been very helpful for marriage. Like

Bobby: it was, it was awful.

Jackie: Every husband, every husband should have to take a course called active listening. Um, and, and really like, I just earned being a nun. And in my heart, I was like, Lord, I could be a nun, but I'm not called to be a nun.

Like I need a guy who could be a priest and is not called to be a priest because I knew like, I'm at this [00:07:00] place in my faith. Like, I don't want to drag along. The guy I'm going to marry, like, we need to be on the same page, and, you know, we need to, I want someone who we're going to run the race to heaven together, and I'm not going to be dragging him along, because I didn't want that for my life, you know, so I'm just grateful for the years he had the friends he made and who are a lot of the reprise now and

Bobby: some who baptized our kids

Jackie: somewhere.

The godfathers of our Children. And yeah, I'm just so I'm grateful for those those years.

Joey: Love it. No, nothing is wasted. I love that. I want to transition into talking about dating. Um, so the biggest area of struggle, uh, speaking of dating, the biggest area of struggle, uh, for people from broken families, our audience, uh, is in romantic relationships.

It's been a lot of research to show that as well. Um, basically we were poorly trained in how to love, and so we feel incompetent at it and we fear, you know, repeating our parents mistakes. And so I'm curious, I'll start with an easy question. How can someone overcome that fear and relearn how to love?

Jackie: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that that fear comes from, again, if your parents are divorced, [00:08:00] there, there's a fear like, is, is it even possible, you know, and my parents are not divorced, but I come from a family that's very messed up. I mean, you know, like I did not have a good witness of a Catholic marriage.

And so I started praying when I had my conversion at 18, I was like, Lord, you need to start bringing some good marriages in my life to know that it is possible. Like, what does it even look like to have And God did. He started bringing mentors into my life of what it looked like. Um, so I think for me, I would say like the first step is our own healing is our own healing and really acknowledging what are those areas that like, where are the fears?

Um, am I afraid of being abandoned? Um, am I afraid of being rejected? And like, even in our marriage, like. There is a fear of being cheated on because that was an example for me, you know, like I, and so even that own insecurity in my heart, I have to work on of, um, making sure that I don't make Bobby an idol.

Like also the two of us meeting at theology of the body, we both knew only God can satisfy every [00:09:00] desire of our hearts. Like another human being can't do that. Um, so that was very freeing. Like Bobby's not God. I'm not God, even though he's the man of my dreams. He's the love of my life. He's my best friend.

He's not God. And it would be very unfair to make him God and to make him have to be perfect because he's not, and I'm not. Um, so I think obviously the first step for anyone, no matter what background you come from is like allowing the Lord, acknowledging the woundedness and allowing the Lord to heal you and how you see relationships.

But yeah, Bobby, what would you, what would you say?

Bobby: Yeah, I think one of the hardest first steps is to acknowledge where you've been hurt and where there have been deficiencies. Where there should have been love like where you needed love in a certain way you needed stability or security and it wasn't there because otherwise we're just constantly reacting and the parts of us get really agitated get really can be really controlling or clingy we don't want to be abandoned we don't want to be out of control and so it's also one of the hardest steps to actually sit [00:10:00] with myself to sit in silence to come to acknowledge okay how have I been hurt and how am I you What am I afraid of reliving because otherwise we are just kind of reacting to life instead of I know I'm operating out of a place of self knowledge and it's a painful journey.

You know, we do everything we can to avoid sitting with ourselves. We run from silence. We just endlessly distract ourselves. We scroll because it's really hard and painful to sit with these ways that we haven't been loved to rightly.

Jackie: Yeah. And then, and I would say like the best thing you can do for your vocation, no matter what your vocation is, whether that's celibacy or marriage, the best thing you can do is to be as healthy and Holy now and healthy in all the ways.

Right. Like healthy, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and. It's just one day at a time, you know, we're all on a journey and just everything one day at a time, but to, to not waste your single years, but to really allow the Lord. Cause when I was single, I was like, Lord, I might die tomorrow. I mean, I guess I'm kind of like memento [00:11:00] mori.

I just thought of death every day. I was like, maybe I'll die tomorrow. So I want to be as healthy and holy as I can today. And, um, yeah. Um, not knowing what tomorrow would bring, not knowing when my spouse would come, if that's what I was called to, you know, because I was fully open to the possibility that I might be called to celibacy or that I might die just for, for me, just like I was, I was like, I want to be as joyful as I can now and allow the Lord to heal me in those places of my heart, the, the wounds that I have for my mom, my dad, my siblings, like, uh, allow the Lord to heal me in those places.

So I can be free and live joyfully and not just be. Um, enslaved by my sin or even enslaved by my insecurities and my my woundedness

Bobby: or enslaved by fear because I know there's also the cases of those trying to avoid relationships at all costs. You know, because I've been so hurt by them. I've been so hurt by this example of marriage.

I want nothing to do with marriage. If I've been abused, I want nothing to do with acknowledging my sexuality. [00:12:00] Even in the Catholic sphere, people that choose celibacy more out of a fear of marriage. Then genuinely feeling called to the priest or called to be a sister. There's a sense of I just am so afraid of marriage.

I would rather hear or hear. I can't be hurt in the same way. I can't or just the fear of divorce repeating the cycle. I'd rather just opt out altogether.

Jackie: I like how he asked. This is an easy question.

Bobby: What once you use an

Jackie: easy question that you guys are going to take 20 minutes to answer.

Bobby: Once you pull the string on Jackie and Bobby, you don't know

Jackie: how long an

Bobby: answer when it's going to stop.

Jackie: It's like a really long worship song. It's going to go 15 minutes.

Joey: Yeah, no, this is so good. And you guys hit on so many great topics, which we'll go into a little bit deeper later. But you mentioned the word reacting, which I think is so true. Like one of the things that we believe here at Restored is that after sin, like sin's the worst thing in the world.

It's the cause of all the unhappiness in the world. But after sin, the thing that holds us back the most from becoming, yeah, the best version of ourselves is our untreated brokenness. And so I love that [00:13:00] focus of like, kind of getting your own house in order before you try to. Um, love because it's going to prevent you from loving.

Well, and I've seen that certainly, uh, in my own life. And so I love, um, Bobby, that you said you kind of need to diagnose your brokenness, you need to put words to it all, which can be deceptively hard. And once you've kind of come to that point, then you're better able to, you know, have that self awareness, move on to kind of self mastery, and then finally like move to the stage of like self love, where you're giving yourself self gift, um, which is, is the goal.

I, in my opinion, that's the meaning of life. So I love that. And then the other word you mentioned, reacting, um, I think, yeah, like you said, a lot of us have this fear of re enacting what we, we saw growing up. And so I think that's really the only way, if you're afraid of that, everyone listening, like working on yourself, growing, like growing in virtue of healing is, is always a good investment.

I would love to spend more time there, but I wanted to ask you guys, The dating world is obviously just so messy right now for everyone. I'm so glad like I'm not in it anymore. I feel for my friends who are. Um, so I'm just curious, like what are your top three tips? What would you say on navigating that dating [00:14:00] world right now?

And any books, resources, podcasts that you recommend?

Jackie: Yeah. Um, yeah, it is a total poop show. Um, but actually the book that we just got, the, um, um, Oh my gosh, I'm blanking. The single Catholic book. I, there was some really good advice in there of your funnel. Like you got to start with a wide funnel. Like you just got to start meeting a lot of people because it used to be, you literally could meet somebody in your town that shared the same values that you had and You were attracted to, and you know, you really had chemistry with it.

It used to be because so many more people had the same values that we did. It was much easier to find some of it now, just the statistic alone of the chances of just someone being a really good, like a good Catholic, or even having the same values as you is going to be pretty slim and then not just same values, but then you're, you have chemistry with them.

You have a friendship with them. You're attracted to them. I mean, right. It's like pretty daunting. So I just think your funnel needs to [00:15:00] be wider. Sometimes, um, I mean, I just, I'm online and I see people make these crazy, just, Vanity lists of like, Oh, he has to be six feet tall, make six figures, have a six pack.

I'm like, that's ridiculous. Like

Bobby: it's too many sixes.

Jackie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Six, six, six. If that doesn't tell you something right there, um, you're, you know, I would say have obviously very high standards. Like I tell women all the time, don't settle, like, don't not, not, not to settle down, but like I say, don't settle for.

Like, don't grasp at, you know, because you're lonely or afraid. Wait on God's timing. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't be proactive and it doesn't mean you can't go on dating sites. So I would say your funnel needs to start being wide and you start meeting people. And I'm always about Catholic match or Catholic sites because Literally, we keep meeting.

I keep having friends who are like, I'm so embarrassed to say this, but we met on Catholic match and I'm like, why are you embarrassed? And like, they're literally getting married and sometimes it's after years of sifting through all the [00:16:00] really awkward people or whatever, but I'm like, Hey, it could be you get on.

And that guy just left seminary. And actually I had a friend that that happened to, he literally just left seminary, got on and she got on and they are married. Um, but this keeps happening to friends. So. Yup. Your funnel needs to be, you just need to meet people, and you can't, I heard this one comedian say, like, women, you need to leave the house unless you want to marry your Uber Eats guy.

Like, you want to get married, but if you don't leave the house, how are you going to meet people? Like, I literally traveled around the world for my ministry. For the first 10 years of my ministry, I traveled around the world. I met thousands upon thousands of Catholic men, and it still took me 10 years to meet Bobby Angel.

And I met amazing Catholic men, good men, holy men, but I was like, they're not Bobby. And so finally when I met Bobby, I was like, ah, there he is, you know? So your funnel needs to be wide. Um, very good Catholic, right? Isn't that what it's called? Very good Catholic.

Bobby: [00:17:00] The book, the book is right out there. Is it really?

The problem is if we go get it, a kid is going to see it and come.

Jackie: Or pretty good Catholic. Pretty good Catholic. That's what it's called. Pretty good Catholic.

Joey: Pretty Catholic. Cool. We'll put the link in the show notes so everyone can check it out. But yeah. Yeah.

Jackie: Cause it's all about being single. And she gives, she has advice from like a Catholic matchmaker and she, it's actually very good.

I highly recommend it. And just to help you when you're dating this, this poop show dating what it is right now. So yeah, Bobby, what would you say?

Bobby: I don't have much advice. What you said at the beginning, like you're just so thankful to be married and be done with it. I said something similar to a college talk we gave a year ago.

Jackie: Yeah.

Bobby: And I just like, ah, I don't know, man. Good luck.

Jackie: Cause I love talking about, I love talking to single people about dating and Bobby's like, I've already arrived. I don't need to stop. And not

Bobby: that I, Not that I don't care. It's just such gratitude to be on this side of the fence. Yeah. Because it is such a new landscape with all the different apps and, [00:18:00] and just, like, it was already a hookup culture 10, 15 years ago, but now it's just all the more we're atomized.

We're just trained to objectify one another to like,

Jackie: Atomized?

Bobby: Yeah. Like we're just kind of Broken apart. Okay. .

Jackie: Wow. I've never heard you say. Okay. Okay.

Bobby: Alright. See, I wanna talk philosophy. Jackie can talk dating all day long. . I can. Yeah. Yeah. We're not trained to like. Engage one another as humans. We're trained to look at each other as body parts to swipe left or right.

And I mean, it's, it's difficult. So even when, even in a time where to be proactive and to be assertive, like I'd like to take you on a date could be perceived as, well, I don't want to be a creeper.

Jackie: Yeah.

Bobby: It's like, Oh, like we're in a tough place in culture right now. And so,

Jackie: but I've always got guys ask girls on dates and girls say yes.

Like, unless you're afraid they're going to murder you, like say yes, practice going on dates. Just it's a good practice. So I had to put my money where my mouth was because I was speaking about this when I was single [00:19:00] and literally God was like, all right, I'm gonna make you practice this. And I'm not even kidding within 24 hours.

And this had never happened in my life. So don't think this happened before. Like four guys asked me on a date. I'm like, did they see my talk or something? But they didn't. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna just do it. I'm just gonna go on a first date. And so I had to practice going on dates. And then I had to practice if I didn't want to see them again, I had to practice which apparently I didn't because I'm married to Bobby.

Um, I had to practice not ghosting them and how to reject in a healthy way and say, you know, if they asked me on another date, My guy friend was like, just say thank you so much, but I won't be going on any further dates with you. Like, that's all you need. It does. And we all are so, man, we're so wounded. We get so sad when we're rejected, but the truth is, it's not.

If we were really healthy, we wouldn't get sad at being rejected. We would just be like, okay, I guess I'm not the person and there is somebody else for them and that's okay. And there's somebody else for me and that's okay.

Bobby: Well, and even with the sting of rejection, at least the gratitude of [00:20:00] there being upfront with you.

Jackie: Yeah,

Bobby: they're not ghosting you. If you're in this case where it's painful, you can acknowledge that

Jackie: they're not dragging you along and leading you on,

Bobby: but also to not throw a hissy fit. Like you see guys that just decide

to like start a verbal barrage and like making the girl to be the enemy when it's like, listen, she's trying to shoot straight with you.

There's no reason to turn into a toddler. But again, there's, there's parts of us that are wounded and hurt and we, we react and lash out if we're not in a place of self control and self mastery or

Jackie: integration. Yeah,

If you're from a divorced or broken family, the holidays can be so stressful and challenging. You know that pressure issues between parents being reminded of your family's brokenness, especially if you've been living out of the house or at school and just feeling a bit lost and alone and navigating it all.

Thankfully, you're not alone. Our free guide, five tips to navigate the holidays in a broken family offers really practical advice that you won't hear anywhere else. A worksheet to plan out your time with your parents, super helpful, and even a copy paste template you can edit for communicating [00:21:00] with your parents through messages or even a call.

Most of all, the guide helps you feel less alone and more in control. When the holidays hit, you can get the free guide at restored ministry. com slash holidays, or just click the link in the show notes.

Joey: I couldn't agree more. So, so basically the takeaway is put out a wide net, marry an ex seminarian and then make sure Yeah, sure.

No, no, but I think it's important. Like we want to find people who are like well formed and virtuous. Like we're talking, which we'll get into in a little bit, but yeah,

Jackie: I think we might talk about this, but kind of the two things that how, you know, somebody is the person you're called to marry. Like I just say like, number one, you have to have a good friendship and a virtuous friendship.

And then number two, you want to, you should want to pounce them. I mean, like if you, cause there's people, there's people are like, I want to pounce but y'all don't have anything to talk about. You don't have. A faith life together, friendship, you don't have a friendship and then there's people you have a friendship with and you're like, I'm not attracted to you, you know?

And so you have to have both because you're going to be married [00:22:00] to, you need to have a virtuous friendship. You're going to be with them 24 seven, right? So you have to like the person and be free to be yourself with the person, but y'all have to be very attracted to them because there's a lot of love making in marriage and uh, that would be very difficult if you were not attracted to the person.

Joey: No, I've heard stories where. There's struggles there. And it's definitely, I think it's a major area where you need to focus on like that attraction and the, yeah, the sexual attraction is like an important part of marriage. So I love that advice. I wanted to, um, go back in time a little bit, Jackie, you, a while ago wrote a great article called the devil wants you to settle in your relationships full of great advice.

One nuance I wanted your advice on for our audience is they struggle a lot with fear and anxiety in relationships so much. So that Bobby mentions before. They might end up giving up on love altogether or even leaving like otherwise good relationships because they're just afraid and they're really wounded.

And so basically means that a lack of peace doesn't automatically mean that the relationship isn't meant to be. It might mean that, but it doesn't automatically mean that, um, but it's not always the route. And so [00:23:00] definitely makes a lot harder to discern, you know, Is this lack of peace, the relationship, this person I'm with, or maybe my past?

So any advice for discerning that? Yeah.

Jackie: Cause I talk about in that article, like having that pit in your stomach and that situational anxiety, like when you're in the wrong job or you're in the wrong relationship, you have that pit in your stomach. Yeah. But for, so the people who maybe just have anxiety all the time, like, what do you do with that?

And I think. Again, it's very helpful kind of going back to the, is there a friendship there with this person kind of just knowing like outside of how you're feeling like, okay, do we have a friendship? Am I free to be myself? Even though maybe I still have anxiety, like is this, this particular person, is there peace with this person that just like I have with my friends of the same sex, like how are you with your girlfriends or your best guy friends?

You can be completely you and you don't have to put up. You know, a fake self, you don't have to put up mask. You can be completely you and they still love you. And that's how it's going to be with your spouse. It's this person's going to see [00:24:00] you completely naked, both physically and emotionally, spiritual, everything, and they're going to still love you.

So is there a friendship there? Just like. you would have with your, your best guy friends or best girlfriends. I think you can tell that even if you have anxiety, there's still going to be an acknowledgement. Like, wow, I can be myself. I can be free in this relationship. Um, and then also, am I attracted to this person?

Is there a romance there? Um, so. Yeah, because I asked Dr. Bataro this question, because I was getting this question a lot. And back in, back in my day, when I was in psychology, I mean, the statistic was that 20 percent of people had generalized general anxiety. And I, I kind of have a feeling that statistic has gone up, you know, so for maybe, 80 percent of people or 70 percent of people, they might have situational anxiety when they're in the wrong relationship, the wrong job.

But those people who have generalized anxiety all the time, and it really affects their day to day life. I asked Bataro, I said, you know, how do those people discern? He's like, well, you would still have a piece about the [00:25:00] person, even though you still have the same thing, there still would still be like, I still have a.

Really deep friendship with this person. I think we make it so complicated. And the problem is we always are trying to make the shoe fit. When we have the wrong person, we're like, I just want to make it fit. And we kind of know inherently like, no, we, I feel like I did that in so many other relationships.

You're like, oh, but there were signs like I, this person's name I saw on the street side. We just try to make the wrong shoe fit. So often, I think that's where it becomes really difficult. And then when we find the person we're. Actually supposed to be with, it's like, Oh, like this, I really do have a friendship with this person.

But Bobby, what would you, what would you say to that and add?

Bobby: Yeah, everything Jackie said, uh, just, just rewind and listen to it again. I mean, I, I think two of, we can have a part of us that Just is tempted to self sabotage and afraid of the [00:26:00] thing that we want the most and what if it what if it falls through because how I've been wounded by divorce or how I've been rejected.

So sometimes there is that in a generalized anxiety sense. That temptation to to self sabotage and maybe it's because a part of us thinks that I don't deserve this I don't deserve this relationship. I don't deserve the love of this person I mean my spiritual director told me when I was tempted I had a moment of like this is too good to be true Like when Jackie and I just really started to click in he's like don't refuse the gift like recognize what God is allowing to happen And what you've been praying for, it's finally happening.

And to know, like, there's a part of you that is really quick to be self critical and think I don't deserve this. This is, you know, don't get my hopes up. And it's like, no, no, no, just receive the gift.

Jackie: And on the opposite spectrum is that when you are with the wrong person. It's good to like talk to your family and your friends because you know, there are moments like I was with the wrong person and my friends like, yeah, we don't like this guy.

And, and, and then when Bobby, like Bobby was engaged [00:27:00] prior to, and the girl that he was with his own family was like, you're not yourself. And his friends were like, you're not Bobby. Like you're not you when you're with this girl. Like you, Are not as fun. You're not as happy. And so it's also good to have our people outside of the relationship help to see maybe some blind spots that we can't see

Bobby: even to risk the friendship because sometimes we've pushed away the voices of accountability in our lives because we don't want to be seen.

We're not proud of what we're doing or the behaviors we're doing or we don't want to be told So I, I had friends put the friendship on the line and be like, you may not want to hear this, but we don't think this girl, like it's, it's, it's right. It's healthy and you know, it's, it's stung. But at the same time, the part of me is like, like craving for like a smack in the face.

Like, you know, we, we know there's a better option here for everyone. And yeah, like sometimes we need the friends. To tear the roof off and lower us to Jesus because we're just so [00:28:00] broken, we're so paralyzed with our own fear or our own addictions, whatever, like we need the help of friends and family to bring us to Jesus to intervene.

So if you're listening and there's someone in your life that you've have felt the nudge to reach out to talk to like that, you know, might be the Holy Spirit.

Jackie: Yeah, please, for the love of God, do it. I've, I've just had women reach out to me who were months away from a marriage and even just them reaching out to me on Instagram and I'm like, Oh my gosh, you are just saying so many red flags.

And they're like, no, but I can't imagine life without this person and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I'm just repeating back to you, what you just said to me. And you know, it might take a while for them to kind of But it's like you wouldn't have reached out to me if you, you know, you didn't kind of know at a deeper level, like this wasn't right.

So yeah, marriage, I'm all about like, but again, better 14 broken engagements than one broken marriage. And again, if this, if you guys know this, you know, this from experience, you know, what a broken marriage can do and how [00:29:00] it affects generations, like how it affects you. And it affects, and so we know. So I, I don't want that to scare you on finding the right person, but I think, listen to what, like what Bobby said, like when you're with the wrong person, That there's, there's a way that it feels and your friends and family can see it.

But when you're with the right person, don't self sabotage. And also there will be people around you who will see like, no, this person's amazing and really good for you. And you can be yourself and you know, you don't need to second guess that you're attracted to them. And there's a beautiful friendship there.

So

Joey: no, I love that. There's so much more we could say. I was just thinking back, uh, one of my relationships, I thankfully, like all my serious relationships with the team. These great girls, like they were awesome women, but didn't always mean they were right for me. And I remember, um, in one situation, one of my buddies, after the girl had broken up with me, he was like, Oh yeah, I saw that.

I was like, I wish she would have said something to me. So the lesson I took away from that is you can't always wait for your friends to come to you with this stuff. You sometimes need to seek it out. In fact, that's what I would [00:30:00] advise is like, Ask your friends. Like you guys are saying, ask your family.

Hey, what do you think about this? Do you see any red flags and yellow flags? Like what's going on here? Um, and I know Jason Everett has a bunch of great stuff that if you guys are wondering, like what you're talking about, seems maybe a little bit elusive in the sense of like, it's not only based on feelings.

That's not what we're saying here. There are objective markers. And I know I've heard you guys preach about this too. And so Jason Everett's book, uh, how to find your soulmate without losing your soul is great for women helping you discern if like the man is right for you. And then his dating blueprint for the guys as well.

We'll link to those in the show notes. They can help. Provide some like, you know, objective framework, not that you shouldn't pay attention to your emotions too. I think the tricky thing with this audience is like, they might have a lot of peace and other areas over the life, but when it comes to love and relationships, because there's just so much baggage and brokenness there, it can be freaky.

Like in my case, um, I remember once I got to like that point in my life where I was started to seriously date, I was terrified. I felt so incompetent. I didn't really know what I was doing. Um, and I almost like. Like Bobby, you said before, I almost just like backed away from it. So I think this advice is, is good [00:31:00] advice.

And what are you guys are saying is really helpful for now. Anything you'd add before we move over to marriage?

Jackie: Well, I like what you said about someone could be great on paper. Oh man. Like there, there was a guy that I was like going on days of like perfect on paper, like literally stellar on paper. And then just there, the French, like, I'm like, I don't want to spend 24 seven with this person.

And like, I think I would. Die if I just, you know, I, it's just, there were things that, again, but on paper, an amazing guy, amazing Catholic. Um, and, and so just cause someone's perfect on paper, it doesn't mean they're great for you or they're the person that God's calling you to. So I think that was a very good distinction.

And sometimes we can be in love with the idea of a person instead of actually the person. And so I definitely know we, we prayer blocked a friend of ours.

Bobby: A few.

Jackie: Our friend, our friend told us they were engaged. And I was like, I had this massive pit in my stomach. I was like, Baba, we need a prayer block this ASAP.

Like, this is not. This is, these two are not meant to be married. And so [00:32:00] we literally prayer block, like we literally just pray. This is how we got to your baby. Jesus, please break this couple up, but it lets your will be done. Wink, wink, but I know what your will like. And literally five months later, they, they broke it off.

Thank God. It just, I just knew this man was in love with the idea of this woman and not in love with her. And I was like, she deserves better. She deserves a guy who actually is in love with her and not just the idea of her. Um, and on paper they looked perfect together. Wow. But again, I kind of knew a little bit more of the inner workings of the relationship and the stuff.

So I kind of knew a little more, but yeah, we probably blocked a couple, a couple of people.

Joey: You guys are good friends and I'm sure they're doing better because of it. Thank God. I,

Jackie: Oh, amen. I think the girl met her husband like six months later and he's amazing. So,

Joey: so good. So good. And that's Chuck. I love the distinction you made.

Like one of the things that is sometimes debated is like, should you have a checklist of like qualities you're looking for? And I think it's a good thing, but I think like you said before, too, it's so important to distinguish between like the non negotiables and the kind of [00:33:00] more preferences, vanity items maybe.

But yeah, but it's so important to remember you don't marry a checklist. Like you marry a person. And, and so I think it's really important, even if, like you said, they line up like, yeah, we believe the same things where, you know, we believe the same things about God, about like parenting and morality and all these things, but there's just something there that's not matching up.

There's not, you're not suited to each other. It's not good chemistry, things like that. The two things I noticed in some of my relationships, um, one, when the relationship wasn't meant to be, there was often like a heaviness around it. That's the best way I can explain it. Like there were like almost like constantly like problems to be solved in it.

Um, that was one item. And the second one, like it kind of lacked like some sort of like smoothness or naturalness. And I know that might sound kind of vague, but like basically it wasn't like you mentioned with like my best friends or, you know, female friends who I get along with really well, there was just kind of this mismatch and constant butting heads.

And obviously relationships are hard. Like we need to learn how to love, but. I think if it's that early on in the dating relationship and you're already having struggles, it's a kind of a scary sign of what's to come. So I know we need to move on to marriage [00:34:00] advice, but any final thoughts on this?

Jackie: For me, it was massively important that I married, like, again, in our, in a friendship.

I love Like someone who has a good sense of humor, like to be able to laugh through life is like massively important to me. Now, my best friend, she's like, I could care less about a sense of humor. He needs to have a job. Like, but for me, I'm like, if he does, if we don't have the same sense of humor, I will die.

Like I will die. So the fact that I was like, okay, he has to like the same stupid humor. Like I like watch the office parks and rec. Like I love. And so when Bobby was so self deprecating could make me laugh, it was like, immediately I love this man. Like just even as a friend, it was. When we were friends, I was like, Oh my gosh, this, I love his humor.

Like that to me is one of the most attractive besides like being holy. The humor is like one of those attractive things to me. So I think again, you have to know yourself and know like, this is a person I want to spend with every day. And Bobby makes me laugh, like even when we're in fights and I want to punch him in the face, there'll be times he makes me laugh.

And I'm like, ah, I'm so mad at you, but you're [00:35:00] so, you know, so you have to have joy in marriage and. Someone who, again, you're on a team, especially when there's kids in the mix, like you're on this team together, you're working together and, um, to have that joy, to really have that joy in marriage is huge.

Joey: I love that.

And on that note, I'm curious, like what conversations, what topics do you advise couples to have before they, you know, even get engaged, but especially before they get married to maybe try to vet if this person is right for them.

Jackie: I've talked a lot. I know I have things, so I want you to,

Bobby: I want you to keep talking.

Jackie: What do you think people need to talk about, Bobby?

Bobby: The stuff that you don't want to talk about, like finances, our approach to kids. And because, again, the, the nature of this particular conversation and forum, like family history, like family of origin stuff. Like what's going on in your family tree, like all that stuff, even if it's a lot of it's in our blind spots where we've worked really hard to shove it into the subconscious.

Like we don't talk about Bruno, but [00:36:00] this is the stuff that is going to come out in one way, shape or form.

Joey: Yeah.

Bobby: So like there's the, the matters of faith. And, and the type of people we want to be. And there's also the nitty gritty of, of, yeah, finances like saving and spending. Communication is, is a thing that makes and breaks relationships.

Like you can't over communicate, you know, this, this is especially our, our relationship around conflict.

Jackie: Yeah,

Bobby: and, and the sense of like, most of us, it's either like loud and we just, it's shouting at each other and, but we're not really resolving anything or we don't fight at all. We just push it under the rug and neither extreme is really helpful.

If we can't have empathy and step into one another's shoes and what are we really. Upset about or talking about what is she trying to communicate to me and vice versa these are the stuff that the more you can iron out ahead of time and it's it's a school of love as Pope John Paul the second said so it's not [00:37:00] overnight you master this stuff where 11 years married.

I mean, we hashed out a lot in

Jackie: engagement. That was probably engagement was our hardest time. Cause we were like, we need to talk about all these things. You need to talk about expectations. What your roles in the house, like, tell me about, like, what do you expect that I'm going to do as a wife? What do you expect?

I'm going to do as a husband, like even like taking the try. It's like, cause we have these, we have these expectations that people don't talk about, like in marriage, like, Oh, I expect that you're going to cook for me. I expect that you're going to take out the trash. I expect you're going to mow the lawn.

So

Bobby: based on the family of origin, it's like, my dad always did this or my mom did this. And so there's. Sometimes a nonverbal expectation.

Jackie: It's

Bobby: like, Oh, that's not how we did it in my family.

Jackie: Right. So you talk about that. You need to talk about your sexual history. Like, does somebody struggle with porn? Is there addiction?

Is there like, what's that? You need to talk about the very difficult thing. Talk about children. Are you on the same page with, you know, the, if you're Catholic, like the teachings of the church, when it comes to contraception, I mean, I literally, I know this is ridiculous, but like on a first date, I'd be like, If I didn't already know that they were very Catholic, I'd be [00:38:00] like, what do you think about NFP?

Like, I'm like, sorry, my time is precious here. I wasted my time. Like, cause I know again, I could be a nun, but I'm not calling you. Um, so you have to talk, I am shocked that certain couples like literally don't talk about things. They get married. One of the most common, I remember in psychology, they were like, the most common years of divorce are year one, year seven and year 20 and year one is like, yeah, cause y'all, y'all didn't talk about stuff and then you, you're married and you're with somebody every day and these things come out.

Like I tell single people all the time, marriage doesn't solve your problems. It exposes them. Right? Like you, you think like, Oh, I marry this person. It's going to solve all my problems. All your ish comes to the light. Okay. And so it's going to come, it's going to come out cause you're with this person all the time.

And so I feel like the more you can talk about stuff in engagement, the better and the beautiful thing is what you said about the heaviness in the wrong relationship with Bobby. Every time we got in an argument when we were [00:39:00] engaged and then we apologized made up. It was like, Okay. Ah, okay. This guy's not going to leave me.

Like he loves me for me. Whereas like in other relationships, there would be an argument and it felt like, uh, like I, you know, it felt like, I don't know if this is the person, like the, the way, the way this person handled it, or like, I feel like they, they might not really love me. Um, but with Bobby was so different.

I was like, man, he actually loves me and he's not going to leave me. And like, we're in this. So. I'm, I'm all for you talk about all that tough stuff. So yeah, children, expectations, finances, your family of origin, your sexual history. I mean, there are definitely books like we had an engagement that was like 101 questions to ask before you get married.

And you know, I, on that whole article, the devil wants you to settle. Like I go through a list of questions to ask yourself, like red flags and then things that are a little less red flags, but like you still need to ask yourself. So

Bobby: also. Let it, you know, let these conversations come organically.

Jackie: Yeah. You don't need to do it [00:40:00] all.

Bobby: Once you know, okay, this is serious.

Jackie: Yeah.

Bobby: We want to be exclusive here and we're not just dating to date. I see a future here. There's a, there's a comfort. There's an, there's an ease. You could start to get into some of this stuff. And, and let it kind of come as trust builds and we can continue to grow in vulnerability with each other.

And we, we love each other more the deeper we go, like that's another great sign of this is the person I want to, I want to be with

Joey: all the type a people just heard, okay, I need to schedule eight hours on a Saturday with my girlfriend.

Jackie: Although we did, we were, I remember we were like at a pond. I don't know if we were engaged or dating at one point, but we literally did go through that book of like 101 questions to ask for your marriage.

So we did. We sat for a day. I know, but we did. We had a couple hour day and we like went through some of these questions just because you just want to, you know, you want to make sure you're on the same page with this stuff. So

[00:41:00]

Joey: no, it's so important. So important. And yeah, I definitely. I've heard Father Mike talk about the [00:42:00] things that you just mentioned, like get on the same page when it comes to parenting, like how many kids you want to have, things like that, like obviously openness to life, of course, but get on the same page when it comes to, you know, faith, Bobby mentioned that, um, when it comes to money, you guys mentioned that, and then when it comes to, um, uh, in laws, like family, Situation too.

That's super important. And I know father Mike kind of adds the intimacy component, which Jackie already said super well. So those five points have always been kind of helpful for me and my wife and I were able to talk through those. I know the focus inventory, like if you're Catholic and getting married through a Catholic parish, Catholic church, um, the focus inventory is an assessment if you're not familiar with it.

It just kind of spurs conversation for you and hopefully your mentor couple or priest to just talk through some of these things too. But I would say it's kind of late in the game if you're just doing it then. So start sooner if you can. So thank you guys for that. Such good advice. And then one book I wanted to recommend too, it's by an evangelical couple, um, how to save your marriage before it starts.

Uh, a lot of good questions in there as well. Doctors, Les and Leslie Parrott, men, women, couple who, uh, write books on relationships and marriage. And I've learned a lot from them as well. Um, so yeah, Thank you guys for that. Um, so many more questions I want to go [00:43:00] through. I know we're running out of time, but I'm curious, Bobby, you mentioned conflict, like how important it is to learn how to handle that.

Well, make it healthy. Uh, what's been the most helpful advice or tactic that you guys have used in your own marriage? Because as you guys know, this is a major struggle for the people that we serve from broken families because so often they just saw conflict handle so poorly.

Bobby: You know, Jackie's always says she's sorry.

Um,

Jackie: I was like, I'm waiting for the joke to come. He's like, just, uh, avoid, avoid, just run.

Bobby: Yeah, if I wait long enough, she'll always apologize. So, um, yeah, I think kind of what I said at the very beginning of the episode, which was acknowledge. How have I seen? Like, what's the first blueprint I was given of conflict?

So how did my parents fight or not fight? Because that's my baseline of. Conflict equals arguing or conflict equals

Jackie: throwing something at or yeah, it's violence, violence. And so

Bobby: like, what am I working with and how might I need to rehabilitate that? [00:44:00] And for me, that was kind of a no conflict model. So any conflict or disagreement was like, This is ending.

This is awful. Like this is, you know, Defcon five. It's like, no, no, no, it's just, we need to communicate. We didn't have a disagreement. And so I, so I don't need to run away. I can turn towards it and recognize what parts of me are in fight or flight right now and realize. She loves me. This relationship is secure.

So even when it comes to attachment styles, there's a lot of literature and resources out there that can inform you of like, oh, I'm, I'm totally that I'm totally anxious or I'm totally avoidant. And I try to, I want to grow in relationship, but I'm also tempted to keep a person at an arm's length because what if they hurt me?

So the more we can grow in self knowledge and what is my norm for communicating and engaging conflict, it's going to help you stretch and realize, okay, I have room to grow here. And just because we're having conflict, it doesn't mean the relationship is over or it's in danger. In fact, the repair is and coming back together is [00:45:00] makes the relationship even stronger than if we never had like a disagreement at all.

Jackie: Yeah. And I, and I think obviously like we have our, I think we have our formula now for when we, you know, one of us does something and it's hurtful. Um, most of the time it's Bob, but we kind of, the two of us kind of not do the silent treatment, but we, we both are, we kind of, we take our time kind of questioning what's really going on here.

So like in my head, I'm like, why is he mad or why am I mad? Yeah. And is it really the thing, or is there something deeper than the thing? So, for instance, there was a time that I was mad at him, and, like, I'm thinking, am I mad at him, or am I actually mad because there's an insecurity in me? And there was that, there was a time that it was like, it was, it was me.

It was like, I was mad about something that he didn't even do. It was just that I was in, my own insecurity was, Run in the ship, you know, and [00:46:00] so I was getting jealous and I was, I was like, this wasn't even his fault. And then there were times, there have been times that you bring something to someone, you say, Hey, I feel like I felt this way.

So this is kind of like I've my friends who did net the national evangelization team. They have their conflict resolution. Like they would say, Hey, I felt this way when you did this. Not be like, ah, you always do this. But like, Hey, I felt this way. Cause they can't, no one can say, Oh, you didn't feel that way.

It's like, no, this is how I felt. I felt angry. I felt sad. I felt rejected when you did this, I didn't feel seen. Like, so there was a time when Bobby mowed the lawn and I made a comment that, you know, and it hurt him. And, and he was like, Hey, I felt this way when you said this. And so for us, we. Talk about it.

And we use the phrase in the future, because you can't change what just happened, but we say in the future, it would really help me if, when, so for instance, in the leaf thing, like in the future, when I mow the lawn, it would be really [00:47:00] helpful if you just said, And then you can criticize the job.

Joey: We missed a whole patch.

Well,

Jackie: like literally Bobby was like, all, I just want you to affirm what I just did for the last hour and then you can give me feedback, but I want to hear, thank you, you know? And so we always kind of say, Hey, or even if we're not in a, an argument, but like, say, I feel like I'm drowning with kids and housework.

I just say to Bobby, Hey, it would really help me. If you did this. It would really help me in the future. If you did this, like we, we want to love each other. We want to help each other. We're on the same team. And so again, you can't change the past. You can't change what you said. And also we don't ever say, I'm sorry.

You felt that way. Cause that's a very narcissistic response, right? That's like, don't ever say, I'm sorry. You feel that way. I say, no, I am sorry. I did that. I mean, personally for me, like. Even if I don't necessarily, like, there have been times, like, in a friendship, I'm like, I don't, you know, sometimes you [00:48:00] don't even think, like, did I do something wrong?

Like, I, I, I, in those cases, if you don't actually feel like you did something wrong, be like, I am so sorry. If I knew that that's how you would have, that you felt, I would have never done that. You know, cause like again, I care for my friend, I care for my spouse and I don't ever want them to feel that way.

And like, even if I didn't think it was that big of a deal, like I would have never done that had I known that it would make you feel like that. Like, I am so sorry.

Bobby: I'll say as the introvert, your spouse can't read your mind. So sometimes you have to be assertive

Jackie: in

Bobby: what you need, which is tough. Like, Especially if you have a part that wants to be a servant to the point of like, I have to be a martyr.

I have to overextend myself, but then you end up kind of frustrated and resentful because no one's checking in. It's like, well, you've got to vocalize. What do you need? Like I could really use help with the kids. I could use an afternoon just out of the house. Like say, don't be afraid to say what you need.

Jackie: Yeah. Your spouse cannot read your mind. You always ask for help. Ask for [00:49:00] Yeah. So that's like our thing. It's like in the future. So like with an argument, it's like in the future, it would be helpful if you responded like that. Like if I did this, this is how I wish it would have gone. This is how it could go better, you know, like when I do this, this is how, whatever.

And then it would really help me if you did this, you know, to help lighten the load of whatever we're, You know, I need, I need a day retreat. I need a silent retreat.

Joey: No, I hear you guys. This is so good. I love how tactical you guys get. This is really helpful. I have another question for you, but I wanted to mention some for our audience, what we've kind of heard, uh, Catholic author Layla Miller put this into words really well.

She said that For children of divorce and people come from broken families, we often have this belief subconsciously that conflict leads to permanent separation. And so like you said before, it's like really important to expose that stuff to light to understand like, okay, this is going to maybe drive my behavior and the way I feel about conflict.

I really need to like, talk about that, bring that to mentorship therapy, wherever. Um, so, so I love that as well. And then the other thing that's been really helpful for [00:50:00] me personally is, um, business author, speaker, Pat Lincione. He talks about how trust makes conflict the pursuit of truth. And I love that line.

Like trust makes conflicted pursuit of truth. So if you can have, you know, a base level trust. Um, then any sort of conflict is just a matter of like, how do we as a team come to the best possible solution in this particular situation? Not like a, just a battle of egos. And so those have been really helpful for me and everything you guys said I'm learning from you.

So I want your advice. My wife and I were kind of butt heads on this a little bit, if I'm honest. Um, I'm the type who, when I apologize, Jackie, like you mentioned, if it was something I did with good intention and then it ended up like hurting her or ended up overlooking something else, I, you know, will sometimes like want to explain like, well, actually, here's what I was trying to do.

And it ended up, you know, hurting you or it wasn't, you weren't happy with it, but she doesn't want to hear that in the moment. And so I'm curious, like if you guys had to navigate that and what's your advice, like, is there a place for an explanation or does that just sound like an excuse to me? It's like an explanation, but to her, it kind of sounds like an excuse.

And so without oversharing or [00:51:00] anything, I think this is something that I've heard other couples struggle with as well. That when's there a place for saying like, actually, like you're just misunderstanding me versus, Hey, I'm just sorry in the future. Like you said, Jackie, I'll do it differently.

Jackie: We had an argument probably within the last year and a half that kind of, we were just kind of.

Missing each other's intentions, I think. And so Bobby came to me with something and I was like, okay, that's, this is, this is what I was doing or saying. And, and we kind of had to hash it out. So I don't mind, I mean, personally, I don't mind if we kind of hash out like. What were you actually thinking? Like, what was I thinking?

Like it was just really, we were missing each other and I think it just depends on your spouse. Like, yeah, I mean, I would say that's hard because if she doesn't in the moment want to hear an explanation, um, yeah, I, I would say maybe on your end, like you're saying, okay, what, instead of me doing this, what would you What would you have hoped that I would have done, or what would you like me to do in the future?

Because I, like, I didn't mean this to hurt you, and I would have [00:52:00] never done it if I knew it was going to hurt you, but what would you, what would you like me to do in the And not do it like, what would you like me to do in

Bobby: the future? Tone matters. Can you write up a Google doc right now? I think

Jackie: so, to ask, yeah, to ask your spouse, like, so in the future, if this happens, like what, how, how would you want me to respond or like, what would be the best way for you, for me to love you?

Like, how can I love you? Better. And so for some couples, like effort, Bobby and I, like, I remember we were sitting in our bathroom, just hashing it out. Like, well, this is what I thought. And I meant, and this is what I thought. And I meant like, okay, in the future, because then we can't change the past. We can't change what just happened, but I'm going to be more attentive to your needs.

And I'm going to make sure I voice my needs, you know? So it's like, so we kind of had to hash it out a little bit, because in my mind, I was like, I didn't do anything wrong. But. So we were kind of hashing it out because I had to understand where he was coming from and I had, you know, so like we had to really work [00:53:00] through like, okay, so in the future, we need to make sure we do this.

We need to make sure we voice our needs and we're attentive to each other's needs and we don't let things slide, you know,

Bobby: well, it's a note to that. Sometimes one of us we want to be right. And the other person just wants to be heard, you know, so you're fighting for clarity. Like what I was doing, I was after a good, I was actually trying to help and serve and wanting that validation and the other just wants to be heard for their perspective and their point of view.

And so to come to a place where, okay, can we step into each other's shoes? And see what we're seeking and then a light might require like for the male, for instance, who often wants to be right to recognize, let me subordinate that to, to realize how is my spouse feeling? How is she doing? What did my actions as good intention as they were?

What is that causing in her and understand that first? And then the hope of circling back. And once that piece is established to say, like, [00:54:00] here's what I was trying to do. I can understand how it led to this. I want to make sure in the future it's handled differently, not, not to the extreme though. It's like, you're just becoming, uh, you're letting yourself be walked over perpetually, you know, cause that, that's not the point either.

It's to honor the other. And John Paul, the second talked a lot about tenderness and being able to be tender with one another is to step into the other shoes and to experience their world, to be able to read his or her body language. I can tell when my wife is exhausted. I can tell when she is, you know, Overwhelmed with the kids and it's like, so what can I do assertively, uh, to serve?

Jackie: Yeah. So like if in that moment your wife just wants to be heard, she doesn't want an explanation necessarily. Yeah. To be like, okay, I see that at this point she just wants some, she just wants to be heard and that's okay. Like,

Joey: yeah,

Jackie: like I'm sorry. And yeah, I, I maybe at a, apart from that to say like, yes, I'm, I'm so sorry.

Like I, my intention was to help and I obviously that didn't. So in the [00:55:00] future, this is how I can help. You know,

Joey: no, I love that. No, I try to be the guinea pig for the audience. That's why I threw that out there. Um, but this is so helpful. And I know, um, what we've kind of landed on, especially in our best moments was just that, that, you know, I can just apologize and kind of eat my pride in the moment.

And then at a later time when the emotions kind of quelled, then we can have that conversation of like, well, actually I was trying to do this and I was trying to help. And I understand that, you know, it didn't come across that way. So I love that advice. Thank you guys. Um, I know we're, we're almost out of time here.

So I want to transition into mentorship. Bobby, um, if people want to continue to gain from your wisdom and, um, work with you potentially to heal and to kind of get guidance through some of the challenges they're dealing with, especially due to all the brokenness from their families. Uh, tell us a little bit about mentorship.

Uh, you're a trained mentor with Catholic Psych who we've had Dr. Pitara on the show. So what, what exactly is mentorship and any cool stories of transformation that you've seen?

Bobby: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Greg invited me to be part of the Guinea pig cohort in training people to do mentorship. As he calls it, [00:56:00] which has one foot in therapy and counseling and the best of psychology and the other foot in authentic Catholic anthropology.

And what do we mean by a flourishing human person? So we're not boxing with like one hand tied behind our back. It's, I have a vision of man and woman is God created them to be. And also the different tools in, in ministry, in psychology to help people get to that healing. And I've been blessed to do it now for a year alongside Jackie and I's speaking and media ministry.

And, uh, there's now a growing army of those of us who've graduated the program, who are hungry to help people. And walk with them and help them process because one of the sayings that we're reminded of frequently is that we're hurt in relationship and we're also healed in relationship. So we're hurt in the situations of childhood where there has been divorce, abuse, abandonment, et cetera, but what it takes.

Is right relationship a corrective [00:57:00] emotional experience, as it's so called, where I can be in a place where I am loved and I am received and I can rewrite that script and God can heal in a moment, you know, there's miracles for sure, like physical healing, psychological healings. But there's usually a process.

It's usually a process of walking with another person. It's not just one podcast episode, one YouTube video. It's there can be real insight and eureka moments, but it's usually walking with another person that I experienced God's love and healing. Uh, so yeah, I've been, I've been blessed to, to walk with many people and you know, stories of just self loathing or, or addiction.

Rocky marriages just had to take it slow and look at what's the underlying hurt. What have you been running away from? What do you refuse to acknowledge? And what you said earlier about trust, like as trust builds and you can reveal a little bit more of yourself and a little bit more of yourself and a little bit more, it's like understand like the parts of you that don't think I'm worthy of love or are so [00:58:00] afraid of repeating the script of my parents that I'm sabotaging everything and to let that click to let, to bring that into the light and let God do the rest.

It's been a real gift to have the ministry that Jackie and I have come out of to grow in this deeper, deeper way. I never thought I would be in mental health, like the mental health field. It kind of found me, but it also just really fits with my youth ministry background.

Jackie: It was beautiful. It's like you're not going to a therapist's office once a week, you know, every couple of weeks or once a month.

It's like a Monday through Friday, every day, like a 15 minute voice memo kind of back and forth. And Bobby responds within 24 hours. Like, so it's like every day you're, you're kind of, because I know for me, like, I forget what happened last week. And so, but if it's daily, I'm like, I know what happened today and how I felt today.

And, you know, it's like two days ago, I was really annoyed by something today. I'm like, I'm totally over it, you know, but it's just like for it to go daily. And then also what I love about mentorship, it can be around the world. So Bobby could [00:59:00] work with someone in the military. Who's literally stationed somewhere who they can't be at a therapist office once a week, you know, and people from.

Different countries, different time zones, and this kind of particular way of doing it is so beautiful because They could be in a halfway around the world and still, yeah, I've gotten, I've

Bobby: gotten to, to work with people in the UK and, and, uh, Australia, uh, Columbia, Costa Rica, and it's just like, praise God, like technology brings about a whole lot of not great stuff, you know, but also the gift of forums like this and new avenues of healing.

And so I'm very, very thankful for what Catholic Psych is doing. And like I said, it's, there's a whole graduated class of us open for business and ready to. To walk with anyone in your audience who needs the listening ear. I just need someone to help them process their stuff with.

Joey: I love that. Thanks for going through it.

And no, I'm, I'm a big fan. Um, for those of you listening, who don't know, we've just begun a partnership with Catholic psych. And so we, um, you know, I've been in conversation a while about this. And so we've [01:00:00] vetted it. We love what you guys are doing. And if you guys want 10 percent off your first month, you can just put in the code restored 24, all caps restored 24, and I'll get you 10 percent off your first month.

Um, and yeah, just super. Happy about just all the ways in which you guys are helping people. And I wanted to say this, I was talking to a software engineer, a woman in her twenties recently who did a year of mentorship and she was, I was wondering like, yeah, what'd you get out of it? Was it a good deal? She was like, yeah, I did the math and compared it to therapy.

Um, I think it's better than therapy, but she compared the math in terms of the price for therapy, the price for. Mentorship and the time you get and she's like, yeah, it actually wasn't even close. I got way more out of mentorship than I did out of therapy because I know that's a big concern for a lot of people.

So if you want to check that out, go to catholic psych dot com slash apply catholic psych dot com slash apply. We'll link to that in the show notes guys and you can do a free console. It's like a thing. It's a 30 minute phone call where you can just ask your questions and learn more and get all the details and.

You're not committed to anything. So definitely check that out. Thank you both so much for being here. Uh, two final questions. One, where can people find you online? How could they follow you? And then two, what [01:01:00] final advice and encouragement do you guys have for everyone listening, maybe is discouraged and struggled in relationships because of, you know, what they've been through in their own family.

Jackie: Um, so first you can find us, I mean, I'm on Instagram probably more than anything else, um, that's at Jackie Francois looks like Franco is, and then at Bobby's at Bobby it's. Dot angel, right? Bobby dot angel. And then we also have a podcast called conversations with Jackie and Bobby, where, because we love again, human formation.

So we also love talking about psychology and just people's testimonies, like miracles, kind of stuff like that. And

Bobby: yeah, our website is Jackie and Bobby dot com where it's got different Links to videos, blogs, and other resources. And then on YouTube, we've worked with Ascension Presents for a long time, which is where maybe people are familiar with us by our videos alongside Father Mike Schmitz and the CFRs and just talked a whole lot about relationships over the last Many years my my final [01:02:00] advice is is be not afraid something John Paul the second said over and over and over again because I think he knew like how easily fear paralyzes us and and those core fears and those fears of repeating the pain of my parents and the family I was I grew up in.

And Christ makes all things new. Be not afraid.

Jackie: My final thing would just be like, be patient with yourself. We're all on the journey. None of us are perfect. Like be, you know, give, give yourself grace and, and just be patient. Like you don't have to be perfect before coming into a relationship. As, as long as you're walking, you're, you're walking towards the goal.

You know, it's, we're just making movements even for me as a, as a mom with five kids, even in my own prayer life, you know, I used to read a ton. And I got it. you know, coffee shops and read theology of the body, like tons of it. And now I am a mom of five kids and I'm like, I have very little time. So my little, I'm like just little by little, right?

Poco a poco, like just little by little, like baby steps and just baby steps in your spiritual life, baby steps and like working [01:03:00] out like babysitting, like just move. A step at a time forward. So be patient with yourself and just make little steps every day.

Joey: Jackie and Bobby are amazing. I definitely encourage you guys to check out their content and especially check out catholicpsych.

com slash Bobby to see if maybe working with Bobby as a mentor is the right fit for you. He actually offers 30 minute free phone consults, and so you can go on his webpage, read about it. Maybe watch some videos. And if you want to talk with him, you can actually sign up to do a free consult to see if it's right for a few.

And he also said that if you tell him you listened to this podcast and you asked for a discount, he'd be willing to work with you for the first month to see if there's a way that he can discount his services. So again, I definitely encourage you guys to take him up on that generous offer and see if that's right for a few.

Again, go to catholicpsych. com slash Bobby, or just click the link in the show notes. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe or follow on your podcast app, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever other app you use like YouTube. Not only is that the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more that the [01:04:00] apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for help.

And it only takes a few seconds. And if you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We definitely appreciate it. That feedback and that also helps us to reach more people for other people to find us as well. In closing, always remember, you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction.

You can break that cycle and build a better life. And we're here to help. And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Holidays with Divorced Parents: Part 1

5 minute read.

Navigating the holidays as a child of divorce can be incredibly challenging. From juggling split holiday schedules to coping with feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and family conflict, this season often amplifies emotional stress for teens and young adults from broken families. Whether it's managing time between parents, dealing with the dynamics of stepfamilies, or battling holiday depression, we’re here for you. To help, our holiday articles offer practical tips for not only surviving the holidays, but making them less stressful and more enjoyable.

Tip 1: Stop Trying to Fix or Please Everyone

The quickest way to misery is trying to please or fix everyone. It’s an impossible task that will always leave you feeling inadequate. It’s not your responsibility to please everyone. It’s not your job to clean up the mess inside your family. It’s not your job to fix your parents or their marriage. You can’t change them or your family. Sure, your influence has its place, but it’s not the same as being in control or responsible. Remember that you can love your parents and still acknowledge that they got themselves into this situation. As such, they need to work through it and deal with the consequences.

Around this time of year especially, your parents or other people might expect you to put on a good face and be happy. That’s not right. You should never have to pretend to be happy in the midst of a difficult situation. Again, you can’t make everyone happy, nor should you try. When you try to make everyone happy, you’ll likely make no one happy and yourself miserable.

Tip 2: Prepare for the Stress and Emotions

Holidays in a broken family can be stressful and emotionally exhausting. Don’t let it surprise you. Expect it. Plan for it. If you don’t, here’s the danger: you might emotionally burn out and do things that you’ll later regret in an attempt to fill your needs. To avoid that, prioritize taking care of yourself. That’s not selfish if it’s aimed at allowing you to love well, treat others with respect, and be virtuous.

Think ahead about the difficult emotions you might feel, perhaps even thinking back to last year if it’s comparable. Have one or two quick ways to calm yourself if you feel anxious, or to experience some joy if you feel down and depressed. For example, in the middle of parties that cause anxiety, don’t hesitate to step away for a breather. Whatever you do, allow yourself to feel your feelings. Work through them. Pay attention to them and learn from them. Ignoring them or stuffing them away only makes things worse. The only way to heal and grow is by moving through those negative and messy emotions.

Your body and your emotions are naturally intertwined. As such, care for your body in these simple ways to feel better physically and emotionally:

1. Sleep. Sleep at least 7-8 hours per night, according to sleep experts like Dr. Matthew Walker.

2. Water. Drink half your body weight in ounces (e.g. If you weigh 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces) per day, according to health experts like Shawn Stevenson. Typically, that results in drinking half to a whole gallon per day (roughly 1.75 to 3.75 liters).

3. Exercise. Move your body, whether through walking, running, biking, bodyweight exercises, or sports. The endorphin release will help you feel better.

4. Eat. Eat healthy, whole, unprocessed foods to feel your best. Fun facts according to trauma therapist Margaret Vasquez: Eating good quality dark chocolate stimulates the release of endorphins that make you feel better. Similarly, the carbonation in sparkling water stimulates serotonin release which makes you feel happier or better about yourself.

If you’re religious, don’t forget to pray during this time. Not only have experts found it calming, but God can give you strength during difficult times if you ask for help. He sees your pain and wants to be there for you. Know that he doesn’t want it to be this way either. Trust that he’s not finished with you or your family. While divorce or separation is devastating, God can bring good even out of evil. Perhaps you’ll never see that in your family, but you can see it in your own life.

Healthy distractions aren’t bad. If you’re constantly in situations or with people that drain you, you must have ways to revive yourself. For me, quick ways look like:

• Listening to music or audiobooks

• Playing sports or board games with friends or my family

• Watching good movies

• Having good conversations with my friends

• Walking outside for fresh air

• Watching a sunset

• Cooking meals, especially for family or friends

While it’s good to have alone time, it can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. Make sure you’re not isolating yourself. If you’ve spent the majority of the holidays on your own, without meaningful conversations with friends in person, on the phone, or even through messaging, you’re likely isolating yourself. If you feel lonely, that’s a sign that you’re isolated. Instead of waiting for someone to rescue you, take action. Invite a friend over or plan to meet up. Whatever the circumstances, decide to keep your calm. In tense moments, remember to take a breath, pause to think, and detach from the intensity of the emotions before you act. By doing that, you’ll make better decisions about what to do next and save yourself from regret.

Stay tuned for the next part of our holiday series! Download the whole guide for free below.

---

Holidays in a divorced or broken family can be stressful and exhausting. But there’s a better way.

Our guide, 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family, helps you:

• Avoid people-pleasing and burnout

• Manage stress and difficult emotions

• Plan time with parents thoughtfully

• Set clear, protective boundaries

Make the holidays less stressful and more enjoyable.

#135: Holidays with Divorced Parents? 5 Tips to Navigate Them

Whether holidays with your divorced or separated parents are new or you’ve done it numerous times, this episode is for you. In it, you’ll get 5 practical tips to better navigate the holidays in your broken family, so they’re less stressful and more enjoyable.

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Links & Resources

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To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

===

Joey: [00:00:00] After my parents divorce, the holidays changed from joyful and magical to stressful and complicated. Pressure to choose between parents, a misled desire to make everyone happy, especially my parents, often at my expense. My emotions are other people being in control instead of me. Feeling alone and uncertain of how to deal with it all.

Sound familiar? If you can relate, know that you're not alone, especially if the wounds are fresh and tensions are high. Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panerelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

Whether holidays with your divorced or separated parents are new, or you've done it numerous times, this This episode is for you. You'll get five practical tips to better navigate the holidays in your broken family. So they're less stressful and more enjoyable. The content you're about to hear is the audio version of a PDF guide that we created for you.

Instead of making you guys download the PDF to get access [00:01:00] to the content, we just figured, why don't we deliver it to you through this podcast? And if you're the type of person who wants to read it and listen at the same time, you're obviously more than welcome to, to do so, to download the PDF, just go to restored ministry.

com slash holidays. It's totally free. Again, restoredministry. com slash holidays, or click the link in the show notes. But again, you do not have to do that. You're still going to benefit by just listening. The tips you're about to hear, they're really simple. They're really practical. And since they're so simple, it's easy to have a sophistication bias to overlook the importance of simple things.

So remember, it's not enough just to know this stuff. You have to do it to see the result of the holidays being less stressful and more enjoyable. In other words, knowing is not enough. Doing is better than knowing, especially in this case. And with that, here's the audio version of the guide. Five Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family.

Read and authored by Joey Pontarelli. Holiday Challenges in a Broken Family. After my parents divorce, the holidays changed from joyful and magical to stressful and [00:02:00] complicated. Often, I felt more excited about them being over than the holidays themselves. The holidays brought about real challenges. A sad, pit in the stomach reminder of my parents split and my family's brokenness.

Pressure to choose between parents and balance time amid many events. A misled desire to make everyone happy, especially my parents, often at my expense. My emotions or other people being in control instead of me. Feeling alone and uncertain of how to deal with it all. Sound familiar? If you can relate, know that you're not alone, especially if the wounds are fresh and tensions are high.

But it doesn't always have to be this way. In this guide, you'll get five tips to navigate the challenges and hopefully even begin enjoying the holidays again. Based on research, expert advice, and 20 years of experience that's helped thousands of people, the tips below are simple, Using them won't make your holidays look like a Hallmark movie, but they will improve the experience by putting you in the driver's [00:03:00] seat.

How to navigate the challenges. Tip one, stop trying to fix or please everyone. The quickest way to misery is trying to please or fix everyone. It's an impossible task that will always leave you feeling inadequate. It's not your responsibility to please everyone. It's not your job to clean up the mess inside your family.

It's not your job to fix your parents or their marriage. You can't change them or your family. Sure, your influence has its place, but it's not the same as being in control or responsible. Remember, you can love your parents and still acknowledge that they got themselves into this situation. As such, they need to work through it and deal with the consequences.

Around this time of the year especially, your parents or other people might expect you to put on a good face and be happy. That's not right. You should never have to pretend to be happy in the midst of a difficult situation. Again, you can't make everyone happy, nor should you try. When you try to make everyone happy, you'll likely make no one happy, [00:04:00] and yourself miserable.

Again, tip one, stop trying to fix or please everyone. Tip two, prepare for the stress and emotions. Holidays in a broken family can be stressful and emotionally exhausting. Don't let it surprise you. Expect it. Plan for it. If you don't, here's the danger. You might emotionally burn out and do things that you'll later regret in an attempt to fill your needs.

To avoid that, prioritize taking care of yourself. That's not selfish if it's aimed at allowing you to love well, treat others with respect, and be virtuous. Think ahead about the difficult emotions you might feel, perhaps even thinking back to last year if it's comparable. Have one or two quick ways to calm yourself if you feel anxious, or to experience some joy if you feel down and depressed.

For example, in the middle of parties that cause anxiety, don't hesitate to step away for a breather. Whatever you do, allow yourself to feel your feelings, work through them, pay attention to [00:05:00] them, and learn from them. Ignoring them or stuffing them away only makes things worse. The only way to heal and grow is by moving through those negative and messy emotions.

Your body and your emotions are naturally intertwined. As such, care for your body in these simple ways to feel better physically and emotionally. One, sleep. Sleep at least seven to eight hours per night according to sleep experts like Dr. Matthew Walker. Two, water. Drink half your body weight in ounces, such as if you weigh 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces per day according to health experts like Shawn Stevenson.

Typically that results in drinking half to a whole gallon per day, roughly 1. 75 to 3. 75 liters. 3. Exercise. Move your body, whether through walking, running, biking, bodyweight exercises, or sports. The endorphin release will help you feel better. [00:06:00] 4. Eat. Eat healthy, whole, unprocessed foods to feel your best.

Fun fact, according to trauma therapist Margaret Vasquez, eating good quality dark chocolate stimulates the release of endorphins that make you feel better. Similarly, the carbonation in sparkling water stimulates serotonin release, which makes you feel happier or better about yourself. If you're religious, don't forget to pray during this time.

Not only have experts found it calming, but God can give you strength during difficult times if you ask for help. He sees your pain and wants to be there for you. Know that he doesn't want it to be this way either. Trust that he's not finished with you. While divorce or separation is devastating, God can bring good even out of evil.

Perhaps you'll never see that in your family, but you can see it in your own life. Healthy distractions aren't bad. If you're constantly in situations or with people that drain you, you must have ways to revive yourself. [00:07:00] For me, quick ways look like listening to music or audiobooks, Playing sports or board games with friends or my family, watching good movies, having good conversations with my friends, walking outside for fresh air, watching a sunset, cooking meals, especially for family or friends.

While it's good to have alone time, it can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. Make sure you're not isolating yourself. If you've spent the majority of the holidays on your own without meaningful conversations with friends and person on the phone, or even through messaging, you're likely isolating yourself.

If you feel lonely, that's obviously a sign that you're isolated. Instead of waiting for someone to rescue you, take action. Invite a friend over or plan to meet up. Whatever the circumstances, decide to keep your calm. Intense moments, remember to take a breath, pause to think, and detach from the intensity of the emotions before you act.

By doing that, you'll make better decisions about what to do next, and save [00:08:00] yourself from regret. Again, tip two, prepare for the stress and emotions. Tip three, plan ahead and set boundaries with your parents. Think of it this way to stop a fire. You can either fight it as it arises reactively or proactively install sprinklers, smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers.

Time with your parents is no different. Making a plan proactively does require some time and effort, but it's a smart investment that it reduces stress, sets expectations and protects you. A good plan will naturally include when you'll see your parents and for how long. It will also set healthy boundaries with your parents informing them how to treat you.

When it comes to the holidays, it's okay to lay down those rules with your parents. For example, you can tell your dad that you won't talk to him about your mom or vice versa. Boundaries communicated in advance also give people the option to opt out of interacting with you, which prevents drama. By the way, don't feel guilty for [00:09:00] setting boundaries.

If you're not used to this, it might feel mean. That's not true. Boundaries are a sign of a healthy person. Listen to that again. Imagine not having boundaries and letting anyone do whatever they want to you that would be extremely unhealthy and end very badly for you. And them. Boundaries aren't only good for you, but also for your parents.

It'll help you have a healthier relationship with them. If you have kids, make sure to protect them. Don't sacrifice your kids' sanity just to please your relatives or parents. Your immediate family is most important now. For more on boundaries, listen to episode 36 of the Restored podcast@restoredministry.com slash 36.

Don't only set boundaries, but be ready to enforce them. If you tell someone this is the boundary and they break it, there need to be consequences without them, they'll ignore your boundaries next time. As part of your preparation, be ready for the predictable [00:10:00] circumstances that will arise, such as a conflict with a specific relative, your dad or mom bringing their new partner to the party, or whatever else.

Prepare for how you'll avoid those situations, or how you'll handle them, such as, when your dad introduces his new girlfriend, simply say, Hi. I'm Joey. When that overbearing relative starts pelting you with questions, say, I'm sorry, I need to run to the bathroom. When your mom starts bad mouthing your dad, politely excuse yourself to grab food.

It's crucial to remember that spending time with one parent is not a betrayal of the other. Healthy relationships with both are essential. Many people like us benefit from spending separate days with each parent. By spending Christmas Eve with your dad and Christmas Day with your mom, here are the benefits.

1. It allows you to focus on each parent without, hopefully, worrying about the other. 2. It gives each parent assurance that they're going to have uninterrupted time with you. 3. You can avoid burning out. If siblings are part of the [00:11:00] equation, include them in the planning process. Although the approach may vary depending on the nature of those sibling relationships.

Hopefully, you can approach the holidays as a team. To start, create a group chat and start asking good questions to get the discussion going. If things get stuck, make a plan for yourself, share it, and ask them what they think. Although a good plan is helpful, no plan is perfect. Don't plan every minute.

Also, allow some flexibility in your plan in case things change. A back up plan if things go badly is smart too, such as staying with relatives or friends if the time with your family implodes. But what if your relationship with your parents is toxic? If it's to the extent that you can't see your mom or dad That's rough.

I'm so sorry. I hate that you're going through that. In that case, what can you do to experience some sort of community instead of your family? That might look like going to a friend's house or even having friends over to your place. You'd be surprised by how happy it makes other people to host or receive an invitation during the [00:12:00] holidays.

Ideally, choose friends or a family that models what it means to be a true and good family, the kind you want for your future. By the way, if you live at home with one parent, a plan like this is extra difficult. Do what's within your power to set boundaries. You might be able to spend a little extra time with the parent that doesn't live at home.

In that case, speak with your parent who does live at home, setting that expectation and explaining why you'll be spending a little more time with your other parent. To solidify your plan and boundaries, write it down, whether on paper, an app, or a calendar. Feel free to copy this Google Doc schedule template and fill in your details.

You can get that by downloading this PDF. Again, tip three, plan ahead and set boundaries with your parents. Tip four, communicate the plan. By far, this is the most difficult tip. A fair amount of you will not complete it. Why? It's scary and uncomfortable. I get it, I've been there. Perhaps you've never stood up for yourself like this, or you're [00:13:00] unsure how your parents will respond.

Just remember that an action has a cost, too. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. You deserve better. When communicating, it's best to do it well ahead of time. Already cutting it close? Don't worry. Better late than never. In crafting how you want to communicate, follow the advice of speaker and author Donald Miller.

First, figure out what you want to say, such as the main points and order. Then, figure out how you want to say it, such as the words you'll use in the form of communication. In figuring out what to say, a few tips. Lead with your intentions, such as affirming that you want to see your parents and spend time with them.

Make sure they know they're part of the plan. You have every right to express your feelings to your parents. Be honest and tell them your needs. Brutal honesty and vulnerability might not give them warm, fuzzy feelings, but hopefully they'll respect you for your honesty. And if they don't, at least you know that you spoke [00:14:00] your truth.

Naturally, this assumes you're in a good spot where you have at least a decent relationship with your parents and you can talk to them. Sometimes that isn't the case. In solving how to say it, some things to consider. In person is best, video or phone is next, then voice memo, and finally email or text is last.

At other times a letter is most effective. Start with I'm reaching out to set expectations and make sure we spend time together. Be real saying things like, I love you, but it can be really hard around the holidays to please you both and not offend you. I need you to understand my decisions, my boundaries, and that the tension in our family makes it difficult to enjoy the holidays.

If you can't see both parents, give the reason why. At least in a diplomatic way, focusing more on yourself than them. Such as, I can't afford it. It's too exhausting for me right now. It's too much on me or my [00:15:00] family. Or, I need a break this year. What if your parents get upset? Stay calm. Try to display empathy by placing yourself in their shoes, yet keep your boundaries.

Keep in mind that your parents are learning to navigate the holidays too, so give them some grace. Then, speak the truth by saying what you're thinking and feeling. As part of that conversation, ask good questions. When people make unreasonable requests, FBI negotiator Chris Voss suggests asking the question, How am I supposed to do that?

The intent behind the question is to find an answer. But often, the request made is so difficult or impossible that the person who made it feels stumped by the question. You can also ask questions aimed at understanding and empathy, such as, In your mind, what did you expect this year? Or, If you were in my shoes, what would you do if your mom and dad were asking what you are right now?

Whatever happens, don't allow someone to take control of your plan [00:16:00] and adapt it at your expense. For example, if you get a request from your dad to attend a party or see him during the time you're spending with your mom, you can simply point to the plan and remind him of it. Learn from it all too. Don't feel the need to have the perfect plan or perfectly execute the plan.

Instead, look at it as a sort of experiment to find the right balance between your parents. You can then make changes next year based on what you learn. See it also as an opportunity to become a better, stronger person. Think about the lessons you can use in the future, especially to build your own family.

To help, my team and I have developed copy and paste templates here to communicate with your parents via text, voice memo, email, phone call, video call, or even a letter. You can get those templates by downloading the PDF. Again, tip 4, communicate the plan. Tip 5, enjoy the holidays. Ironically, forgetting to enjoy the holidays is easier than it sounds.

Creating new traditions, especially if you're married or soon will [00:17:00] be, is a great way to reset and redefine the holidays. Serving others, such as the poorer, elderly, and nursing homes, is another way to break the cycle with selflessness. If you're like me, spending time with your friends makes the holidays much more enjoyable, too.

While it's good to spend time with your parents, make sure you block out some time to spend with your friends, too. So often, since spending time with both parents separately can be so time consuming, our other relationships suffer. Do what you can to plan some time with those people that you like to see.

The extra effort will pay off. Keep in mind that you might need to lower your expectations for the holidays, unfortunately. Holiday traditions in your family might die because of the divorce. You might not feel the same joy, safety, and security with your parents anymore. That's hard to swallow. In the midst of that, try to focus on the deeper meaning of the holiday.

For example, Christmas is a time to delve into the mind boggling mystery of God becoming a vulnerable, weak, human baby. Don't let the [00:18:00] stress and challenges in your life Distract you from things like that. Again, tip five, enjoy the holidays. Improve how you handle the holidays in your broken family. If you do what you've always done for the holidays, you'll get what you've always gotten.

As a result, the stress and challenges from your broken family can easily overwhelm you and cause you to do things that you'll later regret. But there is a better way. If you execute the tips in this recording, even though some are uncomfortable, you'll be better equipped to navigate this time of year and benefit in many ways.

Save yourself from trying to please or fix everyone. Avoid burning out from the stress and difficult emotions. Stay in control by planning time with your parents. Setting expectations and boundaries that protect you and your relationships. Experience relief, feel less alone, and perhaps even enjoy the holidays again.

In the end, instead of being controlled by your emotions or the demands of others, you'll be in control. Remember, you're not alone, [00:19:00] and you're not doomed to experience the holidays like this forever. We're here to guide you through the messiness. Know someone who would benefit from this guide? If you want, share it with them.

Here are a few resources to further help you navigate the holidays and the other challenges stemming from your parents divorce or the breakdown of your family. Podcasts. Restored, helping children of divorce. Ranked in the top 20 podcasts on divorce, the Restored podcast exists for teens and young adults from divorce or broken families.

On it, we feature stories and expert advice on how to navigate the challenges in your family and even find healing so you can break the cycle. Listen now at restoredministry. com slash podcast. Community. Restored's online community. If you'd like a private place to talk about the challenges that you face in your broken family, join our private and free online community built for people like us.

It'll help you feel less alone, get advice from people who've been through your experiences, and challenge you to grow into a [00:20:00] better, stronger person. Join at restoredministry. com slash community. Course. Broken to whole, tactics to heal from your parents divorce or broken marriage. In just two hours of short videos, learn 17 years worth of lessons from a trauma therapist who's helped hundreds heal.

By taking the free course, you'll benefit in numerous ways. Identify the root cause of your struggles. Learn why the trauma of your parents divorce or family dysfunction is so damaging. Feel validated and less alone in your struggles. Get simple tools and tactics to heal. understand and better navigate your emotions, build healthy relationships and a better life, avoid passing your brokenness onto the people you love the most.

Sign up for free at restoredministry. com slash broken to whole book. It's Not Your Fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents to force. Nobody shows teens and young adults from broken families how to handle all the [00:21:00] pain and problems that stem from their family's breakdown.

Without guidance, they feel alone and continue to struggle in serious ways with emotional problems, unhealthy coping, relationship struggles, and more. It's Not Your Fault features 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges they face. After reading it, teens and young adults will learn how to handle the trauma of their parents divorce or separation, how to build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pain and problems, healing tactics to help them feel whole again, how to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God.

How to make important decisions about their future by the book or get the first chapters for free at restored ministry. com slash books. Guys. I really hope that that helped you. My challenge to you is this take action, schedule a time this week or this weekend to plan out the holidays. 20 to 30 minutes is probably enough, but if you can't do that, do 10 to 15 minutes of planning, it's really going to help and to help [00:22:00] in that process.

You're welcome to download the PDF guide, five tips to navigate the holidays easily. In a broken family, you can do that at restored ministry. com slash holidays, or by clicking the link in the show notes. Again, it's totally free and you already heard the content in this episode, but perhaps you want the digital version.

So you can reference it at a later date, or maybe share it with someone like a friend or a sibling. And by downloading it, you're also going to get. Yes. Um, and you can also use this to get access to some free resources that come along with it, like a worksheet to plan out your time with your parents.

Also a copy and paste template that you can edit to communicate with your parents via message or a call or whatever way. Again, that's all restored ministry. com slash holidays. Those bonuses are within the PDF themself and you can get all that at restored ministry. com such holidays or by clicking the link in the show notes.

Overall, guys, I just hope that the holidays are less stressful and more enjoyable for you. Hang in there, I know this can be a really difficult time of the year. That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe or follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast app that you use.

Not only is that the best way to avoid missing future [00:23:00] episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for help, and it only takes a few seconds. And if you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We definitely appreciate the feedback and also the feedback.

That helps people find the podcast in closing. Always remember, you're not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life. And we're here to help and keep in mind the words of CS Lewis, who said you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

The Bottom of My World Dropped Beneath Me

2 minute read.

This story was written by Anonymous at 48 years old. Her parents divorced when she was 16. She gave permission for her story to be shared.

HER STORY

My mom had an affair and left us for her boyfriend, now husband. It was messy, we didn't see it coming. She moved out on Thanksgiving weekend. I came home from school and she was just gone. I still remember what it felt like to discover she had left. My dad was devastated, so he wasn't available to help guide me during this time. I was alone to figure it out. What hurt more was the fact that this happens all the time, so it's no big deal. But it was a huge deal to me. It felt like the bottom of my world had dropped out from under me; no support, just freefalling. I didn't feel like anyone saw me or heard me, they just expected me to be fine with everything. And I wanted to be, because I wanted them to love me.

HOW THE DIVORCE MADE HER FEEL

Alone. Like the bottom of my world fell out from beneath me. I felt invisible. Discarded. Needed by my parents, but not able to have any needs of my own. Any of my needs were deemed as selfish. I still struggle today with needing anything from people.

HOW THE DIVORCE IMPACTED HER

It made me seek attention from unavailable people. I drank and was promiscuous. I was reckless in many situations. I feared that you wouldn't like me if you really got to know me. Like there was something so bad about me that it would drive away anyone of value. I fought with low self-esteem, underemployment, fear of intimacy, and anxiety.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHOSE PARENTS JUST SEPARATED OR DIVORCED

It's not your fault. Your parents’ inability to see you or acknowledge your feelings right now is a reflection on them and not on you. You are loveable, they are just incapable of loving anyone right now.

---

Are you interested in sharing your story with Restored?  If so, click the button above. Sharing your story can help you begin healing. 

Be assured: Your privacy is very important to us. Your name and story will never be shared unless you give explicit permission.

#134: Holidays After Your Parents’ Divorce: What Nobody Tells You | Danielle

While the rest of the world is filled with holiday cheer, people like us from divorced or broken families usually feel very differently. While you can’t magically make the holidays happy and drama-free, what if there was a way to make them less stressful and more enjoyable? 

That’s what we’ll discuss in this episode, plus:

1. The challenges that come from navigating 3 Christmases

2. Some typical fears and barriers that complicate the holidays and tips to handle them

3. A FREE resource to help you navigate the holidays, so they’re less stressful and more enjoyable

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

===

Danielle: [00:00:00] The holidays always felt chaotic. That must be just what this time of year is about is just drama and chaos.

Joey: If I go over and choose to spend this Christmas day with dad, then mom's kind of on her own.

Danielle: Maybe I shouldn't go do two Christmases on the same day. Maybe I should space them out and say that is not a good day for me, but if that's a great day for y'all, how about I join in on like a phone call?

I think both of my parents wanted me to have a good time and be happy and celebrate, um, but there was also a little layer of sadness that. They weren't all together.

Joey: Why are we doing this all in the first place? Is it just to like buy like materialistic kind of empty gifts for whatever reason? Or is there something deeper?

Danielle: The chaos that I've felt from this in the past doesn't have to be the way I choose to move forward. And that has actually been really kind of cool.

Joey: Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better [00:01:00] life.

The My guest today is Danielle. Danielle lives in Central Florida and works as an occupational therapist. As a child of divorce, Danielle has found great healing in faith, counseling, and support groups, and she hopes that her story may help others as they continue on in their journey towards healing and wholeness.

Now, while the rest of the world is filled with holiday cheer, people like us who come from divorced or broken families usually feel very differently. Navigating the holidays for us is just really complicated and brings a ton of emotions along with it. And while you can't magically make the holidays happy and drama free, what if there was a way To make them less stressful and more enjoyable.

That's what we discussed in this episode. Plus we talk about the challenges that come from navigating three Christmases or perhaps more in your case, how you're not alone if you feel guilty for spending time with one parent, but not the other on a particular holiday, how feeling sad is actually okay, even though we often run from it.

And we talk about some typical fears and barriers that complicate the holidays and some tips to handle them as well. And so if you dread the holidays or you just want to make [00:02:00] them less stressful and more enjoyable. This episode is for you. Before we dive into the conversation, you'll hear Danielle and me talk about our holiday guide.

Our holiday guide is a beautifully designed PDF that contains five tips, really practical tips, to help you better navigate the holidays in a broken family. It's totally free and you get, again, really practical advice you're not going to hear anywhere else. A worksheet to plan out your time with your parents, a copy and paste template that you can edit for communicating with your parents, whether that's through a phone call or Or a message.

And then most of all, the guide will just help you feel less alone and more in control when the holidays hit. And so if you want to get that guide, go to restored ministry. com slash holidays, or just click the link in the show notes, I'll remind you guys at the end as well. And with that,

Microphone (2- ATR USB microphone) & UT-VID 00K0519341: here's our conversation.

Joey: Daniel. So good to have you on the show.

Thanks for being here.

Danielle: You're welcome. Thanks for having me. I feel grateful to get to be here and just get to chat with you.

Joey: Yeah, no, when we've had previous chats, I was, yeah, just really impressed with you and I wanted to bring you on because I know you've had to [00:03:00] navigate the holidays. You are no stranger to this.

So I thought it was good to kind of bring you on. chat about it and hopefully offer some guidance to anyone out there who's just really struggling with this whole holiday season, the upcoming holiday season, wherever we're at when they're listening to it. And, uh, so I wanted to start with a little bit of maybe context setting.

So obviously we're going to get into kind of the challenges with the holidays, some solutions that we've maybe both have found helpful and then all that. But before we get there, I'm curious, yeah, set the scene a little bit to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing, like What type of kind of family gatherings you guys have and how many parents are you navigating?

Set parents, all of that.

Danielle: Yeah. So, um, growing up I had a relationship with my dad's grandparents, so they were like a separate home and then my mom was one and then my mom's side of the family. So. A typical Christmas looked like at least three Christmases. Um, and then typical Thanksgiving looked like whoever, whenever, however, it was, um, kind of, that one was a [00:04:00] little bit more of the, like, I don't want to say like the lesser holiday, but that was the one that as a family, we didn't put a ton of emphasis on, but Christmas definitely looked like.

Each weekend, there was something going on. There were different groups of people to buy gifts for. Later in my life, um, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my dad. And so then that was another Christmas on top of that other one. So it ended up being a round four. I had a season as well where my dad and my stepmom, that was a Christmas together.

Um, and so that was newer to navigate as well on some of those expectations. So it. Had for me some overwhelming and also a little bit of excitement that you had all this extra time and other people to get to see, but at the same time, I would say overwhelming was the feeling of it. Whenever Christmas would come around, there was, I felt like there was a lot of places to go and not enough of me to go around to everyone.

Joey: Totally. I love the way you said that, like overwhelming, not enough here to go around. Um, someone said it recently, like, um, too much [00:05:00] bread, not enough, like jam or something.

Danielle: Yeah. That'd be so real. Exactly.

Joey: Yeah. And no, no. And part of the reason I wanted to have the conversation with you is because you've had so many different dynamics of, you know, like myself, I actually haven't had to navigate the step family dynamic.

I've had close friends of mine. I've walked with people who have, but, but you certainly have. So this is great that we're as hard as that is, this is great that we're able to offer. You know, you're able to offer some wisdom to everyone listening. So man, that's a lot of Christmases. And then one of the points that we talk about when this comes up, the holidays and everything is that because it feels so overwhelming, it's easy to not like think about it, to just put it off.

And then when we don't think about it, when we don't put like a plan in place and communicate that plan, which is relatively simple, but it can be hard, then it can get even more overwhelming and more stressful. Did you experience that?

Danielle: One hundred percent, I think it's. I feel like I thought about a lot of the conversations I wanted to have, um, when I was, I would say when I was younger, so my, my step parents [00:06:00] didn't come in until like the, my last year of high school, um, or my step mom and my dad.

Um, so for me, I didn't know that I could say something. I just felt honored to get invited. So I didn't speak up a ton if that makes any sense on what would work for me or what wouldn't work. Um, it just kind of was something like I should make it happen. And then a little bit more. In my 20s, I didn't feel again.

I didn't know that I could voice a little bit more of what I needed and what those holidays needed to look like

Joey: totally. And it's a great point that you make that I think it does change. Like, when you're in high school, you're kind of in one mode. Um, you're often just going along with parents and you, yeah, certainly want to set healthy boundaries, but there's a little bit of like a limit, especially depending on how like your parents react to those boundaries.

When you get to college is a little bit more autonomy, a little bit more freedom distance between you and your parents. Um, Um, but even then, you know, we're kind of along for the ride, but then once you kind of move it on your own, maybe that's more of a distinguishing factor than just being a young adult after college.

But, um, yeah, I think that can certainly be the case [00:07:00] here. Not, not everyone goes to college, of course, but, uh, but yeah, being out on your own, I think can be like a new level of challenge. So I think there's like unique challenges in each of those, what was of those kind of three scenarios, which was the most challenging for you, would you say high school, college, or kind of the young adult?

Phase or did they all have their own kind of

Danielle: young adult, the young adults in the hardest. I don't like, I don't know about you, but like, this is going to sound a little like at least in high school, I was like, okay, I know the groove. And then in college there were built in breaks. Um, but young adult felt a little more challenging because it was the first time I felt like I had to decide what was right for me.

I don't want to say present that but then bring that into my family situation. Yeah. And that's like hard. I feel like on two levels, right? Because there's the one of like, okay, well, I'm like changing the way things have been if I do something different. Um, but then on like a little bit of a deeper side, it was kind of stopping and saying, okay, what do I want Christmas to look like?

Like, what do I want Thanksgiving to look like? And that can feel Really [00:08:00] big. And, um, I'm learning to be a little bit more of a dreamer and give myself space where I can like. You know, what could that look like? And I don't know if other people like us have a little bit of a struggle with that, where you're like, there's endless possibilities.

