Consultation: Catholic Psychological and Spiritual Healing

Fear  |  Love  |  Spiritual Counsels  |  Books  |  About CSF

Introduction | The Benefits of Loving God With a Pure Heart | A Story About Desire

Psychotherapy
Evidence-Based Psychotherapy Techniques | The Work of Knowing Yourself | Demonic Influence | The Place for Medications

Psychological and Spiritual Healing
Techniques | Putting It Into Practice | Following the Spiritual Counsels | Telephone Work | Couples and Family Therapy | Legal Issues

Clinical Practices
The Nature of the Treatment | The Modality of the Treatment | The Length of Treatment | Transference | Cost, Length, and Frequency of Sessions | Making a Payment | Practice Policies | Using Insurance | Scheduling a Consultation | Clinical Records | E-mail Questions | Free Help

Mailing Address

OST Catholics do not recognize the psychological truth that past emotional injuries of childhood can live unconsciously in the present and can obstruct psychological and spiritual growth; nor do they recognize the spiritual workings of evil that feed upon resentment over past injuries. For such persons, prayer and fasting alone are not sufficient to relieve their emotional distress and to overcome the obstacles to doing the very things they know they should be doing. These persons need Catholic psychotherapeutic help to get to the root of their psychological and spiritual desire to commit sin and thereby to close the openings in their hearts to harmful influences which can be quite invisible to conscious awareness.

So, do you need help from Catholic psychology? Do you desire guidance from a Catholic psychologist who understands the nature of the unconscious and the hidden powers of evil that are constantly working to influence us and draw us into psychological and spiritual doom?

This website is filled with self-help guidance, but if you need more than self-help, through personal consultation I can provide the professional clinical help you need to explore your unconscious and remove the psychological obstacles that prevent you from loving God with a pure heart.

If you are interested in contacting me, first be careful to read through all the information on this web page; also review the following information about my professional credentials and office policies that is found on my associated website A Guide to Psychology and its Practice:

 

Education and Training A description of my professional credentials, training, and experience

   
F only we did exactly what Christ told us to do—through prayer and fasting, ^[1] turn away from the satisfactions of the world so as to renounce sin, pray constantly, and live chaste, modest, and humble lives filled with loving sacrifices for the salvation of other souls—we would be spiritually and mentally healthy.

Nevertheless, even in her time Saint Teresa of Avila could see the true depth of human nature: that we scorn the way of a holy lifestyle and seek immediate, tangible comfort for our emotional distress.

	You see, the gift our Lord intends for us may be by far the best, but if it is not what we wanted we are quite capable of flinging it back in His face. This is the kind of people we are; ready cash is the only wealth we understand.
	—The Way of Perfection (30.2)

Today, things are even more disordered than in times past. Now we live in a culture of diabolical insanity. In today’s world, most families have been stained with divorce and the dysfunction of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. Traditional family security has been shattered. And children, rather than basking in prayer and a sense of belonging to God, have become lost souls wandering in a wasteland. Children are brainwashed from infancy by movies, television, magazines, popular music, sports, and social media that are all awash with the demonic vices of aggressiveness, competition, defiance of authority, sensuality, hatred, anger, revenge, and lust. Hence when many individuals experience emotional distress, they think in depths of their hearts, “God owes me. Christ’s sacrifice doesn’t mean much to me right now. I want tangible compensation for all I have suffered!” Sexual pleasure, pornography, masturbation, gluttony, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are the currency of the “ready cash” the modern world demands from God. 

Consequently, in today’s culture of insanity, the fundamental Christian principle of prayer and fasting (especially fasting from personal pleasure) has been so ignored that most Catholics today find the meaning of the principle to be incomprehensible. Trust in God and love for God have lost their meaning. And, sadly, all the while this is occurring, most of us are blind to it.

Accordingly, many individuals today need psychotherapeutic help to overcome the unconscious resistances to doing the very things they know consciously they should be doing.

