Interior Integration for Catholics

No one parents perfectly, but how do we as parents best love our children, how do we create a family environment in which children will thrive?  How do we animate our homes with love?  How do we create conditions for children to form secure bonds with Mom and Dad?  How do we discipline from love rather than from anger or fear?  How do children’s God images form?  How do we help children launch successfully from the home into the world?  Join Dr. Gerry Crete, Theresa Robinson, and Dr. Peter as we discuss the answers to these and so many more questions, all grounded in a Catholic worldview and through an IFS lens.  

Do you want the human formation that can help you be a better parent, informed by IFS and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person?  And do you want to go on this adventure with other likeminded Catholics together in community?  If so, the Resilient Catholics Community may be just what you need.  The RCC offers a structured, step-by-step way to better come to understand and love your own parts, so you can better understand others in their parts.  The RCC opens for new applications in the months of October, February and June.  Find out more here:  https://soulsandhearts.com/rcc.  Have questions?  Contact Dr. Peter at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594.  

Applying to the RCC includes the PartsFinder Pro; you can download examples of the reports for a man and a woman:  

https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/zgqdzv21hjwxax5/PFP_Sample_-_Man.pdf/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/dbtd91dksh7v56c/PFP+Sample+-+Woman.pdf/file

And you can take in a 19-minute experiential exercise about discerning whether or not to apply here:  https://media.transistor.fm/d601eb42/521341ff.mp3

Check out Theresa Robinson’s practice, Greenhouse Counselling, here: https://www.greenhousecounselling.com

Dr. Gerry’s Parting Thoughts movie and film reviews are here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/parting-thoughts/
And his Kingdom Within series is here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/parting-thoughts/

Dr. Peter’s semimonthly reflections, including his series on the relational works of mercy are here:  https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/blog/

What makes a good marriage? In this wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Gerry Crete and David Edwards, we address this question from so many angles, bringing Internal Family System, Emotionally Focused Therapy, the Gottmans’ family therapy work and addressing idealization, love, vulnerability, attachment, wounds, conflict, devaluation, friendship, pressure, commitment, patience, giving, forgiveness, receiving, sacrifice.  We explore how managers, firefighters, and exiles experience marriage and explore ways that marriage move beyond surviving to flourishing.

Dr. Gerry Crete’s practice: Transfiguration, is here: https://www.transfiguration.co/
David Edward’s practice, St. Joseph Counseling is here:  https://www.stjosephcounseling.com/

Souls and Hearts have an amazing searchable archive of hundreds of resources on Catholicism and Internal Family Systems in dozens of topics, with an AI assistant to help you find what you need.  Check it out here:  https://www.soulsandhearts.com/archive

The Resilient Catholics Community (RCC) opens just three months each year: February, June and October. We will begin accepting applications for our 14th cohort on October 1. 

Nearly 300 faithful Catholics are learning to love themselves, God, and others more fully in community, using the best of human formation resources grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person, informed by IFS and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.  

As members work through materials in small groups and with companions, they experience the beauty, messiness and realness of human relationships in a safe environment, helping them first to love themselves in an ordered way and, later, learning to radiate that love upward to God and outward to others. Learn more and sign up for the interest list: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/rcc

Plan to attend our live Zoom informational meeting to learn more. The meeting will be from 8 PM to 9:15 PM on Tuesday, September 29, 2026. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/jyHHqRKiRYaDGWMaij4-1A

Home.  Family.  Belonging.  Love.  What does it mean to have a healthy marriage, a healthy family?  Gerry Crete and Theresa Robinson join us to explore that question: “What does a thriving marriage and flourishing in family life look like?  We bring in Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, perfectionism, the importance of family members delighting in each other, parents’ vows and scripts, how loving children involves more than the will, and the importance of “being with” each other.  
 
Check out Theresa Robinson’s practice, Greenhouse Counselling, here: https://www.greenhousecounselling.com/
 
And Dr. Gerry Crete’s practice, Transfiguration, is here: https://www.transfiguration.co/
 
Episode 85 is all about perfectionism:  https://youtu.be/bw-zUp2h_TA
 
Check out our Resilient Catholics Community – the RCC offers structured programming to help orthodox Catholic flourish in life by working on our human formation: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/rcc
 
If you are a Catholic therapist, coach, spiritual director, priest, or in another role where you accompany others in their human formation, consider the Formation for Formators Community (FFF).  The FFF is all about the personal, human formation of the formator, so that you can better receive and give love in how you accompany others.  More here:  https://members.soulsandhearts.com/fff
 