So what do I want this season to look like? And how do I want to communicate that to my family? I would, I would say is a huge

Joey: piece. I can totally relate with that. And I, um, yeah, it's like, what I hear you saying is when you're a young adult, there's instead of like, just going along for the ride sort of thing.

Now you are the one making the decisions and kind of somewhat of like imposing your will on the situation. And if. Especially maybe your wish, desire, dream, whatever isn't what a parent wants or your family wants. And then it introduces conflict, which is never fun. Um, especially when things are like when the conflict isn't healthy.

And so I totally get that. So I'm curious, like maybe talk a little bit more about that. What were some of the challenges and Maybe the emotions that went along with those challenges, um, in addition to what you've shared so far when it came to navigating the holidays as a [00:09:00] young adult or any other point.

Danielle: Yeah, I would, I would say the, the frustration that I felt with the holidays, and I think you kind of talk about it a little bit is emotional exhaustion. So I would feel like, I don't know if you remember, there is a cartoon character, the Tasmanian devil, and he would like, it would be this really. Pretty seen.

And then you'd see him just come like spinning in and things would get like all torn up and then he would stop and he would kind of look like, Oh wait, what happened? And then he would like spin off again. Um, and I wouldn't say that's exactly how I felt, but it would feel more like a tornado. It would feel like I would kind of get caught up in the holiday season.

It would feel very chaotic and it would feel like I didn't really know what other people were expecting from me. I didn't know if I could be in all those places, but let me just go along for the ride and make myself kind of. Experience. It was a lot of the, I would say probably that like beginning of young adult ages.

Cause that was just kind of the norm. Like the holidays always felt chaotic. So why would that feel any different? That must be just what this time of year is about is just [00:10:00] drama and chaos. And maybe you're just feeling a little stressed and that's just a part of it. And then I didn't realize that I could kind of pivot out of that and turn into something where I got to kind of, how were you talking about, like having a little bit more autonomy that I could say, Hey, maybe that's too much for me to do in one day.

You know, maybe I shouldn't go do two Christmases on the same day. Maybe we should like, maybe I should space them out and say that is not a good day for me, but if that's a great day for y'all, how about I join in on like a phone call or like a FaceTime call to say, Hey, for a minute, instead of physically being in that same room.

Joey: I like that.

Danielle: So I would say it was a shift from like, what felt like chaos into a little bit more calm and a little bit more peace for that time of the year.

Joey: I love that. And I want to go deeper into that. I, um, one of the things I wanted to add for anyone, maybe newly married and has maybe a baby or a couple of kids too, that adds like a new layer to it as well.

Cause I remember with me, you kind of realize how, like in a new way, how exhausting it can be to do two [00:11:00] Christmases, three Christmases, like whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And then you bring kids along and it's like, my goodness, this is exhausting for them as well. And so that's, that was a little bit more of a wake up call, I think for me too.

Cause I was like you too. I just kind of put my head down, just got through it. And then thankfully before kids, but, um, especially with kids, it was like, wow, okay. I can't like, Do this to other people, I need to set some healthy boundaries even more so than I had in the past. And so totally tracking with you there.

I'm curious, maybe I know we're talking about like our experiences through this, but what did you see in the people around you? What kind of negative impact did all these like challenges and drama and like all these events going on, whatever else we want to add, have maybe on other people around you, whether that's your siblings or your parents.

I'm just curious what you observed there.

Danielle: Yeah, I think a little bit for my parents, it would be maybe like some comparison of like, well, how was that experience with them? And I, it could have been like the ones that I was seeing it through, but sometimes there might be comments that I would take as hurtful of like, Oh, it sounds like [00:12:00] you had a really good time with them with a little bit of a negative undertone.

And again, I think both of my parents wanted me to have a good time and be happy and celebrate. Um, but there was also a little layer of sadness that. They weren't all together. I know I felt a little layer of that sadness when we were coming together. To be quite honest, I was the one who was bouncing between all of the places.

So I, in chatting with just some like siblings in that sense, they, they would kind of express when we would have two Christmases, that would be like, Oh yeah, we have, you know, it's, it's a lot. The holidays are crazy. Um, and even now as adults, when we'll kind of talk about it, there's, I would say a little bit of like an unspoken thing.

Yeah. Of like, Hey, the holidays are just going to be crazy. How about we catch up in like January or we catch up in like do something beforehand is just kind of understood. Cause they, they also have other sets of sibling, like other sets of parents and it's branched a little bit more. So I would say their experience has been, I haven't gotten to talk directly about them with it.

So that would actually be a really great thing to get to do. Um, if that [00:13:00] door, when that door opens. I would say just kind of this rollercoaster that we're on a little bit together of like, okay, it was nice to see you. Like, great to see you too. We've, we've got like a few others that we got to go see as well.

So maybe not quite like a receiving line at a wedding, but something where you're just kind of moving through the process a little quickly.

Joey: Totally. No, I totally get that. There's not as much depth. It's more like width or breadth. And yeah, I'm, I'm with you there. You made me think of something that I think a lot of parents experience, um, which is almost like a rivalry between the families or between children.

You know, this parent and that parent, like thinking like, Oh, well, if I give the kids more gifts, then they'll want to come to this side of the family or, you know, whatever it might be. And then, you know, one parent might have more resources and money to do that. Another one might not. So it makes them feel like they're not able to give as great of an experience.

So definitely a lot of tricky dynamics, you know, just want to acknowledge for the parents too. But, um, but for us, I think I know in some ways, like. Yeah, I felt guilty. It's like, [00:14:00] okay, if I go over and choose to spend this Christmas day or Christmas Eve with dad, then mom's kind of on her own or, you know, vice versa.

And it's just like, you can never really please everyone. And there's always someone kind of missing out. So that certainly, um, that heaviness that you mentioned, I can relate to. And I think it, it is unfortunate. And, and that's where I think, you know, some planning ahead and setting expectations and having like somewhat of a plan to just, Connect with each parent if you can in some way, even if it's simple and you know, assuming you're on like good terms, then I think it can bring like a lot of peace that it's like, okay, I'm not neglecting them.

It's just, this isn't their time right now. Their time will be the next day or coming up soon.

Danielle: Yeah. And I think you bring up a great point with that too, Joey, when you were talking about like. It's their time and there can be a little bit of rivalry. And if I spend one, I would sometimes feel that way.

Like if I spend this time at my dad's grandparent's house and not with my mom on this Christmas holiday, then I would internally put this pressure of like, well, then the time I'm with her has to be extra great, you know? Cause she'll feel bad. So I need to [00:15:00] make that like a really special time, which no one put that pressure on me.

It was just a lie and internal pressure that I was building up. For myself, you know, like, okay, I need to bring my a game or, you know, help make it great to help cover up this gap that it's so sad that we're not all together instead of just enjoying the time that I have with them. And this is going to sound like let the sadness be there.

It doesn't have to be the whole piece, but. It's, it's okay if someone feels uncomfortable, it's okay if I feel slightly uncomfortable, it's okay if there's a little bit of sadness that not everyone's together because that is a consequence of divorce, right? It's a death of the love my parents shared together and our parent, like, it's Anyone who is sick has experienced divorce.

That's a piece that's present. And just like you would grieve a family member who's not there on Christmas and you feel sad. I think it's okay to to touch that place. I don't think it's okay to live there the whole season. I don't think it's okay to avoid that whole season, but it's I think that was something I ran from a lot, was just [00:16:00] that, like, okay, well, we can't feel sad about this instead of kind of just acknowledging it for a minute and then, or acknowledging it in a, in a healthy, appropriate way, and then moving on and enjoying what Christmas is today, or what Thanksgiving is today, or what the holidays are today.

Joey: That's so true. Like, especially, yeah, in our culture today, we tend to look at like the quote unquote negative emotions, like the things that feel ucky and uncomfortable. And we try to just like, get out of them, run from them. But there's something about like, kind of just letting it happen, sitting in the midst of it.

That's so powerful. I love that you brought that up. My daughter tonight, it was so funny. Lucy, she, um, she's three now. And, um, my son John Paul is four months old and, um, he was crying and I was like just about to get him out of the car. And so, but Lucy was next to him when he was crying and she was like, had a, I think her hand on his head.

And she was saying, it's okay to feel sad, buddy. Like so profound. I'm like, wow, something like, thank God. Like this, she knows that. Like, um, and I think it, you know, it applies here too. Like it's, it's okay [00:17:00] to like feel sad. It's okay. You don't need to like try to extinguish that or run from it. Like you said so well, you can kind of just be in the midst of it.

And in the business world, one of the concepts that's kind of helped me that relates here is like you're in any career, really, there's always like so many problems to solve and things to like deal with. And. Just like we're talking about, it can be overwhelming. And so this whole idea of like, you know, in, in business or in any sort of like leadership, you're kind of faced with like putting out fires, right?

You're like the fireman, firewoman. And, um, this whole idea that like, well, sometimes some fires have to burn. And one of the things I learned early on was like, um, yeah, sometimes like the small fires especially have to burn. Like we just have to let those burn, like we don't need to put them on and solve every situation, which for, uh, for people like us who are more type A that's hard, but, uh, but I think there is a bit of surrender like in that, that can bring a lot of peace too.

So it is an interesting like dichotomy though, kind of what we're all saying here, what we're saying here is like, between like kind of taking charge and control and having a plan and communicating that plan. But at the same time, like having like the flexibility and the openness and the [00:18:00] surrender of like, well, Everything might not go according to my plan.

And if it doesn't, like, am I going to be destroyed or can I be adaptable and just be like, you know, that's okay. Like there's something good that can come out of even this situation. So it's interesting dynamic between like flexibility and having like some boundaries in a plan. Any thoughts on any of that?

Danielle: Yes. Cause it's, um, I think of it, I think there's a phrase that's like. Essentially, you're creating a plan and you're holding it very loosely, if that makes any sense. So there is something in place, but if that alters and changes, it's, it's okay to let it pivot to a degree is at least kind of what I'm learning to experience instead of holding so tight to every tradition that needs to be kept a certain way or on the flip side, not caring about anything and not voicing any of the things that I would like to see happen during the holidays, for sure.

Sure. This is going to sound really silly, but one year I did, um, and probably a little type a, so if, uh, if anyone is not this way, like I respect you and I totally feel Billy on that. Um, but there was one [00:19:00] year I actually did like an itinerary cause I was coming home for a week and I just needed it. So I felt organized with like how things were going to be, but it actually was super helpful.

Um, For my mom and extended family members that I was going to see, I just kind of like shot it out with a little email on it that said, like, it's okay if these plans change, but this was just some of the things that we talked about wanting to do. And so I started putting them on different spaces in the calendar.

It's okay if they shift, but I just wanted you to know that I, I heard you and I care about spending time with you and I'm looking forward to it. So I just wanted to put those things that we talked about that were important on a calendar. Please feel free to adjust it. How you need to, um, and so that at least for me was really helpful, but that's kind of what I mean by the idea of like, make a plan, but hold it loosely.

It's kind of like, like something that you can kind of piecemeal and move around a little bit if you need to. But you have the, like the blocks in place and you have the foundation in place a little bit.

Joey: Okay. Yeah. Almost like a Lego, like build.

Danielle: Thank you. Legos. Yes. Thank you. [00:20:00] Like you're building the Legos and it's okay if the details change up a little bit, but you've got the idea.

Yeah.

Joey: Yeah. Wow. No, I can relate. And I think as much as you and I are like type A, so I'm sorry for like turning some people off to this, but I think there, there is so much of a benefit to kind of bringing out maybe that part of your personality that you don't use often of like being more of a planner.

Cause it does bring a lot of, a lot of peace and structure and helps set expectations. Cause I think that part of the reason I've seen the holidays can be so tricky is like everyone has their own idea of what's going to happen. And then when the expectations aren't met. Naturally, disappointment follows.

And then if disappointment like broods for long enough, resentment starts to seep in and that can be really devastating for any sort of relationship, especially relationships with our parents. And so I think it's, yeah, setting those expectations, like we have been talking about, it's like really, really huge.

And, and that's actually, you know, in the guide that we're going to talk about in a second, um, that's the. Kind of itinerary planning is something we definitely recommend. And I remember after we built the guide, I just like used the [00:21:00] tips and the resources in it to plan out the holiday for myself. And it was great.

It was like really helpful. I was like, this is awesome. And not, it wasn't just me who built it. It was our team too. I, my face is on it so that if anyone's head gets chopped off, it's my head, but it's, but, uh, but it was certainly a team effort and definitely pulled on wisdom from a lot of different people.

But anyway, uh, I think whether you're a planner or not being a planner for this thing, this season, I think is going to only benefit you.

Danielle: Absolutely. Yeah. And if you're not a planner too, like for me, it's a lot harder to just sit and be still in some of those moments. So I'd say like, if someone who's listening is not a planner, like, Lean into that non planning part of you, because there may be some really beautiful spontaneous moments that someone else in your family who is a planner, like, helped create space for, and you can call your family into attention for that.

We have a family member who is really good at kind of just creating some fun moments that I could not because I just don't work that way. When [00:22:00] they, when they do, they just bring such light and such levity and some jovialness. So if that's you, lean into that strength. If you're just feeling in that moment, like, this is a time we need to turn on a movie and watch it, or we need to sing, or going and looking at Christmas lights sounds really fun right now.

Let's go get in the car and go do that. That's okay to also bring that out. In this time as well,

Joey: I love that. And what I hear you saying too, is it's okay to have, like, if you're not a planner, a simple plan, like just the main pieces, the main like components of the building that you're trying to build.

You don't need to have like every detail in the furniture, like figured out. It's like, okay. Go do that a little bit. That that's no. That that's really helpful. And even if, if you are a type A, just make sure you put in like some flex time in your schedule, like spontaneous time,

Danielle: 100 percent write it in there.

It's really good. It's super helpful. We get to keep practicing. It's very, I

Joey: love it. I love it. So I'm curious, uh, Danielle, how did you find out about the, the holiday guide?

Danielle: I think, so I had read it in your book, it's not your fault. [00:23:00] And then I think I listened to a podcast similar to like this one where you would have the tip guide.

And I was like, I need to apply this this year. Like I've heard it. Let me just apply it. Let me see how it actually, how it actually works. And that's, that's how I found out about it.

Joey: I love it. That's awesome. And I think that's it. Like it's really, it's simple. It's not super complicated, but, um, it can be hard to execute on because there's just a lot of like emotional resistance.

So I'm curious, like what sort of resistance did you maybe face before and doing some of this stuff? You know, it's not like we invented this stuff. We're just kind of saying like, here are the things that you need to do that will make the holidays more enjoyable, less stressful, less overwhelming. So I'm just curious if there was any resistance, even with like using the guide or kind of putting the tips into action.

Danielle: Absolutely. I. I would say my biggest resistance was probably a little bit of pride in there of like, okay, well, I know how to work this, so I, I've got it figured out. I don't need to jump into it. Some of it was, well, it's too simple. Could it really work? You know, so a little bit of doubt in there. [00:24:00] And then I would say, I think the other one, and I've heard someone say this before, a little bit of the unknown, right?

Like if I, if I step in and I try something different, how much am I going to rock the boat? I know what this discomfort is like, and it's consistent. This other thing is so unknown. What is that jump going to look like? So a little bit of fear in there too. I would say were some emotions I was journaling through and just, I think finally just came to a head of like, I should just try at least a couple of these things.

They seem like good ideas. Yeah.

Joey: Cool. No, I love it. And I get all of those, like, yeah, I'm pretty good at pride. So I can relate to that. And, and the whole, um, I forget the term for this, but like, when we think less of things that are simple or sophistication bias, sophistication bias, where it's like, Oh, you know, It's so simple.

I couldn't really be effective and helpful. And yeah, I think like when I've been challenged in those situations and I do the thing, I'm like, wow, okay, this is great. Even like we talked previously, I think about atomic habits, the Jim Clare book. Yeah. And like the whole [00:25:00] idea in that book is that the 1 percent improvement, which is like, really?

Like 1%? I want like 80 percent or a hundred percent. I'm actually really smart and I can do that.

Danielle: Exactly. Change myself overnight. It's going to be great. Like, yeah.

Joey: I get it all planned out in my head. It's perfect. And then it doesn't happen. But no, I think that sophistication bias is super real. So I'm glad you brought that up.

And then the unknown too. Yeah, it is scary, especially some people have a little bit of a track record with like putting boundaries in place with their family. Others don't. And so I think it's definitely scarier for people who are just starting. That for the first time, if there's a little bit of a track record and they speak up, then there's a little bit of, Oh, okay.

The parents saw this come in siblings, family, relatives, because relatives who I know we haven't really talked about them as much, but that can be like another like aunts and uncles and people who, who love you, who want to see you, who it's like a lot of the time, it's just Good desires. I know there can be some drama in there, maybe some twisted desires at times, but yeah, I think like a lot of it is at the core is a good desire.

They just want to be [00:26:00] with you. So just want to acknowledge that for a second, but, um, yeah, no, that's, that's really good. Um, any other resistance or barriers that you hit on those super well? You know, the pride, the kind of simplicity, so sophistication, bias, the unknown, and um, I forget what the other one was, but that was a good point too.

Danielle: No worries. I think those are all the ones I've got, I've got for right now, but if I think of any others, I'll, I'll let you know.

Joey: No, I love it. And um, what about the guide itself was most helpful, would you say, for, for you in particular?

Danielle: I would say for me, like the, the big highlight one that I came up with, um, I am an evangelical Christian.

And I know not everyone listening is, but. I would get so caught up in Christmas and starting to like, I wouldn't necessarily say dread it, but not embracing it. And there's a piece in the guide where you talk about coming to God and praying to God, but also like recognizing it as a time for celebration.

And that is such a great gift, right? Like I get, this is a time where in my faith belief, the God of the universe chose to wrap himself in flesh and walk among us [00:27:00] so that he would He would suffer in the way I would, he would feel what I did so that in those moments when I'm walking around years and years later, I can know that the God I'm talking to has felt with me, has walked with me and has experienced what I'm experiencing right now on a deeper level than I am.

And that is just such a gift. And that is something that has given hope and peace and joy, not at this time of the year, but throughout the year. So it's such a beautiful way to end our church, like end the church calendar and the year calendar, and then kick off into the new year that. Getting to stop and realize that, for me, just really anchored and gave a why.

Like, why are we even gathering this season? Why am I choosing to stop and celebrate and be around my family and give a lot more time to gathering with friends this year? This, this is why, this is the reason for this moment and for this season. So that one, I think, just really anchored me a lot. Because when I go into those family gatherings, It feels a lot less pressure of it has to be something that I've seen on TV or this imagery [00:28:00] that I've made up in my head.

It's all coming from the grace of God that I get to walk into these spaces and have these relationships. And these are the parents that He has chosen for me. And even if you're not a believer in Christ or a Christian, I would even say just finding a reason to celebrate at the end of the year. It is a time of joy and of hope.

And kind of having that why when you're entering into it for me has been really helpful because all the rest of it can be distracting and can be really kind of chaotic and get caught up in people pleasing or in keeping a boundary or not keeping a boundary or trying to squeeze one more thing into an already packed schedule instead of just saying why, like, what is the whole reason for doing this?

Why am I doing this? At this time. So I know it's like a, a bigger one, but that, that big Y kind of helped put more of the practical pieces that were really helpful to me into place.

Joey: I love that. No, you're so articulate. And I definitely can relate on some of my levels with that. Yeah. It's so important.

Cause I think what. What I hear you saying is it gives like a reason and purpose [00:29:00] behind like some meaning behind like the effort that you're about to go through with this whole season, which is for people like us can be certainly extra challenging. I know, um, we'll get into this in a little bit, but even now, you know, thinking ahead to the holidays this year, Thanksgiving with my side.

So I'm married. If anyone doesn't know, and we spend, try to spend like either Christmas with my family and then like Thanksgiving with my wife's family or vice versa. Um, but on my side, of course, it's split in two. I know some families, you know, have three or four splits, which is super challenging. So it's tricky to kind of figure out, you know, who are we spending the holiday with?

I, um, I'm such a nerd. I have, uh, I just created it somewhat recently in my phone. Like I have an Apple note. That just like has tracked the last like five or more years of like, who I spent each holiday with, because I kind of forget to be honest with you. And so that's like one extra tip for anyone watching.

And it's like listening, it could be helpful. And you know, your future self will be thankful if you do that, because you can look back and now I'm just going to keep adding to that, especially now with kids, like things can just be a lot and you [00:30:00] forget like, what did we do that year? And so it would just save you a little bit of time and hassle if you kind of keep track of it.

But, um, on that note, I don't think it's, um, Maybe a good healthy thing to feel like you like, Oh, your family or your parents to always be with them for a particular holiday. I think it's more of like a gift that you can give to them. Um, and hopefully they can receive and you can like, it's a beautiful thing.

Um, but I think there can be an unhealthy dynamic if there's like a lot of pressure. So, so we never, we try to avoid like language, like it's your holiday. No, it's Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever anyone's and, um, and we are choosing to be with you. We want to be with you. And I've even tried to use that language with my parents.

It's like, no, it's like, dad, I want to see you. We want to see you, mom. We want to be with you. We want to see you. We want to visit you all that. So I found that helpful as well, but you're right. Like, it's so important to like get that foundational stuff of like, why are we doing this all in the first place?

Is it just to like buy like materialistic kind of. Empty gifts for whatever reason, or is there something deeper going on here? [00:31:00]

Danielle: Yeah. And I found like having that depth makes the practicals feel a little more grounded, if that makes any sense. So in some of those simple things, a couple other things you talked about in your guide was having, um, Like a little bit of a support system if it's a little more challenging and in years past, I would find that I would end up calling my friends during the holidays with like some kind of drama blow up for like, I just need to vent.

Um, so the year I found your guide, I was more proactive with it and it was just great to, I have four friends that I feel very close with where I can just share my heart and share my thoughts and share my feelings as they're happening. And so. I want to say it was like after Halloween. I think I texted them and I was just like, Hey, the holidays are coming.

This is a time where I tend to get really stressed and I feel overwhelmed. Is it okay if I send you text to just tell you what my plans are? Is it okay if I text you before I go to these plans and possibly text event? And can you be praying for me during this time? And in [00:32:00] years past, I'd always, you know, you just felt like it was a burden or like, Oh, well, they're busy with their family.

But honestly, it brought us a lot closer. Um, and I think a lot of my friends, some of them come from intact families and some of them don't, um, and the ones that don't, I have just felt like such a, like, deeper closeness with them from having just had that one moment of practically being open and starting that conversation early of like, Hey, this time is sometimes hard for me and I'll shut down or I'll shy away from it.

Um, so that one was just. I think really helpful for me to set that up. And then I know we've talked a lot about the itinerary, but making a plan and clearly communicating with family has been like such a gift. And we do growing up. My mom was really big on like, I, I grew up in Orlando. So we have theme parks close by.

So the thing was always, if we went to a theme park, it was like, what's the one ride you want to do today? So you don't feel disappointed. Um, and then whoever we were with, like you would, those were the first few rides you would do. So we've kind of carried that on into the holidays a little bit. So I like a rebirth that a [00:33:00] couple of years ago of like, all right, what's the one thing this Christmas that you want to do together that if that season passed, you would feel sad if we, if we didn't do.

And it's actually been really helpful because I think sometimes I have all these pictures of what Christmas would look like. But I don't remember what my mom's was last year, but mine last year was like, I just, it sounds so simple, but I wanted to sit on the couch with her and watch the Christmas movie elf and eat like popcorn and red and green M& M's like, that was it.

I was like, that just sounds so fun to me. I want to do it. And we did. And it was really just such a nice expectation setting with her. And so I've found that really helpful to just practically ask, you know, what is something. That you would like to do this Christmas and I can offer if I can do it or not, um, kind of jumping.

I know we've talked a lot about itinerary and practice, but just asking your parents what they're expecting for this Christmas. Um, and just being clear if you can or can't do it in a very loving and gracious way, I would say it's just kind of been helpful again, coming all [00:34:00] from that place of like love and joy.

That's, that's the whole reason we're getting together this season is for love and hope and joy and celebration.

Joey: So good. There's so many things you touched on, um, that I want to hit on. I love the whole like asking permission from your friends. I think there's something like so good about that that's like very respectful.

Um, not that it's like bad to reach out to friends when you're in a tough moment in Venn. I think good friends will be there for you during those moments. But I think there's something about like the proactiveness that you Brought out, which is awesome. And then getting their permission there. Yes. And then they're even like buy in of like, yeah, no, I want to help.

But it's not just like, I'm allowing you to do this thing. No, I like actually want to be there for you. And, and often it's not, you know, something that's super time intensive. It's just being there for a touch point. And that's kind of all we need, which I think is so, so good. And I love that you're kind of like, we're focusing on kind of maybe one big thing with each person or even that big thing, but like main thing with each person.

And I think that's so good. And, um, and then, yeah, when it comes to the expectations, I heard this recently, and then I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I think what I'd like to add, that [00:35:00] a happiness is, or equals happiness, equals expectations minus reality.

Danielle: Yes. So it's happiness, happiness equals expectations minus reality.

Joey: Yeah.

Danielle: That feels so right. Yeah.

Joey: I can't, it was some business guy said it, but, um, And the funny thing is like, we can't control reality. So there's one variable there that you can control and that's your expectation. So I think like setting simple expectations, that is what I learned from you there. I think that's really wise.

Danielle: Yeah, absolutely. And I know there's like a couple people out there who will say like, there's a whole dichotomy out there of like, well, don't have too low of expectations. Like you should have some high, but I think in, at least in my journey of being an adult child Some of this ground still feels really new.

Um, and so I think for me, if you're further along in this process and you're like, Hey, I can ask like a little bit more and like up the expectations, absolutely go for it. If that is like built and that is there, but I think staying [00:36:00] realistic, at least for me is healthy with expectations. And then. Kind of going back to that idea of, like, having a dream session about what the holidays is gonna look like, like, if there's space to be honest with yourself and journal, like, what do I expect this Christmas to look like?

Or this Thanksgiving or this holiday season to look like? And just be honest, like, With yourself and then looking at it and seeing like, Hey, is that like, is that going to be reality this year? Or am I like, am I shooting a little too low? Am I shooting a little too high just to put it on paper and out of your head?

And I think has been helpful. Yeah. It's just really helpful. So it's not rattling around in there.

Joey: Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. And the other thing. That I found helpful. And I know others have too, is just throwing that, um, off of someone to just being like, Hey, here's my plan. What do you think? Is this a good plan?

Um, it's nice that, you know, um, you could do that with a significant other, like a best friend, siblings, perhaps of being like, Hey, what do you guys think? And I, I've done that with my siblings too, especially if we're all going to be together, you know, I'll be the nerd who writes up the itinerary and be like, what do you guys think?

And, and the [00:37:00] nerd, like, this is, you

Danielle: know what? Someone needs the nerds, like someone needs it to put a little structure in there and that's okay.

Joey: Yeah, no, no, it's helpful, but it's been great. And then we kind of make adjustments on the fly or even beforehand. And then it's like, okay, this is great. Like, we're kind of talking about expectations or tweaking the expectations where, you know, like you said, I think it's a good point.

Like, we don't want to have them so low. It's like, well, the holiday is just going to be horrible. I'm just going to skip out this year, which can be tempting at times, but, um, Yeah, I think, you know, talking it through with someone, it just, I know we're kind of going on about this, but guys, it doesn't need to be complicated.

Like literally whip out your iPhone or your, whatever phone you have. If you don't have a phone, like a paper or whatever, something you can draw on and, uh, and then, you know, just like come up with a simple plan. That's it. And one of the things that. Like you said before, um, in addition to the kind of prioritizing maybe experiences, um, you could also prioritize people, um, which might sound kind of mean, [00:38:00] but it's like, no, I mean, not everyone in your life, um, can have top priority.

So it's like, okay. You know, when, for example, I go back to the Chicago land area, there's so many people there that I love. There's so many people I want to see, there's friends I want to see, there's family I want to see, there's, you know, Obviously my immediate family is relatives and I like often am not there for super long, maybe three days or five days, seven days at most, I would say.

And it's just so tricky now, especially with kids to see everyone. And I feel horrible, but it's like, okay, no, I have to have like a priority list of like, okay, this is my, for lack of a better term, like my A list. This is, these are the main people I'm going to see, you know, mom. Dad, you know, now it's my mom's in a different place, but, um, I'm going to see dad.

I'm going to see, you know, my brother, Anthony, my sister Mia, and then some, like, these close friends for this reason or that reason. Um, and then maybe like some aunts and uncles and that's like as much as I could do, unfortunately. And there was a recent trip that we took to that area. And I, um, again, just really wanted to reach out to all these friends and plan all this stuff.

Like I really, if any of them are listening right now, like I wanted to see you all really badly, but I knew there was a [00:39:00] particular reason that we were out there. And so we kind of, Anchored onto that reason, um, there's a baptism actually that we were going out for. We anchored onto that reason and then like everything was kind of built upon that.

And then, um, anything that didn't fit just didn't fit, unfortunately. Um, and it's an unfortunate thing, but that was like really freeing and helpful. So having that kind of, not just list of experiences, which I think is really wise, I love that you have that, but also a priority of kind of the people that you're going to see and spend time with.

Danielle: Yeah. You said that so well, Joey, and I love how you said as well, like it's not to be mean, it's. It's just a set of expectations, realistically, and that's something that time is finite, right? We don't have, if you're there for a week, like, seven days is all you got, like, there's only so much you can do, because you still need to sleep, you still need to make sure, like, you're eating, you still need to make sure, like, you're drinking water, you still, like, all of the things to keep ourselves up, like, you still need to be doing during that time as well, right?

And I, I think that's something we forget when the holidays happen, that we forget. December only has 31 days in it. It doesn't get like a [00:40:00] bonus day. Um, and Thanksgiving is a great idea

Joey: though.

Danielle: Right. It would be so great to throw that in there. Um, but it is still finite. So it's okay to just tell people proactively, like.

I am so sorry. I'm not going to be able to see you like this season. Like, is there another time I could see you and just share your heart of like what feeling disappointed that you can't be there to see them or just be, I would say, just be honest and clear. Like clarity is kindness. Instead of trying to, I'm going to use the word contort yourself or feel like you have to please someone, or you have to get yourself into a bunch of different places at once.

It's okay to say that is something I cannot do this year. I still love you. I still care about you. And I'm still wishing you the best for the holidays. What can we do to stay connected during this season?

Joey: I love that. That's such a good template of like, I love like the kind of heartfelt apology affirming that they're important to you that you wish you could.

And then planning, like you had said earlier in the conversation to planning something separately that you can. Do to invest in the [00:41:00] friendship relationship. So that's awesome. I think all of those things are really, really good. And, and the, the thing, the only thing I'd add, cause it's just so common these days, it's just like, you know, avoiding the temptation to ghost people too.

Danielle: Yeah.

Joey: Yeah. Don't do that. It's just so rare. Like, and, and the only, I think the only motivation a lot of us need is like, think of how that feels when you're ghosted, it's horrible, you don't like that. And. I don't like that. And so it's like someone else wouldn't like that either. And so it's, um, it hurts far less to, like you said, be clear.

And maybe it stings a little bit of like, oh man, I really wanted to see that person as opposed to this like drawn out kind of painful, I don't know, mucky ghosting. That just is not a fun thing to go through. And, um, I'm curious kind of what were the results or the outcomes of, you know, using the guide you already alluded to some of them, but I'm curious, like, did it make things better?

Like. How did it help you when you were actually going through it? Not just like the before and the putting the tips into action. Like what came of it?

Danielle: Yeah. Um, what came of it for me is like one. I had clarity for [00:42:00] me when I was going into the holidays. So I, I knew what to expect, which is such a gift. And then, For me, whenever there is some clarity and a little bit of structure, it actually gave me space to really be present and just kind of have fun.

And I know that sounds so odd and a handful of people might be like, that, shouldn't you have fun all the time? But it's hard. It's hard during the holiday season sometimes when In my head, I'm planning the next place I'm going to. So when it was just all laid out, I felt like I got to be present with the family that I was with and with the friends that I was with.

And that was just such a gift. And from that, I felt more connected one with my family when I got to see them. And. To like with those friends that I was texting with and it was actually really fun to celebrate with them. So like when they would text and say like, Hey, how did that go? I'd be like, Oh, I'm really well.

And to get like a heart emoji or like a hands up emoji, you know, they're like, that's so great. I'm so happy for you. Like. That was so cool, you know, to realize like, wow, I got to, I got to celebrate and really just enjoy [00:43:00] and relish this season a lot more than I had in the past. And I'd even say too, Joey, it gave a little more, I know we've been talking like a lot about like autonomy versus surrender, like autonomy.

And then we were talking about structure versus surrender a little bit, but it. It gave some space to realize that like the chaos that I've felt from this in the past doesn't have to be the way I choose to move forward and that has actually been really kind of cool, you know, it's it's carried over into some other areas and so I would say it made it better for me for sure.

It's been a little bit of a play, so I don't want to say it like it was perfect, like right off the get go, but it's been really fun to kind of play with and have more conversations, um, with family and just, I think even for myself, learn how to be a little clearer and learn how to say it kindly and how to say it respectfully, but also at the same time, learn how to stand my ground when I need to stand my ground.

Which has been kind of cool.

Joey: No, that's good. I was going to say, we can certainly give you your money back cause we actually guarantee that the holidays will be flawless once you go through. No. And for the [00:44:00] record, it's completely free. It's completely free. So you will certainly get your money back. But, um, no, we've heard a lot of great things just, yeah, again, putting it into action is the key.

And that, that would be kind of the challenge as we get to the end of this conversation here is, um, yeah, it's. One thing to know these things, they're not complicated. It's not a thing to do them like we've talked about before. So that'll be the challenge. But before we get kind of the very end, I'm curious, you talked about kind of the benefits for you.

Did you see any benefits for maybe your parents or siblings or the other people around you? Because We're a little bit more proactive and went through this whole kind of system or process. You called it a system when we talked before. And I was like, that's true. It's a little bit of like a system to make the holidays less stressful, more enjoyable.

Danielle: Yeah, it worked really well. I would say, um, at least for my mom, it gave her a lot of structure, which was really nice. And it opened the door to have some conversations, um, about the holidays earlier. So that's been kind of fun to get to know her a little bit more as an adult of some of the, you know, things that she values during the holiday time.

And then I would say for [00:45:00] some of my siblings, it actually opened the door for us to kind of communicate a little more clearly on what does work during the holidays and what doesn't. So that's been, I would say, a really cool gift to kind of carve out time to just be siblings together and doesn't have to always be around like a family holiday.

So that's been kind of fun to enter into in an adult season. Yeah. And then I would even say too, for the. Some of the extended family that has been kind of also navigated, um, it's taken some pressure off for them to, when I, I wouldn't say I take the lead, but even just communicating or starting that conversation as something as simple as like, Hey, I'd love to see you guys.

Like they'll shoot back a text of, Oh my gosh, we'd love to see you too. When would work? Like, we know you're busy, what works best for you? And so that's actually been a really cool thing. I didn't realize they were waiting. Sometimes someone's just waiting for an invitation. Yeah, it opened the door to have some time together and that was a real gift.

Joey: I bet they really appreciate that. That's amazing. And just going back quickly to the thing you said about presence, I think that's so good. And I've experienced both sides of that where in [00:46:00] situations where, yeah, your mind's like in a million places cause you're trying to maybe please everyone or you're thinking about like, man, we have so much on the schedule to do, so many people to see, so many parties to go to or whatever.

And yeah, it can be so overwhelming that you just skip the present moment. You just are not there. Like literally like I don't really hear what people are saying and you're not like, present in the conversations. But on the flip side, like you said, if you kind of simplify things and put a little bit of a plan and set those expectations, communicate those expectations, that plan, and then, um, you could actually just live the moment and there's no need to Yeah.

Be in a million places. So I, I love that point. I, um, was curious, what would you tell someone maybe who's watching, listening right now and they're unsure about maybe getting the guide and starting to use. The tips, like put them into action. What would you say if they're a little bit, there's some hesitation there.

Danielle: Oh, great one. First I would say, take a deep breath. And I would, I would ask you to be a little curious about that hesitation. You know, if you're feeling a little, a little uncertain or a little bit of trepidation about [00:47:00] getting the guide. Just kind of ask yourself what, what is kind of blocking you from that.

I wouldn't stay there too long, but regardless, I would get it. The information is great. And if that's something that you still kind of work through in your head and your heart, that's okay. But I would really say, you know, be curious about what's holding you back from that. And if you have a friend that you can chat through with it, A journal's been a really great place for me to, again, let my thoughts come out of my head and onto paper and become concrete.

I would kind of process that a little bit because it may be holding you back where it may be something very real that you need to work through, but that's, that's what I would recommend. Be a little curious on it. Regardless, I would still, I would still grab it. It's good. It's good information. So if now's not the right time, you have it for when you need it.

And I'm, I'm hoping the time is right for you because it is, it is such a gift. And if you're feeling even the tiniest little nudge that you should, or like curiosity about it, grab it. It's, it's very helpful. And I feel really confident that something from it is going to bless you as you enter into the soliday season.

Joey: I love that. Even if it's just one [00:48:00] thing I would throw out there to everyone listening, it's like we have like five main tips and then some additional like resources that you can use to kind of put those tips into action. But even if you were to use like one tip and not any of the resources or maybe one of the resources and not really any of the tips, like that's okay, that it's there to serve you.

And so, you know, if you don't, you don't have to use it as like we built it, you can use it however is going to help you. So we just want to help you. We want to be there to support you guys. So yeah, I hope it's a blessing. Hope it's helpful. And, um, just wanted to give you the last word to first, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It's, uh, really great to talk with you. You're so articulate. Um, yeah, you're just a good woman. Thank you for being an advisor to resort as well. I'm really grateful to have you behind the scenes kind of help steer the ship and, um, you know, give your advice in certain scenarios. And so anyway, take care.

Really grateful for you, for everything, all the wisdom that you shared today and your vulnerability and, um, yeah, just grateful. So thank you. Um, but yeah, in closing, please. Yeah. Good.

Danielle: Yeah. I was going to say my pleasure. Thank you all. My [00:49:00] pleasure.

Joey: Amazing. And, um, yeah, just final word to you, any, any final advice or encouragement to anyone listening right now who maybe feels the weight of the holidays coming up, or maybe they're listening in the midst of them, um, yeah, any final encouragement or advice for all that.

Danielle: Um, enjoy the season it is, it is designed to be enjoyed and it's okay to have a little bit of fun with it as well. And just, again, remember there is hope, there is joy and there is peace in this season. Um, and if you don't have any of that, you can, um, borrow some from me. You can borrow some from others in your life as well.

Um, but that is something to lean into during the season, um, regardless of what your circumstances are.

Joey: Again, if you want the guide five tips to navigate the holidays in a broken family, just go to restored ministry. com slash holidays, or click the link in the show notes again, that's restored ministry.

com slash holidays, or click the link in the show notes that wraps up this episode of this podcast has helped you feel free to subscribe or [00:50:00] follow us on apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, not only is it the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers that we have, the more the apps will actually suggest our show to people who are looking for help.

And it only takes a few seconds, but if you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We appreciate that feedback. And that also helps people find the podcast. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life and we're here to help.

And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

I Was Happier and Different Before the Divorce

2 minute read.

This story was written by Anonymous at 29 years old. Her parents divorced when she was 4. She gave permission for her story to be shared.

HER STORY

There was fighting, my mom struggled to keep up with us kids and the house. There were other men around (mentor types) who made my dad jealous, but he never communicated that. My dad got angry and wanted a divorce. He moved into an apartment and I remember him driving away, with my mom and I yelling after him. My dad brought us to live with my grandparents for a few months and my mom wasn’t allowed to see us except for an hour a week until she took my dad to court. She says she tried to see us more. I think my dad was at his wit’s end and needed help from my grandparents. It was a terrible idea to prevent my mom from seeing us, though. Very traumatic. I remember having a nightmare and not always having a good time. I even developed an allergy while there.

HOW THE DIVORCE MADE HER FEEL

Not good, though I can’t remember too much. My uncle said that something shut off in me. I was happier or different before it happened.

HOW THE DIVORCE IMPACTED HER

I have very low self-esteem and have trouble feeling like I have the friendships that I have. I have some friends, but at this point, I don’t feel too close to anyone, though I desire this. When dating, I am quite insecure with the person I’m with, which makes it hard to discern marriage with them. I feel insecure about changes in conversation and in my emotions while dating. I fear the person will leave and it will end. I am also attached to marriage too much perhaps and live in a fantasy world a bit about it, something that has helped me cope.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHOSE PARENTS JUST SEPARATED OR DIVORCED

If separated, it may be possible to save their marriage. I know of a Catholic ministry that has saved many marriages.

If things are more final, I would say pray, get close to God, volunteer, reach out to people. Talk about it!! There is nothing more helpful than talking about it with a person you know you can 100% trust. However, be sure to call them out on it and stand up for yourself and your experiences if they downplay the situation and gaslight.

---

Are you interested in sharing your story with Restored?  If so, click the button above. Sharing your story can help you begin healing. 

Be assured: Your privacy is very important to us. Your name and story will never be shared unless you give explicit permission.

#133: Digital Addiction: Why It Hurts You & How to Beat It

Technology certainly has benefits, but there are dangers as well. Sadly, our misuse of technology is causing us to be more depressed, more anxious, less happy, and less healthy than ever before. 

Perhaps worst of all, it destroys our ability to heal, grow, and build healthy relationships. In this episode, we dive into that with my guest, Andrew Laubacher, plus:

• Alarming data on how misusing tech is hurting us, especially young people

• How to build an intentional relationship with technology

• A novel yet simple solution to help you find freedom from digital addiction

Visit Humanality.org

Support Humanality

30-Day Digital Detox Challenge via Hallow

Get the Mini-Course: Why You Feel Broken

Get the Guide: 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

===

Joey: [00:00:00] How big is this problem?

Andrew: There was a study that just came out actually that surveyed teenagers and around 75 percent of them shared that they wish TOK never existed. I don't know anyone so far I've spoken to that's like, Hey, I want to be spending more time on my phone. Founders of Google and Instagram, Facebook, they don't give these products to their children.