Hence it can be said that Catholic psychological and spiritual healing is a bet that you make that getting close to your unconscious will remove the psychological obstacles that prevent you from loving God with a pure heart.

 
The Benefits of Loving God With a Pure Heart

The psychological focus of this work is to help you know yourself as you get close to your unconscious. Then, depending on the effort you put into the process, you can learn to love God with a pure heart and thereby experience many other benefits as well.

1.	You can grow in the Fruits of the Holy Spirit and therefore get along in peace with family and neighbors and be an inspiration for their spiritual growth.
2.	You can live a life free from grave sin.
3.	You can have the clarity of mind to develop your talents, work productively, and provide for your material sustenance.
4.	Your physical health can improve.
5.	You can do penance for the past sins you have committed and thus shorten the penance you will have to do in Purgatory.

 
A Story About Desire

I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but the story goes that a man came to an ancient philosopher desiring to learn wisdom. The philosopher took the man out into a river and then suddenly wrestled him down under the water.
     Just at the point of drowning him, the philosopher hauled him out again and said, “Now, what did you say you wanted?”
     The poor guy was just gasping and wheezing, begging for air.
     “Well, when you want wisdom as much as you want to breathe,” the philosopher told him, “then you shall have it.”

 
About
PSYCHOTHERAPY
and
PSYCHOLOGICAL  AND  SPIRITUAL  HEALING

 
Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy (often referred to colloquially as “therapy”) has as its objective—even when informed by the Catholic faith—the resolution of psychological conflicts that produce psychiatric symptoms.

These symptoms are created by emotional resentments that begin in childhood and become the core of your unconscious psychological defenses. Such defenses have an original purpose of protecting you from intense emotional pain by hiding your resentments from conscious awareness, but as you get older these resentments can so erode your confidence and self-esteem with feelings of victimization, hate, self-blame, and self-punishment that they affect not only your mental health but also your social health and spiritual health.

In fact, individuals caught up in their unconscious defenses don’t really desire to serve God. Deep in their hearts they use the name of God only as an excuse to serve their own pride—the pride of believing that they are “in control” of their lives.

And why is this? Well, you may not want to admit this to yourself, but all of us have dark and hateful thoughts and imaginings that we keep shrouded in secrecy and don’t want to reveal to anyone, especially not to a psychologist. How many times have you said to yourself, “If people knew what I was really like, they would never want anything to do with me”? Yet the more you try to hide the truth of your life from others, the more you hide it from yourself, and the more you fall into pride—the pride of doing everything your way.

 
Evidence-Based Psychotherapy Techniques

All the psychotherapy techniques that I use are evidence based, but the evidence does not come just from scientific experimentation; much evidence comes from ages of experience and wisdom.

Many various psychotherapy theories and techniques have been developed since the early 1900s when Sigmund Freud formulated the concept of psychoanalysis. These techniques have one basic objective: to help us do the things we would like to do, but, by ourselves, cannot manage to do.

Some of these techniques are based in conscious, rational thought processes.

•	Cognitive-Behavioral techniques, for example, focus specifically on changing thoughts and behaviors. Note that vocal prayer is the preeminent form of Cognitive-Behavioral therapy.
•	Teaching and reasoning are also forms of psychotherapy. Note that this has been a preferred method of Christian psychotherapy, beginning with Christ Himself, continuing with the Apostles, and fully exemplified by men such as St. Thomas Aquinas (whose work is often recalled by modern Catholics in their practice of psychotherapy) and St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises.

Still, some persons develop such deep resistance to changing their lives for the good that psychotherapy must reach deep into their unconscious minds, well past their conscious thoughts.

