Interior Integration for Catholics

What can the Early Church Fathers teach us about our inner worlds, the complexity of our psyches?  Actually, very much, if we are willing to listen.  Join Dr. Gerry Crete, Dr. Christian Amalu and me for a highlight tour of what these Early Church Fathers offer us in understanding and loving ourselves, God, and others:  St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John of Damascus.  We particularly focused in on St. Evagrius discussing the “Christ-self” and the “legion of other selves” within each person. We explore how the Early Church Fathers bring in allegory, metaphor, symbol, and typology to capture more readily the richness, variety, complexity, and beauty of the inner life than we moderns generally do.  Dr. Gerry closes with a brief prayer reflection.   For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and for discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Internal Family Systems is extremely popular not only as a therapy model, but as a way of making sense of our inner experience.  IFS does not have specifically Catholic origins.  But can there be a way of understanding parts work and systems thinking and harmonizing them with an authentically Catholic understanding of the human person?  Dr. Christian Amalu, Dr. Peter Martin, Dr. Gerry Crete, and Dr. Peter Malinoski explore that question in these next episodes, starting with Sacred Scripture.  What evidence can be found in the Bible to support the major tenets of IFS?  How might IFS be understood through a Catholic lens?  Join us for a tour of Scripture to answer these questions, with an experiential exercise as well.  

You have got questions, we have answers – all about IFS and parts work, Catholic style. Join Marion Moreland, David Edwards, Bridget Adams, and Dr. Peter as we engage with a live audience for a discussion. David provides a brief drop-in exercise. The new discuss relating with our parts with love, legacy burdens and legacy gifts, detecting when a part is blended, displaced anger, how core beliefs drive parts, how our human formation arithmetic can help our spiritual formation algebra, Divine Providence working through our flaws, shortcomings, sins, and inadequacies, making the gifts, and the Resilient Catholics Community with the PartsFinder Pro.  For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and for discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Question: What do improvisational jazz bands, 8-man rowing shells, the Catholic Church, and a nuclear family all have in common? Answer: They are all human systems. Systems have three components: 1) elements (or parts); 2) interconnections (relationships among elements); and 3) a function or purpose. John David Edwards and Dr. Peter as we explore systems. Understanding yourself as a system, with an innermost self, parts, internal relationships among your innermost self and parts (e.g. polarizations, alignments, suppressions, etc.), and that each unintegrated part has an agenda – a purpose it desires – all that helps us understand ourselves and each other. And that understanding helps so much in being able to receive and give love as Catholics. 

Fearfully and wonderfully made – that is what you are.  And made not just as a single, homogeneous personality – but as a system.  But what is a system?  How can we understand ourselves not just as a monolithic personality, not just as a unity, and not just as a multiplicity, but in terms of our inner relationships with ourselves?  Join Dr. Gerry Crete, Bridget Adams, and Dr. Peter as we explore how each of us has a “kingdom within” – and how understanding that kingdom, understanding our multiplicity of our system allows us to better love God, our neighbor, and ourselves, the three loves in the two great commandments, firmly grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.   For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and for discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

“The body remembers what the mind forgets,” psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno tells us.  And Bessel van der Kolk takes it a step further – the body not only remembers, but “the body keeps the score.”  Our parts have so much to tell us about their experiences – our “forgotten,” unconscious experiences – and so often, our parts communicate with us through our bodies.  Will we listen?  Will you listen?  In this episode, Marion Moreland, Jennifer Maher, and host Bridget Adams share with why and how our bodies remember what our minds forget, with examples from their lives.  They stress the importance of a felt sense of safety.  And they and offer you step-by-step guidance to help you to listen to your body in an experiential exercise if you’d like to listen to your body and hear what your parts want your innermost self to know about your experiences.   For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and for discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Survival.  Importance.  Agency. Goodness.  Mission.  Authentic expression.  These are the six integrity needs that Dr. Peter came up with over decades of work with Catholics.  In this episode, we define integrity and integrity needs, we discuss how so many children are forced to choose which needs will be met and which will be denied.   We cover each of the six integrity needs in depth, we explore the hierarchy of integrity needs, and we discuss what kinds of parts are especially focused on each integrity need.  Then Dr. Peter lays out how we can meet our parts integrity needs, and we have a 19-minute experiential exercise to help you connect with your parts’ integrity needs.   For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Feeling safe. Feeling seen and heard. Feeling reassured, soothed. Feeling cherished and delighted in. Feeling loved. Feeling that I belong. We all have these six attachment needs. But how do our parts experience these needs? Which kinds of parts have which kinds of attachment styles? How can I recognize which attachment needs different parts of me have? Where do I start in helping a part of me who is struggling with unmet attachment needs and an insecure attachment style? Catholic IFS therapists Marion Moreland and Peter Martin join me to discuss and answer these questions in depth. And, as a bonus, I offer you an experiential exercise to help you get in touch with your parts’ attachment needs and find the “next right step” in meeting them.  For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Dr. Gerry Crete helps us unravel the confusion within us, why we have such deep internal conflicts and tensions that pull us in different directions and tear at our hearts.  St. Paul tells us in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  What’s up with that?  Parts.  Parts are up with that, that’s what -- or who.  And in this episode, Dr. Gerry and Bridget Adams shed so much light on our internal experience in our fallen human condition.  Join us to learn about how parts, despite their good intentions and desires to help us, can generate impulses toward addictions and other problematic and even sinful behaviors.  Learn how critical it is for parts to be integrated, to collaborate cooperatively with your inmost self, and most importantly, how parts can join in your loving God and neighbor with your whole heart in Dr. Gerry’s experiential exercise.   For the full video experience with visuals, graphics, and discussion in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

Who are you, deep inside, at the core of your being?  Who lives in the inmost chamber of your personhood?  Join us on an adventure to discover your core identity.  Catholic experts Dr. Gerry Crete and Dr. Peter Martin find the convergences and synergies in Scripture, the early Church Fathers, the Eastern and Western Catholic monastic traditions, Doctors of the Church, the medieval Catholic theologians, the writings of contemplative saints, and the magisterial teachings of the Church -- supplemented by attachment theory, Internal Family Systems and other parts and systems approaches in the modern era – all in the service of answering the question – “Who is my inmost self?”  What do the words inmost self, heart, soul, “nous,” and the “eyes of the soul” mean from a Catholic perspective?  We bring together the best of the old and new, the spiritual and the secular, to help you know who you are at your core, all grounded in an authentically Catholic understanding of your human person.  With an experiential exercise from Dr. Gerry, too.   For the full experience with visuals, slides, B-roll, conversation and discussion in the comments section and so much more, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics