Being Human

Dr. Greg thought the draft was good. A year later, he called it "terrible." That's how a book ends up taking almost ten years to write.

With The Personalist Cure finally launching, Dr. Greg sits down with his good friend Dr. Bryan Violette for a conversation that circles back on itself the way John Paul II's own writing does. Along the way, they get to the heart of the book: the difference between love that controls and love that sets free.

Key Topics:

• Why so much of what passes for love is really a compulsive effort to get your own needs met
• What emancipating love looks like: willing the good of the other for their sake, even when it costs you
• Why the love Jesus shows on the cross changes how you see every relationship in your life
• What John Paul II meant by mutual submission in marriage — and why it's the opposite of control

Learn More:

• The Personalist Cure by Dr. Greg Bottaro — the book behind this episode, almost ten years in the making
• Join us at the Summit of Integration in Dallas, October 20–23, celebrating the Feast of St. John Paul II (virtual tickets available)
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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You've been called lazy. Maybe you've been told you're just bad at your job. But what if that was never the problem at all — what if you've simply been sitting in the wrong seat?

Dr. Greg sits down with his good friend Dr. Bryan Violette to explore what the Working Genius reveals about the work that drains us. Along the way, they make the case that even the parts of us we're most embarrassed by are usually protecting something good: our dignity.

Key Topics:

• Why the task that grinds you down says more about your gifts than about your character
• Why "you're lazy" is usually the wrong story — and "wrong seat on the bus" is often the right one
• What "adaptive narcissism" is actually protecting
• Why shame doesn't produce lasting change — it just teaches you to hide better
• Why "I'm not myself today" gets it wrong, and why curiosity about the part that just showed up works better
• Why giving yourself away fills you up, even though handing over your coffee only leaves you with an empty cup

Learn More:

• Join us at the Summit of Integration in Dallas, October 20–23, celebrating the Feast of St. John Paul II (virtual tickets available)
• The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni — the framework Dr. Greg and Dr. Bryan discuss throughout the episode
• Gaudium et Spes — the Vatican II constitution behind "Christ reveals man to himself" and finding ourselves through a sincere gift of self
• Previous episodes on parts work (IFS):
• Ep. #34: A New Theory! w/ a Catholic Lens
• Ep. #35: Why Do I Feel Like I Have Conflicting Thoughts? w/ Dr. Peter Malinoski
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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Psychology is supposed to be a hard science with clear answers about what's healthy. It isn't — and when the people forming our kids can't say what a human being actually is, even their best work turns into darts thrown in the dark.

Dr. Greg sits down with Dr. Brett Salkeld — host of the Making Every Class Catholic podcast — to trace what psychology and education both get wrong when they skip the question of what a person is for, and why the schools racing hardest to keep up with technology may not be the ones still standing in five years.

Key Topics:

• Why psychology has no agreed-on standard for mental health — and what that gap is doing to real kids in real classrooms
• Why you have to know what a healthy human being is before you can help one heal
• How one true principle about the human person let Dr. Greg call the phone crisis in 2014 — years before the data caught up
• Why a phone doesn't connect two people so much as stand between them — and who profits from keeping it there
• Why the schools racing hardest to keep up with technology may be the ones that don't exist in five years
• What actually makes a school worth attending once AI can hand a kid any fact for free

Learn More:

• Dr. Brett Salkeld's podcast: Making Every Class Catholic — bringing the Catholic faith into every subject in the classroom
• Educating for Eternity: A Teacher's Companion for Making Every Class Catholic by Dr. Brett Salkeld
• Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyła (St. John Paul II)
• Duc in Altum Schools Collaborative — the Catholic-schools network where Dr. Greg first met Dr. Salkeld
• Join us at the Summit of Integration in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• The Personalist Cure — Dr. Greg's new book, launching this October at the Summit
• Sign up for our newsletter
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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John Paul II is the most important psychologist of the twentieth century — and almost no one knows it. In three dense paragraphs on the subconscious, he named what Freud got wrong and gave us a fuller picture of the human person.

Dr. Greg sits down with Fr. Randy Sly to trace how a pilgrimage through Poland turned a philosopher he'd studied for twenty-five years into a father he'd finally met — and why that kind of encounter, not more theory, is what integration actually asks of us.

Key Topics:

• What John Paul II saw about the subconscious that Freud missed entirely
• Why studying a saint for twenty-five years isn't the same as actually meeting him
• How explaining integration can be the very thing that keeps you from it
• Why you don't have to be in crisis to need help becoming who you're meant to be
• What it means to be a channel instead of a closed loop — and why receiving isn't optional if you want to keep giving

Learn More:

• Join us at the Summit of Integration this October in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• The Personalist Cure — Dr. Greg's upcoming book, launching this October at the Summit
• Sign up for our newsletter
• Fr. Randy Sly's podcast: The Follow to Lead Podcast
• Integration Pilgrimages — the encounter-focused pilgrimage Dr. Greg helped lead this summer
• Practice Catholic mindfulness to find the presence of God in the moment
• Go deeper in the integrated life through the Integrated Life app and community
• John Paul II on the subconscious: Person and Act and Related Essays by Karol Wojtyła
• Duc in Altum Schools Collaborative
• Black Elk Healing Retreat (Wyoming)
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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You can become who you are. Which means you can also become who you're not.

Recorded on location in Poland during a pilgrimage through the life of John Paul II, Dr. Greg Bottaro and Dr. Gerard McNicholas trace JP2's line "let yourself be molded by love" — and what happens in the subconscious that blocks our freedom to choose it.

Key Topics:

• Why "become who you are" carries a hidden warning — you can also be molded into who you're not
• Why virtue never becomes automatic, no matter how many years you practice it
• How the one freedom no one can take from you is the freedom St. Maximilian Kolbe used to step forward and say "take my place"
• Why the buried things in your subconscious actually want to be known — and why John Paul II called surfacing them a task of morality
• How art slips in the back door of the subconscious and unlocks what analysis alone can't reach

Learn More:

• Person and Act and Related Essays by Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II) — his account of conscience and the subconscious
• Our God's Brother — the Wojtyła play that gives us "let yourself be molded by love"
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• John Paul II's Letter to Artists
• The Personalist Cure — Dr. Greg's upcoming book, launching this October at the Summit
• Join us at the Summit of Integration this October in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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Not knowing what comes after graduation feels like failing. It's not. The real problem is the pressure to have it all figured out. Dr. Greg sits down with college senior Sandy Napolitano to talk about the anxiety of life after graduation — where the fear of the unknown really comes from, and why discernment starts the moment you stop trying to force certainty.

Key Topics:

• Why "What's your plan?" quietly writes God out of the decision
• How the need for a plan can be fear wearing the mask of responsibility
• Why starting at the end — not the next step — makes half your options disappear
• Why naming a fear out loud drains most of its power
• How the experience that changed you becomes the one you most need to integrate

Learn More:

• The Personalist Cure — John Paul II's blueprint for a Catholic standard of psychology
• Join us in Dallas, Oct 20–23: Summit of Integration
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

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Trust isn't something you manufacture through effort — it's something you receive through relationship. In this episode, Dr. Greg Bottaro concludes the series on OCPD and perfectionism by exploring why control feels so necessary, how our earliest relationships shape our ability to trust God, and why freedom begins not when we become perfect, but when we allow ourselves to be loved. Because holiness isn't built on mastering the perfect spiritual routine — it's built on learning to rest in the love that has always been pursuing you.

Key Topics:

• Why trust can't be built through more effort, more surrender, or the right devotion
• How "trying harder" to trust God is actually the pattern itself, not the way out of it
• How the parts of us that need control aren't bad, but are protecting something deeper
• Why compassion, not correction, is the first step toward healing a controlling part
• How self-possession exists for the sake of self-gift — and why you can't give what you don't have
• Why holiness was never meant to end fear of hell, but to end the need to earn love in the first place
• How real healing only happens in relationship — not in a program, a podcast, or a novena

Learn More:

• Previous episodes in this series on Obsessive Compulsive Personality Patterns:
  • Ep. #290: "I'm Only Loved When I'm Perfect": The Lie Fueling Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
  • Ep. #291: OCPD and Scrupulosity: How the Worship of Rules and Control Leads to the Loneliness of Certainty
  • Ep. #292: Holy Anxiety: The Understandable Underbelly of Scrupulosity
• Join us at the Summit of Integration this October in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• Presence Virtual Retreat: Practice the presence of God and trustful surrender
• Previous episodes on parts work (IFS):
  • Ep. #34: A New Theory! w/ a Catholic Lens
  • Ep. #35: Why Do I Feel Like I Have Conflicting Thoughts? w/ Dr. Peter Malinoski
• Start of the Being Human series on the Antisocial Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #281: Control or Be Controlled: The Devastating Wounds Behind Antisocial Behavioral Patterns
• Start of the Being Human series on the Borderline Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #269: BORDERLINE: The Push-Pull Between a Fear of Abandonment and Annihilation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Histrionic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #274: To Be Loved Is to Perform: Inside the Histrionic Compulsion for Attention and Validation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Dependent Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #265: Jerry Maguire, Gollum, and the Fear of Not Existing
• Start of the Being Human series on the Narcissistic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #261: Narcissism and the Terror of Being Ordinary
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation.
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment.

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Scrupulosity often looks like devotion — but when fear takes over, even our spiritual life can become consumed by doubt, checking, and the search for certainty. In this episode, Dr. Greg Bottaro continues the series on OCPD and perfectionism, exploring the difference between a healthy conscience and a scrupulous one, why mercy can be hard to trust, and how our experiences shape the way we see God. Holiness was never meant to be an endless audit — it was meant to lead us into relationship with the One who loves us.