•	Guided Imagery helps you visualize things that could or might occur so that you can achieve them or avoid them in the future. Note that St. Ignatius of Loyola anticipated this concept in his Spiritual Exercises.
•	Mental Prayer (or contemplative prayer) calls upon inspiration by the Holy Spirit to reveal and understand unconscious mental conflicts. Note that Catholic mystics through the ages have had much to say about this.
•	Dreams [2] can be interpreted to help you understand emotional elements of your life that you have not yet recognized consciously. Note that the Book of Daniel provides a practical example of this, while the Book of Sirach (34:5) warns us that dreams are not meant to be taken as predictions of actual future events.

 
The Work of Knowing Yourself

Some persons will say that they want nothing to do with “touchy-feeley psychology” and will insist that their lives are quite fine without it. Those who say this, however, have usually experienced family dysfunctions such as alcoholism, or emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. In an environment of lying, broken promises, arguing, and violence, they grew to fear emotions as something dangerous, and so they fear knowing the emotional truth about themselves; that is, they refuse to know themselves.

Nevertheless, in order to live a true Christian lifestyle, all persons, male and female, need to know themselves well enough to be able to manage their internal emotional reactions to external events, so as to remain always in a place of Christian purity of heart. Two common “emotional traps” illustrate this.

1.	Let’s say that someone says something critical to you. Your immediate reaction, based upon learned behavior from childhood, will be to defend yourself. That can provoke more criticism, and more arguing, until you get so exasperated that you start saying hateful and vengeful things—and right there you have abandoned purity of heart and fallen into sin. This all occurs because interpersonal conflicts result from failed emotional communication.
2.	Let’s say that someone corrects something that you did. You could just say, “Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that before.” But instead, because your mother or father constantly criticized you as a child, you sink into silent despondency, thinking, “I can’t do anything right. I’m just a worthless piece of garbage.”
3.	Let’s say you’re on your way home from work and suddenly you feel a temptation to stop at a bar and drink—to use drugs—to shoplift—to stop at a strip club—to get a “massage” from a prostitute—to masturbate. So right there you have abandoned purity of heart and fallen into sin. This all occurs because behind every temptation is an emotional reaction to some event earlier in the day that has shaken your self-confidence.

Emotional awareness, therefore, is a psychological tool that provides protection from sin. Interpersonal conflicts result from failed emotional awareness. Temptations do not just appear out of nowhere; behind every temptation is an emotional reaction to some event that has shaken your self-confidence. It is impossible to stay in the place of Christian purity of heart if you fail to know yourself well enough to understand your emotional reactions to the events around you.

Thus Catholic psychological and spiritual healing helps you to know yourself so that you can learn to respond to every moment of the present with an understanding of the emotions involved—and this understanding gives you the ability to respond honestly and appropriately to the situation.

For example, if someone says something that hurts you, you can say to yourself, “OK. I’m feeling helpless and abandoned.” In the midst of these emotions, you can recognize how you responded defensively to similar emotions as a child. Then you can choose an appropriate, non-defensive, mature, and psychologically honest response to your current emotions. But if you haven’t done your psychological work, instead of naming your emotions you will just feel a vague yucky inadequacy and then get angry or go off and drown the yuck with food or drugs or some other dysfunctional behavior. The sad thing is that when you drown the yuck, right along with it you drown the possibility of forgiveness—and that opens a hellgate to demonic influence.

 
Demonic Influence

Demons are everywhere, trying to subvert God’s will in regard to everything. Primarily, demons affect our behavior by trying to affect our thoughts, so as to discourage us and lead us into doubt, despair, and sin, and our task is to resist such temptations. In some cases demons can affect circumstances, but only with God’s permission; in these cases, our task is to surrender to God’s will.

Some persons, however, falsely believe that psychological disorders can be the result of demonic influence. The truth is actually the other way around. Psychological disorders result from emotional resentments that have been stuffed away into the unconscious, and then, if the resentments are especially strong, the anger and lust underlying them will attract demons the way blood in the water attracts sharks. Remember a fundamental point here: demons cannot get into us unless we invite them in, and one clear invitation is through the door of anger and lust. Consequently, if demonic oppression is suspected, prayers of deliverance—and formal exorcism, if required—will be necessary. Note well, though, that the demons will keep coming back as long as there is anger and lust for them to feed on. To stay free of the demons, the unconscious resentments underlying the psychological disorder must be resolved through Catholic psychological and spiritual treatment.