And our daily sister podcast, Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts is all about helping our listeners integrate inside, heal from emotional burdens, and grow to flourish in accepting being loved and loving yourself in an ordered way. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/@ScriptureForYourInnerOutcasts
 
Key moments:
 
0:00  The home and family as a human treasure and source of joy
4:30  The core question for this podcast series
11:10 What does it mean to have a healthy marriage and family?
13:30 The importance of the family, the “domestic church”
21:00 Parts’ expectations for family life – flourishing does not equal perfection
25:00  Dr. Peter was a great parent right out of the gate, but then things got much more real.  
25:56  Perfectionism in family life – how “the best is the enemy of the good.”  Attachment needs and integrity needs in family life.  Dr. Gerry wanted to provide his children everything so that they would be happy.  
29:41 Eudaimonia is about a life well-lived, not perfection, a place where children can rest in the security of love
33:30  Unconditional love in the family vs. a focus on “achievement”
36:20  What is flourishing in marriages and family life? 
40:42 The importance of joy and delighting in children
45:45 How mothers and fathers can parents from a position of self-protection; the importance of pausing
49:15  Parents’ vows and scripts are often reactions to their experience of their own parents
50:53  Parents often take too much responsibility for their children’s behavior
57:25  Balancing wanting the best for our kids with the need to “let go”
1:00:10 Even heroic acts of the will are not enough in loving children
10:01:30  How understanding parts make family relationships much easier
1:04:20 Self-led parenting
1:05:19  Parts language and family life
1:09:00 How parts work helps with forgiveness in family life
1:18:40  Some reassurances about parenting:  how earthy parents are not the primary parents of their children,  God’s providence is active
1:19:20  “Being with children” is more important than solving their problems
1:22:30 Reversal with children and identification/counter-identification with parents
1:26:00  Earthly parents are secondary parents, redux. God has a plan for every miscue, every mistake. He's willing to rewrite the family symphony, to take on the bad notes and turn them into good notes in His Providence
1:28:25 Flourishing in a family is about creating an ecology or environment of worth and delight
1:30:20  For each mom to remember that she is a beloved little daughter of God.

Download a PDF of Dr. Amalu’s dissertation: https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/8yt9aur8ixed59q/Amalu_Final_Dissertation.pdf/file
His private practice:  https://www.deeprenewalpsychotherapy.com/
Dr. Peter Martin’s practice:  https://www.immaculateheartcounseling.org/
The CCMMP is here:  https://divinemercy.edu/department-integrative-studies/catholic-christian-meta-model-of-the-person-ccmmp/
Dr. Anthony Flood’s book:  https://www.cuapress.org/9780813234205/the-metaphysical-foundations-of-love/
Dr. Monty De La Torre’s article on the 8 Cs and virtue:  https://www.soulsandhearts.com/blog/8cs-of-ifs-and-their-connection-to-the-virtues/
IIC 169 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM3OcGYDJE8
Summary:  Measuring IFS by the gold standard of Catholicity for therapeutic approaches – that’s what Catholic psychologists Christian Amalu, Peter Martin, and Peter Malinoski are exploring today.  The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (CCMMP) by Dr. Paul Vitz, Dr. William Nordling, and Dr. Craig Titus systematizes the 11 essential dimensions of a person that need to be respected in seeking to heal and change.  How does IFS stack up to those dimensions? How must it be adapted to be fully Catholic?  And how can IFS even inform the CCMMP in some important ways?  Join us and find out.  
Key moments:
11:55 Dr. Amalu and Dr. Peter meet for the first time..
14:15 The very beginnings of the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person in 2005
17:10 What the CCMMP offers:  1) a true and authentic representation of all of the elements that when put together is the human person; 2) providing a normative framework that defines what a human being ought to be and what flourishing looks like; 3) bringing together a Catholic understanding of philosophy and theology, and grounding psychology in what we know to be true by Divine Revelation
28:30 Dr. Amalu describes his dissertation, evaluating IFS through the lens of the CCMMP, bringing IFS into dialogue with the Catholic Faith.
32:40 How can IFS engage in the Christian project of healing?  
40:24 The dissertation can help Catholics understand why they can trust parts and systems approaches, including IFS, with some modifications, which Dr. Amalu lays out
45:19 Catholic virtue from an IFS perspective, bringing in the 8 Cs and the 5 Ps of IFS
51:45 Dr. Richard Schwartz: “The parts are crying out for redemption.”
55:00 How Schwartz stumbled onto a naturalistic religion.
57:50 How IFS helps us not only to love our parts in an ordered way, but to like our parts
59:15 The importance of playfulness and delight. “It’s wonderful that you exist.”
1:03:36 How so many people leave the Catholic Church because they don’t believe it has the answers to the human formation issues that trouble them
1:05:00 Does IFS nuance, extend, or expand any of the premises of the CCMMP?  Some limitations of the CCMMP.  How IFS and the CCMMP could inform each other.  Trauma, the unconscious, parts and systems thinking, and the relationship to self (self-love) are not addressed in the CCMMP.  Does IFS nuance any of the premises of the CCMMP?
1:16:51 Progression from self-awareness to self-possession to self-gift as the US Bishops describe.  
1:18:50 St. Maximus describes the human person is a microcosm of the cosmos, a small little cosmos within that reflects the entirety of all creation. Humankind is the nexus point of the contact between created reality and the divine.  If you do our own internal work, it's going to lift everybody else up in the Mystical Body of Christ, and it will have a positive impact on the rest of the cosmos.
1:23:30 The importance of mercy in whatever model of the human person you use.  
1:25:30 What helps all of you to flourish?  Including your exiled parts.  
1:03:40 Pope Benedict:  Healing is an essential dimension of the mission of Christianity.  Healing is holiness.  “Love each other from an undivided heart.”