Key Topics:

• How reciting the truth about mercy in your head does nothing to change what your body still believes
• Why certainty about being forgiven is the one thing this pattern can never actually get
• Why confession, meant to bring peace, can quietly become just another form of checking
• How the voice you call your conscience might actually be a punishing voice in disguise
• Why the face you're afraid God is making at you was never really His
• How the saints wrestled with scrupulosity — and what finally brought them peace wasn't more proof
• Why doing this work alone almost always makes the pattern worse
• How the way out can feel too easy to trust

Learn More:

• Previous episodes in this series on Obsessive Compulsive Personality Patterns:
  • Ep. #290: "I'm Only Loved When I'm Perfect": The Lie Fueling Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
  • Ep. #291: OCPD and Scrupulosity: How the Worship of Rules and Control Leads to the Loneliness of Certainty
• Episode referenced on spiritual bypassing: Why "Everything Happens for a Reason" Isn't Working: The Holy Words We Use to Avoid Healing
• Join us at the Summit of Integration this October in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• Start of the Being Human series on the Antisocial Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #281: Control or Be Controlled: The Devastating Wounds Behind Antisocial Behavioral Patterns
• Start of the Being Human series on the Borderline Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #269: BORDERLINE: The Push-Pull Between a Fear of Abandonment and Annihilation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Histrionic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #274: To Be Loved Is to Perform: Inside the Histrionic Compulsion for Attention and Validation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Dependent Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #265: Jerry Maguire, Gollum, and the Fear of Not Existing
• Start of the Being Human series on the Narcissistic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #261: Narcissism and the Terror of Being Ordinary
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation.
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment.

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Certainty feels like safety. But you can only ever be certain alone — and the life you build on control slowly becomes a lonely one.

In week two of the series on OCPD, Dr. Greg explores why we reach for control when trust feels dangerous — and how the certainty we build to feel safe ends up costing us the very relationships it was meant to protect.

Key Topics:

• Why the certainty that makes you feel safe is the same thing that leaves you alone
• How a rule can feel safer than a person — because a rule never changes its face
• Why the control you use to protect the people you love can drive them straight into the danger you feared
• How devotion can quietly turn into a contract with God instead of trust in Him
• Why trying harder to get it perfect is the pattern itself, not the way out of it

Learn More:

• Previous episode in this series — OCPD Part 1:
  • Ep. #290: "I'm Only Loved When I'm Perfect": The Lie Fueling Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
• Join us at the Summit of Integration this October in Dallas — launching the Year of St. John Paul II
• Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism by Dr. Paul Vitz — on how wounded trust in a father can shape our capacity for faith
• Person and Act — St. John Paul II's (Karol Wojtyła's) philosophical work on the acting person, and the personalist heart of this episode
• Stop Walking on Eggshells by Paul Mason & Randi Kreger — the book on borderline patterns Dr. Greg references
• Start of the Being Human series on the Antisocial Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #281: Control or Be Controlled: The Devastating Wounds Behind Antisocial Behavioral Patterns
• Start of the Being Human series on the Borderline Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #269: BORDERLINE: The Push-Pull Between a Fear of Abandonment and Annihilation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Histrionic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #274: To Be Loved Is to Perform: Inside the Histrionic Compulsion for Attention and Validation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Dependent Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #265: Jerry Maguire, Gollum, and the Fear of Not Existing
• Start of the Being Human series on the Narcissistic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #261: Narcissism and the Terror of Being Ordinary
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation.
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment.

Follow Us on Socials: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter (X) | LinkedIn

Perfectionism doesn't always come from loving excellence. Sometimes it's the only way you've ever known how to feel safe.

In the first episode of a new series on Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, Dr. Greg unpacks how perfectionism, rigidity, and control take root—and why, underneath them, control quietly fills the space where trust was supposed to be.

Key Topics:

• Why the pursuit of perfection is often less about loving excellence and more about not feeling safe without it
• How "until I'm perfect, I'm not loved" becomes the sentence an entire personality gets built on
• Why one small mistake can feel like disconnection instead of just a mistake
• How conscientiousness and perfectionism can look identical from the outside—and the one thing that tells them apart
• Why you can get everything right and still never feel free to rest
• Why the love you keep trying to earn was already given—before you got anything right

Learn More:

• Person and Act and Related Essays by Karol Wojtyła (St. John Paul II) — the anthropology of self-possession and self-gift behind this episode
• Join a future Black Elk healing retreat at the Hawkeye Ranch in Wyoming
• Episode referenced on spiritual bypassing and scrupulosity:
  • Ep. #288: Why "Everything Happens for a Reason" Isn't Working: The Holy Words We Use to Avoid Healing
• Inner Parts Easy Conversation Guide — an audio guide to get to know your inner parts.
• Start of the Being Human series on the Antisocial Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #281: Control or Be Controlled: The Devastating Wounds Behind Antisocial Behavioral Patterns
• Start of the Being Human series on the Borderline Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #269: BORDERLINE: The Push-Pull Between a Fear of Abandonment and Annihilation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Histrionic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #274: To Be Loved Is to Perform: Inside the Histrionic Compulsion for Attention and Validation
• Start of the Being Human series on the Dependent Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #265: Jerry Maguire, Gollum, and the Fear of Not Existing
• Start of the Being Human series on the Narcissistic Defense Patterns:
  • Ep. #261: Narcissism and the Terror of Being Ordinary
• Need help? Schedule a free CatholicPsych consultation
• Want to help? Learn more about our Certification in Professional Accompaniment

Follow Us on Socials: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter (X) | LinkedIn