Sometimes persons seek medical treatment because they are “hearing voices.” Quite commonly, the “voices” will be diagnosed as auditory hallucinations and anti-psychotic medications will be prescribed. But if the medications do not stop the voices, then it’s likely that the voices are not hallucinations but are real spiritual experiences of a demonic nature. In such a case, an exorcist should be consulted to cast away the demons, and a Catholic psychologist should be consulted to help heal the underlying unconscious issues, especially lust and anger, that the demons are feeding upon.

 
The Place for Medications

Psychotherapy is hard work. It will often seem counter-intuitive because it does not examine only what is on the surface of your life. To be able to cure the pain and confusion of your life, you really have to examine and change what motivates you to act in ways that cause pain and confusion, and, for the most part, this motivation is unconscious and under the surface of your life. Therefore, your true motivation cannot be examined directly. It must be examined indirectly by digging through all the dirt and filth hidden under the surface. It’s no wonder, then, that most people fear psychotherapy—and fear psychologists.

Consequently, psychiatric medication has a special appeal to it, an appeal that is seen more and more today in advertising. Rather than go through all the hard work of constantly monitoring your emotions, thoughts, and actions, why not feel better without having to do anything at all? Why change your lifestyle? Just take some pills a couple times a day and go about your life as usual. 

Now, the truth is, psychiatric medications are generally mandatory for the treatment of disorders such as schizophrenia and mania. For other disorders such as depression, PTSD, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychiatric medications can, in some cases, be a helpful adjunct to psychotherapy. That is, medications can suppress debilitating anxiety or alleviate your depressed mood such that you can then feel comfortable enough to do the hard work of psychotherapy.^[3]

It’s important, then, to keep in mind that psychiatric medications are not curative. The medications merely suppress unwanted symptoms for as long as you take the medications. If you stop the medications, the symptoms will flourish again in full strength. But, if psychotherapy is used in conjunction with psychiatric medications, the psychotherapy holds the possibility of a genuine cure by resolving the deep unconscious issues that lie behind the symptoms—and then the medications can be discontinued.

Note carefully that the use of psychiatric medications therefore poses a grave spiritual danger. If someone uses medications merely to suppress symptoms of anxiety, depression, or OCD, rather than use psychological treatment to renounce willingly the morally disordered inclinations underlying the symptoms, he or she can be in a perpetual state of unrepentant mortal sin, much like a clean, shiny grain of wheat that, when broken, is full of dirt inside.

 
Psychological and Spiritual Healing

Psychological and spiritual healing in the Catholic mystic tradition seeks to guide someone in ways that bring him or her closer to living a holy lifestyle.

In this healing process you learn to surrender yourself to total trust in God so that, no matter what afflicts you, you can bring the pain before God and ask for the strength and courage to deal, in imitation of Christ, with what needs to be done in any moment.

Because of deep psychological conflicts, however, you may find it difficult to make a total surrender to God, and so you will discover that education and reasoning do little to overcome that difficulty. In this case, psychotherapeutic techniques must be used to understand and overcome the fear that puts up an obstacle to the spiritual purgation necessary for living a holy lifestyle.

 
Techniques

I have been well trained in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and so in the work of psychological and spiritual healing I use these techniques for understanding the unconscious. Because unconscious conflicts can often result in spiritual stagnation, the psychoanalytic work of understanding unconscious motivation can be a large part of the healing work. But in psychological and spiritual healing the resolution of such conflicts is directed toward ever greater trust in God, not just toward the specific relief of psychiatric symptoms. Nevertheless, as trust in God grows, psychiatric symptoms will abate.

 
Putting It Into Practice

Therefore, in the form of psychoanalytic healing I practice, and as I describe on this website, you can be guided—through the sacraments, vocal and mental prayer, fasting, study, and the insight resulting from the psychotherapeutic relationship—into understanding the roots of your unconscious conflicts. Then you can learn to identify the events of life that have wounded you and to understand the emotions surrounding those events.

That is, it’s not enough just to “know” intellectually what occurred—it is important to feel the pain and then be able to identify and “name” the emotions associated with your pain.

This all occurs through a collaborative process of interpreting your unconscious associations to your intellectual memories, using techniques such as free association and dream interpretation.

 
Click here to learn about the common problems and conflicts
that can occur during the therapeutic process.

Eventually, you can recover a full awareness of your emotional life that in childhood you learned to suppress as a psychological defense.

 
Following the Spiritual Counsels

Please read my Spiritual Counsels to learn about the spiritual values underlying my work.

You might ask me, “Do I have to follow all the Spiritual Counsels in order to consult with you?” Well, no, you don’t have to do anything. If you follow all the counsels your healing will be less complicated, it will take less time, and it will cost you less than if you don’t follow all the counsels. But it’s all your choice.

Nevertheless, as you read the Counsels, note the things to which you might object, and this will give you a clue as to the unconscious sins working under the surface of your conscious beliefs about yourself. Do you believe that you cannot live without television and movies? Then you are using entertainment and all of its illusions to fill your emotional emptiness rather than seeking the fullness of God’s truth. Do you believe that you cannot live without social media? Then you are using the pride of human fellowship for consolation rather than seeking a deep prayerful relationship with God. Do you believe that you cannot live without sexual activity? Then you are using lust to satisfy your anger at God. And so on. Once you see what is really there under the surface of self-deception, ask yourself if you are really willing to risk everything, and give up anything, for the sake of saving your soul. But at least be honest. Many persons, even those who call themselves devout, really aren’t willing to do anything it takes to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

 
Telephone Psychological and Spiritual Healing

For all practical purposes, psychological and spiritual healing uses the same techniques as psychotherapy and has some of the same goals as psychotherapy (in that a healthy relationship with God will produce psychological health), but because I can assume that someone of faith is not deliberately attempting to hide anything from me, psychological and spiritual healing is well suited to be conducted over the telephone. In fact, the partial anonymity of telephone work can be quite similar to the anonymity of Confession.

 
Couples and Family Therapy

I do not provide treatment for minor children. Furthermore, when children have psychological problems, it has been my experience that the parents, not just the children, need treatment.

I do not provide couples and family therapy because such modalities require specialized training and experience. Nevertheless, for clients already established in individual treatment, I have occasionally conducted joint sessions with a spouse or a parent, but my role in such sessions is simply to be a facilitator of healthy communication.

 
Legal Issues

I am an independent practitioner, and my work focuses on confidential personal healing. I do not accept cases involving legal testimony or progress reports to third parties.

 
 
CLINICAL PRACTICES

 
The Nature of the Treatment

My healing work is ordered to psychological and spiritual growth rather than to the simple relief of psychiatric symptoms.

 
The Modality of the Treatment

I conduct all clinical sessions by telephone; for clients (within or outside the US) who prefer an encrypted connection, I use Signal audio. I do not use video conferencing.

 
The Length of Treatment

The length of treatment depends on the nature, the severity, and the extent of the emotional wounds that have afflicted you—and those criteria in turn affect the strength of your resistance to change, which in turn affects the length of the treatment.