Joey: What would you say to someone like that? Who's like, man, like I can't even consider giving up my smartphone. Like I live on the thing and I get, I'm so productive on it.

Andrew: When we talk about. Being moderate with our devices. It's like nurses going to high schools, telling students to moderate ecstasy. It's just, it's just not possible.

Joey: Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorce or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle. And build a better life. My guest today is Andrew Laubacher. Andrew is the executive director of Humanality, a movement, helping people overcome digital addiction and reclaim their humanity with degrees in theology and philosophy and a decade of experience as a [00:01:00] touring musician, he offers a unique global perspective on human connection as a national board certified health and wellness coach and personal trainer.

Andrew blends his expertise and wellbeing with Humanality's mission for humanity. Promoting balance technology use his innovative approach, empowers people to reconnect with authentic human experiences in the digital age. I'm really excited to have Andrew on the show. As you guys know, technology certainly has benefits, but there are dangers as well.

Sadly, our misuse of technology is causing us to be more depressed, more anxious. Less happy, less healthy than ever before. And perhaps worst of all, it's really destroying our ability to heal, grow, and build healthy relationships. And so in this episode, Andrew and I dive into that. Uh, he, we talk about the alarming data on how misusing tech is hurting us, especially young people, how tech addiction is perhaps the biggest barrier to achieving great hard things.

How to build an intentional relationship with technology is some awesome advice on that. And finally, he offers a novel yet simple solution to help you find freedom from. Digital [00:02:00] addiction. So if you have a smartphone or you watch screens, maybe more than you'd like, this episode is for you. Quick note. I apologize for the background noise due to a canceled flight.

Andrew actually had to speak with us from the Denver airport in the Delta airlines lounge. But I'm really glad that he did. Here's our chat. Welcome to show, man. So good to have you here.

Andrew: Hey, honored to be here. Thanks so much.

Joey: I'm going to talk about your apostolate, the work that you're doing. I, you know, it was checking out your website, obviously, and definitely impressed by what you're doing and just how well researched it is.

And just how, um, big of a problem this is. It's such a huge issue that we're all facing. And so I'm really excited to dive into the conversation where people aren't aware. Um, what problem are you guys trying to solve exactly?

Andrew: Yeah. So humanality exists to help people discover freedom through an intentional relationship with technology.

So. We are really helping people be more fully human and especially in regards to our phones and devices and TVs and tablets and, you know, the addiction regarding our phones and social media and gaming and, you know, pornography. We're, we're [00:03:00] addressing that problem, which is like the elephant in the room, you know, but the elephant's really in our pockets.

And it's affecting all of us in many different ways, but at this point in our society, we're really helping people get their lives back and get their time back.

Joey: So good. It's amazing. I know we'll get into this a little bit, but I've heard stories of people when they actually take a break from technology, they, yeah, like what comes of it.

So we'll get into that in a little bit. But I wanted to ask you the kind of maybe obvious question of why do you care about this? Like, you're a talented guy. You could be doing a lot of things. Like, why this?

Andrew: Yeah. At least in my own experience, I am a millennial, so I had half of my life, you know, without a phone and then kind of half my life with the phone and all the social media platforms.

And yeah, I got a, I got a smartphone in college 2010 and got on every, you know, social media platform. I mean, I was on my space and AOL and some messaging and, you know, all the early kind of things like that. You know, I had the razor dude and I thought it was like the coolest. Kid ever, but you know, as all these different platforms came out, I began to experience the addiction to all of [00:04:00] myself.

So just the comparison, the waste of time, the lust, and that just began to get just progressively worse in my life. I've been a musician pretty much most of my life. That's been my career the last 10 years. So playing music at, you know, conferences and retreats and had a band that traveled around the world playing music.

I was playing the game, you know, sharing all the. Places and people and flights and cool trips and I just noticed my own addiction to feeling good Getting more likes and yeah by 2018. I say I was addicted to all the platforms snapchat Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube and I personally was just getting tired of the struggle with lust and Comparison and waste of time and just feeling lesser like I should be in this different place Place at this stage of my life, you know or all my friends getting married off, you know and finding their person and I'm not so anyway 2018 I decided to delete all my social media and go to a flip phone and my record label and Management at the time was like that's a [00:05:00] horrible idea You know, like how are you gonna get gigs and events and I was like, dude, this stuff just is not making me happy And I deleted all of it, and that year, God took me all over the world, North America, all over Canada, South America, Europe, Jerusalem, all without social media, all with a flip phone, and it was just this moment of real freedom, like my relationships improved, I got my time back, my purity improved.

I was beginning to experience like surprises about things, you know, like about stuff happening in friends lives. They're like, Oh my gosh, I found out they had a baby, you know, and I didn't know. And, uh, we'll get to do this thing called like catching up with people, you know, like in person, you know? So, so anyway, that's, that's kind of where this all started for me.

Um, and I just noticed even while I was on the road, playing music, you know. In front of all these people, I saw the mental health epidemic unfolding before my eyes, and I began to be very passionate about healing. I've always been fascinated with [00:06:00] healing, pretty much since I was 21. Um, so for me, I wanted to help people.

And I just felt like music wasn't enough. Like when I was on stage playing, like I wanted more. And so I started studying nutrition and health and wellness and longevity and mental health and started to find You know, and this intersection with technology, I just began to see more and more. We're getting sicker and sicker as a society, almost, you know, on every on every front.

And I wanted to help people heal. And I noticed that technology was really affecting us in many different ways. So there's a lot more to the story, but that's kind of how I got interested in these topics. And to me, it really comes down to healing. How can I help, you know, people heal? I

Joey: love that. One of the things I love about your mission is that It gets to the root of so many other problems.

And I think that for so long in our culture, we've just been treating symptoms. And now you're, especially with this, like that's what we try to do here as well. You're going to the root. Talk about that.

Andrew: Yeah. Let me hit you first with just a little bit of the data. I'm kind of a [00:07:00] nerd. Um, so I'm going to hit you with the slew of stuff.

This is going to be a little overwhelming, but it's going to get to, this is obviously describing maybe the symptomology and then I can kind of share some Um, you know, changes we're looking to present to the world. Uh, children aged eight to 12 in the United States spend an average of four to six hours a day watching or using screens while teens spend up to nine hours a day on screens.

This is common sense media. That was 2019. So that number is actually even higher. Um, excessive screen time is associated with a 30 percent higher risk of anxiety, depression in adults. A study of 4, 520 adolescents found that those who spent more than seven hours a day on screens were twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety as those who use screens for an hour a day.

A 2021 study found that 210 million people worldwide suffer from social media addiction. Research shows that limiting social media to 30 minutes a day can lead to significant improvement in well being. I mean, there's an incredible amount of [00:08:00] information on, on gaming. Right now, in regards to pornography, 28, 258 users are watching pornography every second.

A study found that 64 percent of young adults aged 13 to 24 actively seek out pornography weekly or more. Um, and here's kind of a synthesis analysis. A study of 2, 587 adults found that problematic internet use, including social media, gaming, and pornography was associated with poor mental health, increased suicidal ideation, and decreased physical activity.

So, that's just some of the data. Obviously, this book by Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation has really been blowing up lately. You know, since the last 10 years, anxiety and depression have skyrocketed amongst teen girls and boys. 10 to 14 year old girls have experienced a quadrupling in, uh, self harm, directly correlating to this moment when the smartphone came out and the front facing screen.

So these are a lot of different problems, right? I don't think the technology piece is the answer to all of them. I'd say it's a [00:09:00] huge contributing factor, and all the data is pointing to that the more you're on these things, the worse mental health outcomes you experience. So our idea is, Hey, how can we help people get more human interaction, more face to face in person interaction, get outside, get sunlight, get moving and actually do this thing together, right?

Here's the bread and butter of humanality. This is a movement. So it's people doing this together right now. We're at, you know, six universities, over 300 students that are essentially giving up their smartphones and taking on dumb phones to be a part of this movement. And when you realize there's people that want to do this together, that's the game changer.

Um, there was a study that just came out and actually that surveyed teenagers and around 75 percent of them shared that they wish Instagram and tech talk never existed. So we're actually giving young people the opportunity to opt out of this social contagion of. This need to belong via social media platforms and allowing them to reintegrate their friendships, their purity, [00:10:00] get their time back.

And it's already been incredible. We're only in our second year as an organization, but the testimonies coming in are just amazing.

Joey: Wow, man. So good. And how big is this problem? Would you say like, obviously all those. Stats show the seriousness of it and mind blowing, honestly. We'll, we'll make sure to link all that in the show notes, but my goodness.

Um, how big is this problem?

Andrew: I mean, it's definitely universal. So there's 2 billion people on the planet that have smartphones. I don't know anyone so far. I've spoken to that's like, Hey, I want to be spending more time on my phone. I also have never heard anyone after they scroll Instagram for like four hours, be like, wow, my life is incredible.

Everything is so great in the world. And I'm just so looking forward to this day. You know, I mean, I just, those aren't the things that people experience. And we have to understand that these different tech You know, gurus, different founders of Google and Instagram, Facebook, they don't give these products to their children.

So Steve jobs was interviewed in a 2010 interview. I was asked, how are your kids enjoying the new iPad? [00:11:00] He said, we don't give it to them. We limit their technology. And here's the also funny part. All these guys are Schmidt from Google. Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Tok, all these guys went to Waldorf schools, which are zero to low technology schools.

So, and that's where they send their kids as well. So, you kind of know something's off when the guys creating these products aren't giving it to their children. And they themselves created these products from a place of growing up without them. So, we're really helping people. One, understand that these platforms are addictive.

It's actually behavioral addiction. Um, and we don't use that word flippantly, right? It's actually, uh, dopaminergic neurological wiring that's happening. And they've essentially exploited the human brain in such a way that we constantly feel that pull, right? The average American is checking their device, just looking about 352 times a day, that's almost every two minutes and 45 seconds.

Uh, some other numbers are even worse. Um, so [00:12:00] there's a reason you can't stop checking, right? Two major mechanisms they're using social approval and intermittent positive feedback. So a lot of these companies went to the slot machines of Las Vegas and actually, you know, looked at how they utilized intermittent positive feedback to create You know, greater dopamine responses to keep you coming back for more.

So that's your Instagram, your Facebook, your, you know, Snapchat, Tik TOK, but then even just the idea of communication, I mean, pretty much everyone constantly is checking email, text, phone calls. I mean, there's never a point where it disconnected. So. Once we help create boundaries once we help educate people on how these technologies are addictive and actually this is their attention you kind of build up this rebellious anger of like you know what when i don't like being used.

And i don't like my time being monetized for money i mean really your engagement and attention into these platforms is what's being monetized are not free at they're not free actually [00:13:00] cost you a lot. If your screen time here's, here's my thing. My screen time was average five hours and 30 minutes with no social media.

I was just looking at the weather channel app, you know what I mean? Just to distract myself, you know what I mean? And my Delta app, just see how many points I had five and a half hours times, seven days a week, you know, times 365 days a year times the next 20 years. It came up to, you know, over four and a half years of my life are going to be spent on the screen.

Now, if your average American is on a screen seven to nine hours a day, I mean, we're talking over ten years of your life, you're going to look back, and it's going to be spent on the screen. And I remember looking at that number, and just not wanting to entertain that reality. I wanted to choose a different path.

And That's really what we're inviting people into a new way of living while utilizing the good of technology. So we're not anti smartphone, we're not anti technology, I'm speaking to you on a computer in the Delta Club in Wi Fi, you know. But we have to understand that this didn't just happen, like this, this [00:14:00] wasn't just by chance, this is, this is by design.

And, um, there's many different physiological, social, emotional, spiritual implications that, um, humanality is really addressing as a whole.

Joey: So good. So much I want to comment on, but one of the things you made me think of is in one of our past episodes we had Dr. John Bishop on and he, um, was talking about how there's really three, um, somewhat recent revolutions that have really, in some ways, damaged the human person.

There's been some good things that have come out of them, but they've damaged the human person. They've hurt our ability to love and hurt like families and. And he talked about obviously industrial revolution, how that kind of took, you know, men and some women away from their families and away from like a farming lifestyle.

Then from there came the sexual revolution, of course, which had so many devastating effects on love, on marriage, you know, relationships, all that. And then finally, the one he pointed to, which I don't think is talked about enough. That's why I like the work that you're doing is the digital revolution. How that's like just upended so much of our culture and cause so many problems.

And so I love that you guys are talking about this. [00:15:00] I also, I was thinking about how you said that, you know, all these guys who've created these platforms and who are very successful businessmen are not, you know, doing the things that they're trying to get us to do. It's fascinating. I remember hearing from James Clear, the author of atomic habits.

He was in one of his like emails. I get this, he was talking about how, you know, a lot of people have their best ideas in the shower. And he's like, for a lot of people, that's the only time they're away from their screen. So it's like, it's amazing what your brain can do and how like productive you can be when you're away from it.

And the final thing I was going to say is I remember, um, studying in Austria, you know, going to Franciscan university, going over to Austria. And for anyone who's not familiar, we have this awesome study abroad program. where we go for like, you know, semester three, four months. And we're literally there on this, like in the foothills of the Alps and at this old Carthusian monastery that's been converted into a hotel.

And it's just like 180 of us. And, um, now it's a little bit different, but back in the day, we didn't have any smartphones. And it was like, you maybe had it done for maybe, and that was it. And so obviously we're using our laptops and computers to get schoolwork done. But then when we would [00:16:00] travel, we had nothing.

And it was so, so freeing. Like some of the most peaceful, happiest times in my life were there. And then my time in Italy. And so, yeah, I, I've tasted it and it's so good. And I think like so many people feel that, uh, this is just the way our culture is. And we can't really overcome it. What would you say to someone like that?

Who's like, man, like I can't even consider giving up my smartphone. Like I live on the thing and I get, I'm so productive on it. Like, what would you say to that objection?

Andrew: Yeah, so many things. But, um, I was just thinking briefly, Cal Newport in his book, digital minimalism says that we weren't wired to be constantly wired.

Like there's just not how we were designed. Um, and just, To your point about the shower, like we don't really have any space away from these platforms, uh, and it is affecting our capacity to think, to reflect, to be creative. Actually, boredom is one of the most incredible places that you can begin to be creative.

And I think there's a creativity crisis in our culture right now. [00:17:00] So yeah, to the people that are so addicted, most people are willing to admit they're totally addicted. So I've haven't met anyone. That's like, you know what? My smartphone is so amazing. It's doing everything. I don't actually struggle with being on it at all.

I have perfect control of it. I mean, I actually haven't spoken to one person that's ever said that. If that is the case, and, you know, maybe they're, you know, convinced that, uh, this is the only way forward, I would just say, you know, really ask the question, like, is this the best way you could, you know, spend your time because while there is incredible, like apps like Lyft, like a random person can come pick you up and take it, like, that's an incredible technology.

Um, I know most people aren't just using, you know, the phones for these incredible tools. Uh, they're also getting caught up, you know, scrolling on. On YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and Twitter. So again, it's very difficult because the, the tool, the phone has been so mixed with incredible tools.

Most of our society now doesn't even have menus at a restaurant, [00:18:00] right? You have to use a QR code where we're actually, it's getting very difficult to live without these platforms. So here's the only difference. It's very difficult to talk about the moderation conversation again, because this tool is largely addictive.

So. Abigail Schreier says, you know, and speaking of this moderation thing, this is what I just, I hear a lot of like, well, just be moderate with your technology, you know, she says that when we talk about being moderate with our devices, it's like nurses going to high schools, telling students to moderate ecstasy.

It's just, it's just not possible. You know, you'd never give an alcoholic a beer and tell them to moderate it. The issue is. Is that we have these addictive things in our pockets in our hands at all times. It's literally an appendage now That we can't live without so it's not like you can really fully detox from the thing because you just need it at all times so yeah for most people I think the answer to the You know, productivity.

I don't, I don't think I can get off this thing. I mean, I would one just say, yes, it is incredibly productive. Um, but [00:19:00] maybe are there places with your relationship with your device and social media that you're finding are unhealthy or toxic? And I guarantee you, every person is going to say yes. So we're here to help.

How do we help get those toxic places with our relationship with our devices out and kind of get back to a more healthy place? And to be honest, I don't know. At this point with how toxic social media platforms are, if there is a healthy place. Now that's a hot take.

Joey: If you feel broken, understanding why is the first step to healing.

Our free mini course called Why You Feel Broken features five short videos by a trauma therapist answering key questions such as, what is trauma? How does it affect your body, your mind, your emotions, and your relationships? It'll help you diagnose what's wrong so you can begin to heal and build. a better life.

Get the free mini course at restored ministry. com slash broken, or just click the link in the show notes. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I remember when we were in Indianapolis, when I met you for the first time, you showed me your dumb phone. I was the wise [00:20:00] phone or light phone. And, um, and it was kind of impressive actually how like, New looking they are, they're not the phones from the nineties or early 2000.

So I was impressed with that. But the few things I would throw out there, in addition to everything you just said, would be, you know, doubling down on what you said, if someone said, you know, saying that their phone makes them so productive and their life so easy and everything like that, which I think there's a lot of truth to it.

Um, but at what costs you said that really well, then the other thing is, is it the only way, like you said, you can do a lot of this stuff on your computer. And then what if, you know, you could actually be more productive. Without your phone, which I think, you know, you, you quoted, uh, Cal Newport and I forget the name of his new book, but it's, I think it's slow, slow productivity.

It's like that, that idea that, you know, anything great that you can produce in your life is going to come through a lot of like focused, deliberate work that, you know, doesn't involve distractions, maybe some healthy breaks,

Andrew: but

Joey: it's like, good luck. If your attention span is worse than a goldfish, like you're not going to be able to build anything great in your life.

And it's going to, there's going to be a [00:21:00] lot of other struggles that come from that.

Andrew: Yeah, no, I mean, it's kind of the whole funny thing I've been discovering that even when I deleted all my social media, I mean, I really actually felt withdrawal symptoms that first week and two weeks, like actually anxious, feeling left out the FOMO, the whole, the whole thing, you know, which again, they know, this is how we feel.

This is why young people can't get out of this. Um, they feel stuck, you know, cause all their friends are on it and when they get off of it alone or their parents are forcing them. Yeah, they feel very alone. Um, but yeah, county reports book is incredible because he goes through a list of, uh, you know, inventors, creators, businessmen, I mean, really anything worth building just takes like 20 plus years, you know, and right now this is what I'm calling the instification of everything.

So I think again, our habits and our day to day. Um, decisions really do impact our thinking and behavior. So in regards to our Instagram and Facebook and Tik TOK, like watching influencers and watching them share [00:22:00] every meal and everything they think and everything they do and every time they go to the bathroom and whatever, like.

This is warping our view of reality. Um, So the idea is, okay, I can get rich and famous instantly and go viral. Uh, this is what, like the number one thing young people want to be is an influencer. Like, that's very alarming to me. Um, because that isn't real life and it's mostly people projecting false illusions, you know, and this is like the part of the difficulty is like a lot of people are, you know, desiring to do so many good things.

You know, via the internet, via these different, you know, websites. Um, I think it's just missing the mark in so far as that you have to become obsessed with how many people are following you, you know, everything's about a reaction video to what this person said, we're, we're losing actually authentic friendships.

We're losing actually real in person communication. Uh, Dr. Cardoris talks about this in his book, digital madness. And Nicholas Carr talks about in his book, um, the shallows, how we're actually [00:23:00] losing our capacity for what's called spectrum or critical thinking. So these platforms are actually making us dumber, like our IQ is going down, but actually one of the main indicators of success.

In many different realms is actually creativity, and I would say our creativity is actually going along down along with that with our IQ. So my point being to really do anything fulfilling, uh, we're in a meaning crisis. We're in a loneliness epidemic. Uh, the surgeon general has shared. We're in a loneliness epidemic.

The surgeon general has shared that, you know, we need to have warning labels on our social media platforms.

Joey: Wow.

Andrew: Um, because this stuff is making us. Sick and really anything worth doing in life, I believe takes a really long time and it's slow and it's painful. Like even just building this organization, you know, it's like, this is an incredible undertaking that is not instant.

And it's probably going to take the next 40 years to really unpack for the world. What I want to unpack for the world. Um, And along with that, um, I think it's pretty [00:24:00] clear that at this point in time, the experiments gone horribly wrong. So, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have this data, right? But now we do.

And it's like, well, what do we do moving forward? I don't think the influencer model, you know, creating a culture of consumption and obsession with self is healthy. And we're really interested in helping humans flourish. I'd say humanity is more of a wellness movement. Yeah. We actually don't even call ourselves a ministry.

We're actually just a movement for humans. So it doesn't matter if you're religious or where you land on the political spectrum, everyone is asking the question, how do I be more human? 90 percent of our time is now spent indoors with 10 percent of that time being outside. A hundred years ago, that was completely the opposite.

You know, we're not getting enough sunlight. We're not getting enough movement. Uh, we're eating highly ultra processed food. 60 percent of the American diet is ultra processed food. Almost 70 percent of our society is, you know, overweight or obese. These are a multiplicity of issues coming together that within our calling them villages at our universities, because [00:25:00] it's this idea of how do you get back to your local village?

Again, we were talking about that omnipresence idea. I can't really do much about all the wars around the world, but I can go help that person down the street that just like needs someone to say hello and maybe needs food. Or I can call that friend, you know, that I know is struggling and instead of just liking their picture, I actually, I think I could call them and actually check in and see how they're doing, you know.

There's people like literal neighbors next door. That need a hello, that need a hi. Like I've lived in a lot of different places and I'm sad to say I've barely known my neighbors. So with globalization, with all of its benefits and amazing attributes, again, it's making us lonelier than ever and unhappier than ever before.

And so really the things we're proposing in the club, which we can get into maybe our, uh, solutions that we're proposing are actually to help people heal physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. I mean, it's the whole person and it's, and it's literally applicable to every human. Um, so that's, what's so exciting about.[00:26:00]

Um, our work and i'm also a national board certified health and wellness coach. So i'm very passionate about behavior change. I love you quoted the, uh, atomic habits. Um, but i'm very interested in virtue and i'm very interested in those questions, you know, like what does it mean to be happy? What does it mean to live a life worth living?

So anyway, those are some of the things I'm, I'm interested in.

Joey: So good, man. I love that. Yeah. Let's get into the solution. Um, for you, I'm just curious if you'd add anything about like young people who come from broken families in particular. I know we've talked a lot about kind of where technology leads us when it comes to like anxiety, depression, tension, span, all those different things that we talked about.

What do you think is driving at least for these young people from broken families, their use of technology as an escape?

Andrew: Yes, there is a 20 percent increase in low income communities on all platforms and all gaming platforms. So yeah, single mom, three kids. I mean, the, you know, the phone and tech is, is a pacifier, you know, and it's hard to blame these.

You know, families that are having to, you know, [00:27:00] to do this, but man, I mean, I pretty much lived my life in airports and it is wild when you walk around how many young, young kids are just glued to a screen, you know, and there's an incredible amount of data showing that this is affecting their, their hardware, right?

Their, their brains, their communication skills, their emotional recognition skills. So it definitely is affecting younger populations, especially low income families. Uh, More and it's a problem. I mean, it's actually creating these bigger disparities because the more wasted time they experience on these devices, the less they're engaging reality, the less they're building skill sets, the less they're, you know, able to engage in their schoolwork and actually finish, you know, homework and projects.

So it's a real issue. And the whole idea that, you know, every kid needs technology in a phone or iPad, you know, to be successful in this day and age, it's a complete lie. I mean, Jonathan Hyde's been talking about this. Yeah, again, Dr. Cardares, Anna Lemke, her book, Dopamination. I mean, there's a slew of PhDs, MDs, [00:28:00] um, that are sounding the alarm that, you know, the idea that every kid needs to have an iPad with full access to the internet is going to help them succeed.

It's actually the complete opposite.

Joey: No, it's a real problem. And that's why the work you're doing is so important. Uh, what are you guys offering? What's the solution to this whole mess we're in?

Andrew: Yes, this is the good news part. So I'm excited about this because it gets, it's dark, dude. I mean, it's even worse than what we just talked about sadly with, you know, how children are getting exploited, you know, the sex trafficking, pornography.

Um, it's really, really bad. And so our solution is pretty radical. And I think Jonathan Heights book is great, but I don't think it goes far enough. And, um, I think he's just a little too soft. To be honest, so our, you know, proposition right now to college students, which we realize we're late, right? We realize that at that point, you know, we need to go further upstream to really help, you know, young people heal.

But at the university level, these kids can make the decision. They get to decide. To give it their smartphone, take on a dumb phone. And we've just found that, you know, students are doing this together, are [00:29:00] so excited to opt out of the matrix, you know? So, uh, you join a humanity village at one of our six locations, you can get a light phone or a wise phone.

You go through a 30 day detox that we have together. Um, which again is going diving into all the data, little challenges throughout. And then during, during the year, every month we have, you know, a meeting where we've synthesized multidisciplinary fields on technology and mental health, spiritual health, physical health.

Um, so we're unpacking all the data of what is doing to us, our attention spans, our social connections, our dating life, our, you know, everything. Right. So once a month they meet, they dive into the data and then we're giving them like phone free experiences. So they're going on phone free hikes and having phone free bonfire nights.

And creating new games just without their phones. Like, uh, one of our groups at Aave just had a cookout night and they just literally went and cooked food and grilled meat without their phones. It sounds hilarious how simple this is, but it's like, uh, [00:30:00] there was one group I was talking to, you know, that was sharing like some young guys, you know, they're going through this detox and they're like, we literally don't know what to do.

So. Young people actually don't know what to do when they aren't engaging in some of these technologies. So we have a slew of challenges that students take on and they get to choose their mode. Okay, so this is like the humanality modes. You join the club, you can be in human mode. Rebel mode or savage mode so human mode you go grayscale you keep your smartphone you take off all addictive apps you just have maybe podcast maps banking very basic.

Rebel mode you go to a light phone or a wise phone you can still have some of your social media platforms on your computer. But again, just that little bit of friction from it not being in your pocket is just going to decrease your chances to just endlessly scroll on it. Um, then you've got super rebel mode, which is just a light phone, wise phone, no social media accounts, um, and everything is done on your computer.

And then savage mode is [00:31:00] just choosing one device. I mean, we had some students that did this, they went no cell phone and just used a computer laptop, you know, which sounds so wild now, but it's funny. Like that's how most people lived for millions of years. Yeah, like this is actually more human and these students are thriving.

So you pick a mode and then you have a monthly phone challenge and a monthly wellness challenge with the community. So for example, monthly phone challenge, no phone at meals. Say you look at the phone three hours at each of those meals, right? You add that up by the end of the year, it's close to 70 something days.

So if you just don't look at your phone at three meals every day, you get 71 days of your life back. So last year, just with all the, you know, the events that students did in their clubs, they got about an average of 144 hours back from their lives, just. And so, yeah, at the end of the year, you know, we bring in a speaker each semester as well to speak on the topic.

And then at the end of the year, the Humanality Club throws a concert for the whole [00:32:00] school with the cost of admission being your phone. So you just act to experience music without a screen. So students are, I mean, they're literally having like transformative experiences. Experiences so you have to realize like this generation now grew up on the smartphone.

So they're learning how to interact. They're learning how to flirt and go on a date. And I mean literally like learning how to ask people out in person. You know, they're learning how to do new things. Like there's a guy in our club that was addicted to YouTube got off YouTube and he realized and I want to emphasize this point in a moment.

He realized that he had the desire to learn to sing and play guitar. And now he's like playing events and learn how to sing. And like, that's exactly what I love. I really believe humanity is going to help people get their time back. Their lives back. We're going to have the newest, best artists, authors, physicians, lawyers, teachers.

They're going to come out of these clubs, um, looking very different from their generation. Because [00:33:00] they're going to be more human and being more fully human, they're going to be happier. And we also have some fun like sauna challenges and cold plunge challenges and circadian challenges where you have to watch the sunrise and sunset and not let the screen be the first thing your eyes see, but actual morning sunlight.

So we're incorporating a lot of wellness principles too. And yeah, right now we're, you know, in six universities, we have a waiting list of high schools and we're just kind of about to take off. We're just kind of in this process of Preparation, you know, kind of period here, gathering all the data and getting ready to, to blast out the world.

The funny thing is you probably don't know this is happening because we're not on any social media platforms. So that's part of the gift of podcast and I actually love podcasts. Long form podcasts are amazing. Um, I myself was addicted to podcasts as well. So I had to actually find that balance as well of like I was listening to too much good information.

I would say i'm a recovering addict of information. So in my car rides, it was filled with [00:34:00] podcast and my workouts is filled with podcasts and my flights is filled with pocket. I'd say even good things, all good things. Um, so I've even had to found my own new methods moving forward to not be constantly consuming information.

And miss out on information and that's been extremely healing for myself. But anyway, that's a little bit of what is happening in the clubs. Um, and students are responding in an incredible way.

Joey: So good. I'm sure there's so many benefits. Um, what are kind of the biggest benefits you've seen? And if someone wants to jump into this, what's the first step?

If you're from a divorced or broken family, the holidays can be so stressful and challenging, you know that. Pressure to choose between parents, being reminded of your family's brokenness, especially if you've been living out of the house or at school, and just feeling a bit lost and alone in navigating it all.

Thankfully, you're not alone. Our free guide, 5 Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family, offers really practical advice that you won't hear anywhere else, a worksheet to plan out your time with your parents, super helpful, and even a copy paste template you can edit for communicating with your parents [00:35:00] through messages or even a call.

Most of all, the guide helps you feel less alone and more in control when the holidays hit. You can get the free guide@restoredministry.com slash holidays or just click the link in the show notes.

Andrew: Yeah, so if you're at one of our six schools, if you're at, um, Christendom Ave, Maria Franciscan University, university of Dallas, Benedictine, or tac, you can join a club there if you want.

Start a club at your university. You can be totally secular this again. This is not a religious political thing Anyone can start a humanality village at your university So if you want to do that just reach out to us from our website Humanality org and we'll help you start a club, but really If you just find a few people that want to do this together, that's, that's really all it takes you would be amazed.

I mean, average year one of humanity villages starting was 40 plus students. Like we're all in, you know, um, we've had as much as 60 students in one of our villages around the country. So really, if you're at one of those universities, Join, [00:36:00] and if you want to start one at your own university, there's nothing stopping you.

There's no startup fees. You essentially create the club and you fundraise. Each club fundraise for what they want to experience, whether they want to fund the phones, Humanity merch, the speaker, the concert at the end of the year, other phone free activities. You got, you know, they get to fundraise and they create the experiences they want.

So that's a great place to start. And then I'd say for the general population, um, we're going to have some resources for them as well, probably in the next couple of months. But the best thing you can do right now is probably go through our 30 day digital detox with HALO. Uh, which everyone always is like, Oh, that's an app.

What do you do it? You know, and my answer again is we are not opposed to technology. HALO is not trying to addict you through social approval and intermittent positive feedback. We are happy with our partnership with them and in the coming weeks, we're going to have a 30 day digital detox, uh, you can go through with hallow.

So I'd point people there and that's going to walk you through all the data, [00:37:00] all the hacks, all the ways to move forward. And I, and I mean, I know people say this about a lot of other things, but this is so particularly true to this movement. I literally believe this is going to change your life because your life comes down to time and attention.

And right now our time and attention is being sucked into the abyss. When you get your time and attention back, it's going to change your life, you know, and here's the thing, my life hasn't gotten any easier once I've gotten off of these technologies. My life is still difficult in many ways, but I think my capacity to be resilient and have incredible friendships, have a prayer life, exercise, sleep, the average American is losing 30 minutes of sleep per night.

That's largely due to the invention of the light bulb, but also social media and our devices. I mean, life doesn't just get easier all of a sudden because I got off of Instagram, but it does actually become incredibly more fulfilling. So I just want to invite people. I know this is scary. This is terrifying for most humans to think about not being on these platforms.[00:38:00]

And even if you get amazing information, because there are incredible pieces of information, all these platforms. The detriment along with it, I think outweighs the good. And even if you just take a break, maybe this isn't what you have to do the rest of your life. Go on a 30 day detox. Maybe go to a light phone for a year.

Like what's one year of your life going to look like if you just went to life and like do a scientific experiment and just see what happens if you want to go back to your smartphone later and go back to all your social media platforms, do it, but just give it a chance. Like, don't look at the news, which I know is really difficult during this time in our society, but imagine just not going on the news for 30 days.

Here's what I found that was super interesting when I didn't go on the news for 30 days. The world kept happening, like reality didn't like just explode into oblivion, you know, like life kept happening, you know, and I knew what was happening in my environment and my village and I was happier for it. So, um, I hope that [00:39:00] encourages people.

There's a huge fear aspect to this of missing out, not having real connections, being lonelier. I've experienced the complete opposite and most people will too. You really have to take that leap of faith, but find someone to deal with. And two major predictors of actually long term sustained behavior change is your environment and accountability and the humanity club.

You get both your environment is now a group of people. That are opting out of this norm of being on these platforms and you have accountability. So maybe go through this 30 day detox with hollow, you know, with your family, with your coworkers, with your friends, we're also going to have stuff available for anyone soon, but yeah, that would be my encouragement moving forward is.

Take a leap of faith, like just do a scientific experiment and see what happens.

Joey: So good, man. Thank you so much for being here. I, I just love the work you're doing and I'm excited to promote it to our audience. I, um, yes, when you were speaking, just all I could think of is like, this is such a barrier to doing, building marriage, building, like, Date, like whatever this stands is such a huge barrier.

So I love the work [00:40:00] you're doing. I love how simple it is. And I love how yeah, novel too. I think it's simple and novel at the same time, which is a hard thing to pull off. So well done, man, really appreciate you and the work you're doing, your wealth of information too. This has been awesome. Again, everyone, I invite you to check out humanality.

org. We'll link to that in the show notes and yeah, just want to give you final last word, like what final encouragement or advice would you offer to everyone listening, especially if they feel maybe a bit. Heavy or the weight of what we've spoken about and even discourage any just kind of spoke to that but any final words of wisdom

Andrew: yeah i'd say don't be afraid to heal and i really think what these technologies have done to us we have to be willing to enter into a healing process and that's painful and i'll never forget i was playing an event with my band in west point.

This navy seal ranger dude, whatever, you know, eight kids been to war three times was driving me my band at the airport and he just said something I'll never forget. He said, if you seek comfort, you will deprive yourself of self knowledge. So I'd say one of the things that these devices have done to us, which is really sad, is that we're, we're escaping [00:41:00] our embodied reality and self to see someone else's.

And I would just encourage people that you're worth getting to know. Like get to know yourself in a place of solitude and discover what silence does to you. It's incredibly difficult to get to know yourself and love yourself and your neighbor and God. But I would encourage you to go on that healing journey.

And instead of escaping our emotions and our difficulties, um, to face them. And it's easier said than done. But, uh, the healing process is so worth it. And Dr. Bob Schuetz says that, you know, hurt people hurt people. Heal people heal people and i want to be part of seeing humanity heal i think we need a healing movement i think humanity is it so i just want to encourage people to not be afraid to heal and make some difficult decisions with our relationship with tech.

And you're going to experience healing, and it's going to be amazing.

Joey: That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe or follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or [00:42:00] wherever you listen to podcasts. Not only is that the best way to not miss future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will show our show to people who are looking for help, and it only takes a few seconds.

If you've already done that, feel free to review or rate the show. That also helps us reach other people, and we appreciate that feedback. And in closing, always remember, you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life, and we're here to help. And keep in mind the words of C.

S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#132: Why Your Wounds & Subconscious Are Ruling Your Life | Dr. Gregory Bottaro

Carl Jung once said, “Unless you make the subconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” 

In this episode, Dr. Greg Bottaro explains why our untreated wounds and our subconscious rule our lives, often without us knowing it. We also discuss:

• How his parents’ divorce impacted him and how he found tremendous healing

• Dr. Bottaro answers your questions, such as:

• How do you heal?

• How do I overcome my extreme fear of marriage and intimacy?

• How can you reconcile and build a strong relationship with parents who’ve been blind for years to the harm their divorce caused for me and my siblings?

• And many more questions related to healing, relationships, your parents, helping others, and even your relationship with God.

• What exactly are abuse and narcissism?

• A NEW resource that’s an alternative to therapy

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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Joey: [00:00:00] How do you heal, especially from the trauma of your parents divorce?

Dr. Bottaro: We're healed in relationship. So we need relationships. No, no process of healing can happen outside of relationship. And ultimately, it's the relationship with God, which is the foundation for all healing.

Joey: How do I overcome my extreme fear of marriage and intimacy?

Dr. Bottaro: I was so afraid of it that I thought I had a vocation to religious life, and I became a Franciscan friar for three and a half years. Well, what, I mean, nothing in our culture is teaching people that. It's good to stick with things that you want to quit. It's like literally every other part of culture is telling you, like, if you don't want to do something, don't do it.

Joey: How do you differentiate between like abuse and maybe just misbehavior?

Dr. Bottaro: Not having boundaries becomes the opposite of love.

Joey: Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panrello. If you come from a divorce or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that [00:01:00] cycle and build a better life. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr.

Greg Bataro. He's a Catholic psychologist, founder of the Catholic Psych Institute and creator of the Catholic Psych Model of Applied Personalism as a mentorship program that you're going to hear about in this show, he's passionate about integrating Catholic philosophy and theology. with relevant psychology currently lives in Connecticut with his wife, Barbara and their seven children.

Carl Jung once said that unless you make the subconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. In this episode, Dr. Pitaro explains why are untreated wounds. And our subconscious rule our lives often without us even knowing it. We also discuss how his parents divorce really impacted him and how he found tremendous healing.

We discussed the three factors present in all healing. Dr. Pitaro answers your questions. Questions you guys have submitted, such as how do I heal? How do I overcome my extreme fear? of marriage and intimacy. How can, you know, I reconcile and build a strong relationship with my parents who've been blind for years [00:02:00] to the harm that their divorce caused me and my siblings and many more questions related to healing, relationships, your parents, helping others and even your relationship with God.

We also discuss what exactly are abuse and narcissism and he mentions a new resource that's an alternative to therapy. Now, in this conversation, we do talk about God and faith, and if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Everyone knows that this is not a strictly religious podcast, and so wherever you're at, I'm glad you're here.

But if you don't believe in God, my challenge to you is this, just listen with an open mind. Even if you're to skip or take out the God parts, you're still going to get a lot out of this episode. With that, here's our conversation. Dr. Pitar, so good to have you on the show. Welcome. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

It's always a pleasure to speak with a fellow Italian as well. And I know this, um, this topic itself is really near and dear to your heart. If I remember right, you were 17 years old when your parents divorced. To whatever degree you're comfortable sharing what happened and how did that experience impact you?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah. I mean, I was, uh, raised in a, an Italian family. We were [00:03:00] Catholic, you know, in name and in some practice. But, you know, that Italian dimension of family was really like driven home so deeply. And, you know, it was like dinner at Nana's on Sunday was, was definitely like a priority, a place of prevalence of priority over like, I mean, we went to mass, but if the two were ever in conflict, like there's a clear winner, which would win.

So. You know, I was without really realizing it, I had built a foundation on family and there is obviously that's a good thing, but it's not eternal and it's not the same kind of thing as the faith and then it's also subject to the imperfections of this world. And when my parents got divorced. It really cracked the whole foundation on which my family and identity and sense of self was built.

And so, I mean, I'm sure on some level that's gonna be the case for everybody, uh, you know, in some way. But in a very particular way for me, it felt like a real ground shaking, [00:04:00] earth shattering, foundation cracking kind of moment. And, you know, they, they fought for, my parents were trying to work it out for like probably eight years, I think they say.

Um, all through high school, I know they were in therapy, they were trying to figure stuff out, but then, you know, my senior year of high school, I was getting ready to leave for college and that's when they basically said, you know, that's that's we're done with it. We're not trying anymore. Um, you know, so I went off to college and in a lot of ways, when people are trying to find out who they are.

You know, in that new, a new environment, new world, like I was doing that on a whole different level, um, because I was also figuring out how to make sense of the foundation on everything I had, what it meant for that to be cracked. And so I think for me, the real grace, and this was the year 2000 and it was, you know, the Jubilee year.

John Paul II had, had called it the Jubilee year and, and, uh, there was, I just think a significant grace for me to recognize the truth of what the church [00:05:00] teaches above and beyond what my experience of it had been. So, in other words, you know, I think a lot of people. have bad experiences of the church or church teaching or, you know, traumas and wounds and imperfections.

And certainly there's plenty of examples of representatives of the church misrepresenting the church. Uh, and then people have wrong ideas or bad ideas and bad tastes in their mouth about what, what faith is, what religion is for, for whatever reason. I just had this grace to realize it was, it was because my family was not following The principles of the faith that I was suffering so much, and it was through reading this book by John Paul to love and responsibility.

And I read the beautiful articulation of what Catholic marriage is supposed to be. And it made sense of all the pain that I was feeling. Because it's not what my parents were living. It's not what they were promoting. It's not what we were being raised with. And it wasn't what we were being taught. So there was that clear juxtaposition [00:06:00] of this really beautiful ideal and beautiful vision of what to live for and why marriage can make sense.

That it sort of corrected my direction and it actually healed the pain that I was suffering. Wow.

Joey: Incredible. I, um, I can relate so much to your story. And one question I had, did the divorce come as a surprise to you? Like when they broke the news to you, were you pretty shocked or did you see it coming?

Dr. Bottaro: I mean, it's kind of both, like on one hand, cause I, cause I said that they were fighting so much.

They had spent some time, like we had a, a summer place that was at the shore. And, you know, my mom would spend a lot more time there in the summer. And then, you know, my dad would come down on weekends and stuff, but it was like, there's, they're taking some time being apart. Um, and so then when they finally sat us down to tell us what was happening, part of it was not surprising part of it though.

It's like, I don't know, that conversation is a splash of water in the face. That's like, I don't know that, I actually anticipated that happening.

Joey: Okay, no, it makes sense. And, uh, I [00:07:00] know different people react differently to that, but there's some research I've seen that says, um, situations where it's a surprise, like a low conflict marriage, divorce, are actually the most traumatic.

