#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?
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
132_Final
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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.
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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.