Catholics becoming Gods.  In this episode, Mother Natalia of the Byzantine Catholic of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery and host of the “What God is Not” podcast discuss theosis (or deification) from an Eastern Catholic perspective, bringing in parts and systems thinking.  Join us for a fascinating, rollicking conversation about this most important topic.

Mother Natalia’s podcast:  https://www.youtube.com/@whatgodisnotpodcast

Praying with Parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OZ6e6zAMb4

Mother Natalia’s Riding Your Hot Mess Express to Heaven talk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BtvYRfBChc

Check out Dr. Peter and Chris Stefanick on parts work:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSWuvRg5csU&t=1468s

The Resilient Catholics Community is open to new members in June!  Check it out:  https://soulsandhearts.com/rcc

Catholic Parts Work in Human Formation will be on the evening of June 10, 2026 at 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM Eastern – register here https://members.soulsandhearts.com/Catholic-parts-work

A retreat for Catholic formators, August 10-13, 2026 on “Authentic Being and Authentic Relating.” https://members.soulsandhearts.com/formators-retreat-registration-for-2026

Key moments in this episode

9:40 Theosis or deification as understood as “becoming God” in the Eastern Catholic Church, and how theosis is becoming more and more one with God.  
15:00 What is the impact or effect of theosis on our parts?  How parts can be transfigured
19:20 Human formation deficits and inner fragmentation can keep us from theosis, from becoming one with God.  The concept of “involuntary sin” in the Eastern Catholic Church.  
28:11 Starting with what health looks like, how the fall affects us, and the effects manifested in spiritual illnesses – allowing all of our parts to heal and be deified.  
31:29 Evagrius insists that our desires are inherently good, but can become twisted
33:00 Are different parts of a person experiencing different degrees of union with God at the same time?
38:01 Jesus seeks out the less desirable members of society – the poor, lame, sick, lepers, the tax collectors, etc.  Does God seek out the exiles first, seeking to redeem them?  Does God bypass the innermost self to reach the exiled parts?  How inner unity is needed for parts to be close to God.  
48:45 The difference between essence and energies in Eastern Catholic thought with St. Maximus the Confessor
54:20 “Nepsis” or watchfulness
1:00:30 Is nepsis about being watchful inwardly and outwardly?  Impulses come from parts which are already in the heart, as opposed to temptation, which originates outside the person.  
1:06:30 An example of nepsis or watchfulness and parts from monastic life about a part feeling unseen
1:15:01 A model of working with parts in ways similar to working with little children.  With an example from Mother Natalia’s life.  
1:19:15 Cutting or self-mutilation as an example of trying to find the good desire within a maladaptive impulse.  Seeking causes underneath the symptom
1:30:00 Mother Natalia’s practical takeaway – we are so steeped in our culture’s obsession with productivity and take a functional view of prayer – what can prayer provide us, for some specific good.  But we need to go to prayer to “be with” God and be in His presence.
1:33:45 Dr. Gerry’s practical takeaway on prayer is to get a cat, because his cat Nebula, helps him to slow way down and stop being so busy in prayer. 
1:35:45 Parts’ desire for theosis is heavily dependent on their God images – patience and kindness and gentleness with parts, and how parts need to experience love from other relationships first
1:39:15 The Holy Spirit is unafraid to approach us even when we are still impure, and one of the mistakes we make is that we believe that we need to get to a particular place in order to encounter God.