So that's kind of why I was wondering. But you mentioned love and responsibility, the book Love and Responsibility. Um, I've heard you say that that was, yeah, a healing medicine after your parents divorce, like you just said. Aside from just the vision of marriage, the beautiful ideal that you mentioned, were there any other like main takeaways or main points that were the most helpful in healing for you?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, I think in general, it gave me the sense that like a Catholic philosophical approach could make sense of a lot of things that humans experience. It was, it was this real eyeopening recalibration of like, okay, there is actually a book. You know, and people are like, Oh, nobody wrote a book about it or whatever, like parenting or whatever.

It's like, Oh no, there's actually a book, like you can read stuff that makes sense and makes sense of what you're trying to figure out or struggling through. And just having that hope, having that clarity, it's like, when you [00:08:00] realize that everything you've been taught is a lie, but then in the same, Six months somebody hands you the book with all the answers.

It's this incredible salve that is just yeah It was that healing for me that I was like, okay, I'm gonna be okay Like I'll be able to figure this out still

Joey: so good What would you say aside from that book was was most healing for you and the years following the divorce?

Dr. Bottaro: Friendship. I had a really good friend who was part of my youth group.

And then was at, he was at St. John's seminary in Boston. I was at Boston college. Uh, so my friend Colin was, um, we hung out all the time, you know, we'd talk. It's very philosophical. We'd have very deep philosophical conversation. He ended up leaving the seminary. I transferred to Steubenville and then he, he also transferred to Steubenville.

Um, and then at Steubenville, I had a, you know, a lot of flourishing of friendship. That was really life giving. Um, also really good mentorship. I had Peter Kreeft at Boston College. And um, I took [00:09:00] three classes with him. As soon as I knew I was transferring, I just ditched my advisor. And I ditched the course pack.

And I was like, I'm just taking as much as Peter Kreeft has available with us a year while I'm here before I transfer to Steubenville. And I just got to know him. Um, he gave me a lot of really good mentorship and direction. As I was a budding reversion and then getting to Steubenville, obviously a lot of good, you know, good professors.

They're really solid mentorship there. Uh, so yeah, I would say friendship and mentorship and, and then, yeah, just God's grace leading me and, you know, had certain retreat experiences, prayer experiences, just all of it attributed to his grace that he was leading me through all of that at that time.

Joey: Beautiful. I love it. That's so interesting. Like we see this theme throughout, like when we're exposed to good content, you know, like love and responsibility. Dr. Kreef's courses, um, when we're surrounded with good people coaching us in our life, mentors, you know, spiritual doctor, therapists, perhaps. Um, and we have community, like friendships, people who, you know, we're loving on and they're loving us.

Um, that's really such a [00:10:00] good recipe for flourishing. Would you anything else?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, I don't know. I was just going to validate that. Like what we've built into everything we do at Catholic psych is like coaching content in community. That's the three C's are like, well, we try to build everything on. So it's, it's really a recipe for success.

Joey: I love it on that note, we're going to go to audience questions and I'm excited to, yeah, just get your wisdom with these. And some of them are not the easiest, but, uh, but we'll take a jab at them. So the first one comes from Isabel. She's 22 years old and she says, how do you heal, especially from the trauma of your parents divorce?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, that's a, that's a big question. But, um, you know, I think self awareness is really important. And so, you know, people have different ways of coming to deeper self awareness, but that's where mentorship, accompaniment from people who've been there, who know how to handle relationships well. It could be a therapist, it could be a spiritual director, it could be a mentor of sorts, but the model that we use is that we're made in relationship, we're made out of the image of [00:11:00] God, and out of God himself, so in community, so we're made out of relationship, we're formed in relationship, in the family, that's also where we're wounded, so we're healed, and we're healed in relationship.

So, we need relationships. No, no process of healing can happen outside of relationship and ultimately it's a relationship with God, which is the foundation for all healing, but it manifests in the real world through real relationships and so finding people to help you really see yourself better. Like, it's the kind of people that, it's the kind of relationships that are like mirrors, so that when you look into the relationship and the relationship reflects back to you, something deeper about yourself than you previously understood or realized.

So you grow in that self awareness, and then you bring the kinds of stuff that are buried in our unconscious. Into our conscious minds. And when you let the material from the unconscious pass through that threshold into consciousness, we then have capacity to act as [00:12:00] humans with freedom and self determination.

And so that's, that's the healing process. It means becoming more self aware so that we can become more self determined so that we can become a greater self gift.

Joey: I love that and I love your emphasis on kind of uncovering like what's in the subconscious. We had another psychologist on recently and we discussed like, not endorsing all of his work, but we discussed a quote from Carl Jung or something he said of how basically your subconscious like rules your life.

He, he said, I forget the exact quote, but it was something like, you, you will often just like call it fate. But your subconscious is controlling you, and it's so important to like put into words like what's happening below the surface, um, and that's part of the healing process, and that's what I hear you saying.

So, so good. Um, you also reminded me of Jay Stringer came on the podcast in episode 102, and he gave this model. He said what often happens in situations of trauma and brokenness, you have like these three steps. You have fragmentation in your life. You have this brokenness that enters, and then that usually leads to some sort of numbing.

So, you know, we feel so much pain, we need to numb it, and then finally that leads to isolation, where [00:13:00] we feel so ashamed, we just push people away. And so what I hear you saying is like, we need people, we need people in our lives in order to heal. And that could be like a heroic thing. I've learned to even just reach out to someone to ask for help, um, whether it's a mentor in your program, which we'll talk about at the end here, um, or someone else in your life.

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, and it could be the opposite too, because it takes different forms, but sometimes the pushing away can actually be a clinging to. You know, it could be, it could be a dependency also, you know, sometimes there's two reactions to, to trauma relationships and it's, you know, one is that sort of super independence and pushing away and anxious avoidance.

And then the other is this kind of dependent clinging neediness. And it's almost a sense of never being validated. So you're just always hungry for it and always looking for it. But, but, you know, either way, there's just two sides of the same coin because either way, ultimately there's a wound that's, there's a fragmentation.

There's a wound that's not, that hasn't been processed. And it's typically because it's still buried in the unconscious. Like you're not even aware of it. And that is the process. So [00:14:00] it's, by the way, it's also something John Paul too, really kind of already nailed it with a blueprint of the human person psychologically.

And a lot of people don't really appreciate this about JP too, but I think he's the greatest psychologist that ever lived. And he wrote about the unconscious and he talked about the need to. Bring to light the content that's caught in our unconscious into the light of conscious awareness. Wow. And that's the only way to be fully free and to have free human action.

So it's, I mean, it's not, it's not wrong to quote Jung, obviously it's, Jung is amazing. I love, I love Jung, but. I, I always like to just point out how we as Catholics could do a lot more to promote the full work of John Paul too and, and how much he actually contributed to our understanding.

Joey: Uh, I agree a hundred percent and no, I, I'm with you.

And the quote I couldn't think of was he said, uh, unless you make the subconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you'll call it fate. Um, but I agree there's definitely some better sources out there than, than young.

Dr. Bottaro: No, I love that. That's perfect. Perfectly [00:15:00] complimentary to, uh, John Paul II. He talked about it in person, in act, in terms of freedom.

And he said that it's a task of, it's one of the important tasks of morality and education to help people move material from their unconscious to their conscious mind. Wow,

Joey: I did not know that, and I'm sure we could do a whole show on that. Um, moving to the next question, I'll kind of rapid fire at you.

Uh, this is from a woman who's 33 years old. She said, How should I respond to my mother and family members who disagree with my boundaries toward my abusive and unempathetic father who refuses to change? They tolerate him for money, for financial gain, and expect me to do the same.

Dr. Bottaro: Well, again, another loaded question in that there's a lot of nuance.

And, and part of the, I guess, just the disclaimer, the, the, the psychologist disclaimers, you know, you can never speak to a generalized topic like that, or an individual topic in a generalized way and do it justice. So this is not direct psychological advice or direction here, but speaking about boundaries in general, you know, it's, there's, there's multiple layers of [00:16:00] boundaries.

And so the question is asking about, you know, how to support a boundary with that abusive father. But then there's also the boundary of the opinion of the mother or the other family members. So it's, it's really a matter of boundaries all around, you know, and it's, it's looking at each relationship and then figuring out what are the appropriate responsibilities that I own?

And then what are the responsibilities that I don't own? So making mom happy is not a responsibility of the child any more than succumbing to dad's. You know, violent behavior or negative behavior. And so it's like we can't do just one and not the other. We have to sort of look at all the boundaries in the whole system and recognize the path is going to be forward through that.

Joey: That makes so much sense. And I think so many of the audience members that we Walk with the young people we walk with, like they really struggle with this boundary idea. I think there's this idea that if you really love someone boundaries aren't necessary, they're not a part of the relationship or, you know, the enforcement of boundaries is a way that you're [00:17:00] hurting someone and therefore again, not loving them.

That's not true though. Right?

Dr. Bottaro: No, of course not. In fact, people, you know, people don't really appreciate enough how like holding boundaries is the most loving thing you can do. And sadly, not having boundaries becomes the opposite of love. And this is a really hard concept and it's a really hard thing to walk with people about because it's, this is not with judgment, but when you've been the recipient of abuse or trauma or traumatic situations, you kind of build a whole defense system around it and you have, you know, patterns of, you know, Survival, which is like, all right, well, you know, if I'm getting a bunch of garbage from one person, like I'm going to look for validation from the other person.

Like that's how I get by, you know, or if I, if I keep this person happy, I don't have to deal with yet another person who's mad at me, but at the end of the day, we have to sort of come around to it. Like, okay, maybe there's a psychological reason why that's understandable and we should enter into [00:18:00] it as a psychological issue.

But don't try to make a spiritual justification for it, because if you really go down the spiritual path, you're going to realize you're actually being really selfish. You're defending yourself. You're thinking about how you feel when somebody else is mad at you, for instance, which I wouldn't take that approach.

You know, that's that's not exactly how you're going to help somebody change the pattern. But if they insist. On that sort of spiritualization of it, you can say like, all right, well, if you want to talk about it in that sense, let's really look at it then turns out this is actually the opposite of loving.

And when you set the boundary, you give the other person the best chance possible to maybe have to deal with whatever they've got going on.

Joey: So good. I remember the book that, um, Dr. I think James Dobson wrote. It was titled, I think, Love Must Be Tough. And I had a conversation recently with a young person who was in a situation where she had to kind of use tough love.

And so we talked a little bit about, I think, I learned it from Dr. Henry Cloud about just the difference between hurt and harm. Right. I think that's, that's been really [00:19:00] helpful for me of like, you know, we never want to harm anyone. We never want to degrade them as a person, cause them, you know, irreparable damage, something that's going to like put them down and just do violence to their dignity.

But we might need to hurt them in the sense that we inflict some level of pain because of something that we said that's true. Or, you know, the typical example of like, if you have a tooth that's falling out or has a cavity, you know, you got to get that worked on. If you need a surgery, it's going to hurt.

But it, And ultimately it's going to bring some good, some benefit. And so I think, I think that's so important to remember for all of us. And it's been personally helpful for me when I've needed to put boundaries in place.

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, definitely. That makes a lot of sense.

Microphone (2- ATR USB microphone) & UT-VID 00K0519341-5: If you come from a divorce or broken family, or maybe, you know, someone who does, we are for more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book for video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more. All of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and built virtue.

So you can break that cycle and build a better life. And so if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that, you know, just go to restored ministry.com/resources or click on the link in the show [00:20:00] notes.

Joey: Next question. A woman 32 years old says, how can you reconcile and build a strong relationship with parents who believe their divorce was harmless and a good thing when it's been the main source of trauma for me and my siblings for the past 20 years?

Dr. Bottaro: That's a good question. I think. You know, you want to think about what, what reconciliation really means, like, what are the expectations there? And I think it's important to acknowledge the desire of a child to be validated perfectly by a parent. We are made in the image of God. With a sense that we should be validated as such.

And it's like, we're born and we know, like we have this innate sense, maybe it's, it's unconscious, it's deeper than what we are aware of, but it's like, we know how good we are and we expect to be validated at that level. And then we're not, ever. And every single person, divorced parents or not, perfect parents or not, saint parents or not, we're gonna be [00:21:00] harmed in some way by the imperfection of our parents, unless you're Jesus.

That's why we need Jesus. And that's why Jesus formation in the Holy Family is so important, because he had Mary and Joseph forming him. He had a perfect humanity that was formed in the perfect home by the perfect family. No one else has that. And so, Our expectation, though, is for that, and so where are we going to get that?

If we're expecting reconciliation with parents to provide the perfection of what we're looking for, it's never going to happen. So we have to first go to the source of our perfect validation, which is through Jesus. Into the heart of the Holy Family, and really take on Joseph as a father and Mary as a mother.

In the way that Jesus humanity was formed in the Holy Family in that way. Our, our hearts can be reformed into Jesus, in union with Jesus in that same way. If that deepest need is satisfied, then we can go to our parents, and we can not have This like infinite insatiable [00:22:00] longing for perfection and we can accept whatever it is that they have to offer and then we can appropriately engage with boundaries according to whatever is the context, whatever is possible in that particular relationship at that particular time, because relationships change, people change all the time, but if we don't go with this infinite need.

Then we can, we can sort of accept the finite circumstances and we can, we can deal with whatever is actually being offered at the time. I think that's a pretty huge spectrum with, you know, more or less healthy dynamics possible. So that's, that's where I like to cover first before getting into like, what does reconciliation look like?

Joey: That's so important. And do you typically recommend, I know the context matters a lot with all these questions, of course, so we're taking a jab at them, but, um, do you typically recommend, like, someone who's in that attempt of building a better relationship with their parents, they're at a level where they at least can have conversations, do you recommend that they go to the parent and express how difficult, how painful it was For them, for the [00:23:00] young person to go through their parents divorce, or is it better not to even broach the topic?

Or does it just depend?

Dr. Bottaro: I mean, it kind of depends. I think that's usually something I recommend somebody has help with, like accompaniment of some sort, mentorship of some sort, but I would say, as a rule of thumb, If somebody's never brought it up, they probably could stand to. If somebody's brought it up a lot, they could probably stand to let it go.

You know, it's kind of like, how many times do you need to bring it up? And finding a balance there, it's like, one time maybe is necessary just for your own sake, like, to know that you tried to bring it up. But if it goes nowhere, if it's met with defensiveness, if it's met with blindness, if it's met with a lack of self awareness on the part of a parent, it's like, what more are you trying to get out of this by pushing this?

And that's where we come back to those unmet needs. And you can't really see the reality, which is that you're probably not going to get that need met here in this relationship. So then you have to decide to, you know, to sort of accept it for what it is.

Joey: It's great advice. It's hard advice for people who, you know, the parent, maybe [00:24:00] even they open up to the parent and the parent just doesn't respond well or even dismisses them.

Or like you said, just goes right over their head and they don't see the harm. But I think that's, that's such good advice. Next question. Angela says 29 years old. Um, how do I overcome my extreme fear of marriage and intimacy? This is obviously a trend we've seen a lot. The research we've seen says that this is the biggest area of struggle for those of us who come from divorce families.

So what would you say to her?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, this is where more of my story. Story is applicable where I, I was so afraid of it that I thought I had a vocation to religious life and I became a Franciscan friar for three and a half years. So I, I understand that fear for sure. And I was so blocked to recognizing that in myself that I didn't realize that's what I was doing.

It actually felt like I was called to religious life and I was really happy about it. I was really joyful and I was joyful for like two years. And it wasn't until like the third year that I started to really feel something missing in religious life. And then that grew into a kind of misery. [00:25:00] And then I felt really stuck.

But I was also, uh, working frequently with Father Benedict Rochelle, who is a priest, psychologist. Founder of the CFR Franciscans and praying a lot, you know, it was like five hours of prayer day, uh, intense mentorship with somebody who knew what he was doing. And I really started to break open where I was hiding from myself and I could see, okay, I'm afraid, I'm afraid to, you know, put children through the pain that I've suffered in the future.

Like if a marriage fails, I'm afraid to go through what my parents went through. And I found a great Holy spiritual way to avoid it. But then, you know, then it didn't work anymore. So I had to like, really come around to the healing. It was through the self awareness, like the healing, you can't just force the healing until you really dredge up from the unconscious, all the things that you're actually thinking and feeling, and then you bring up your actual interior experience into the light of truth.

And then, the readings, the [00:26:00] prayer, the retreats, the counsel, like now it starts to connect. Because you're applying the medicine to the wound as it's opened up. You know, if you put ointment on a band aid that's covering the wound, it's not really gonna touch the wound. So you gotta go through that process.

First, you need to open up the band aid and open up the wound, and then also have the ointment. And it's both together that will work to actually do the healing.

Joey: That makes a lot of

Dr. Bottaro: sense.

Joey: I've Gotten this question from other people as well, related to like, discerning their vocation in life, um, where they might feel called, and I know this is only a part of our audience, but I want to focus on this for a second.

They might feel called to religious life, but they're kind of double guessing that because they think maybe I'm just running for marriage because of what I saw growing up. Any tips on how to decipher between the two of those?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, I think you got to trust God more than yourself and trust the process of discernment.

I can say this, I, you know, I described my vocational discernment where I always tell people, what is the deepest [00:27:00] desire of your heart? Find, you have to spend time in prayer and silence and meditation and counsel and mentorship and, you know, putting yourself in that process to get to that interior. And at the same time recognize that you won't necessarily know if you're looking at the deepest part of your heart.

When I joined the Friars, I looked inside myself and I thought I had this image of looking into my heart, like looking down into my chest as if I was looking into a cave. At the bottom of this cave, I could see a treasure chest. And you know, the treasure chest opened and it was the vocation to the Franciscans.

I was like, if I look inside my heart, I see the deepest desire of my heart is to become a Franciscan. So a long story short, I Jo, I joined in three and a half years later. My image was that the floor of the cave. Cracked open and I, I actually saw light shining up from underneath the floor of the cave through the cracks.

And eventually all the cracks dissipated and the treasure chest fell through the floor to the real deepest. And the [00:28:00] inside of my heart, the deepest part of my heart was actually all light. And when the treasure chest hit the bottom bottom, like the actual bottom, it opened up again. And that was the vocation of marriage.

So. It's really important that I went to the friars. It's really important that I followed the desires of my heart. And I, and I'll never say that it was a mistake, or I had the wrong vocation, or it was misdirected, or that I, because I had to go. God's plan was for me to heal and learn what my vocation was by following where my heart was directing me in 2000.

And that, that's how I got there. So it's part of my story. And it was, it was by following the interior. So you, you just gotta, you gotta be where you are today. You have to follow your heart, what your heart is telling you today with the best that you can and trust that God is going to be with you tomorrow and he's going to help you see new things tomorrow.

And it might be a redirection. It might be something totally different, but within the confines of his will, as it's expressed through [00:29:00] various. context. In other words, now I have a vow of a marriage. Like, it's not like if all of a sudden tomorrow, you know, it's like, Oh, well, the deepest desire of my heart now is to, you know, leave my family and go become a hermit in the mountains.

It's like, no, that's not coming from God because the context matters, but in following faithfully, whatever the context and your relationship with God and your interior life is today, that will be the best next step.

Joey: And it wasn't like some mistake that you went to the friars and went through all that like you, you know, weren't listening to God.

It was through that that he worked and got you to the place where you need to be. So good. Next question from Katie, 22 years old. She says, how can I keep a potential future marriage free from brokenness?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, I, I think the truth is that that's not possible.

Joey: I

Dr. Bottaro: like

Joey: the question though.

Dr. Bottaro: It's an understandable and it's a beautiful and valid question.

It's a valiant question, but I, you know, [00:30:00] I tell young people I work with and I, I do work with young people and coaching them and dating and discernment. And, you know, it's like, yeah, the more you grow in self awareness on the front end, before you get married, the less you're going to be bringing into the marriage.

Yeah. in terms of baggage. So it's worth it. It's worth spending the time now. It's worth growing in intimacy with God and, and really focusing on your prayer life and your intimacy in your spiritual life. Because through intimacy in your spiritual life, God is going to reveal to you the brokenness of your heart that he wants to heal right now.

And even if you don't have your future spouse with you right now, you have God who is your ultimate future spouse with you right now. And you can stop avoiding intimacy with him and let him show you what he wants you to see.

Joey: What would you say to someone who maybe has been working on themselves a while, they have found a lot of healing, um, but maybe they for one reason or another feel the need to kind of continue working on themselves before they're ready, quote unquote, for [00:31:00] marriage?

Because obviously there's some sort of a line there, right? And I think some people maybe don't prepare enough. Like they, you know, just aren't in a good spot health wise, um, as a person, but on the other end, there might be people who are like pushing it off for one reason or another under the guise of like, I just need to kind of work on myself more.

What would you say?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, I think it's kind of implicit, like the answer is implicit in the way the person's reasoning through it. So in other words, if a person's mature, you know, I don't think that there's like a compartmentalized area of like emotional brokenness. And then it's just like reservoir off the side.

And that is, you know, maybe they're thinking they're like, I could get married, but I got to do this extra work. The traumas and the wounds make you think for of reasons why you're not actually, you don't actually want to commit. Like you don't want to take the leap. You don't want to make that sacrifice.

You don't trust, you don't have security, you're not grounded enough in, in your relationship with God. And that manifests in a lot of [00:32:00] objections to moving forward in a relationship, that as you grow and heal, those objections will decrease. So I don't know that it's like this independent variable of, Consideration, I think for the most part, I try to encourage people who are faithful, who understand the commitment of marriage to expect marriage to express and, and, and sort of manifest deeper wounds and different brokenness that they never knew they had to still work on and expect it and be ready for it and then be and say yes to it before they even get married.

And when I, when I married my wife, when I, before I proposed to her, her parents are divorced, my parents are divorced, and we were talking about the future. And I said, you know, if we ever do get married, I am going to want to divorce you. And she was like, wait, this is not a romantic date kind of conversation.

It's like, is this how you propose or something? Yeah, that was like, I'd get down on one knee, [00:33:00] but it was, I was saying, you know, we've both learned that language. And I know for sure that we are going to have difficulties as all people will in marriage. That's part of what we're signing up for. And the way that you and I will translate difficulty will be in the form of our brains coming up with this idea that, okay, now it's time to divorce.

So the commitment we need to make to each other right now. Is that even if that's what we're thinking, that will never be the option on the table and that we're going into this eyes wide open and we've talked about it. And now we know that that's not what's possible. If I ask you that question and you say yes, now there's a, an expectation of what that means.

So I, you know, you got to know that's, what's going to happen. And you have to say yes to sticking with it and committing to it regardless and then stuff comes up and the thought has crossed my mind and the idea has come up and it's like, I didn't sign up for this or I didn't realize this was going to be part of the story or all these things happen and you're like, what the heck?

[00:34:00] But we're going to keep saying yes, no matter what. And we do. And then deeper healing happens and more holiness happens and closeness to God happens. And that's why this is a vocation to holiness and why that's is the primordial sacrament.

Joey: No, it's so good that there's a vow because I've never really known a marriage.

Maybe there's a few out there who were, they didn't feel the temptation to quit. It's just, it comes with the territory. And I think it's so important. I love that you're saying this because it's so important for young people. To hear that, that like, Hey, at some point it's going to get really hard. You're going to be tempted to quit.

People are going to tell you, you should quit. You should be happier. Go find someone else.

Dr. Bottaro: Well, what I mean, nothing in our culture is teaching people that it's good to stick with things that you want to quit education, jobs, like where you live, family, like all this stuff. So if it's toxic, get out of it.

If you can quiet, quit your job, you can quit your job, like whatever. It's like literally every other part of culture is telling you, like, if you don't want to do something, don't do it. So we need to know, getting into marriage, that this is, this is an entirely different thing. But it's worth it. [00:35:00] More worth it than all those other things.

Joey: Yeah, in my experience, like, there's, we've certainly gone through seasons of struggle, but the good far outweighs the bad. And you, like you were saying, I remember Fulton Sheen talking about this, you go through that season of suffering, of struggle, and then if you stay with it, you will end up getting to like a new level.

A new place where there's peace and there's joy and, you know, and even if, again, there's suffering there and, um, even if, you know, I know there's certain people listening right now where maybe their spouse doesn't come around and they leave with another person or they abandon them. And even in that suffering, I think there's like meaning and peace that can be found that yeah, really is confusing to, I think the rest of the world.

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, that's, that's not at all being, uh, naive or, uh, numb to the suffering that happens in real life. It's just always the right answer to stay faithful, stay faithful to God above all, and whatever circumstance God has allowed to be a part of your story. He's planned it for a reason for you to grow closer to him.

Joey: It's great advice. It's hard to swallow, but great advice. And [00:36:00] yeah, and I know we've talked a lot about in the show about situations of abuse where maybe one spouse would need to get to safety and that's what we preach and I know the church teaches that too. But um, but always stay, stay faithful to the vows that you make.

That's a great message.

Dr. Bottaro: And that's the case where with mentorship, especially if you need it, but you might need to see that being faithful in that circumstance is separating. That's the, that's the loving thing. Going back to where we started with boundaries, setting boundaries is actually the most loving thing to do in that case, that is the manifestation of fidelity to the vow

Joey: question on that.

How do you differentiate between like abuse and maybe just misbehavior? Cause I think there's this tendency I've seen two kind of camps, two extremes. On one hand, maybe. People who call, um, nothing abuse. They kind of tolerate everything to like a really unhealthy extent. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who call everything abuse.

Like any sort of misbehavior is classified as abuse. Where's that line? Like, what does it look like? Especially if someone's in a situation where they're maybe not sure if something is abused or not.

Dr. Bottaro: This is very nuanced, it's very individual. [00:37:00] And so it has to do with, you know, I think, I think of it as two different levers or spectrums.

And there's the spectrum of the behavior. And then there's the spectrum of the individual, I don't want to say tolerance, that's not the right word, but a kind of individual threshold. Of resilience and that is in no way shape or form meant to come across like a judgment on the quote unquote victim or the non perpetrator but studies show and research shows and reality shows that some people have different thresholds of resilience than others and a lot of that has to do with family of origin and background and and other life experiences other traumas so there are stories of the saints where you know a spouse was physically emotionally sexually abusive.

Transcribed But a spouse sort of just accepts it, you know, in a way of sort of, you know, offering up the suffering, praying for the spouse, you know, trying to be that example. And this is not in any kind of way of like a dependency or, uh, you know, an [00:38:00] enabling, but it's like kind of taking the higher road sort of thing and maybe creating space or boundaries or separation where necessary.

But the interior disposition of that person Is almost unflappable in the face of this other person's bad behavior. And so that's how we can see two different thresholds and spectrums that are happening here. And so we have to kind of evaluate both. If somebody doesn't have the resilience and somebody is crumbling.

And their life is falling apart and they're overrun with depression, anxiety. They're thinking about suicide. They're thinking about like on and on. That's nothing that's wrong with that person that somehow they're weak, but that's part of the discernment process of like, all right, this has gone too far for me.

And I like, that's where my threshold maybe is different than another person's threshold. And that's where, you know, it's like, think about it just in terms of like weather. I mean, people have different thresholds for. You know, stomaching cold weather, you know, and some people might be like, I just can't, I have like my constitution.

[00:39:00] I'm like, so sensitive to cold. Like I'm like this, actually, I can't stand the cold weather. So, so people want to go skiing or they want to go into these circumstances, these environmental circumstances that I consider abusive. And I'm like, I'm not going there. I'm going to set a boundary. And then other people are like, yeah, it's not that bad.

And like, I'm getting something out of it. That's better than what the cold is that I'm suffering. Okay. That's fine for you. So there is. A nuanced individual take on this, and I think, you know, in every circumstance, whatever your reaction is, whatever your response is, you can put it in context of an act of gift of self, an act of love, and this is the right way to look at it every time.

This is the holy way, the virtuous way, the Catholic way, whatever you're suffering, you can say, do I need to set a boundary out of love? Do I need to leave this person out of love? Do I need to call this out out of love? You know, do I need to forgive this person and reconcile [00:40:00] out of love? Like taking into consideration where I'm at, and then where the other person is at, and then discerning what is, The contextualized act of love for me here now.

Joey: And that just reinforces your point of having mentors walking with you, people who can speak into your life, who are like really wise and help you discern like these nuance situations. Cause super nuanced. Yeah. Context totally matters. And that's where it's so tricky when we hear a lot of people talk about divorce.

A lot of times it's just so broad and brand it's like too bland. Like you need to get into the. And it's not just black and white. You need to get into the color of the details. And so I love what you said. I think, you know, separating like this idea that, you know, if there's abuse happening, stop that from happening.

Do your best to stop that for happening. Put boundaries in place. If you need to even separate, get to safe. That's what the church says. Um, but, but at the same time, and so I love that you made that point at the same time, like you were saying, like that behavior of the spouse is a separate question. of like the validity of the marriage, right?

Like we always, like you said, stay true to the wedding vows. And so [00:41:00] I think like, so often in our culture, we see love and marriage, especially as conditional. It's like, I'll only be true to my spouse. If they're true to me, I'll only be, you know, faithful. If they're faithful, they're not faithful. I'm not going to be faithful.

And, um, man, what a disaster that's been the last, you know, 30, 40, 50 years.

Dr. Bottaro: A real, just weakening of our sense of, of what it means to be committed to love. Really. I mean, it's really like losing a sense of being a gift of self. It's all about what I'm going to take, what I'm going to get, not what I'm giving

Joey: a hundred percent.

And we won't get into the topic of annulments here and the question of the validity of the marriage. Cause I know that's a topic that's probably coming to some people's minds right now. We'll do that at a different time. Um, but one of the things I wanted to get your thoughts on what we've seen when it comes to kind of discerning the difference between abuse and kind of Bad behavior is like the type one.

So it was like, is it physical, sexual, or is it just verbal? Not that that's not serious, but those are very different. How severe is it? You know, the severity of it, the frequency as well would be another factor. Did this happen just like once [00:42:00] or is it happening, you know, continually and then finally the impact, like you said, on the person, is there anything you would add or change to those different variables?

Dr. Bottaro: No, I think those are all really important considerations. You know, I think just again, looking at like your individual threshold, your interior threshold. Is important. And that also is sort of different variables to it. So it's your own spiritual development, your own emotional development, your own support community.

You know, if you have, if you have good friendships, if you have good family relationships that sort of support you in this situation versus somebody who's kind of all alone, this is, there's are totally different contexts for being able to deal with some of these situations. So yeah, it's, it's pretty complex.

Joey: Yeah, no, I would agree with them.

Dr. Bottaro: I mean, at the end of the day, all of this speaks to the fact that we're not supposed to be doing this stuff alone. Like God never built us to be walking this walk alone and we need each other. And this is a great articulation of why, like, this is one example where it becomes really clear, like, Oh yeah, we're built for accompaniment and support from each other.

Yeah,

Joey: no. And it's, it's so sad to see some [00:43:00] people trying to navigate this all alone. Like what, what a recipe for disaster. So I couldn't agree with you more,

Microphone (2- ATR USB microphone) & UT-VID 00K0519341: We're now accepting questions on the show. That's right. You can submit your question for the restored podcast and we'll answer them on the show. My guests will answer them or I'll answer them. some of the benefits of asking a question, you can ask anything that you want, you know, maybe you feel stuck or unsure how to handle the pain or the challenges from your parents.

Break up. Maybe you're unsure how to begin or even continue healing. Maybe someone, you know, someone you love or you lead is going through their parents' divorce or separation, or maybe just a lot of dysfunction at home. And you need to know how to help them, whatever your question we'll give you specific and practical answers right here on the show.

How do you submit your questions? Really easy. Just go to restored ministry. Dot com slash ask. You can fill out the form on that page with your question. You can do it anonymously or not. And as we're able to answer your question on the show again, go to restored ministry.com/ask to submit your question or just click on the link in the show notes.

Joey: uh, two mentorship program, which is perfect timing with what we're talking about. Um, [00:44:00] Sandra, 57 years old says. If other family members who are children of divorce don't recognize the effects of divorce on their lives, should I try to inform them or let them be?

Dr. Bottaro: It's kind of a loaded question, but you know, in general, I would say like, when you say like family members, dot, dot, dot, it's probably not your job to inform them of anything that you're seeing, you know, for the most part. People, people feel so compelled to want their family to be better, to be healed, to be holier, to be, you know, better, whatever.

But literally, in Jesus Christ's own family, he had the least effect. We are built For whatever reason, by God's design, to have the least impact on the people we are closest to. And if we can accept that and move on, we'll be a lot better for it.

Joey: I would agree with that. There was a friend recently was telling my wife that they were deciding what to do with their kids for school.

And um, the wife came up with this like idea, I think it was like homeschooling. And the husband was [00:45:00] kind of resistant to it. And then he was listening to one of his business podcasts and the guys on the podcast mentioned how they were homeschooling their kids. And he was like, Oh, I'm sold. That's

Dr. Bottaro: exactly, it happens all the time,

Joey: all the time, all the time.

Um, no, I think that's, that's good. And I, um, yeah, it brings in this bigger question, which I don't know, we don't have time to go deep into this, but some people who kind of have this perspective that if things are going well in your life, there's no use to like, No, there's no use in digging up like past trauma and brokenness.

That's like one school of thought I've heard. And the other end, um, people think that, no, there is a lot of value in that because while you might be okay now, if there's stuff under the surface, it can grow, and then you might be facing that in a few years, do you side with one of those schools of thoughts or neither altogether?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, I could totally understand why people don't want to look at that stuff and why people would get jaded about the value of digging stuff up and all that. Yeah. But I mean, this is directly from John Paul too, that we become more human, the more we become aware of the things that are [00:46:00] buried in our unconscious.

And the more that we dredge out the material of our unconscious, that's actually motivating and influencing us. Like Carl Jung also said. Well, we're always going to be sort of enslaved to unconscious motivations. And so to become fully free, to become fully human, to become fully agents of our own self determination, we have a responsibility to bring out the things from our unconscious and to put them into the light of conscious awareness so that we can see clearly why we're doing what we're doing and constantly move more towards a full ownership over self and ownership of the decisions that we're making.

And if we just let the past be the past and never really look at it, it's ignoring a fundamental part of our anthropology of how God built us. Our past is influencing the way that we are acting in the present. So we, we owe it to God and to ourselves to, to look at it.

Joey: I think it's so important too to kind of define like what going well, What life going well means for people [00:47:00] because it's for different people.

It's like, yeah, no, things seem to be going well. Like I have a successful job and making money, but then maybe secretly they're struggling with like an addiction to alcohol or porn or something like that. And so I think it's really important, like you said, that we have this proper anthropology that we understand, like what the human person is meant to be.

So we have some proper to compare it to, because if we just compare it to people who like, You know, they're doing drugs and living on the street. It's like, well, yeah, your life comparatively probably seems to be going well, but that's where I think it's important to, you know, compare it to people who are better than us.

And then the other thing too, I think that often people might miss this. You can kind of think in the terms of physical health. If you think, well, yeah, my physical health is good, you know, I seem to be doing well. But maybe they're not doing anything to grow in health, you know, grow, visit, become more physically fit, for example, and they might be heading slowly down this path of kind of degrading or, um, you know, they're leaving a lot of potential on the table.

Dr. Bottaro: A hundred percent. And also people don't give enough credit to their ability to, to survive their defenses. And so [00:48:00] maybe somebody has bad knees. And they can't go up and down stairs. And so they, they buy a house that's a ranch that only has one level. And then they're like, yeah, things are going great. And more specifically, like in the psychological mental health world, like it doesn't even have to be as clear of a manifestation as like an addiction.

It could be something like somebody with some like narcissistic parts of them. Narcissism naturally attracts other people who are dependent. So you can have somebody that has built a defense pattern and a personality pattern around being narcissistic, but they've also insulated themself by surrounding themselves with people who are dependent and they're never going to get challenged in their narcissism.

And it seems like everything's going fine. I'm great. Everything's fine. What's the problem? What do I need to look at? But it's because you have people around you that will just do whatever you say without really questioning you. will swallow their own discomfort and never, you know, never really bring something up.

So it seems like everything's fine, but the reality is that we [00:49:00] create these worlds around us out of our own defensiveness as a survival instinct. Wow.

Joey: You brought up the topic of narcissism. I have to go there for a second. It seems like today, everyone's calling everyone a narcissist. Is everyone a narcissist or is there a definition, like a clinical definition of narcissism?

I know I personally, I think like we're all narcissists in one way or another. Um, but what's the difference between like a true narcissist and someone who's just prideful?

Dr. Bottaro: Well, there's, there's a number of different personality disorders and dependent is the other one that I mentioned. Uh, there's also something called histrionic.

It's where you're always the center of attention and you're sort of loud and obnoxious most of the time and, um, there's borderline personality disorder. What this means when we designate something as a personality disorder is that the symptoms have crossed a certain threshold and that there is a certain cementedness in these behavioral patterns.

The fact of the matter is we all have a little touch of all of the personality disorders. They just don't all cross the [00:50:00] threshold. And so, yes, you're right. We all have a little bit of narcissism in us. We all have a little dependency in us. We all have a little histrionics in us. We all have a little borderline in us, but how much are we going to actually stick with those patterns when push comes to shove, or when we start to see that there are really negative consequences, it's like, maybe you have a pride That you want things to go your way, but how much do you stick to your guns when you see that you're bulldozing your spouse or that your kids are like crying in a corner because, you know, it's like, all right, well, some people actually won't even register that there's a consequence.

Whereas other people will be like, Whoa, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll back off now. Like there's a, there's a flexibility. in that pattern. So that's the difference between a full blown disorder. This is something that we teach in our certification program, and one of the sort of interesting exercises, because we teach the different personality disorders, but then we have homework assignments.

Where you have to write [00:51:00] about your own parts that are that personality disorder. So in other words, the week that you learn about narcissism, it's like your reflection paper is like now describe your own narcissism and it's like, there's a mind blowing thing for people to go through. They're like, and it's like, you see it coming, like it's on the syllabus, you know, like borderline is coming up, but then it's like, you, you don't put two and two together until you're like, wait a minute, I have borderline parts.

I have to write about it. I have to reveal it to somebody else. It's like mind blowing, but it actually is true, which is, which is why we can connect with other people when we learn how to do that, we can really accompany people because we all, we're all kind of in the same boat together and we can understand somebody's narcissism because you're relating it also to your own.

It's like nonjudgmental and it's like, Hey, we're in this together, but let me help you. And it comes through with more love than anything else.

Joey: Thanks for making that distinction. That's helpful. The final question before we get into the [00:52:00] mentorship program, a woman's 43 years old says, knowing and feeling are very different things.

Knowing God loves me and feeling his love can sometimes feel like a canyon. How do I bridge that gap?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, great question. And this is true because we have these intellectual faculties, the intellectual part of us, and it's not the same as the deepest subjectivity of our experience, which is, which is why John Paul II is so profound in it as a philosopher and psychologist for our time, because this is where he went, whereas sometimes the sort of Thomistic traditional approach is like, all right, do you understand the truth of this, like the intellectual faculty, but we have these experiences all the time, like.

We can probably teach a course on the mercy of God. Does it mean that we feel it and we're free because of it? Those are light years apart. So in order to enter into experientially the love of God, this is why, again, we have to dredge out the blocks that are hidden in our unconscious. Your intellectual faculty is in your [00:53:00] conscious mind.

Your memory is in your unconscious until you dredge it out into the intellectual part of your conscious mind. So the fact is what's happened to us informs our thoughts and feelings and our will, but that's buried in the unconscious. So we have to do the work of dredging out the handicaps, the hurdles, the wounds, the miseducation.

That's buried in the unconscious.

Joey: So good on that note. Let's talk about the mentorship program. What is it? How does it work and any stories of success like transformation that you can share?

Dr. Bottaro: Oh gosh, we have so many I mean, we've built a model to accompany people. So we primarily have two services now We offer through Catholic psych one is to provide services of accompaniment.

We call it mentorship Where we walk with individuals who are struggling from whatever. And essentially that's what we're doing. We're walking with them to dredge up from their unconscious. All the things that they're not aware is actually motivating their thoughts and feelings and actions, but we're also training other people how to do that.[00:54:00]

And so coming up, I think. I think shortly after this episode airs, we're going to have an open house where we're going to fully open up the doors and show the inside of our certification training program. People could sign up at, at, um, catholicpsych. com slash open house. And that's the registration, free registration to, to come to our open house to see what our program is all about.

And essentially we're teaching people how to integrate faith, reason, and science. To understand yourself and to be able to understand others so that you can accompany them and help them flourish. There's, you know, all sorts of people in all different walks of life. We've had priests, other therapists that want a deeper Catholic integration and foundation of what they're doing.

Teachers, parents. Young students who are coming out of school who want to go to grad school, but maybe for whatever reason, don't want to go get a license. We're not, we're not teaching people how to become licensed therapists. We're teaching people how to do a really Catholic authentic form of accompaniment and mentorship.

We've also had people who are like [00:55:00] retired or sort of in their midlife state where they're trying to figure out how to give back more. So there's a lot of different ways that we can help train people to help others. But we, I mean, we really work with people who. are, you know, suffering from divorce, uh, whether it's their own parents, whether it's their own divorce, whether it's their own marriage, maybe they don't want to get divorced and we mentor marriages so that they can figure out through healthy communication and a deeper sacramental understanding of Catholic marriage, how to find healing.

Instead of succumbing to where most couples end up with now. Um, so that's, you know, by, by applying these principles, we've been able to find a great, great effect, great outcomes that we're starting the studies now putting together the data, but it's really profound how effective this model is. We actually talk with people every day.

Which is very different from like a therapeutic model of, you know, a session once a week or every other week. And so we really go all in with people. We really, we accompany them [00:56:00] every day, we meet them where they're at, and we stick with it. If you're, if you really want to change something, if you really want to work on something, we're there to go all in with the people that we're walking with so that we give them that best chance possible.

Joey: I love that. I love that. And, uh, any top stories? I'm really excited to see the data when it comes out. And I'd love to have you back to talk about that. Cause I think that people would be really interested in how it could help them. Any like top stories come to mind about, man, this person was struggling with this.

They went through mentorship and now they're, they've grown in this way.

Dr. Bottaro: I mean, I've got a hundred. So, I mean, I think really quickly, I mean, addictions, uh, work with a number of, of young men and a couple of women, uh, in the last year who were struggling with. Pornography, addiction, um, internet, you know, just can't get away from social media.

They were feeling depressed, suicidal, and just mired in this world of fantasy and this world of self loathing, self gratification in that sense and freedom. Able to figure out how to get out of that and feel [00:57:00] validated and loved to the extent that they were satisfied where else. Otherwise, that's what they were looking for.

Um, number of people worked, worked through marriage difficulties. Like I was saying before, a lot of people I just find are just not, they don't even know to hope for something better. And unlocking hope so that people have something to strive for. All of a sudden they're able to strive for it, but they don't even realize how much unconscious despair they've already accepted.

And they're living with this sort of sense that like, that's not really going to ever work anyway, not consciously, but buried in the unconscious. Scrupulosity is a big one. We work with a lot of people through scrupulosity. And just getting out of the ruminations and the self doubt, self blame, the fear, deep fear of judgment and wrath of God, the personality disorders.

It's been amazing to see a lot of therapists are trained to avoid personality disorders. Wow. In grad school, it's kind of like the un, unwritten sort of thing. [00:58:00] Like, well, you know, if somebody comes in with borderline or narcissism or whatever, just refer them out. Fine. You know, it just takes a lot out of you to work through some of that stuff as a therapist, but our model is perfect for it.

And it, it just works really well. So we challenge people. We love people, but we, we, it's a kind of a no BS model. And if people really want to work on stuff, we, we put it out there and then, you know, if it's, if it works, it works. So it's not always, sometimes it doesn't, but we don't hold that responsibility of, it's not up to us.

You know, it's, we're providing what we can, but God is the real agent of change and his grace is ultimately what's doing the work. So when you sort of get out of the way, you see all sorts of things happen that, you know, I think most people don't expect to be as easy to, to actually heal.

Joey: Yeah, no, so good.

And you guys have been doing this for years now. And how many people have you helped as mentees?

Dr. Bottaro: You know, I don't know that I've done a full count. I started myself in 2019 before I told anybody what I was doing with this new model of daily accompaniment, and then. After about a year of, of success, I told the [00:59:00] rest of our team that we're doing it.

And then I trained them. And so at this point now we're up to like 250, almost 300 people a month that are going through mentorship with our team. And now we're training new people. So we have lower costs. Uh, mentorship available to work with one of our students and the students get our supervision. So it's kind of like a model of apprenticeship and then when students graduate, some of them become partners and then they're doing the mentorship as well.

So we have their clients. So it's, it's growing pretty quickly. We're serving the church. We have priests coming through the program. They're applying this model to spiritual direction, because it's really a kind of a mix of spiritual direction and therapy. And so they're using it for spiritual direction.

And yeah, it's growing.

Joey: So good. And is it still the model where people sign up for like a month at a time and you do a lot of voice memos? Or is that different?

Dr. Bottaro: No, that's, that's essentially the methodology. So we use an app, and then we go back and forth with voice messages every day. It's like you have this private walkie talkie channel set up with your your mentor.

And then you're, you're having this daily conversation, so you're not really, by [01:00:00] the time you're in it, after a few days, you're, you're sort of just in the dialogue. You're just always having this dialogue, and it's not separated out of your life. So things happen in 24 hours that you bring into the dialogue, but you don't feel like you're starting and stopping an appointment.

You kind of feel like this is the ongoing dialogue that we're having right now.

Joey: Now, I remember that going through therapy myself, like, you know, You get to a point where you're just spending so much time giving context and updating the therapist on like what's going on and it's like half your session's done and it's yeah, so I love this model.

I think it's so wise and a couple questions because I know people are thinking this, um, how much roughly does it cost and how long do people typically stay in the program?

Dr. Bottaro: Um, to receive mentorship itself, we have a sliding scale. So it depends on who you're working with and if, you know, the person has more experience or not, but it could be anywhere from, you know, like a couple of hundred bucks a month for that date, but this is a daily interaction.

So whereas like four sessions during a month might cost like 600, you [01:01:00] know, we do have like our more established mentors are available for the daily interaction for closer to probably a thousand dollars a month. Depending on the training of the person, you know, I get, you know, a partner mentor or somebody else who's less than that.

And then, you know, we, like I said, we have our students available for, you know, three, four, 500 a month as well.

Joey: Love it.

Dr. Bottaro: And then people will stay in the program. Everybody's very different. It's tough. But I, as a general rule of thumb, I tell people to play in on three months to kind of A good handle on pretty much anything that they can bring up.

A lot of times people will work through their initial things so quickly or so deeply that they're like, Oh, I have all these other things I want to work on. And then they just kind of keep benefiting from it. But yeah, it takes a good month to, to really dig into some things. And then. Uh, there's not much that people are suffering from that gets resolved in a month.

So I usually say like, at least give it three months.

Joey: That's so good. And for the whole pricing objection and pricing might change guys, just know that if this is years in the future when you're listening to it, but, um, just one thing I was going to mention is like looking at the lifetime costs of [01:02:00] therapy.

I think it's really important. Cause if you just look at like, oh, well, compared to this other model, I wouldn't be paying as much. It's like, well. If you go to therapy for a year and you're, you know, paying 600 a month, and you know, it's over 6, 000 that you're spending. And, you know, if you do that for years and years, and you're not making much progress, then you're going to be spending a lot of money and you're, you know, suffering continues, or, you know, you're not able to handle it as well.

And, you know, it's just, there's all sorts of frustration and other costs too, in your life. And so what I see is like, it, I think you need to look at it as an investment, whereas if you were to invest in that time, whether it's three months or six months and you get to like a better, healthier place where you no longer maybe need that intensive of a model, that intensive help that can prevent so much additional future, you know, mentorship or need.

And it's similar to our bodies, right? If we take care of our bodies, we get in like a healthier spot. We're not going to be needing to go to the hospital and the doctor all the time.

Dr. Bottaro: A hundred percent. And that's, you know, that's kind of like one of the unjust things about the current model with therapy because You compare [01:03:00] based on a weekly fee.

And yeah, to your point, it's like, Oh, you know, I could do therapy for 60 a week, or I could do therapy for 150 a week, or I could do therapy for 300 a week. And when I was doing therapy, I was charging 300 a week and it was out of pocket self pay. I didn't even work with insurance companies, but I know people were wrapping up their issues faster with me than if you went to some like insurance covered, you know, not to put them down, but.

From what I've worked with in terms of like Catholic charities or some of these other, like institutional organizations, they just don't have the training to be as effective and, you know, you go to somebody with a doctorate who worked for six, seven years before, you know, they, they could have their own license versus somebody with a master's who worked for two years, you know, two years of schooling, and then they hang their shingle.

There's a difference. And if you're not calculating those costs to your point, it's not a fair comparison. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're going to be working on that issue for three years. So calculate 60 a week out for three years. And [01:04:00] also the, the value of three years worth of having not moved forward on the issue, it's like, what is three years of battling through marital difficulties?

Compared to one year of battling through marital difficulties. What do you do with those two extra years where you had a resolution of your, of your marital difficulties? What's that worth as well? So there's a lot that goes into the value of things that people don't necessarily think about. And when it comes to marketing and everything else, it's like, yeah, sure.

It's easy to position something like, Oh, it's only 60 bucks versus whatever. But. There's a lot more to that story.

Joey: No, and that's why I wanted to stay on this topic for a while. And we'll throw in the show notes, guys. We have an episode to kind of give you some creative ways to pay for therapy, because I think that's often a barrier for a lot of people.

So we'll throw that in for you guys. Definitely recommend listening to that. We've gotten a lot of good feedback on that episode, in case you're in a spot where you think maybe you couldn't afford it, or you couldn't figure it out right away. But there's a lot of creative ways. But one of the things I was going to mention, Dr.

DePardot, is um, when I got to college, I played baseball a little bit in college and, uh, I was like shocked at like the quality of [01:05:00] coaching. I was like, you know, through high school, I played travel ball, I, you know, played with like really good guys who ended up, you know, I wasn't at this level, but they ended up going D one or pro.

But when I, you know, the coaches just weren't at that level, but we get to college and we're like being coached by pros that were being coached by these guys who have just so much experience coaching or playing, and it's just like night and day. And I can't imagine what like an actual like pro coach or an Olympian coach compared to like a high school coach.

That's the difference that we're talking about here. So just to tie that together for everyone, if someone wants to do mentorship, um, as you know, a mentee, uh, what's the first step? What can they do today after they're listening to this?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah, sure. You go to Catholic psych. com. Um, you can go, you know, I think it's mentorship.

There's a button right there that tells you that says basically like I'm looking for help. And then there's a, a consultation. We'll give you a free consultation. So you just pick a time on our calendar and just have a conversation. And so we'll help you figure out if it's a good fit, if we have a better idea, if you think that there's a safety issue or something else that's there or, um, you know, or who would think [01:06:00] you could sign up with and get started.

So you have a consultation. And then if you think it's a good fit, And then, you know, we have a whole team of people ready with different areas of expertise and specialties in training. And so it could get started right away. Okay. And I imagine you kind of tailor people, you pair them up. Is that right? Or do no, we pair people up.

So yeah, we kind of have a sense of what, you know, based on an application form, there's an intake form that they fill out and people can share sort of what's going on, what they think they need help with, what their history looks like. And then based on that, we have a whole intake team that. Kind of discerns where the right fit is with the right mentor.

Joey: One final question on, on this whole mentorship program. If someone is listening and they're like, I want to be a mentor, you mentioned a little bit of the process, but overall, what does that look like? And how do they get started on that?

Dr. Bottaro: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot, so definitely come to our open house, October 1st.

catholicpsych. com slash open house, but it's a one to two year program. We pay a quarterly as you work through these four levels. And the first quarter is really a lot of just kind of working on yourself. [01:07:00] You, you get the mentorship that we provide. So every student actually has. Our top tier mentors giving them accompaniment.

And so at every student, you start off, you start taking courses, you have a small group, you have the reading, but there's a lot you're processing in terms of what you're learning and how you're going to start thinking about how you would give this to other people. And you know, in the old days of therapy, everybody, every student had to have a therapist, you know, Freudian analysis, every, every analyst has to be in analysis first.

Well, that practice has kind of gone away, you know, in, in secular therapy, but we think that it's essential because we, you know, you can't give what you don't have. And so we want to make sure that people are shored up and, and have the sort of bandwidth to bear others burdens. Um, so you get it first and then you work through some stuff and you process and you figure out where you're at, but then you move into level two and that's when you'll get a client and we have a practicum and so, you know, we, we give you supervision.

And, you know, through, through that [01:08:00] experience, you're putting together a lot more of the pieces of what you're learning and it becomes a very practical experience.

Joey: Love it. Appreciate that. And definitely recommend you guys check that out as well. Both the mentor program. And then if you were interested in becoming a mentor, uh, go to that open house or just go to that link, uh, at a later date, I assume you guys will have a recording or something on there.

Dr. Bottaro: Yep. There'll be, there'll be another replay on there after. Love it. Love it.

Joey: What other resources do you offer? I know you've written books and things like that. And how can people find you online? And I assume catholicpsych. com is the best place, but what other resources

Dr. Bottaro: Yep. We have, we're on social media at Catholic Psych is our handle everywhere.

LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. We have a bunch of stuff on YouTube. Um, I wrote a book called The Mindful Catholic, and that's about the integration of mindfulness with abandonment to divine providence, um, as a very psychological and scientific approach to mindfulness. Not some of the new age sort of Buddhist stuff, but the, the more medically proven model of it.

Um, but it's, it fits really nicely with abandonment to divine providence. So that's where I wrote that book about, um, on the website, we have a digital [01:09:00] resources section. So we have something called a virtual retreat, which is an introduction to the way that we do integration and, uh, and some, some other courses and things there.

There's, there's actually a course called Built to Last, which is about marriage, uh, some of the stuff we were talking about today, healing some wounds, learning how to communicate, understanding Catholic sacramentality and what that can do for, for wounds and marriages and trouble. So there's, there's a lot there.

Joey: So good. I appreciate all that. And again, I encourage everyone to check out the, all the links that Dr. Pitaro mentioned. And, um, we'll throw that on the show notes to make it easy for you guys, but Dr. Pitaro, thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, you're so wise. This is so enlightening. I learned a lot and, uh, definitely

Dr. Bottaro: praise God.

Joey: Thank you. Have you back at some point and thank you for helping this audience. Like I know it's near and dear to your heart as well. I want to give you the final word. Uh, what encouragement, what advice would you offer to the you who's perhaps listening right now?

Dr. Bottaro: So, you know, pray the prayer of St.

Augustine, you know, to, to ask God for the grace to know yourself better so that, [01:10:00] and to know him better, uh, to, to just continue down that road, that continual life goal of, of growing in self awareness, self knowledge and knowledge of God.

Joey: If you want more content from Dr. Pitaro, check out his podcast called Being Human.

Lots of solid content on there. We'll link to that in the show notes. And if you're curious about the Mentorship Program, go to catholicsych. com slash apply. They'll answer a lot of your questions. And when you're ready, you can schedule a free 30 minute phone consult. Just click schedule free consultation on that page and pick a time that works for you.

They make it really easy. And they offer pricing for various budgets, and you can actually get 10 percent off your first month with the code restored. 24 again, restored 24. It has to be all caps restored 24 again, go to catholic psych. com slash apply or click the link in the show notes. And that wraps up this episode of this podcast has helped you feel free to subscribe or follow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app.

Not only is that the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more the apps will suggest our show [01:11:00] to people who are looking for help. And it only takes a few seconds. If you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show. We definitely appreciate that feedback.

And that also helps us reach other people too. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life and we're here to help. And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#131: Family Felt Stressful, Tense, & Unstable | Jordana

After 24 years of marriage, Jordana’s parents divorced. Overall, her experience of family felt tense, stressful, and unstable. Once she learned of her parents’ divorce, she went into problem-solver mode, taking on the role of mother for her siblings. 

In this episode, you’ll hear us discuss all of that, plus: 

• How filling a parent role isn’t ideal, but sometimes necessary for a season, and how to handle the guilt about moving forward in your life.

• Her struggles with communicating in relationships and with anxiety overall

• Why it’s so helpful to put your feelings into words, even though it seems too simple to help

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Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart

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As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

131_Final

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Joey: [00:00:00] What was life like for you at home in the years and the months before your parents split?

Jordana: The word that usually comes to mind when I think about that part of my life was tension. It was very high stress for everyone involved. I think I noticed it the most though when I started dating and was in relationships.

Joey: How about emotional problems.

Jordana: The anxiety was probably the biggest one. Hypervigilance was a big one as well. You know, trying to be aware of or anticipating needs in a not healthy way, right? Where I'm like expecting the worst all the time.

Uh, I would hold myself back a lot in, in friendships and relationships. I wouldn't allow myself to kind of like be fully myself. Welcome to The Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life.

Joey: My guest today is Jordana. Jordana graduated from Rowan University with a bachelor's in psychology. She's passionate about [00:01:00] walking with young people, especially through youth ministry. She joined our team at Restored recently, actually, and we're really happy to have her. I know we're both overjoyed at the opportunity just to work together and to help the young people that we serve.

She's the oldest of five siblings, and, uh, she enjoys singing, playing guitar, and she's happiest out in nature and at the beach. After 24 years of marriage, Jordan and his parents divorced, and before, during, and even after the divorce, Tension, stress, and instability really described her experience of family life.

And once she learned that her parents were getting divorced, she went into problem solving mode, which included taking on the role of being kind of a mother to her siblings. And in this episode, you'll hear us discuss all of that, plus how filling that parent role really isn't ideal, but sometimes it's necessary for a season.

We talk about how to handle the guilt about moving forward in your life and maybe leaving your family and even your siblings. We talk about her Struggles in relationships, especially with communicating and her struggles with her emotions, especially anxiety. We talk about why it's so helpful to put your feelings into words, even though it [00:02:00] might seem too simple to actually help.

And she shares a simple tip to help a sibling or a friend who's struggling. So if you can relate to any of that, this episode is for you. Here's my conversation with Jordana. Jordana, welcome to the show. So good to have you here.

Jordana: Thanks so much, Joey. I'm so excited to be here.

Joey: We're thrilled to not only have you in this episode, but um, as a team member at Resort, just love working with you.

So I'm excited to hear more of your story through this episode. I wanted to start kind of going back in time. What was life like for you at home in the years and the months before your parents split?

Jordana: Sure. Yeah. It's interesting thinking back on it because it was such a mix of obviously good times and bad times.

Stressful times as well. So, you know, there was obviously dysfunction at the root of our family life, but, um, I think everyone kind of tried to ignore it. They tried to, you know, everyone was just trying their best, right? Everyone's doing the best with the tools that they have, especially my parents. And so they were trying to make it seem [00:03:00] like it was okay.

And, uh, but it just created this, um, uneasy tension. You know, the feeling of maybe walking on eggshells or not really quite knowing when someone was going to be upset or something that you would say, you know, as a child, maybe setting one of your parents off the word that usually comes to mind when I think about that part of my life was tension.

Joey: It's a good word. I'm sorry you had to go through all that, but it makes so much sense. And in one of the recent interviews, um, we were talking about how that like security, like as a person feeling secure is kind of like this felt sense of safety. And so often for those of us in broken families, like that's removed from us.

Like, I remember a time in my life where I felt that as a kid, like, I remember like very much. So like, it's this vivid memory I have of like being in the car. With my family, dad, driving mom in the passenger seat and just feeling like nothing in the world could hurt me sort of thing. And there's probably a little bit of delusion because like, there's certainly many things that can hurt you in the world.

But, um, but I think that's like really good and [00:04:00] important. And like that sort of security leads to our ability to like love and flourish. And so when that's kind of like violated and taken away from us, it leads to a lot of problems, which I know we're going to get into.

Jordana: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Joey: So. Next, I'm curious to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing, you know, what led your parents to seek, you know, separation of divorce?

Jordana: I guess it's kind of a long story, but to make it short, you know, I'm very, I try to be very conscious of where my parents were coming from, because obviously their stories very much influence what is now my story and my sibling stories, you know, um, So they both came from very difficult childhoods, difficult upbringings, and they themselves really didn't have the support from their parents that they needed growing up.

And so again, you know, this theme of doing the best with the tools that they have, but they didn't really have a lot of tools. And so it just, it built up for those 24 years that they were married and, you know, things got more and more tense, more and more difficult. And I think it just finally became the last straw.

My mom was the one who decided to, you know, [00:05:00] to initiate the divorce. And, uh, yeah, it just kind of all happened after that.

Joey: Okay. No, that makes sense. Um, how long were they married? Do you know that?

Jordana: Uh, 24 years.

Joey: 24 years. Okay. That's fascinating. I've heard a lot of, I know people close to me who like, have similar stories in terms of their parents being married that long.

Cause I know, I think on average, according to the U. S. census, like it's, if you're in a first marriage, it's like seven years typically on average from when you get separated and then one more year. So eight years in total before you get divorced. So it's definitely outside the norm to go that, to be married that long.

Um, but I wonder if that's typical in like faith based marriages, like Christian or Catholic marriages, any thoughts on that?

Jordana: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that a hundred percent, uh, especially to the degree that we were involved, uh, in the faith, you know, we're, you know, going every Sunday, very involved in our parish, very, very traditional, you know, I don't even know how to, how to phrase it, very traditional lifestyle of Catholicism, uh, and so that I think a hundred percent [00:06:00] impacted it.

Yeah, that and just a lack of support for the alternative, you know, I think maybe it would have happened sooner if one of my parents felt like they would have been able to support themselves being divorced, but didn't really seem like an option.

Joey: Yeah, that, that makes sense. It's not this, and I'm not saying this about your parents, but in general, like, it's not always necessarily that they're like opposed to divorce, but it's just like divorce isn't like a good option for them.

Maybe economically, financially, that makes sense. Yeah,

Jordana: exactly. Exactly. Absolutely.

Joey: Super interesting. Did your parents reach out for help amidst the struggles, if you're comfortable sharing that?

Jordana: Yeah. Yeah, they did. They, um, you know, marriage, retreats, counseling. I, I know that they, they did seek help.

Joey: Okay.

Got it. And maybe, did you see it work in some instances and not in others? Or was it just like kind of short lived?

Jordana: Yeah, I think it was more short lived. Again, when you're living in, you know, You know, if you're living out of the lens of your own brokenness, like my parents were, it just makes it really hard to attempt healing.

I think at least that's what I saw in [00:07:00] my experience of them. And that's, you know, that's what they continued doing. They weren't really, you know, getting to the root, the root root of things to, to get that healing that they needed.

Joey: Totally makes sense. I like the way you talk about it too, about, you know, kind of doing the best that they can with the tools they have.

I think one of the things that I look at my own parents with, it's like, man, I've been given so much more in so many ways, in large part, thanks to them, at least indirectly, than they were really given, like they had to do more with like less. And so I definitely feel grateful to them and to, you know, everyone else in my life who's like kind of helped me, but yeah, it is, it is a really difficult thing, but I, um, one final question on this.

And again, only to the degree you're comfortable sharing. I'm curious, like, did you see those attempts to the best of your memory of like, Going to retreats and therapy and whatever else were they typically like done over like long periods of time like with an intense commitment or was it more like we'll try this and then no we're not going to do it like kind of flaking out.

Jordana: It's an interesting question because I was so Young and a lot of, I actually don't [00:08:00] remember a lot of details sometimes from my childhood, cause I was, I felt very stressed frequently. And the other thing too, was they tried not to show that to the kids. I could definitely give them credit there. You know, they tried not to show us that they were fighting.

They tried not to show that there were problems. And of course that leads to, you know, its own set of problems. But, um, so whenever they, they would go on retreats or they, if they were going to counseling, we didn't really know about it. Um, so it was kind of more like under the table. So,

Joey: okay. Those are too hard to answer that.

Cause one of the things that I've seen in marriages that end up falling apart often, it's because they don't even ask for help. Like there's this kind of this attitude of like, we'll figure it out. I don't know how, but we'll somehow figure it out. Or we'll just like, kind of like muscle our way through it.

That's one attitude that I think Definitely leads to like lots and lots of problems. The other attitude would be like, um, marriages where they kind of tip their toes in like healing and getting help. And it's like, Oh yeah, let's go to therapy. But they go to therapy for like two sessions or four sessions or even like six months, [00:09:00] maybe once a month or whatever.

But it's like in the large scheme of things, the effort that necessary to deal with the. Severity of the brokenness, there's a mismatch. Like they need to do way more effort in order to like, to deal with the brokenness, that's what I've typically seen. And so like, yeah, whereas people are kind of reaching out for help and doing some activity to get help.

Um, and I'm not saying this about your parents, but it's just what I've seen. Um, they might not be doing it at the level that's necessary as if you had a physical illness. It's like, oh, I have cancer. Well I'm just gonna, you know, walk once a week and like try and not one day of the week. I'm not gonna eat sugar.

And then maybe I'll see the doctor like every six months. It's like, well it's not gonna help you get rid of your cancer.

Jordana: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think that relates a lot to my parents as well. And it's just the other fact that seeking help. One, itself is hard and two, sticking with it is even harder, especially when, you know, I, I say that as a 26 year old, you know, but it's even harder the older you get and the longer your brokenness has, you know, kind of set into your bones in a way, but yeah, [00:10:00] that, that makes sense.

Joey: That's so wise. No, I love it. You said like, seeking help is hard. Sticking with it is harder. So, so true. Boom. Quote. I love it. So, so moving on, how old were you when your parents separated and divorced and how old are you now?

Jordana: Yeah. So I was actually 20 when they divorced. I was a senior in college and I am 26 years old now.

Joey: Okay. So you've been living with this a little bit. And how long did the divorce last for them? Was it pretty immediate or did it drag on?

Jordana: So the actual divorce process was about six months. Okay. And then I would say, you know, figuring out how to proceed as a divorced couple probably took even longer. It definitely took longer, you know, a few years at least and obviously still dealing with, you know, the fallout of all of that.

But yeah, so six months for the actual divorce, but several years for actually living that out.

Joey: Fair. Yeah. And I can understand that. How did you learn about the separation, about the divorce and what was your reaction to it?

Jordana: Yeah. I definitely remember that moment. Um, my, I remember my mom [00:11:00] coming to tell me it was just kind of like late at night and I was, I had my own room at the time and she came in and told me that she was going to divorce my dad and it was a very obviously, you know, as to be expected, a great mix of feelings.

I felt not necessarily surprised because I knew that their relationship was broken. Maybe more just, you know, there was certainly still an element of shock, uh, just because of the suddenness of it. And then there was just kind of like a great, great sadness. I just, you know, she, after she left the room, I remember sobbing and just feeling like the floor was like pulled out from underneath me.

You know, kind of just like a sense of like, well, what am I, what am I do now with this information? What do I do going forward? And I kind of immediately went into fix it mode and solution mode and thinking about my siblings. I have five younger siblings and, uh, yeah, just, you know, feeling like any kind of support that I felt like I had.

I felt like at the time I couldn't lean on my parents at all going forward from [00:12:00] that.

Joey: So you felt like you were on your own.

Jordana: Yeah. Mm hmm.

Joey: How did your relationship with your siblings change after you got that news? You mentioned you were worried about them. So I'm curious kind of what shifted.

Jordana: Yeah, that's a good question.

I don't even know if there was necessarily a shift. My siblings and I were always very close, very tight knit, and we still are that way. But I think I just took on, you know, I put a responsibility on myself in that moment of, you know, I need to be there for my siblings. I can put my own feelings and needs aside for them.

because we're in crisis mode right now. And so, you know, I kind of assumed the role of a second mother to, to them and felt like they needed at least somebody to look to who was stable in taking step forward, steps forward, uh, through that process.

Joey: Okay. No, I can relate so much cause I'm number two in my family of six, big family as well.

And, um, and I certainly felt that responsibility and, you know, stepped into that role, especially for certain seasons. Maybe when my like older [00:13:00] brother wasn't around when he was away at college, for example, and just feeling like, yeah, they, in some ways, you know, they lost a parent almost to death and it's like, well, man, these kids need a father in my case, or in your case, they need a mother, they need someone to mother them at least, you know, so I totally see that.

And I, um, I definitely have seen like the negative effects of that in my life. Um, but I've seen a lot of good coming from it, from like, kind of being in that role for them. Like, I think they needed it, even though if it kind of negatively affects people like us in different ways. But I think like sometimes it's unavoidable and for a season of our lives, we kind of have to fill that role as, as unideal as it, as it is.

Jordana: Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. And it gives you a certain, at least it gave me a certain tenacity and a grit, you know, for, okay, we're dealing with this, with this crisis right now. And I liked that you phrased it as seasons. You know, I certainly wasn't looking at, at it like that at the time, but looking back now and certainly how I view life now is, you know, okay, for this season, this is the role that I think I need to fill, but you're right.

You know, it's, it's, [00:14:00] even if it's unjust or not ideal, it's, it's necessary sometimes.

Joey: Yeah, totally. That's it. I like how you put it. And I, um, What I've seen too is like I felt a lot of guilt kind of moving beyond those roles that I was filling, even going to like college. So I went to junior college for a year.

I did some like AP CLEP exam stuff. So I had some credit college credits as well. So I did junior college for a year and then, um, went off to university to college. And, you know, that was like really hard. And I remember pulling away from like the house and, um, the thing that like, Cut like the pain, like I felt in my chest and that made me tear up was leaving my little siblings.

That was the hardest

Jordana: part. Yeah.

Joey: Yeah. So it was like, I kind of felt guilty. I felt sad. There was a lot of emotion at play there, but something in me knew that me like kind of pursuing the path I felt called to in life would in some way benefit them. Right. So, so that was like something that I kind of had to wrestle with and just make a decision like, okay, I'm going to move forward.

I'm going to kind of seek out, you know, where I'm called and go down that path. And And I've seen that play out, [00:15:00] you know, not, not that it's been perfect in any means and not that it's been like a pure blessing, but it, there's been some struggles, what I'm saying, but by and large, um, for them, I think they've seen, and now being married and having kids and like having my siblings around those kids, like.

That's where I've kind of seen it come a little bit full circle where it's like, okay, this is why I wasn't really supposed to just like stay at home for years and years and years and be like the dad they, you know, hopefully in some level, I'm definitely not a perfect father, husband, but in some level are inspired by that.

And hopefully would, you know, pursue that if that's like the path that they're called to in life. So I think there's something about that, that we often forget about when we're in the midst of it, or maybe feeling like some guilt about moving forward in our own life. Did you feel that guilt as well?

Jordana: Oh my gosh.

Yeah. I was relating very, very much to what you said. Um, so I commuted for college. I didn't go away, which is interesting because that's all I wanted to do was go away for college, wound up staying because it financially wouldn't work out. But you know, you see the Lord's plan. I was meant to stay home. Um, but certainly every time I was going to go out [00:16:00] for an event, or if I was going to go out with my friends, it was a struggle every time.

You know, I wanted to go out and do something for myself when I felt like I needed to stay home with my siblings. Yeah, that was definitely a similar guilt that I struggled with.

Joey: It's a tough spot to be in. And so I think for everyone listening, who maybe feels that too, like give yourself some permission to step out of that role.

Like obviously if there's any really dire situation and you're needed for a season, then we get that. We both had to do that to some extent. Um, but I think in time, kind of like we're, describing, um, it can actually benefit your siblings more if you kind of move forward in life and try to show them what like thriving and living a healthy, like functional life looks like.

Um, that's at least what I've learned. Anything you would add to that?

Jordana: Yeah. No, just that I would fully agree with that. And it's not even that we're, we need to hold ourselves to a standard to be a perfect example for them because like you said, you know, obviously we're never going to be perfect. We're still going to struggle.

But I think. When they see us striving for a healthy life, they see us making an effort to invite peace into our lives, invite peace into our homes and to [00:17:00] create joy and security, especially, you know, when you had such a lack of security, I just think that, you know, them seeing you striving is what's important.

But, um, yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to feel like that as well when you're like, well, I'm not a perfect example either. But yeah, I just think that them, them seeing you strive for being healthy is what's so important.

Joey: I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so often, like, if you think of just everyday life, it's like the habit of like having good habits, whether it's like going to the gym or praying or eating healthy food or working hard, like whatever it is, um, those are the two things that I Point and to some extent, that's like the point is like to build those good habits in your life and hopefully those can be an example to other people, not to be like the perfectly like fit person or eat healthy a hundred percent of the time, or, you know, never make mistakes or never, you know, be the most productive at work.

Like all those things are good things to strive for, but it's not like you're, you're, we're saying you're not going to be like succeeding, quote unquote, every single time at like a. Perfect. Like a plus like a hundred percent of the [00:18:00] time, right. But I think it is like that example of like, okay, no, I'm going after the right things and it does set a good example.

And I've always thought of that, um, saying about how so much more is, uh, caught than taught in our families, especially. And so if you see someone and you surround yourself with people who are like trying to live a healthy life and doing like. Good things with their lives. Like you're going to typically be like drawn to that and pulled in that direction.

Um, the same is true of the opposite. If you're surrounding yourself with people who aren't good for you and kind of pull you down and they have like bad habits in their lives, then you're going to be tempted to do that stuff as well. So, um, so I think it's very true for our siblings as well. If we can be somewhat of an example, I always call myself like more of like a guinea pig, like, uh, you can kind of learn from some of the good and learn from the bad as well, because I've certainly made mistakes, but

Jordana: yeah.

Yep. I agree completely.

Joey: Awesome. What was life like for you during the separation and the divorce? You already touched on kind of the role you had to play with your siblings and anything else you'd add though.

Jordana: Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was very high stress for everyone [00:19:00] involved. I mean, I was in my senior year of college, I was working a couple of jobs.

I. You know, wasn't sleeping, um, like no college student does. Um, yeah, it was just, it was just high stress and it was surviving and just, you know, hoping that the next season was coming as quickly as possible.

Joey: You want to put it behind you and that, and that makes a lot of sense. And I'd imagine my parents divorce, unfortunately, spanned out like three years.

So it was like more of like a marathon. Um, and I imagine with a shorter divorce, there's like a, an extent of like whiplash. I remember talking with, um, a coworker in the past who was sharing with me, um, just about how her parents divorce had been like really fast. It was during COVID and when they were doing like stuff online and things actually got more efficient and we're moving pretty fast.

And I think it was like a matter of like a week or something like that. I can't remember the exact timeline. So I think she had kind of experienced in her siblings experience, like a. Bit of whiplash. Did you feel that too or maybe not?

Jordana: That's a great question. [00:20:00] Looking back on it, it didn't feel like whiplash to me.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think so. I think it just felt like, the whole time just felt like scrambling. So maybe it was a little bit of whiplash. You know, it just felt like I was, we were scrambling to put pieces back together and somehow create some kind of stability again as soon as possible.

Joey: That makes so much sense.

And that that word stability is a good one because I think that's like one of the primary things that's removed from the lives of like children regardless of their age when the parents divorce it's it really is and not that it was perfectly stable before but you know it's like there's a broken foundation and then there's like no foundation so to speak and I think it's um it's definitely a really really difficult thing to to go through.

When did you realize that the dysfunction and the divorce were affecting you? Negatively. Like, was it something you woke up and like, Oh gosh, this is affecting me. I didn't realize it. Or were you always kind of aware of it or was it more gradual? What do you think?

Jordana: Yeah, I suppose it was more gradual. I was always very inclined to [00:21:00] people's behavior, which was why I studied psychology in college and very much enjoyed it.

And so there was definitely a level of self awareness for myself. And so it was, but it was more removed. There was a bit of a disconnect. I was like, okay, I know that divorce will affect people in X, Y, and Z. And so I would kind of be on the lookout for that for myself, but you can only be an objective perspective of yourself for so long.

Uh, it's not very sustainable. So I think I noticed it the most, though, when I started dating and was in relationships, I think that was the biggest area that it definitely impacted me. Um, you know, I started noticing, wow, I'm really anxious all of the time. I'm always on edge. I always feel tension. I am so fixated on what other people are thinking of me and am I doing something wrong?

I always felt like I was doing something wrong and communication was terrible. So all of those, all of those ways, I think that started, I started to realize that when I was getting into [00:22:00] relationships and dating.

Joey: If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast.

Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more. All of our resources are designed for you. to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue so you can break that cycle and build a better life. And so if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, just go to restored ministry.

com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes. No, makes so much sense. And thanks for sharing all that. Um, how about emotional problems? What emotional problems have you experienced?

Jordana: Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say the anxiety was probably the biggest one. Um, I had the most difficult time keeping that in check.

Yeah. Cause it would just, it would just spill over into all of my interactions with people. Like I was impacting every relationship, you know, not just romantic relationships. Yeah. And I think, I think that was just the biggest thing, like fixating on what other people were thinking. And so I was just, fearful and anxious all of the time.[00:23:00]

Joey: Okay. And was that the primary like source of the anxiety kind of like other people's opinion of your perception of you, or was there kind of other things that played out in relationships that caused you to feel anxious?

Jordana: Yeah, I think that was the pri the primary thing that would drive it. And so I would, Be very focused on things that I was saying or things that I was doing, but there was just also a lot of fear, you know, having seen my parents example, having lived their example, that was always a driving fear behind that as well.

You know, I don't want that to happen to me. And again, being aware of, I know that this will affect me in this way and that repeating the cycle is so likely that fear definitely drove it a lot.

Joey: Okay. No, I can relate a lot with that. I think a lot of everyone in this thing can too. Um, who comes from a broken family.

It's like, we want better. We went different. What about bad habits? What bad habits did you fall into to whatever you're comfortable sharing?

Jordana: Sure. Yeah. I think mine were, they were really more emotional, bad habits. Um, maybe that's a way to categorize it, but, uh, I would hold myself [00:24:00] back a lot in, in friendships and relationships.

I wouldn't allow myself to kind of like be fully myself. I wouldn't communicate my needs or my wants. And I would consider that a habit because it just became so second nature for me to not acknowledge anything that I wanted or needed from other people, you know, to the point where I was just making myself miserable because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't either asking for help or I wasn't allowing myself to receive love or help from other people.

That's been a really hard habit to break.

Joey: Yeah. Kind of what I hear you saying is like that fierce independence that. And, and you also mentioned that, um, just kind of like being the chameleon, like changing to kind of be and do what people want instead of maybe just like being yourself and kind of having the attitude of like, you can take it or leave it.

This is me.

Jordana: Yeah. Yeah. I certainly was not like that at all. Yeah. No,

Joey: I, I definitely hear you. And I've seen, we've seen that a lot with like people from broken families, like we're really good at like [00:25:00] reading a crowd and like, you know, not everyone, but like on average, like we're good at reading a crowd and just kind of understanding like what people kind of expect us to be and trying to like fit into that mold.

And yeah. And I think, you know, as you probably can imagine, like, um, so much of it just comes from, you know, Maybe different expectations of our parents and needing to kind of switch roles, whether it's like going over to dad's house or mom's house, or even things at home, like dealing with one or the other, it can be, can be tricky.

And definitely like we seem to have that experience of kind of switching faces, mass roles.

Jordana: Yeah. Yeah.

Joey: I was also wondering just if you would elaborate a little bit more how. You know, you've struggled in relationships, um, especially romantic relationships. Like, have you seen the brokenness from your family come out there?

Jordana: Sure. Yeah. In several ways, um, communication, like I mentioned, was probably the biggest one again, you know, not expressing what I really needed or, or wanted, you know, something as, as small as asking if my significant other wanted to go do something, you know, that like, [00:26:00] even that small request would give me anxiety The anticipation or the fear of rejection of even something as small as that was pretty detrimental to me.

So that just, I mean, that just like micromanages your every interaction with your significant other. So I think that was the biggest area. Um, and then of course that just kind of led to a constant anxiety and a hypervigilance. Hypervigilance was a big one as well. You know, trying to be aware of or anticipating needs in a not healthy way, right?

Where I'm like expecting the worst. All the time or I'm expecting some kind of negative reaction to anything. So just constantly being on edge in, in romantic relationships.

Joey: Okay. Now I hear you. And again, so many of us listening to you can, can relate. Given all of that, when did you decide to ask for help and what's the, what's been the most helpful thing when it comes to helping you heal and transform into, you know, better, stronger you?

Jordana: I was open to asking for help. I think gradually, you know, it's, it started slowly. I got more [00:27:00] and more comfortable being vulnerable. Um, when I was in college, I was very involved with my Newman center. Um, and so like that sense of community was, was huge for me and started to help me become more vulnerable after my parents divorced.

And, um, so I would say that I was like the start of it, kind of like planting seeds, but just as I was, as I was dating more, as I was, You know, learning more about myself and how I interact with other people. I just kind of start to realize you're like, okay, I can't, this isn't sustainable. I can't continue interacting with others in this unhealthy way.

And I need to do something about it. I need to, you know, if I don't want to repeat the cycle, I have to do something about it. Um, You know, and being, it's funny that, you know, I studied psychology, I was, I'm always been super into it. And I'm always, I was always suggesting that other people got therapy. Um, but I would always put it on the back burner for myself, not because I didn't think that I needed it.

I knew that I would benefit from it and probably needed it, but I just didn't feel like it. I did not physically have the energy to, you know, Pour that time into myself. I think that also came from, you know, [00:28:00] putting my needs aside for for that season. Uh, that just kind of like continued, but I did, you know, finally start going to therapy.

And, uh, so that was a big help. Just helping me to talk about. Uh, how I was feeling, how to put, like, what I was feeling internally into words, because that felt very difficult for me, especially when I was talking to other people, because I was just always thinking about what their reaction was going to be.

And so it didn't give me the freedom to take my time putting things into words. Um, so therapy very much helped me do that. And at the same time, I was just filling myself with all kinds of content, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos. You know, um, and listening to other people's stories as well made, made a huge impact on, you know, the journey for healing for me.

Joey: Beautiful. Why do you think it's so helpful to put what you're feeling into words to learn the language you need to articulate your story? It's kind of a fascinating thing and it seems like a really simple kind of almost like something you can skip over. But [00:29:00] it's really not. What are your thoughts on that?

Jordana: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on that. Um, I just think, you know, your, your interior life, the way that you experience experiences, um, the way you internalize experiences, perhaps being able to have language for that and have another person receive what you specifically are going through, I think is very healing because Then you're not experiencing that rejection, right?

So like this fear of rejection that I kept talking about. And I think maybe a lot of, you know, people from broken families can relate with because maybe their parents didn't always know how or didn't receive them well when they tried to express their feelings, right? And so having, being able to like have the confidence to put language to that and have another person be like, Oh, that makes sense.

You know, maybe they can't relate to what you're going through, but they can understand because of the language that you were using, you know, like, okay, that makes sense that you would feel that way then, or it makes sense that you're internalizing this experience in this way. And it just makes you feel, it makes me feel, you know, understood.

And it's like, okay, I'm not crazy. [00:30:00] Um, I think it, it really lessens the isolating feeling and, you know, the lack of support or a lack of security that that creates.

Joey: That's really good. And that makes a lot of sense. And. I think we've talked about this separately of that, uh, quote, I've heard it from Brené Brown.

She was quoting someone else who said like, the limits of your language are the limits of your world. The limits of your language are the limits of your world. And I think there's so much truth to that. Like if we can't describe our experiences and the things we're feeling, then it really does stifle us.

It like really holds us back in life. Um, and so there's something like really freeing and powerful. And that's a. That's the feedback we've heard the most probably about this podcast is that it frees, it gives people the ability to describe, to put into words their experiences. Um, sometimes, and this always kind of breaks my heart, but sometimes after many, many years of going through their family falling apart, their parents getting divorced, like, you know, I've heard from people in like their 50s, 60s, even heard stories of people in like their 70s.

I'm like, man, I never heard anyone talk about this the way that you guys are. And it's [00:31:00] sad. It's really sad to me that all those years, um, they kind of went through, like you said, isolated, alone, like, kind of maybe dismissing the pain and dismissing like what they had been through. Um, so I think there is something, yeah, so freeing about that.

And I think it also gives you the ability to move beyond it. Cause like, that's the whole goal of everything we're doing here. I know. You know, we're like in the midst of doing this work and we're kind of like living and breathing this every day, but we don't want people to like stay stuck and broken. We want to like move them from that place to a place of like freedom to move on with their life, to kind of close that chapter in the past.

There will always be challenges that come up, but we want them to be like strong and virtuous so they're better able to navigate and handle those challenges, um, and build those healthy relationships. But we don't want anyone to like stay in the past. And I think one of the ways is actually kind of starting with like Hey, this is what happened to me.

Sort of thing. And, um, it's somewhat reminds me of like how in the 12 step programs, like the first step is like kind of admitting that you have a problem. And, uh, and I think one part of admitting you have a problem is like putting language to it.