 
Transference

It is common, and even expected, for the client to experience feelings for a psychotherapist that are called a transference reaction. For example, these feelings can resemble the mixed feelings (i.e., love and hate) you had in childhood for your parents, and you can begin to treat your psychotherapist according to these feelings, all out of proportion to what is actually occurring in the treatment. In such a case, it is important to realize that the psychotherapist is only doing his or her job of bringing these feelings to light; it’s your feelings, not the person of the psychotherapist, that are important. Also, you can come to believe that your psychotherapist has the personal ability to redeem your sense of inner worthlessness, and so you can desire to be special to the psychotherapist. Hence you might desire the psychotherapist to be your friend, or you could become sexually attracted to him or her. The therapeutic cure, however, must come from facing your inner emptiness and not seducing it by acting on the transference feelings.
 
For more information about this matter, read a Question and Answer from my other website A Guide to Psychology and It’s Practice.

 
The Time to End the Treatment

Said simply, the treatment can be ended when you have learned to face life’s trials and tribulations calmly, with trust in God’s providence and justice, and to have the confidence to continue doing so without continued therapeutic guidance. Nevertheless, some clients might still want to continue treatment for continued psychological and spiritual insight and growth.

 
Cost, Length, and Frequency of Sessions

My fee is $175 per hour. Sessions are $250 per hour if they start at or after 6:00 PM my time.

If, because of rising costs, I have to raise my fee, I will not raise the fee of current clients; but any client who leaves treatment for more than a month and then decides to return to treatment will be charged the new fee.

Sessions are usually an hour, but they can be any length, calculated at $175 per hour. (I use 5-minute intervals with the fee rounded to the next highest $5; the minimum fee is $45.)

Sessions can be several times per week, once per week, bi-weekly, monthly, or only as needed, according to your personal preference. The most common frequency of treatment is once per week. (In general, a low frequency of treatment will result in a low intensity of treatment engagement and therefore a low amount of behavioral change.)

Note well that, regardless of the frequency of the treatment, for behavioral change to occur you must dedicate time between sessions to study daily the topics on this website and to pray constantly for humility to accept your brokenness, for wisdom to accept God’s guidance in all things, for courage to face your emotional pain, for determination to resist worry and doubt, for strength to persevere through darkness, and for understanding to accept the guidance necessary to make meaningful changes in your beliefs about yourself and in your physically and spiritually unhealthy behaviors.

 
Making a Payment for Services Rendered

Secure payments can be made through the mail by check or money order, or through PayPal or Square (both of which accept all credit/debit cards—click one of the links below). International payments can also be made through Wise; I can provide the details as needed.

For payments less than $90, please use Square

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Please note that sending a payment without contacting me to schedule a session
does not guarantee the booking of a session.

 
Practice Policies

Please note the following:

•	Sessions must be scheduled in advance.
•	You will be billed for sessions canceled without 24 hours advance notice.
•	You will be billed for missed sessions.
•	If you are late, you will be billed for the entire session.
•	My schedule does not allow for crisis therapy.
•	Text messages and e-mails should be short, concise, and concerning immediate practical matters. Other matters are best discussed in a treatment session.
•	I do not schedule sessions on Sundays, and I generally do not return phone calls, text messages, or e-mails on Sundays.

 
Using Insurance

I do not accept Medicare or any managed-care plans. If you carry other insurance, please understand that my professional services are rendered and charged to you, not to the insurance company. This means that you must pay me for each session in full. Then, if you request, for a $25 fee I will provide you with a statement which you can submit to your insurance company for a reimbursement (paid to you) for the session fees you have paid to me. This statement will include your clinical diagnosis, the procedure code, the number of sessions for the time period you request, and the amount you have paid me for each of those sessions. It will be your responsibility to contact your insurance company to determine if it will reimburse you under these terms, and, if so, what percentage of the billed amount it will cover.

Note, however, that your use of insurance will breach the confidentiality of your treatment because any employee of the insurance company can demand the details of your treatment. Furthermore, insurance companies require a psychiatric diagnosis, which I believe is clinically useless but, once given to your insurance provider, will become an indelible part of your world-wide electronic medical record.

 
Scheduling a Consultation

To schedule a consultation, whether as a new client or as an old client returning after an absence, first be honest about the value of your soul and send a donation in gratitude for what you have already learned from my website. Keep in mind that a lack of gratitude is a major block to healing.

