Episode Details

Episode 33. –  Being Open and Coping Well          September 14, 2020.

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.   We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.  I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  Thank you for being here with me.  This is episode 33, released on September 14, 2020 and it is titled: Being Open and Coping Well

Today we’re going to explore openness in the natural realm.  And as a special bonus, we will explore closedness.  

Abierto Cerrado.  

Review: 

Episode 32:  Ways to increase trust, especially given the negative experiences.  0-24 months.  Exercise – popular.  Need more of that.  

Episode 31  The One Thing You Must Have to Be Resilient.  The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite.  Absolute childlike trust

There is one thing that separates those who are resilient from those who are not.   Childlike Trust (particularly in God’s goodness and his Providence for me in particular) separate those who are resilient from those who are not.  Absolute confidence in God.    

Episode 30: discussion of why we mistrust God so much, and it is because we are trying to be way too big.  Trying to make it on our own we don’t feel safe.  Trust is faith in action.  

We hate and fear the dependency required to be in a real relationship with God. 

Reciprocal relationship between openness and trust.  

Why do I bring in Non-Catholic ideas:   What makes me different.  Not closed to new ideas.  

Catholic with a small c  -- universal.

St. Augustine:  On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana)  

CHAP. 40.—Whatever has been rightly said by the heathen we must appropriate to our uses. Paragraphs 60 and 61  

Branches of heathen learning … contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them.

Not only natural learning, but we can learn truths regarding the worship of God. 

Freud.  How many times have I heard Freud being dismissed out of hand by Catholics because of his views on religion.  I get it.  Freud:  God as an illusion, we’re like infants who need a big, strong father to keep us safe and secure.  A big daddy in the sky.  

Religion had its uses to keep the unwashed masses subdued so that civilization could develop.  We needed something to help us restrain violent impulses and keep life on earth from turning into an episode from Jerry Springer.  But now we have reason and science.   Reason and Science.  

I travel in a lot of traditional Catholic circles, I attend the Latin Mass, love the beauty of the ancient Mass.  Not a lot of traditional Catholic psychologists.  Consulted nationwide, coming to Indianapolis, lot’s of suspicion.   Lots of rejection of psychology

But listen to what Freud is saying – we need a father.  We have an infantile need for a Father. He says it more clearly than a lot of Catholic speakers do – which Catholic media personalities have you heard really driving home the point that we are little, like todders, like infants in our need.  Freud found part of the Truth.  

Pope Francis.  Not to bash the pope.  Not about that in Souls and Hea