Jordana: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that because I also, when [00:32:00] you don't have the language, you know, it's just kind of like stored in your body and you're like, I know I'm feeling a certain way, but I don't really know how to explain it.

And, you know, maybe Even I don't even know where it's coming from or what's causing me to feel this way. And so the other element that I would add to that is having the language, being able to move past it because you are able to get to the root, you know, you're like, you're able to put it into words now.

And it's like, okay, well, I, you know, why, why then do I react this way? Why do I feel that way? And, you know, instead of it just being this kind of indescribable. You know, feeling in my chest, feeling in my stomach and in my whole body. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely helps you move past it because you can figure out why.

Joey: Totally. And you make me think in the medical world, right? When you're dealing with some sort of health problem that is nameless, that you don't have a diagnosis for that you can't really figure out, the doctors can't figure out, um, it's really debilitating and there is a, Huge amount of freedom to like putting a name on it, like you have this condition, this is what you're dealing with, you know, hoping that it's like a proper diagnosis of course.

[00:33:00] And, and I think there's like a ton of, yeah, there's definitely a ton of freedom in being able to like put a name on it. Cause then at that point, like if you think in the medical world, then opens up the options of treating it. Because otherwise, you're just kind of like shooting in the dark, like being like, I think this will help.

I don't know if it will help entirely because we don't really know the problem. But once you understand maybe like the problem, then the solutions kind of present themselves. And it makes me think of in the, I forget who said this, but, um, a problem, you know, well defined is a problem half solved. And so if you can get like really clear and Einstein even said something similar.

Um, and I know it's funny, we're relating Einstein to like healing, but I think it applies. Um, he said like talking about kind of his brilliance, he said, it's, it's not that I'm so much smarter. It's just that I stick with the problem longer and, and I don't know if that perfectly translates to healing, but I think there's an important principle in that, like, yeah, if we like really understand our stories and like what we've been through and like how it, We've been affected that gives us the freedom to go seek the help that we need, then leading us to hopefully put that in our past, close that chapter, move on and just thrive in life.

And then the other thing I was thinking of [00:34:00] was how the first time, um, I, you know, really experienced kind of intense, like anxiety, I didn't actually know what I was experiencing. It was, it was just like you said, it was like something I felt in my chest, but I couldn't put. a name to it. Like I knew I was like worried or I knew that I was just didn't feel like at peace, but I didn't know like, Oh wow, you're going through like really intense anxiety right now.

So having the language now gives me a bit of like power over it and like freedom of like, okay, if I experienced that again, then I know what I'm experiencing. So I can then do things or get help. They'll help me kind of counteract that.

Jordana: Yeah. The power in the self mastery, I think is another. big element of that because if you, if it's nameless, you don't know what it is.

It's like, okay, well, how am I, how am I going to harness this? How am I going to move forward? It's just kind of something that feels out of my control and it's just going to keep happening because I can't, you know, put a name to it. I can't, I don't know what solutions are there if there's no name for it.

So I think that actually the medical analogy was, was very, was very apt for that.

Joey: Good. I'm glad that's always been helpful for me because I think when we talk about like emotional healing, [00:35:00] it can be kind of elusive and abstract and I think it's helpfully compared to something that a lot of us like understand better.

Good stuff. I was curious to if there were any particular books, podcasts or other content that have helped you the most.

Jordana: Yeah. Well, certainly your podcast. Um, I remember finding your podcast, uh, very early, uh, this year actually. And, um, I think, you know, actually same for me. It gave me a lot of language also made me feel not alone because I'm hearing other people's stories of similar things that I've been through and it just helps so much, you know, again, with the language and people understanding you, it helps you to feel not so isolated.

And, uh, I was really, really very grateful to the abiding together podcast with sister Mary and James and the restore the glory podcast with Dr. Bob shoots and Dr. Those were just very formational in. My healing journey, especially as of late, I would say in the past couple of years. Um, you know, listening to them talk about how to live healthy, listening to them and their honesty with their [00:36:00] struggles as well, you know, just keeping it very, very real.

And, but at the same time, you know, acknowledging how difficult it is to just, you know, live in general. Um, so yeah, I would say that those. Those certainly. And, um, also by Father Jacques Philippe. Um, I already forgot the, the title of the book. We just talked about it right before recording. Um, but it's about surrender, surrendering to the Lord.

I think that that was like, that was just very eye opening, like maintaining peace and surrender. It just, it shifted my entire spiritual life. It shifted a lot about my mindset and how I approach, uh, you know, difficult things that kind of life throws at you

Joey: and there's plenty of those things. Um, and I think that, you know, Book's name is searching for maintaining peace or peace of heart, something like that.

We'll, we'll link to it in the show notes so you guys can pick it up. And I, I was just saying, um, before we were recording, we were talking about that book and how influential it's been on me and I've read it multiple times and just cause I've needed a different periods in life. It's really been helpful when I've kind of been going through [00:37:00] seasons of like uncertainty or anxiety, like worry that just has brought a lot of peace.

So, and I know you can relate to that. So beautiful and love those podcasts, like great suggestions and definitely recommend everyone listening. Um, check those out if you're looking for more content on healing. Um, what about people? I'm curious what people like for their friends, mentors, whoever have helped you the most?

Jordana: Oh, man, there's actually there's so many I couldn't even bring them all up but Yeah, there's been so many people in all of the different seasons that i've gone through in the past six years people from my newman center, you know, whether it was campus ministers or Uh, you know the priests that were there Priesthood in my parish and just very good.

I thank the Lord every day, man. Like he's really blessed me with the people that he's put in my life, you know, just friends who are also growth oriented, friends who are able to have vulnerable conversations and are passionate about, you know, in the same way as me about, you know, just being better and, you know, living a virtuous life.

You know, I have very, two very close friends that come to mind right now where I'm able to [00:38:00] have those conversations with them. And one of those friends is about 10 years older than me. And, you know, we have conversations like this all the time and she's able to lend me some of her wisdom, you know, being a little bit older than I am and it's just, it's beautiful.

So God is, God is really, really good in that area.

Joey: I love that. And, um, no, I think that's probably been the most influential thing, like the content. has been helpful. Therapy has been helpful, but I think like my relationships with my mentors, like you said, has probably been the most like transformative and healing thing for me too.

So I love that you mentioned that. Did you go to therapy? And if so, what was therapy like for you?

Jordana: Yeah, so I've been in therapy for a couple of years. It was, you know, the actual going to therapy wasn't a struggle for me. Well, after I got over the hurdle of, you know, kind of not feeling like doing it. But the actual like talking about what was bothering me and talking about, you know, where I was struggling, thankfully it was not a challenge for me because I just wanted a solution so bad.

You know, I was like, okay, what do we need to do? You know, what are, where do I need to work on these things to, you know, be better? And so [00:39:00] that was like a really good experience. Like I said, it helped me to communicate and express, you know, what I was actually feeling and, you know, made me, you know, a lot more well spoken, which was, which was really nice.

And it was good to just have a space. I'm sure anyone who's gone to therapy can relate to this, you know, hopefully it was good therapy, you know, having just a space to be able to talk about all of those things, because I didn't feel like I had that, you know, growing up. And, you know, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that as well.

Just a lot of people don't know how to receive vulnerable things well, right? And so having that space in therapy to be able to talk about that and just, you know, You know, let them, the person on the other side just let me be and exist, you know, is, is healing in itself. So, and I think those are probably the biggest ways that therapy's impacted.

Joey: If you'd like to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. You can do that in three easy steps, but first, some of the benefits of sharing your story, reflecting on your story and sharing it with someone who can receive it with empathy is actually healing on a neurobiological level and makes your brain [00:40:00] healthier, according to neurobiologists.

Writing your story is also healing. Studies have shown that people who write about emotionally. Significant events in their lives or less depressed, they're less anxious, they're healthier, and they're happier. And finally, it can be really helpful to someone who's maybe on the same path that you're on, but a bit far behind you, uh, to just hear your advice and to hear your story since they're going through things that you've been through.

And so if you wanna share your story, just go to restored ministry.com. Uh, you can fill out the form on that page that will guide you in telling a short version of your story. And then we'll take that and turn it into an anonymous. if you want to share your story now, you can do so at restored ministry.

com slash story, or just by clicking the link in the show notes. I like that. I was listening to another podcast. Um, it was actually, it was, um, a pastor of all things at a hospital talking about how like their presence is meant to be like a nonjudgmental comforting presence. And I think that's like kind of describes a therapist for me in a lot of ways.

It's just like, they're there to like kind of walk with you, you know, not judge you. And hopefully even challenge you to grow. [00:41:00] I, that's, I guess the one thing I would add is like the best therapists I've had are ones that not just like are mirrors and are, they reflect everything back to you, but it's more like they see what you're saying.

They see like your struggles and then they challenge you to be better, to do the things that are necessary to move from like where you are to where you want to be in life and whatever arena. Do you remember the type of therapy you've done? I don't mean to get too technical with that, but I'm just curious if you remember.

Jordana: Yeah, no, not at all. I think that's actually very important. So I was doing just regular talk therapy. Um, at first I think it was, you know, very cognitive behavioral therapy focused, you know, where you acknowledge the negative thoughts and then you try to replace them with positive thoughts. more healthy, positive, uh, thoughts.

So it's kind of like a thought rewiring process. Um, and interestingly enough for me, that only helps for so long because you can only battle with your thoughts for a long enough time where it's like, okay, this doesn't really work anymore. Um, and then, you know, most recently I have kind of delved into EMDR therapy, uh, mixed with some IFS.

So that's eye movement therapy. Desensitization, [00:42:00] reprocessing therapy and internal family systems. And it just kind of gets like more practical, at least that's how it felt for me, you know, it was just kind of getting to, okay, you're having these thoughts where we were in the cognitive behavioral realm, but it's like, why are they, why do they keep occurring, you know, and where exactly are they coming from and why are they still coming up, you know, after this, all this time of you trying to replace them with these other thoughts.

Um, and so that has been, that was really, really helpful. Very eye opening. And yeah, it's just, it's like deep work, you know, you're kind of like, instead of just like trimming the grass on top, you're like digging with a shovel underneath and you're like, Oh, these roots are here. That's why these weeds keep growing.

Um, yeah, that's kind of how it felt.

Joey: Wow. No, that's fascinating. And, um, no, we need to, we talked recently about, um, internal family systems, but the EMDR, I'd love to know more about that. I've heard bits and pieces, but I really don't know much about it at all. Um, What are the therapy sessions like with that?

Jordana: Sure. Yeah. So. I did only a couple. She was mostly [00:43:00] IFS focused, but, um, so EMDR is very memory focused, at least in the experiences that I had. Um, so I'm certainly going to not explain this as well because I'm not a psychologist or a scientist, but the science behind it is when your eyes are moving in a bilateral direction left to right.

Um, Your brain is more able to access long term memories. Uh, and so what happens is, uh, we were doing this virtually. So she had a dot on the screen and it was moving left to right. And she was like, okay, we were talking about a specific memory. And she said, think about that memory. And I want you to watch the dot.

So you just kind of like sit there for like 30 seconds. You're watching the dial. You're thinking about the memory and then she stops it. And she asks, okay, you know what, what was coming up for you? While you were doing that. And, you know, maybe some more specific details about the memory will come up or feelings that you were feeling in that moment.

Um, and then so she does like a couple more times where you're thinking about the memory and she adds like another layer to it. The second time she said, okay, now picture yourself in that memory. Like you, your present self now picture yourself in that memory [00:44:00] and we're going to watch the dot again. Right.

And so that kind of like makes it a little bit more intense. Like, you know, what would, what are you feeling, you know, watching yourself in that specific memory. And then the last, you know, One was kind of like, you know, what would you say, how would you offer your help to yourself in that memory or what would you have done in that situation if you now were in that memory, if that makes sense?

Joey: Yeah.

Jordana: So it's very, it's very interesting. And, you know, by the end you kind of, I felt, you know, a little bit of a weight lifted off and I felt it kind of, it creates this compassion for yourself, you know, it's a kind of encouragement to give yourself some grace.

Joey: Yeah, and it sounds like it's based in like brain science and neurobiology, which is fascinating, something to do with like memories and maybe trauma and things like that, like kind of making it so they don't affect your day to day life as much, because that was one of the things we were talking with Dr.

Peter Malinowski in a previous episode about how your subconscious is. Really rules your life in so many ways. And what we see below the surface, like what we perceive of each other is really the tip of the iceberg, like 90 percent of who we are [00:45:00] and like why we do what we do is like below the surface and often like unconscious.

And so, um, that's, it sounds like that's like what it's getting after is trying to kind of correct. Some of that like unconscious is, is that right? Or is that off base?

Jordana: Yeah, that's absolutely the thought behind it. Yeah. It's getting out the shovel and, you know, digging underneath and getting to the, to the roots of the weeds.

Joey: Cool. Okay. That, that makes sense. Huh? Yeah. Thanks for explaining it. What again, to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing, what kind of ongoing or recent family challenges have you faced?

Jordana: That's a good question. Actually, I feel like in this season that I'm currently in, uh, my family's kind of the most, you know, everybody's doing pretty well.

Um, you know, it's kind of the most stable that we, I think, have all been since the divorce, which is just a, an enormous blessing and I'm so grateful for that. I think that, you know, the most recent challenge was really helping out a couple of my siblings through, uh, mental health challenges, you know, trying to figure out how to be there for them, you know, and, and of course, it was, Some, some elements were because of childhood things [00:46:00] or because of the divorce, but, uh, also just the problems that the divorce created, you know, leading to certain behaviors, if that makes sense.

Um, so I think that, that was probably like the most recent challenge was kind of helping them through that, you know, like, how do I be there for them through that, you know, I'm at this stage in my healing personally, and, you know, how do I get to where they are and support them through that without, you know, Pressuring them without making them feel like I'm not, you know, understanding what they're going through.

Joey: What did you learn through that process? Like another way to say it is yeah What did you learn and what advice would you offer to maybe someone listening right now who? Is going through something similar like they have a family member or even a friend who is going through some struggles Maybe related directly or indirectly to the breakdown of their family their parents divorce Um, yeah, i'm curious like what did you learn and what wisdom would you pass on?

To help them help that person.

Jordana: Sure. Yeah. I don't know. I actually know if I have a very good answer to that because I still feel like I struggle in that area. You know, it's, it's, it's common. It's like, you know, somebody who's going through so much distress and you want to [00:47:00] help, you want to offer a solution, but you know, a solution is not necessarily what they need.

I think my biggest piece of advice really would. Be to just, and this may sound cliche, but just be there for them, you know, make them, make them really know that you are not going anywhere, you know, that you, if they want to talk about anything at all, like you're going to be there for them and you're available and have the capacity to listen to them and, uh, support them through what they're going through.

Joey: I love that. And that's not bad advice at all. I think that's a beautiful principle that we often forget, especially men. Like I'm the worst at it. Cause it's like, Oh, we're so, and in some

Jordana: men,

Joey: I feel like men were more. Yeah. I can certainly be

Jordana: that way. I know that.

Joey: Yeah. Yeah. No, like we, we, we, Probably like the problem solver personality of like, Hey, I know what we need to do to fix this.

And like, yeah, but it's not about fixing the thing. It's more about, yeah, just like being with the person. And this one, uh, psychotherapist, Megan Devine, she talks about how when people are going through difficult times, like when they're grieving, a lot of times we're tempted to [00:48:00] try to like cheer them up and to try to like help them to see the bright side of it or to kind of like move past it maybe faster than they should.

And, um, she says that like the most powerful healing, helpful thing you can do is just like kind of enter into the mess with them and just be with them, just like you said, and that alone is going to help them way more than coming up with the perfect solution, which is so counterintuitive and something that I know is frustrating for me sometimes to do.

But, but that's what people need in that moment. They need the empathy and the empathy, just kind of being, I remember Brene Brown talking about that. Like the difference between sympathy and empathy is like, If your friend falls in the water, like off of a boat, sympathy is like throwing them, like, you know, uh, a life like vest or something.

It's like, Hey, sorry, you fell in like, good luck. Empathy is like jumping in the water with them, just being there in the midst of it and the messiness. And I think there's something like so powerful with that. And, um, not, not to say you can't offer solutions or that you can't, you know, try to help them like out of the mess or.

move forward, get the help that they need a hundred percent. But there's [00:49:00] something about like, even while they're going through that, being the presence in their life, that is just kind of that rock that found, you know, that, um, not necessarily the foundation, cause they need to learn to stand on their own two feet.

But, um, but at least there is like a stable presence and helping them kind of get back on their feet and walk. Walk by themselves, if that's making sense. Anything you'd add to that?

Jordana: Yeah, I think it's kind of a moment to moment thing, kind of like you're looking at your life through seasons. You can kind of look at that situation through moments, right?

There's a moment where they just need support. There's also a moment where, you know, you kind of need to help them pick themselves back up. And cause we never, like you said, we never want people to stay stuck, but, uh, you know, it's just kind of like having prudence to assess what moment needs, what, uh, remedy, I suppose.

Joey: I like that. That's really wise, the moment. So I think that makes sense. Cause yeah, and I think there is a point even in like the grieving process where, I know I've faced this in different situations where we might be tempted to just stay there forever. And even if we've like gone through grieving, we might just feel tempted to like stick in that kind of victim mentality space.

And we, and those moments, in my opinion, we need to [00:50:00] be challenged. So we need to kind of be shaken a little bit and be like, okay, like now what, now what are you going to do? This, this really difficult thing happened and not in like a harsh way, but I think we all need to hear that at some point in grieving.

I don't know the exact like timeline or what, how that looks, but, um, hope to have more answers for you guys on that. But yeah, I think there's something to that. So I love that idea of like seasons or moments of like, they need this now and they'll need this later.

Jordana: Yeah. Yep.

Joey: Really good stuff. Though we are always.

a work in progress. Um, how are, are you in your life better now that you've, you know, put some effort into healing and growth?

Jordana: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, I mean, my biggest area of struggle was always communication. And I think that's the biggest area that I've improved in. Thanks be to God.

Um, you know, I'm able to kind of take a pause if I need to, you know, express something. I'm able to have language to, uh, talk about things and it's just like such a, it's such a barrier removed, especially in relationships. You know, where I was kind of putting up a wall for vulnerability and intimacy and, [00:51:00] and now it's a lot more removed.

And it certainly wouldn't be that way. I don't think if I hadn't sought out, you know, all of the, the help and, and received that help that I have.

Joey: I love that. And, um, have there been tactics too and things you've learned about better handling anxiety or is that, yeah, I'm just kind of curious of the growth there.

Cause you seem to have grown a lot there as well. If, if I'm not judging that wrong.

Jordana: Yeah, no, you're certainly right about that, because, you know, like I said, I was just constantly living in this like bodily and mental tension all of the time that really just, it was a combination of a lot of things, a combination of time.

It was a combination of, you know, practicing just basic skills, like deep breathing, uh, creating times of rest for myself, you know, taking hold of my thoughts and definitely like prayer. I certainly can't leave that, um, out of this. Uh, you know, like I said, the book about peace and surrender by father Jean Philippe.

That, like, type of spirituality completely shifted how anxious I was feeling. It was, it was pretty incredible. Um, but yeah, all, all of those factors really went into that. And I'm, [00:52:00] again, so grateful to God for that because it's such a miserable way to live. It really is.

Joey: No, it is. I think, yeah, it's even hard to see clearly when you're in the midst of it, like we were talking about before.

So I'm really happy for you to, you know, have a more self mastery over that. That's like really beautiful. And in terms of the communication, you're an awesome communicator. Like this has been a great interview and I, um, even working with you for as long as we have been now, basing it off of what you described and struggling in communication, you've been awesome.

So I can attest to that. I appreciate that

Jordana: very much. I'm glad that you can see the fruits. That's all I could hope for.

Joey: Yeah, no, it's a really good thing. Like even, you know, just good questions you've asked or the way you phrase things, it's never rude, but it's always like, Hey, you know, I need some clarity here, like, Hey, what do I do in this situation?

Or, you know, how can I like help this person or whatever? So I think it's, yeah, you definitely, it's cool to see the growth there. And I know that you're still in that trajectory to grow even more, which is beautiful and we're here cheering you on, of course, if you could, um, speak to your parents, shifting gears a little bit, if you could speak to them honestly about, you know, everything that's happened, what would you want them to know?

What would you say?

Jordana: [00:53:00] Yeah, well, it's certainly a loaded question. Um, I don't know, I think I would just want them to know that. You know, how, how much I consider all the things that they've been through, and maybe they don't realize how much, you know, their, the experiences of their lives have shaped them into who they were and who they, you know, still are now.

And, um, I guess I would, I would just want to like emphasize the importance of that, the importance of taking a look at yourself and the things that you have been through and try to like connect the dots and see, you know, where, where is that impacting you in your life now? Cause I, you know, I think that's just at the root of our whole, all of our stories, you know, in my whole family.

I

Joey: appreciate that honesty. And I just want to thank you for your overall honesty and vulnerability in this conversation. I've learned a lot from you and I know everyone listening has too. So thank you for being here. Thanks for going through this. I am. Just encourage everyone to check out the resources that Jordana mentioned.

We'll link to all that in the show notes so you guys can check them out. And, uh, Jordana, in closing, thanks [00:54:00] again. Uh, just want to give you the final word. And that question is, you know, what advice or encouragement would you offer to the younger you who's perhaps listening right now?

Jordana: Keep going. I think the hope is, you know, hope is the anchor, right?

Like, that's what kept me moving forward. Just the, the optimism, you know, just kind of like a realistic optimism, right? Where, you know, I know things might not be great right now and they might not get better soon, even, even if I wanted to, but, you know, it will be. better. And I can certainly say that from my own life.

Um, yeah, just, you know, keep, keep trudging through, keep walking through, you know, with your rain boots in the mud. Essentially, that's how I feel sometimes. But yeah, just keep the hope, keep trudging through, like it does get better.

Joey: That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you feel free to subscribe or follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app.

Not only is it the best way to avoid missing future episodes, but the more subscribers we have, the more apps we'll [00:55:00] suggest our show to people who are looking for help, and it only takes a few seconds. If you've already done that, feel free to rate or review the show that also helps other listeners to find the podcast.

In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. We're here to help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges, and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life. And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

#130: An Exercise to Heal | Dr. Peter Malinoski

If you’re like me, you’ve experienced trauma or brokenness in your life which has led you to seek healing. One method of healing used in therapy is Internal Family Systems. But what exactly is it? And how can it help you?

My guest today, a psychologist and expert in Internal Family Systems, answers those questions, plus:

• A healing exercise that you can do alongside me during this episode

• The result of the exercise for me and both of our thoughts on it

• Why your subconscious is ruling your life

Listen to The Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast

Visit Dr. Peter’s Souls and Hearts

View Restored’s Resources

More Resources from Dr. Peter

Find out more about IFS (Internal Family Systems) with Dr. Peter here

Is IFS really Catholic? Find out from Dr. Peter here

How can IFS help overcome porn use? Dr. Peter’s workshop titled “Working with Part Who Want Porn is here

Check out episodes 49-71 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast for a whole series on sexuality and Catholic marriage

Catholics desiring greater interior integration and personal formation – especially human formation – can check out our Resilient Catholics Community within Souls and Hearts

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

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As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

130_Final

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[00:00:00] Why is divorce so impactful? So often traumatizing for young people. I like to think about this in terms of a poker analogy, but in terms of your parents and the environment that you were brought up and so forth, that's like the hand that you were dealt, right? You're not going to be judged on the hand you were dealt.

You're going to be judged of the way you played that hand. I think it's really underappreciated how much we need to really be human first so that we can flourish so that we can live lives of joy and peace. What is internal family systems and how might it help someone? What I love about internal family systems and parts of systems approaches is that it helps us to make sense of the chaos inside.

Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorce or broken family, this show is for you. We help you heal your brokenness, navigate the challenges and build healthy relationships so you can break that cycle and build a better life. My guest today is Dr. Peter Malinowski. He's been a clinical psychologist for the past 20 years.

In Indianapolis and the co founder and president [00:01:00] of Souls and Hearts, where he leads a community for therapists and for Catholics and creates content for their podcast. Dr. Peter is passionate about bridging the psychological and spiritual realms. Uh, he's an expert in helping people uncover the unconscious barriers that really hinder their ability, their capacity to love God and each other, as well as receive love from God and other people.

He's been married for 27 years to his wife, Pam, and they have seven. Children. I'm really excited for you guys to hear this interview. If you're like me, you've experienced trauma, you've experienced brokenness in your life, which has led you to seek healing in some form. And one method of healing that's used in therapy is internal family systems.

It's helped a lot of people and it's becoming even more popular. You've probably heard of it, but what exactly is it and how can it help? You in particular, Dr. Peter, who happens to be an expert in internal family systems, answers those questions in this episode. Plus he leads a healing exercise that you can actually do alongside me in this episode.

We discussed the results of that exercise for me. I got a bit vulnerable. I'm going to share a lot [00:02:00] with you guys in the hope of being really helpful and kind of a Guinea pig. We talk about why your subconscious is ruling your life and why knowledge really isn't enough for healing. And finally, he offers an amazing resource that you can use to help you heal.

and grow. But before we dive into the interview, a few quick things. One, there's some mature content in this episode, so you might want to listen with earphones and if there are kids around. In this episode, we do talk about God and faith, and if you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. Anyone who's been listening to this show for a while knows that we're not a strictly religious podcast.

And so wherever you're at, glad you're here. My challenge to you would be this. Just listen with an open mind. Even if you were to take out the God parts, you're still going to benefit from this episode. And lastly, if you're not in a place to do the exercise that Dr. Peter leads, um, maybe you're driving, working out, or doing chores, uh, one suggestion is this, you can actually listen through kind of as an observer, and then set a reminder on your to do list or on your calendar to go back and do the exercise yourself.

But with that, here's the interview. Dr. Peter, so good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here. [00:03:00] It is amazing to be here, Joey. I so enjoyed meeting you in person at the NEC, at the National Eucharistic Congress. And for us to be able to connect here is just a pleasure and an honor. Right back at you.

And, uh, yeah, it's always cool to meet people in person. I wish we could have done this interview in person as well, but I'm glad we're doing it here now. And I remember telling you, yeah, go ahead. And you did an interview with, with Dr. Jerry for us. So episode 146, like I'm super excited for that to be coming out or maybe it's already out by the time this goes up.

So. Yeah, yeah, we'll link to that, um, I think it'll be around the same time. We'll make sure to link to that episode where I went on your, your show basically with Dr. J. So, um, yeah, but I was just going to say, I read one article from you one night. I was just researching a topic, I forget even what it was, but, um, an article came up and I read the article.

I don't often read articles, especially not all the way through. And I was like, Oh, this is like really, really good. And I kept reading. I was like, this is really good. I'm like, who is this guy? And how have I not heard of him? So, so then I, so then I immediately like. You know, started looking into the [00:04:00] work you guys are doing, which is amazing, which we'll talk a little bit about later.

And then, um, you know, realizing we had mutual friends and connecting there. So anyway, I'm just thrilled to be here with you. And I wanted to start out just talking about why in the world are you doing this work? There's probably a lot of things you could be doing. What, why do you care about helping people to heal and to thrive in life?

Well, you know, early as a very young psychologist, I realized that so many spiritual problems. We're really spiritual consequences of human formation issues. In other words, you know, when my kids had trouble with algebra, sometimes it was because they didn't get the arithmetic right, you know, and so we're really, I'm really about shoring up the natural foundation for the spiritual life and that natural foundation, that's human formation.

I mean, that's straight out of St. Thomas Aquinas, right? Grace perfects nature. It has to have nature to perfect. And so as a Catholic psychologist, that's what my career is all about. And that's the way that I help out in this little corner of human formation in the great big vineyard. You know, this is [00:05:00] where I'm working to kind of in, in the mission of the church.

And that's what really floats my boat. Cause I think it's really underappreciated, you know, how much we need to really be human first so that, you know, we can, we can, Flourish so that we can live lives of joy and peace and love and to draw other people to Christ. We have to be fully human and that requires us to do some, you know, fully human work even before we start getting into all the intellectual formation and the spiritual formation and the pastoral formation.

Good stuff. No, I love that. And that we take a similar approach, at least in thought about how, you know, just, we can't discount the human. It's so important. We can't just like focus on, you know, only the spiritual or the intellectual, like you said, it's so, so important. So to someone listening though, who's like human formation, what, what is that?

And maybe what is it, how does it differ a little bit from personal development, which is maybe a little bit more in like the secular world? You know, I think there's a lot of confusion about that. When I think about human formation, I'm not talking about. You know, personal [00:06:00] development or professional development per se, or, you know, or the kinds of things that you might think about, like, Oh, I'm going to take a course in this.

I'm talking about the raw humanity. I'm talking about like the intensity of emotions. I'm talking about, you know, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, desires, impulses. I'm talking about the unconscious. The stuff that we don't allow into conscious awareness because it's pretty threatening. So I am about going deep into these things, resolving and healing from wounds that, you know, we sustained when we were little and, and when we were older too, and doing that in a way, obviously I have a therapy practice.

So I do that, you know, with my clients, but I'm also about bringing the best of those resources, like secular resources included into a form, into a way that I can. Other people can access them without actually having to be in therapy or without having to, you know, be in counseling or coaching or something like that.

I love that. Okay. No, that makes sense. And I could see how that would, you know, it's kind of a totally different thing than any sort of active work that you're doing on yourself and like the quote unquote personal development space. So obviously [00:07:00] there's a part of, you know, human formation, human development that would include that, but you're looking at maybe the raw material, the things that right in the past and then how they impact your present and will impact your future.

Did I hear that right? Yeah, exactly. And so, so when we think about human formation, we're talking about like the, the sum total of what's going on and the natural realm within the person. And that crosses so many different domains. That's really good. I remember hearing, um, and you correct me if this is wrong, but Carl Jung.

He has this quote as at least attributed to him that said, unless you make the subconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. That's right. He said this, he said something like something, I think that's pretty close to exact quote and it's true. It's true. You know, I mean, if you think about an iceberg, you know, and the part of the iceberg that's above the water is what's in conscious awareness.

Well, there's a lot that's below the water and it's, what's below the water that sinks ships. So it's below the water that sinks ships. And so I'm all about elevating those, those icebergs, getting them up out of the water more and more because, you know, [00:08:00] we can go right back to Socrates, right? Know thyself, you know, or to our Lord, right?

Remove the beam from your own eye. And if we are not integrated, if we are fragmented inside, which is an effect of sin, the original sin, the sins of others, our own personal sins. In fact, the word, you know, devil Diablo means scatterer. It means fragmentor. And so we are now understanding within sort of the cutting edge of trauma research and, and theory within psychotherapy, uh, research that One of the hallmarks that's getting a lot of attention now of mental health is integration.

How integrated is the person? And you know what? St. Thomas Aquinas was writing about that in the 12th century. He talks about it in terms of inner unity. Some translators will translate him as saying, it's talking about interior integration, but he's saying that if you don't have that interior integration, if you don't have that inner unity, you're not going to be able to form a union with anyone else.

Wow. Very well. And so the degree to which you [00:09:00] have that inner unity is the limit to which you can form a union with somebody else, including God. And so for those of you in the audience that really want to overcome, you know, this, this, the fragmenting effects of your own, of your own trauma and of your own experience, we really want to have that integration so that we can break these cycles, you know, that are such a focus of, The beautiful work you do on this podcast.

Yeah, no. And likewise, right back at you. You guys are doing it at even a deeper level, which I love. One of the things you made me think of was how so often in our culture, we put such an emphasis on like the cognitive, the intellectual, like knowing like how to, and so for example, it's like, okay, it's great.

If I know a lot about marriage, it's great. If I know a lot about what it takes to have a good marriage, it's very different than like, Acting on that, putting that, implementing it, putting it into action. And that's where I see in my own life and in the lives of the people that we walk with, the young people we walk with, that's the disconnect, the behavior change and whatever other changes in their lives, like don't come [00:10:00] about often because what you're saying, this unconscious, the subconscious, um, these barriers that hold us back.

And so that's where I'm so excited to kind of hear about internal family systems and talk with you more about that. But before I move on, any comments on that? Yeah, absolutely. Like you had this great quote in episode 146 of interior integration for Catholics when you were being interviewed with Jerry Crete and you said, we need to know this in our bones.

And I just love that language. I actually use that language as well. It's not just head knowledge. It's what's going on right in the heart and the heart. We want this integrated throughout all of us so that it doesn't remain simply in the realm of the abstract or the conceptual. Because it's going to have a very limited impact there.

It's not a bad start, but it can't be where we end up. I love that. And that's what hit me right away when I was reading, um, your content. It's so practical. It's so down to earth, which is so good. Cause it's often people in this space are often a little bit elusive, which I think is a struggle for people.

We don't get as much value from it. So I think it's great that you're so practical. Uh, on that note, I know we're going to be talking about internal family systems, but a lot of people listening right now, [00:11:00] including myself have very limited knowledge of that. So what is internal family systems and how might it help someone So internal family systems will originated as a form of therapy and by Richard Schwartz, you know, back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and he was a family therapist.

And so he was very interested in systems like, how did this, how does the system of a family work? And he found that when he was doing. Family therapy and things were changing in the family and positive ways that that change was not being internalized right away. In other words, there was a pretty significant leg and that there's actually an internal family.

In other words, the father of the family is represented, you know, within the daughter, you know, and the mother of the family is represented in some way within the son. And people are reacting to those internal images or those internal representations more than they're. Reacting to what's actually going on in real time with the real relationships.

And so sort of this idea as a family therapist that, wait a [00:12:00] minute, we have these parts, you know, his clients were starting to talk to him in terms of parts. And so my colleague, uh, Jerry Crete, the co founder of souls and hearts actually wrote a whole book on, on this called, um, let me say the heart where he goes back and traces things historically though, all the way back.

And so there's a whole history within our Catholic church about how we are both a unity and a multiplicity. And that's really one of the central, the central ideas within internal family systems or parts and systems work is that yes, we are one, but we're also many kind of like an orchestra is one, but it's also got these component parts to it.

Right. And so what I think is really helpful is to, is to understand how different parts react to different experiences. So let's just take the case of a divorce. I think there is many reactions to parents divorcing as there are parts within us. And these parts are, are often at fighting about that.

They're polarized about this one part, you know, is really wanting to connect with mom and dad and make peace in the [00:13:00] family. Another part's really angry at mom and dad and wants to be able to express Brass that as a need to sort of get that out and to make them here. Right. And another part is really afraid of what would happen if, if we were real.

So there's this internal civil war going on with all these different factions, aligning and polarizing. And what I love about internal family systems and parts of systems approaches is that it helps us to make sense of the chaos inside, and it helps us to be able to communicate that and to share it and to get it out and to understand it.

And it ultimately, it helps us to love ourselves, to love our neighbors and ultimately to love God, to carry out the two great commandments, which is what really floats my boat about this is that it helps us to carry out the two great commandments upon which the entirety of the law and prophets hang.

And that's the summary of our Catholic faith. Beautiful. I mean, it adds so much meaning to your life too, when you, when you love, when you go beyond yourself. And so I've certainly seen that in my own life, when I'm the most selfish, I'm the most empty and [00:14:00] miserable. When I love the most in a healthy way, I have the most meaning.

I have the most, even like energy and passion for life. And so I think that focus of like love being the meaning of life, we're here to love and to be loved is so key. And then the question becomes, well, what's preventing us from doing that? Well, and that's where I think this framework is. So, Appropriate and so helpful because we can remove those barriers.

Well, and you know, one of the things that we can easily assume, but it's not true. It's one of the great lies is that the obstacles to loving and being loved are always vices, you know, are always, you know, selfishness or something like that. And I would argue that there are, there's a lot in the natural realm that can keep us from, uh, from being loved, uh, that contributes to that, or that, um, keeps us from loving others.

Just natural level developmental work, human formation work that should have been done when we were 18 months old or 14. Four years old. This is before we even reached the age of reason. So we're not responsible for [00:15:00] it. And, and yet if we don't do that work, it's going to, it's going to get in the way of us being able to love.

So again, that's our little corner of the vineyard at souls and hearts, uh, which is all about like that human formation work, that really basic work. I'll give you an example. This is how it all started. Like when I was a psychologist, I realized that when I worked through father issues with my clients, like toxic relational stuff with dad, their relationship with God, the father got so much better.

And I wasn't doing any spiritual work with them. I wasn't doing spiritual direction, nothing in the spiritual realm, but because they got over that human formation issue with dad, dad and father images as toxic, they now were freed up to be able to engage with God as father in a much deeper way, you know, and, and get over some of the issues that they had, you know, in terms of the way they understood God or, you know, experienced God phenomenologically, which was distorted.

These God images were distorted. And so parts, parts, thinking about things in terms of parts and systems really facilitates that. I've looked at, I've looked [00:16:00] at a lot of different models of change over the years, over the decades, over the three decades I've been working in this area. And this, this is really what I'm finding most helpful for people, both in the natural realm and then the ripple effects as they, as they bring this into their spiritual lives as well.

So. Fascinating. I want to shift gears and through that lens, talk about divorce itself and the trauma of divorce. And so I'm curious in your professional opinion, what you've seen in your practice, as well as the research you've seen, like why is divorce so impactful? So often traumatizing for young people who, who go through it, you know, witnessing their parents marriage, maybe having a lot of dysfunction, like extreme dysfunction or a separation or a divorce.

Why is that so impactful? Well, the first primary condition of secure attachment, according to Brown and Elliot, their book, 2016, they reviewed all the attachment literature. Their book is called attachment disturbances in adults. The first primary condition of secure attachment is a felt sense of safety and protection, a [00:17:00] felt sense of safety and protection.

It's not just actually being safe, objectively safe, but it's feeling safe. And the original place that we get that is from our parents, or at least where we should get it. And one of the things about these parts that we were talking about is that we have parts that are very young phenomenologically, like might be two years old, five years old, and parts get stuck at different points when there is experiences that are overwhelming.

One of the definitions of trauma, for example, is. As an experience, that's so overwhelming that it can't be processed using, you know, what we have as our, in our resource, in our resources at the time. So it gets sort of encapsulated. Right. And so when children are young and parents split, there's huge impact on the felt sense of safety and protection, and there's a huge impact on feeling seen, heard, known, and understood, which is the second condition of secure attachment.

And feeling reassured, calmed and soothed the third condition of secure attachment and feeling delighted in [00:18:00] right. And little kids are going to believe that they have some way to control this. They have to have some way that they feel that they can control the events in their lives. And when they look at parents struggling in conflict, the potential for divorce, splitting up separation, that is an existential crisis for kids.

They don't know whether they're going to live through that because their experiences. I need both a mommy and a daddy and they don't have a broader frame of reference to understand like that. There might be other ways to survive this. So they're gonna, they're going to do everything they can to try to keep, try to keep mom and dad together.

And they're going to help. Own it. They're going to feel responsible for it because if they're responsible for it, that means they have the control. If they have the responsibility, then they have the control. There's a fantasy and illusion that by leveraging their position as a little child or an older child in a family, that if they just do the right things, if they say the right things, if they look the right way, if they get good enough grades in school, if they succeed enough in athletics or [00:19:00] whatever it is that they hope would bring mom and dad back together.

They're going to try that. And parents often, whether they're in contentious relationships or not, they have relatively little understanding of how much this impacts kids. The same dynamics go on in, in healthier families too. It's not, it's not unique. So, so yeah, we don't, we don't appreciate often as parents, the impact of the intensity of these things on kids.

Wow. And so parts get stuck holding different parts of this. Right. You know, like I was talking about the rage and the, and the desire and the fear and the yearning, you know, um, and, uh, and so kids are often left to their own devices in these families because there's a lack of attunement to what the internal experience of the child is.

They've got to figure it out on their own, which leads to things being walled off, separated stuff down in the unconscious, the bottom of the iceberg starts getting bigger and bigger. And, um, There's going to be work to do to kind of work through that later in life. Then the same kinds of things happen when, when folks are older though, to like divorce.

A lot of times you will see divorces happen after marriages are 20 to [00:20:00] 30 years along. And the idea behind that is while the kids are grown, they're all at least in high school or they're in college or they're adults, they've launched whatever. So this is the time where we can divorce. We stayed together for the kids.

It has a much. Underappreciated, a very underappreciated impact and intensity of impact because it activates all kinds of things within young adults as well. And I think that is an area that we're only starting to be able to, as a field within traumatology, to be able to understand more deeply.

Everything you said rings so true. It makes me think of just like the common phrase we often use of like, you know, you're acting like a child, you know? And so like what I hear you saying is. Yeah, you actually, that child within you or that part of you that is kind of stuck at that three year old or 10 year old or whatever is actually running the show in that moment because it was triggered in this way or that way.

Am I hearing that right? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean, in some ways this is supposed to be the case, right? You know, our Lord said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them [00:21:00] for the kingdom of God is made up of such as these. If you look at the Latin and the Vulgate, uh, for that verse, the word that's used for little child is parvolo.

And that's a diminutive of the word parvo. Parvo in Latin means little child. So when you make it a diminutive, it's like saying it's a little, little child. Like we're talking like toddlers here. And so, you know, in, in the gospel reading from a few days before we recorded this, you know, our Lord said he put a little child in front of them.

Cause they were arguing about who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven takes a little child. Whoever does not become like this little child shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Right. And a little child again. And so we need these parts of us that are small, that are young deaf, To help us with those childlike qualities that allow us to connect in right relationship with God, our father, as a beloved little son or a beloved little daughter of God, our father, and also, and also a beloved little son or a beloved little daughter of Mary.

Those are our primary parents. Our primary parents are our spiritual [00:22:00] parents. So one of the beautiful things about this as a psychologist is that I don't have to rely on finding like substitute parents, you know, I mean, if my clients could connect with God as father and Mary as mother, they can take care of any father wound, any mother wound that you could possibly have.

And that's, that's how God works in his providential grace. I think his providential care for us is that any, any problem that he knew was going to happen, any problem in your family, he knew was going to happen before time began. Before time began, he knew every injury you would sustain in being a member of this family and every wound that you would inflict in your own children.

You were a grownup and he had a plan for all of that. And part of that plan is for us to embrace him as our father and for us to embrace Mary as our mother. The perfect parents for us. So as a psychologist, it's amazing when people can connect with that. Yeah. No, it's so freeing and avoids all sorts of traps and pitfalls.