Then contact me by e-mail or by telephone (see below), and we can arrange a day and time for the first session. For the session itself, I will provide a telephone number for you to call; you will initiate the call to me at the scheduled time. For clients who prefer to use use Signal audio, I will provide contact information when needed.

 
Clinical Records

Federal and state laws specify that psychotherapists should keep clinical records. Nevertheless, because I practice psychological and spiritual healing in the Catholic mystic tradition, rather than psychotherapy per se, my treatment practices do not have to adhere to the same record-keeping requirements that govern the pseudo-medical nature of psychotherapy. Therefore, considering the risk of government harassment, bullying, and general intrusion into the privacy of individuals, especially politically conservative individuals of faith, I protect the privacy and safety of my clients by not keeping clinical notes (other than a record of sessions and payments as well as sparse non-disclosable private notes about the general themes of sessions); nor do I use electronic record-keeping and dissemination; moreover, I delete text messages (preferably sent through the encrypted network of Signal) and e-mails once I have read them.

Consequently, because my clinical work is collaborative, and because I tell my clients what I am thinking as we proceed, I encourage my clients to keep their own notes of their sessions and to review those notes between sessions.

 
E-mail Questions

If you are not currently in treatment with me and want advice about your faith practices, relationship issues, work problems, your psychotherapy with another professional (Catholic or otherwise), or other personal matters, send your question to me by e-mail and also make a payment to this website for an e-mail response. I will answer your question within about five days of receiving the payment. (A payment by check is considered to be “received” when the check clears my bank.)

 
Free Help

I made my websites so that anyone in the world can learn from my writings free of charge.

Notes.

1. When prayer is combined with fasting for healing, it is important to understand both prayer and fasting in a very specific sense.
   In regard to healing, prayer must be more than “standard” formal prayers (such as the Rosary); prayer must be an intimate communication with God as an appeal for deep personal scrutiny (both psychological insight into past emotional injuries and psychological insight into the ways current thoughts and behaviors are affected by those past emotional injuries) and an appeal for the desire and courage to alter dysfunctional life patterns through a dedicated surrender to, and trust in, God’s will.
   In regard to healing, fasting should be considered to be an act of distancing oneself from anything that is not necessary for nurturing a state of life governed by total love for God. Hence we can fast from worldly activities (e.g., entertainment and sports) that bring material pleasure to life but that actually distract us—and often lead us away—from an awareness of God’s holy presence in our lives. In this regard, the most benefit will result from perpetual fasting. (Note that perpetual avoidance of mortal sin could also be considered a form of fasting, but this sort of fasting must be considered mandatory for every Christian.)
   We can also fast from food and drink that our bodies do not really need for optimal functioning. In this regard it is important to understand that fasting does not amount to a ruthless act of merely denying ourselves pleasure from good food; instead, fasting has two aspects. First, it can refer to cutting back on—and even eliminating, if possible— unhealthy foods (e.g., junk foods, sugary foods, processed foods). Second, it can refer to a selective reduction of the usual amount of food for a limited time, so as to effect a purging of physiological toxins from the body and also to stimulate a greater awareness of a spiritual hunger for the presence of the holy in our lives.

2. Note that a traditional Catholic guide such as the Baltimore Catechism claims that dreams are irrational and meaningless and should be ignored. But note carefully that this Catechism was written at a time when the psychology of the unconscious was not scientifically understood. If you want to believe the Baltimore Catechism about dreams you may as well believe that the world is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth.

3. Be careful not to be deceived by “medical marijuana.” Marijuana (cannabis) is an evil substance, and any use of it, for any reason, opens a hellgate to demonic influence. As politically correct as “medical marijuana” may seem, it’s all a demonic deception.

Mailing Address Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. 1592 Union Street # 83 San Francisco, CA 94123 USA

 
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