I'm sure some of the pitfalls I've witnessed people fall into when they kind of start doing this work of healing and is one they [00:23:00] might genuinely struggle to love, like the broken parts of themselves or the parts of themselves that they're not as proud about it and don't know the right way to talk about it.

But there's a part of them that they just kind of despise. They even make hate. And, and they think that maybe the goal is to stuff down, get rid of, like minimize, like move beyond that part. But I hear you saying the opposite. Actually, there's something that needs to happen there. All of these parts of us, which were part of the original plan, by the way, it's not like we've fractured into parts.

Like we added a single homogenous personality and we, you know, we got exposed to original sin or we got expelled to the sins of others, our own processes. We fractured into these pieces that we now have to deal with. This was part of the original plan. Remember we're made in the image and like Of God and God is both a multiplicity and a unity.

He is a multiplicity in that is Father, son and Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian God. But he's also a unity. That multiplicity aspect of God allows him to love himself. And that's unique in the history of understanding God. I mean, that is like. Totally different than [00:24:00] even other monotheistic religions, you know, which would understand God as a single entity, kind of homogenous, uh, without this multiplicity aspect.

And so, and we have a command to love ourselves, right? The second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself, which means that we are somehow supposed to have a relationship with ourselves. You can't have love of oneself commanded by our Lord himself. And this is in the second great commandment.

This is not some little obscure passage in numbers or, you know, or Leviticus or something. This is like the second upon which, you know, the entirety of the law and the prophets hang. So we need to understand what it means to love ourselves in a really ordered way. And, uh, and this parts and systems thinking really helps us to be able to do that.

But I'm wondering like we, and we talked about this a little bit, I'm wondering if, if I can show you a little bit about what this is, would that be okay? I love that. And I had one question before we move on, but I'm, and I'm totally game to do that. I think one of the, um, confusions you already hit on this a little bit, but I really want to spell it out for our audience, sometimes another pitfall I see.

The young people were leading fall into is that they [00:25:00] might think that this healing stuff or all the brokenness is someone else's job to fix, right? And in a sense, it might be right. It's like we should be bringing that to God or to the right people, maybe to a therapist. But sometimes I see. You know, I've, I've even fallen into this in my past where we kind of peg this onto another person in our life, thinking that they are going to be the savior.

They're going to come through and fix and solve anything. And I see a lot of people falling into that pitfall and I'm getting really hurt through it and ending up like not moving forward in their life. They just stay stuck. So would you speak to that? If anyone's struggling with that at the moment? Sure.

So I like to think about this in terms of a poker analogy. So, you know, in terms of your parents and the environment that you were brought up and so forth, that's like the hand that you were dealt, right? You're not going to be judged on the hand you were dealt. You're going to be judged of the way you played that hand.

And as Kenny Rogers said in the song, the gambler, every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser. Right? You can play it in a way where you were, you know, it works out in God's providential plan or even that [00:26:00] even the most advantageous of circumstances can turn sour. If you know, if we're not seeking to love the Lord, our God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So I would say that I would also say that a lot of the efforts in the ways that we get into trouble is when we want to delegate our human formation work to somebody else. You know, when we want to sort of have somebody else take that over, especially as well as as adults and the bishops of the American Catholic church, the USCCB are really clear about this in the program for PC formation, sixth edition.

This is the document that governs seminary, the formation of seminarians. And they say that the seminarian is the primary person responsible for his own formation. And that's actually the case for all of us. That doesn't mean we can do everything by ourselves, but we need to be taking an active participatory role in this.

And so there are things, for example, that we are going to require the help of others and the help of God for, but we have to bring ourselves to that help. So I would definitely say that it's a, it's a both and there rather than a sort of either, [00:27:00] or either I just pull myself up by my bootsteps by myself or somebody else takes care of this for me.

Now, when you're, when you're three months old, obviously you're not going to do it on your own, you know, or if you're, if you're five years old, you know, you're limited in what you can do along those lines, but you reach the age of reason and you can begin making choices about this. So, so good. Let's dive into this exercise.

I'm really excited to go through this with you and to see what comes with it. So this is an experiential exercise. I do a lot of these on my podcast, interior integration for Catholics. So we do a lot of these in the resilient Catholics community. Uh, we, cause, cause we want to again, get to the heart, right?

We don't want to just stay in the head. We want to get to the heart. And so this is for you, you out in the audience. Um, and a couple of cautions about this, uh, first one is. That we really want to do this in a space where you have the time and the conditions to really enter into your own internal experience.

So this isn't something you should do when you're driving or when you're working out, or if you're making dinner, or if you're engaged in some other activity, this is something that's gonna, gonna [00:28:00] require your whole attention. Second thing I would say is let's do this in a way that is helpful to you. All right.

So if I offer you something in this experiential exercise or this meditation, that isn't helpful to you, you can let it go. You can let it go. You don't have to follow it. It's not, this isn't something to be, uh, that's mandated in any way. It is really, really rare, but still there's a possibility that for some people, this could be triggering or it could be a difficult.

So if you find that you are leaving your window of tolerance, kind of going to a fight or flight response, you're dropping into a dorsal vagal shut down freeze response, going to recommend that you stop, you know, you get regrounded. And that you, um, that you understand that again, we want to make sure that this is something that's helpful to you at the right time in the right place.

Right? So, uh, so no need to press on with that. Let's pay attention to what's going on there. We really want to make sure that we maintain that first primary condition of secure attachment, which is a felt sense of safety and protection kind of across different parts. So those are some some ideas along those lines.

It can [00:29:00] be helpful. To, uh, to have some pens and paper pencils and paper in case, you know, there's, you might want to write some things down as you come into contact with, with different experiences inside or different parts inside. And, uh, and yeah, this is really sort of a sample and I'm going to keep it fairly simple, right?

The sort of sample of what some internal family systems of informed approaches or parts and systems. Informed approaches to going inside look like, and so if you find that you're doing some really wonderful work too, and you're watching this as a recording, just go ahead and hit pause. You know, can it continue that beautiful work?

You can resume it when the time seems right. So you have that option as well. Yeah. So do you have any questions, any questions, joy, anything that comes to mind in response to kind of getting ready for something like this? I love the point you made about, like, this is heart work, not just head work. Um, I think that's so, so important because again, like we talked about before, I've even seen this trend in myself where we kind of fall into procrastinal learning or what some people call like mental masturbation, where it's like, we just want to consume our content and [00:30:00] hear about healing and we never actually want to do the work in ourselves.

Um, which is a big trap and we're not going to see, I think, like growth and movement in our life until we do something like this where we're sitting down and actually digging deep. So that's what I'm going to try to do. And I, that's what I encourage everyone to try to do as well. Don't just think about this stuff, but kind of connect your heart to the feeling side of it.

And, um, any guys out there, I think they're too macho for this. Like do it anyway, you're going to benefit from it. Well, and I would, I would again say, if you're seeing some concerns, red flakes coming up, you know, if you're, you know, I would say, don't, don't power through that. Let's listen to that. Cause some, some people need to.

Need to have some accompaniment with this. That's more individual and one on one, you know, they initially need their own person with them, but a lot of people could really benefit from this. So, uh, even in this kind of format, in fact, I do the, I've done hundreds of these kinds of experiential exercises.

So, so something that's kind of uniquely tuned, uh, to the audience here of restored, I've been thinking about this. So, and it's so great to have you Joey and for you to be game about doing this too. And, and so, yeah. Um, we'll go ahead and kind of get started with it. So, [00:31:00] and this will go for somewhere between somewhere around 12, 12 to 14 minutes, you know, just so in case people are wondering like how much time, so yeah, about 12 to 14 minutes.

So, um, so I'm just going to invite you. To notice and what's just happening in inside right now, and just kind of, we're not trying to change anything. We're not trying to make anything happen. We're just trying to be aware of what our internal experience is in this moment. And if it's helpful to you to shut your eyes, that's great.

If you want to keep them open, that's fine. So much freedom with this.

But to just notice what's happening inside and to acknowledge the reality of whatever's happening inside. That doesn't mean we endorse every thought or we [00:32:00] give approval to every impulse or, but we just note that it's there. It doesn't mean we have to engage with it or go with it, but just to notice what's already there and to see if we can have a big open heart toward ourselves.

If we can

have an appreciation that even in our wounds, we are still fearfully and wonderfully made.

And would it be okay to just kind of accept that? Or is there something getting in the way?

Every part of us

is fearfully and wonderfully made too. [00:33:00] And that parts are different than the burdens they carry. Shame, rage, fear. Those are all burdens. Those are all experiences. Those are not the parts themselves. They're the burdens that parts can carry. And parts are not their roles. Controlling, criticizing, hiding, those are all roles that parts can play, but they're not the parts themselves.

And so, would it be possible for us to look at [00:34:00] ourselves the way God looks at us, a little bit more like God looks at us, fearfully and wonderfully made, and he saw that it was very good.

And can we notice what gets in the way of that? Cause something might be getting in the way of that right now for you, what might be the objections, the concerns, the arguments that come up inside.

Those are parts of us too.

And can we have an [00:35:00] open heart toward those parts of us that might hate other parts of us, parts of us that might hate our weakness or might hate our shame or might hate our scrupulosity or might hate our, whatever it is inside. are fear.

There are reasons for all these experiences. There are reasons for all these beliefs, assumptions, impulses, desires. Parts, each in their own way, are seeking a good for us. St. Thomas Aquinas says that we always seek a perceived good. These parts are seeking goods for us. But often in ways that are really maladaptive, problematic, sometimes morally wrong.[00:36:00]

Can we appreciate that different parts of us are trying to help us?

Can we be open to that idea? Can

we be open to this idea that we have an innermost self,

deep within us, that

has the qualities it needs to lead and guide our systems? To lead and guide our parts, to be a conduit of graces, to help us connect[00:37:00]

an innermost self that's a bridge to connecting with God in a healthy and good way.

And you might be able to sense these parts. Some people can see their parts. They have a visual representation. Others can hear their parts. Others can see the images that parts are offering, memories. Some parts [00:38:00] communicate through body sensations.

My parts will often play songs, like an internal jukebox, that communicate something they want me to know.

There's a lot of different ways that parts can communicate.

And this may sound really hard to believe, for some parts, [00:39:00] okay? But it is possible for parts to come into much greater harmony.

To be able to come together,

to collaborate, to cooperate

under the right conditions, conditions where there's a sense of leadership and a sense of being loved and cared for. A lot of these parts may be really young,

looking for guidance within. Sometimes parts will Take on the role of leading and guiding your system, but they're not really suited to that takes them out of their naturally adaptive roles.[00:40:00]

It's just going to invite you to notice what parts might be up for you

and what might your parts want you, you as your innermost self to know about their experience. What might they want you to know? We're going to ask parts not to overwhelm you, not to [00:41:00] take you over and not to flood you with the intensity of their experience, but to look at you, you as your innermost self, and to see if there's a space here for you as your innermost self to come to see, hear, know, and understand your parts more deeply and what their experiences were and how they understood their experiences.

What it was like for them,

because often, especially in really difficult circumstances, one part stood in the breach and took it [00:42:00] when times were really hard, when things were overwhelming,

and those parts were heroes. Because it kept that overwhelming experience from flooding into everything and taking us totally out of the capacity to live daily life.

And yet, sometimes those parts get condemned because of the burdens that they care, because of the burdens that they carry because of that.

Can we have a big open heart to those parts that stepped it up and took the heat when things were hard? Not that we're going to unpack all of that. That's not what this is about right now, but to just have an [00:43:00] appreciation for,

for how they've walled off. What is too much for the rest of us to handle, at least at that time.

And if you can't get into that and no, that's okay. Maybe parts are just not at the point where they feel safe enough to be able to engage in that kind of work. We want to be careful about not unpacking too much at once. We want to make sure that we're working in a way that feels safe to those parts of us that protect us and kind of handle our day to day operations.

Really a lot of respect for the ways that things currently work in your system, [00:44:00] but some openness here to some ideas about how things could get better.

And with that, a lot of appreciation for your parts, the ways that they're trying to help you, a lot of appreciation for the good intentions they have for you. Even if they use means that are really problematic in a variety of ways, they, they create impulses

that might be really problematic. There's still a good intention there for the ways that they try to get deep needs met

and an appreciation for any collaboration, cooperation that parts we're able to, to offer in this. [00:45:00] And this work,

a lot of times it's surprising for parts to experience gratitude.

And with that, we'll draw this experiential exercise to a close. If it's helpful to take some time and write a few things down to give parts of voice in writing, and that can be really, really helpful, makes things seem like really real to some parts, or even to draw it out. If they gave you an image to kind of keep that in a parts journal or a parts map.

Yeah. Just want to. Be able to like offer that. So, so yeah, that brings this, this, this to a close and, and uh, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm curious, obviously, Joey, if, you know, whatever you might want to share from that, you know, kind of as a part of a [00:46:00] debrief here. So, yeah, no, it's so much, so much there. I Yeah, I don't know how much I should share because I wrote down a lot.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot this there's not one right way to do this Just like whatever moves you some people won't write at all Others that might write up write a ton because there's so much to like connect with and and so it's all good Yeah, so I'll try to give you a summary without going maybe too into the weeds And if there's anything else anything you want me to explore I'm happy to do that So I have four post it notes filled with different Notes based on the prompts that you gave the, the first thing I kind of struggle with, and maybe this is unique to the format we're doing.

It was like taking off the host hat and then just like kind of tune in. Cause like when you were saying to kind of just notice the sensations in your body, I'm like, I'm kind of in like game on mode, like we're doing an interview here, you know? So I had to kind of step back from that for a second, but.

Once I did, one of those kind of sensations I've been feeling a lot lately is just being very spread thin, just like overcommitted, like lots going on, both in [00:47:00] this, you know, postulate that I'm running and then other areas of my life too. And so that's one of the things. And lately it kind of hit me too. I remember the kind of experience I had the other night where I think sometimes like our busyness can be somewhat of a mask that we had behind and especially had our maybe loneliness behind.

And so I noticed that in me too. Yeah, there's so much more, um, trying to think, there were kind of two, I read this book recently by Mike Foster, if you're familiar with him, but he wrote it, it's called Primal Question and he kind of tied together some of this, um, attachment theory and a little bit of internal family systems and just recognize that for a lot of people, there's like a kind of driving question that they carry with them through life and, uh, for me, I've always struggled to know, and I won't go through all seven, we're going to have Mike on the show in the future, but one of the things that I recognize in me is like just this Part of me just like has such a need and a desire to feel safe.

And that's like, that seems to govern so much of what I do. And then another part of me just has this desire to just feel wanted. And that like has governed a lot of what, [00:48:00] um, I do. And so both of those have been like big blessings and helpful in life. And they've also caused a lot of problems. So those are some of the parts or some of the pieces of this for me, I think, uh, there was a question, which maybe people listening, um, Had this too as like, am I doing this right?

Like I didn't really know, especially since it's the first time I'm doing something like this, I was kind of doubtful. Like, am I doing this right? Am I, you know, I don't know if I'm experiencing it in the way that I should, but that's a part, you know, many of us have a part that is like kind of looking at performance, you know, wanting to do it right.

Wanting to make sure that, you know, and usually that's a part and it's, it's okay. You know, like I'm fond of, of saying that, you know, we're gonna find something out no matter what happens. And, um, so yeah, I'm, I'm not particularly, uh, I don't have a particular script or pattern for something that's, you know, kind of good.

Or not. I mean, there's certain things we don't want to be overwhelmed. We talked about that. Um, but as long as we are making an inquiry, like we're [00:49:00] genuinely interested, we want to connect with our parts. It's one of those things where our Lord tells us seeking, you shall find the real reason why a lot of people do not know themselves is because they don't want to look, they don't want to engage.

They're too afraid of what's in the unconscious. And it makes sense because what's in the unconscious was at the time it happened. Too overwhelming to be tolerated in our, in our awareness. No, but it's not, you know, 1985 all over again, or 1973 or 1992 or 2014, you know, like we're in a different place now.

And so, but parts are caught back in time. Parts are often like stuck at the moment that the difficulties happened, you know, that whatever, you know, so we want to, and that's something that we recognize in, in, in trauma, right? That's why people have flashbacks, for example, when they have, you know, PTSD that's diagnosable or, you know, things like that.

They don't know, they don't, they don't know there's a difference between the past, the present and the future. It all just seems like one great big now. And that's what happens [00:50:00] when a part takes over that blends, which is caught in back in some kind of traumatic event. That makes so much sense. Another thing that came to mind when we were going through the exercise was just like how strong an aversion I have to people who are controlling it's like, and I know, I think everyone feels this at some level, but I know for me in particular, like my goodness, like when I get any sort of a whiff of people trying to like control me, I'm like, I'm either out of here or I'm going to be very like tactful and making sure that you do not control me.

So, um, Yeah. And that's definitely, you know, there's been some good parts or good outcomes that have come from that. Absolutely. Yes. It's protected me. It's definitely, you know, been good. And, uh, my career and, you know, different relationships, maybe that, or the person wasn't respectful of boundaries and things like that.

But then another area is like my marriage. It's been a big, uh, Bad thing because sometimes I think I over interpret and someone's kind of trying to help or speaking, maybe truth, um, or their, you know, their perspective that I think like, Oh, you're just trying to control [00:51:00] me. So a little, maybe overactive at times there.

So that was kind of the first post it notes. I don't know. How did you, well, you know, so here's, here's what I would say. First of all, we have these six attachment needs that I talk about, and then the six integrity needs, it's not just about attachment. It's also about maintaining our integrity. And one of those integrity needs is the need for autonomy, right?

So these are all needs that parts are going to be really focused on, um, and different parts are going to be focusing on different needs. And they have very limited vision when they're not in right relationship with your innermost self. They have a very limited vision. So, you know, I can imagine like I use this example, like a ship is sinking, right.

And you've got two people in a lifeboat, two guys in a lifeboat, and those are like the parts. Right. And one guy is busy trying to load in all the water and the supplies and the food into the lifeboat. And the other guy is busy dumping the water and the supplies overboard. And why? Because they had two different experiences in a lifeboat before the first guy suffered hunger and thirst and starvation in a [00:52:00] lifeboat because they didn't have enough supplies and the second guy experienced a lifeboat capsizing because there was too much water and supplies in the boat, right?

So they're both trying to help. They both have the same goal, right? But they have very different experiences, very different ways to make sense of their experiences, and they're working across purposes to each other. Okay. No, it's so fascinating. I, um, and it makes so much sense and I could see how the context is so important.

Like you're saying, right. And our past experiences, one of the things that hit me hard was, um, when you talked about kind of parts of ourselves that we might hate, um, it took me a second and it took me a little bit on that one to kind of identify it. But I think like even parts that I like kind of value, I maybe have like somewhat of a, you know, I don't know if that's the right word.

Um, I look down upon, um, demise in some way, maybe. So, like in my past, when I was struggling with, you know, sexual compulsions like pornography and things like that, I certainly looked down on my lust, but I also kind of, in turn, looked down on sexuality as a whole. Like any part of like [00:53:00] me that was sexual.

And I think that that has impacted me to this day. I could certainly see like a trend of, you know, yeah, I have to unpack that maybe a little bit more, but you know, I think that, uh, past mistakes in that realm have maybe somewhat twisted and kept me from like the goodness that is meant to be experienced there within marriage.

So that's another thing. And then the two other parts that I identified, um, even that desire to feel wanted, like I mentioned. Part of me is like, looks down on that because it's a form of weakness in a way. It kind of, it's, there's a lot of vulnerability there. And then the other thing too, is that kind of strong need that I have to feel safe, um, has cost me in some ways of, you know, whether I was too nervous to try something or not confident enough.

And it was. You know, doing its job in some sense, but maybe it was just a little dialed up too much to where it prevented me actually from having really good things. I know, especially a lot of people from, you know, divorced and broken families. We deal with, you know, just a lot of struggles in relationships.

[00:54:00] And I remember hearing stories of people who they would just like break off engagements or wouldn't even start dating to begin with because they had like this such strong fear of repeating the pattern that they saw in their parents marriage. And I certainly saw that in my own life. And so I trust that God's brought me where he needs me to be, but it's sad to look back on some, you know, really good and beautiful.

didn't go anywhere because of some of these, you know, some of this brokenness that I was dealing with. So that's just the parts that I think I struggle with maybe loving. Well, would you be interested in, I'm just gonna invite you to take a little minute here and go back inside and just see if it would be okay.

To kind of connect with both the part of you that wants to be wanted wants to be in relationship seeks that and the part of you that really wants you to be safe like if those two parts might be interested in getting to know each other a little better or if that seems like that's not something that that seems you know.

Like a good time to do or a good format to do, because yes, I mean, there is an awareness. This is a podcast episode and so forth. [00:55:00] So, but I'm just curious if you're noticing kind of an openness in your system across parts to that, or if any parts objecting, if any parts objects to that, we don't do it.

Because there's a reason for the objection and we would want to make sure that all parts would be on board so that we don't steamroll apart or we don't, um, just, just sort of bulldoze apart because it's standing in the way of some sort of, you know, agenda that other parts have. If this is good, if anything is good for one part of you, it's actually going to be good for all parts of you.

It's not going to leave one part to twist in the wind. There's a harmony about what's best for a person system. Oh, that's good. I would say, I guess what I'm sensing, what I'm experiencing is it's not so much the venue. Like I'm, I'm open with our audience here and I'm happy. I hope they can learn something from me.

I think it's more like those two parts seem diametrically opposed. Right. They seem like foes. Like they seem like they. Oh yeah, absolutely. Aren't supposed to be talking to each other. Um, so, so I don't know if there's so [00:56:00] much an objection, but I guess, I guess that's a form of an objection where it feels like those two things.

Go together. They are kind of working on different things. So I love that. That's a great challenge. That's why I picked them. Right. Yeah. But, but the first and first of all, this is only an idea. We don't do it. So this is really an important thing where we kind of negotiate these things. Right. We want to kind of explore.

And I, I want to make sure that in doing this, I'm really free of like an agenda on my end. So I'm totally good with not doing this or doing it or whatever. We can do something different. Um, we don't have to do anything at all. The demo, but, but this is where like an amazing thing can happen. If parts begin to see each other as they actually are not as just the enemy, because that's a very, that's a very narrow, you know, kind of very limited, very inaccurate perception of another part.

No, I want to go deeper here. So, and one thing to clarify there, it was just kind of. Communicate when I was experiencing, I was in no way a critique of you. And no, no, no, no, no, I didn't experience it that [00:57:00] well. And if parts are critical of me, I'm all about that. That's an amazing thing. Let's let's, you know, totally good with that because, you know, uh, cause a lot of this is kind of like parts might not even understand, like if, um, you know, like when little kids go to, um, they've got a medical problem, they'd have to have some sort of procedure done, you know, they have to have a piece of glass removed from their, their arm.

Cause they fell, you know, and whatever road riding their bike. They're not going to understand if they're little, that the physician is helping them, you know, like we have to appreciate that they may totally misinterpret what's going on here. And they can be like, mommy, it's hurting, you know, and, and, and not appreciate it in the moment.

And like I said, these parts are phenomenologically really little. So, so it might mean that there's gotta be a little more trust there, but I'm also, you know, let those parts know that I'm also here. You know, with my innermost self and my parts, you know, which are, which resonate with your parts. Like I have parts that are all about autonomy and I have other parts that are all about connection and I have other parts that are all about safety, you [00:58:00] know, and so gets get that these parts of me resonate with you.

It's not just my innermost self, but it's also my parts that are in right relationship with my innermost self. That makes so much sense. Yeah. And that's, that's more complete. That's more about loving wholeheartedly. The kind of next thought or place that I. Kind of being led is just a question, actually, which I somewhat thinking questions.

You asked that question about kind of what comes to mind. I think memories for me, um, sometimes like body sensations or emotions, uh, realizations for some reason, like things that kind of snap and click together. That's kind of different things that I was experiencing there. But, um, one of them, the question that came to mind was like, what if the safety and the part that like just wants to be wanted, like are in a post.

What if they're actually, what if they're not, what if they're actually working towards a similar goal of helping me like thrive and live like a really healthy, meaningful life. And yeah, that's something like I feel strongly pulled towards considering. Yeah. Just like the two guys in the lifeboat, right?

Both wanting [00:59:00] to help, right? But they have very different ways of going about that. So, yeah, I already sensed that in you. I already sensed that these two parts actually could be at some point, great friends. You know, like that's totally makes sense to me. We're not, I'm not going to try to impose that or anything.

I mean, we have to let things develop, but, but yeah, but for this, that's, that's more than we're seeking. What we're seeking potentially in this is just that they come to look at each other and in a different way, maybe, you know, that this polarization, this conflict between the two of them might be able to soften for a little bit.

And they might be able to understand each other a little better in the presence of you as Joey, you as your innermost self. And does that seem interesting and desirable to parts or are there objections or concerns that we would need to address before that would feel safe enough, especially for the part of you that, you know, has concerned about concerns about safety and protection?

Yeah, I, I know to some people, this might sound strange, but I almost [01:00:00] feel like this bodily sensation of like harmony. I don't know how to explain that better than that, but almost like whether it felt like there was maybe like tension, even on like a physical level, there now seems to be a bit of like relaxation and peace.

Cause it's like, wow, what if those two things are again, not mutually, uh, opposed exclusive, but actually working towards like a similar end. So it's almost like I can, okay. There's not as much of a need to like control or stress or, you know, fight. Yeah, beautiful. And so for those of you in the audience kind of observing this, just going to invite you, if you'd like to, if it feels safe, it feels good in your own systems to, to kind of come along with us on this.

You know, and to notice what may be resonating within your own system. You might notice that there's a part of you that really craves, really craves this, the sense of, of being wanted, of being needed, of being desirable, of being, you know, uh, connected. And another part of you that really has concerns about safety and protection and are really, it's really focused on that [01:01:00] because this is kind of like tuning forks.

And if you take a tuning fork, that's tuned to like a particular note, like C and you ring it, you, you, you strike it and you hold it up to another tuning fork. That's also tuned to see the other tuning folk will begin to vibrate. And this is how I know. A lot about this is how I think about loving other people is I'm looking at which of my, which of my parts are resonating, you know, and I've got parts that are very much resonating with both of these parts and have a sense.

Yeah, that this is something that could be, um, but there could be a lot more understanding, you know, kind of connection. So I'm resonating with your experience of, you know, hopefulness of possibility that things might actually be different internally between these two parts of you. And my mind even goes to like externally to like, you know, relationships, interactions with other people like my wife or yeah, just even tendencies I have or things like that.

Cause I think this, yeah, I think this, um, I can feel this and like my sense is that this goes beyond just like this kind of cool mental emotional exercise, [01:02:00] but it actually can result in, and that's not a critique of anything we're doing. I think it's great, but it can result in, you know, some real transformation.

Not just something that I know some people might be turned off the idea of just like kind of thinking and processing or whatever, but like, no, it can have actually have some measurable like outcomes, quote unquote, measurable outcomes like you can see change in your life. Yeah, absolutely. Because these two parts will also polarize with parts in your wife.

Hmm. You know, the part of you that really seeks safety and protection might polarize with the part of your wife that really wants to be wanted, you know, and so the same kinds of parts that these parts will polarize inside, they're going to polarize when they find those parts in other people. And so that's where a lot of the conflict comes from is between parts of me.

And parts of the other person, you know, and if we can be more wholehearted in relationship under the leadership and guidance of our innermost self, we get a harmony collaboration among parts. I mean, it leads us to be able to love and to be loved so much easier in relationship and marriages, especially.

So yeah, [01:03:00] this isn't just about some sort of navel gazing, you know, self absorbed, you know, kind of effort to self love. Ultimately, this is also about us loving God and being loved by God and loving our neighbor and being able to receive love from whoever God sends our way to, to love us. That's good. I, um, there's so much more I could say, so feel free to stop me at any point.

But one of the memories that came back was, um, with our first pregnancy, we had a miscarriage. I know not everyone can relate to this example, so bear with me here. But, um, I remember like having such a strong emotional reaction to that, um, cause we, we didn't know for sure, but we think we were having a boy.

And there was something inside me that like, even to this day, like during the exercise, I got pretty emotional. over it. And, um, yeah, just like, because safety is so prime, not just in my own life, but I like to provide that for other people too, um, both on a physical level, like with, you know, self defense and different things like that, but also on an emotional level.

And, um, I almost felt like I just like failed to protect my [01:04:00] son. When the miscarriage occurred, like I thinking, you know, going through the typical kind of grief stages of like thinking, man, like there's something I should have done differently that would have prevented his life from ending. And, um, that was like really intense for me.

I remember, um, you know, driving the car after it was like the day we found out I was going to pick up some food. Um, and just like really, really. Um, struggling, like really even like crying and just feeling like I just, I didn't provide that safety and I failed, I failed in a very real way. So I've seen that kind of muscle come out in different ways as well and, and even connected to my parents divorce, but that was a particular, particularly like strong situation where that came up.

Does that make sense to you? You as your innermost self, Joey, that that part has such a deep desire to protect not only yourself, but others. Does that make sense to you? It does, and I think the way I can verbalize it is that when, it does go back to when my parents split. And I remember, you know, we were all in the bedroom, my dad was out of the [01:05:00] house.

My mom sat me and my siblings down and explained what was going on and that dad would no longer be living with us. In fact, they were getting divorced. And especially because I looked up to my dad so much and found a great deal of safety in his presence. I, that immediately was like, my goodness, like that's crazy.

Gone. And then I also felt a lot of anger towards my mom, um, even though she, you know, to this day, looking back at that situation, like I knew she was doing the right thing in that particular context. Well, let that part know that wants safety for yourself and for others. Let that part know that you get it.

Just see if you can notice that part, sense that part, see that part, and let that part know, yes, I get it. I get that you want me to be safe. I get that you want others to be safe, and that's a good and wholesome desire. Let that part know that it's really important, and that you as Joey, you as your innermost self, get it.

Let's see how that lands. Yeah, I don't feel any resistance to that. I think I've [01:06:00] always seen it as like a strength of mine. Great. At least to keep other people safe. I think when it's gotten in the way of me, you know, doing things that I should be doing because I just want to feel safe. I think that's where there's more tension.

Um, but no, that's helpful. And, um, yeah, to close the loop on that story that I was just thinking that, um, no, I remember like just, Not really knowing what to do with all of the news that my mom had shared and just the reality of like my family falling apart and just hiding in the closet and crying. And I couldn't have put it into words then, but a lot of these things that we're talking about came to kind of the surface.

I felt abandoned. I felt unwanted. I felt like I wasn't, you know, enough. I wasn't good enough. No, it didn't feel safe, obviously. So I could certainly see like a clear trend line from that experience to these different experiences, whether it's the miscarriage that we experienced or different struggles and by relationships, um, as well.

So it, it makes sense. Like, it's very understandable. Yeah, totally makes sense to me too. And, and I think we can say that that, that was unbelievably hard for parts. I think we can just speak that to say that was [01:07:00] the word that comes to mind for me is impossibly hard for parts and more than parts at that age could, could be expected to manage.

And I think that's where, um, the instinct in me to protect others comes from, in part. Like, I think before that, I'd always still had that instinct to protect others, but after that, the kind of driving force, even behind what I do with this apostolate, is like, I never want anyone to experience what I went through.

And if they have to, for some reason, I don't want them to go through it alone because I felt like I was going through it alone. There was just no one there to kind of walk with me through it. And so I think that's like one of the driving forces behind those parts. Yeah. To make sure it never happens again.

Yeah. So that part, you know, I I'm sensing I could be wrong about this. You can tell me, but that part maybe has some appreciation for what it's like to not feel wanted or to not feel enough. You know, like there's an appreciation there, you know, it may not be in the same way that the other part that bears that burden, you know, [01:08:00] experiences it, but it's like also trying to help that other part or parts of other people to never be in that position.

Of feeling unwanted, of feeling not enough. Yeah, there's like some value to it, some good that's come from it. I could totally see that. Two final things that, um, I know we're running out of time here, but one, um, when you mentioned like how different parts of you can kind of take the brunt of trauma or take the brunt of challenges that have come into your life, I think, you know, around that time when I was, you know, about 11 years old and I, I think, I don't know if there's like a sexual part of all of us or if that would be a technical like term, but, um, I know for me, it seems like that kind of sexual part of me as a human person ended up taking a lot of the burden of trying to help me feel safe, trying to help me feel wanted.

And, you know, for me, it came out and, you know, You know, pornography and other sexual sins. And, um, just kind of recognize that when you were going through the exercise, that, wow, that part of me has like carried so much, especially at that period of my life, you know, a lot of, a lot of [01:09:00] pornography use for men is really about parts that are in a really maladaptive way, trying to feel seen, heard, known, and understood, trying to feel safe, trying to feel protected, trying to feel delighted in valued, you know, and so forth.

And, and so there's a counterfeit of that. In in porn use for a lot of in the experience of a lot of parts of us, you know, which is one of those reasons why I can kind of come back, even though it's a dead end, even though it's there's an emptiness there, it doesn't actually fulfill the need. Our hearts are still restless.

It can still feel like that might be possible. And so. You know, one of the real, yeah, I think benefits of parts and systems thinking is to help us with sexual compulsions because yeah, parts will often sexualize things, especially if, you know, trauma isn't resolved before we hit puberty because now we've got a whole bodily element to this, a whole endocrine system element to this that can complicate stuff.

And it's true for women as well as men. It's not just men, you know, this becomes very, very embodied in [01:10:00] various ways. And so, so yeah, I mean, that makes. Perfect sense to me. Thank you. And, uh, the final thing I was just going to say to close this out, I, yeah, I definitely have an appreciation for the parts of me that have kept me safe and have kind of helped me to find love and feel wanted and connection, all that.

Um, but yeah, just that, that need to feel safe, I think is something I'll continue to kind of, um, Kind of look at and walk with because I know sometimes, uh, for me, even the sounds so silly, but I, uh, I'm very like careful about my family's safety. So there's like cameras like outside the house and the doors are locked and there's like ways, uh, I won't go too into those ways that I would have ready to protect them.

And, um, we, yeah, it just, Just very careful about like my, my daughter and my wife and my son and myself and we, so in our bedroom, um, we would typically keep the door shut. Right. And, um, lately it would just get a little too stuffy in there. And, you know, we're recording this in the summer, it's humid in here where I'm at and we would keep the [01:11:00] door open.

And like, I kid you not Dr. Peter, sometimes I just like, can't go to sleep. I'm like, just like looking at the door, like waiting for someone to like, come through it. I, uh, so I kind of recognize that part of me that's just like, you know, wants to keep me safe. And then the only other thing I was just going to say along with that was I, um, just got over a sickness recently and my wife was certainly super gracious with like helping me and taking care of the kids and everything.

She was great. But, uh, I caught myself saying something towards the tail end of like, I didn't mean this like rudely, but I kind of just said it in like as a knee jerk reaction. Um, I was like, I could take care of myself. I could take care of myself. I just kind of felt that like, no, no, I can take care of myself.

And um, I think that fierce independence is something that this audience especially, uh, can relate to about, you know, so often we feel like we're on our own when mom and dad are maybe warring with each other or kind of starting restarting their lives going this way, that way. Um, we're kind of left to deal with our own brokenness.

And so we just kind of learned to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and just kind of keep [01:12:00] going. And, um, certainly have seen that. Uh, hurt my relationships in some ways. So that's, uh, that's how the exercise went for me. So sorry if that was oversharing in any way, but I wanted to be a guinea pig for, that's what I always try to do for this audience.

And so I, uh, I really appreciate you walking through that and open any final things you want to talk about as well. Well, you know, I'm so excited to have been able to connect. Uh, I have a special spot in my heart for family life and, you know, Deep appreciation for even in, in families where, you know, there's not, not divorce because divorce is kind of a low bar, you know, like, yes, we want to not be divorced, you know, but it's not everything, right?

Like people can be struggling, you know, in families where marriages are stressed for decades. And so none of us are going to escape family life. You know, with no trauma, with no injuries, no relational wounds, no attachment injuries, we're all going to experience the slings and arrows of living in our fallen human condition in a fallen world.

So, um, so yeah, just to appreciate that, if these kinds of experiential [01:13:00] exercises resonate with you, you know, like the, and if this kind of like demo, um, resonated with you, you know, this is what we do over at souls and hearts, uh, this is what. The kind of thing that we do on interior integration for Catholics.

Um, so you can check that out on YouTube, um, or on our, uh, wherever you listen to podcasts, interior integration for Catholics. And then we also have like communities where we have people that are working on their own human formation from a parts and systems perspective. Grounded in an authentic Catholic understanding of the human person.

And that's the resilient Catholics community. And then we also have the formation for formators community. Cause I have a special spot in my heart for the human formation of formators. These are therapists and coaches and spiritual directors and priests and seminary formators, and those that have, you know, a responsibility for the formation of others, because I think one of the big things that gets in the way of that.

effective formation of others is a lack of formation in the formator himself or herself. So, cause you can't give what you don't have. So those are a couple of the communities that we have going on at, at souls and [01:14:00] hearts. So yeah, if this is new to you, if you want to find out more about internal family systems, check out episode 71 of interior integration for Catholics, where I lay it out and I talk about 10 of my own parts, um, in, in some detail.

Um, so, so yeah, and there's a lot of the resources. at our website, soulsandhearts. com. So soulsandhearts. com. And I definitely recommend you guys check it out. And so we're impressed with the work you guys are doing. And so I know it will be really helpful for you and you guys, this journey of healing and just growing into a better, stronger person, more virtuous person.

Um, Dr. Peter, before we close down, there's one question I had that I think might be helpful for everyone. Um, do. Each of these parts have like names and is there like a definition of parts? I know we talked a little bit about that, but when I was going through the exercise, that question came up. So I wanted to ask you if there's specific names and if there's like some sort of a definition of a part itself.

Sure. So a definition of a part is like a constellation of emotions. Desires, impulses, attitudes, beliefs, memories, experiences, and making [01:15:00] sense of experiences. So it's not just like a passing mood state. It's like, it's like a, it's own little personality within you. Okay. It's like its own, its own. And it also.

Endures over time. It's just, they don't like appear and disappear. They can come into consciousness and then leave consciousness and it can feel like they appear and disappear, but that's not what actually is going on. They endure over time. And so, so that's, that's how I think about parts, right? This multiplicity within.

And as far as names go, um, sometimes parts will have ways that they identify themselves. Um, sometimes there'll be labeled by other parts, you know, as the bad part or the, the porn using part, you know, which is kind of pejorative. And so, uh, I work when I work with parts, either my own parts or when I'm working with others with their parts, I mean, the naming thing is something we kind of negotiate with the part, you know?

And if the, if the part wants to call herself, uh, you know, a good for nothing low life, it'd be like, well, maybe we can reframe that a little bit, you know, but I'm hesitant to impose a name on a part. You know, without like, kind [01:16:00] of, kind of talking with the part about that, if they're open to it, really helpful.

Thank you for going through that. And I want to give you the final word first off, again, thank you so much for being here for the great work that you're doing. Um, uh, yeah, just really blessed to call you friend now. And I'm looking, I look forward to hopefully future collaborations as well. Um, but yeah, what, what final encouragement or advice would you give to everyone listening, especially someone listening who does feel Kind of stuck and broken in life because of the, the trauma and the dysfunction they experienced at home.

So I'm a big believer. My favorite scripture versus Romans 8 28, you know, all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, who are called according to his decree. And to just trust that. Actually, each of us are beloved little sons and daughters of God. That's our identity. That's our fundamental identity.

And nothing in the fall, nothing in the sins of others, original sin, our own sins, takes that away. The only way that it can be taken away is if we repudiate it, you know, if we walk away from it. And so, so your primary parents. God, the father, Mary, our mother, I really believe that. And then [01:17:00] the differences between the people that I've accompanied who really take off and flourish and those that don't is this question of, can we embrace the love of God?

And can we embrace our identity as being little beloved sons and daughters? And our Lord tells us, you know, in scripture, I loved you first. We don't have to earn it. We don't have to make ourselves worthy of it. You know, can we come as we are? Can we come and receive as a unmerited gift, the love and grace and light and warmth and kindness of God.

Next time Dr. Peter comes on, I love to ask him to break down the Pixar movie inside out. We love that movie and my family, but in the meantime, make sure to check out his website and his podcast will link to the resources he mentioned to in the show notes. I'm very impressed with him and his content. And so I definitely recommend you guys check it out.

That wraps up this episode. If you found this podcast valuable, I invite you to subscribe. So you can not only be notified when new episodes go live, but you can help us actually reach more people. The more subscribers we have, the more the podcast apps will suggest our show to people who are looking for the kind of help that we offer.

[01:18:00] Again, we love serving you. And if you found it helpful and you'd maybe like to thank us subscribing or following on whatever app you use is really an easy way to do so. And only takes a few seconds. In closing, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life.

And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis, who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

I Thought the Fighting was Normal

2 minute read.

This story was written by Anonymous at 21 years old. Her parents divorced when she was 15. She gave permission for her story to be shared.

HER STORY

I remember when I was 13, I got home from school camp and my mum was cleaning out the study. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me that she and Dad would no longer be sharing a room. They lived like that in separate rooms until one night when I was 15. One week before my exams, they told us they were separating. I have no memory of my parents ever being affectionate or kind to each other and I remember that if I went to a friend’s house and saw their parents getting along, I thought it was weird. When they would communicate with each other, I only remember the constant fighting. I wasn't really expecting the news of their separation because I thought that the way they interacted with each other was normal and I thought that's obviously how all marriages would be.

HOW THE DIVORCE MADE HER FEEL

I struggled with a lot of feelings of worthlessness. My best friend said that if you don't have a mum and dad who love each other, you'll never be able to succeed at anything. I think this mindset puts a huge limitation on God's mercy and is far from the truth. It still cut me though.

HOW THE DIVORCE IMPACTED HER

I became very sick after my parents’ separation and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. My grades also dropped. I was an A student in all the advanced classes. After my parents separated, I was moved down into the general classes and was struggling to keep up.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHOSE PARENTS JUST SEPARATED OR DIVORCED

Know your worth. Don't settle for less, Jesus paid dearly for you. You can also unite your sufferings to the Passion of Christ. He, better than anyone, understands what you are experiencing. He has been through rejection, misunderstanding, slander, etc.

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