Dear Souls & Hearts Member,
Who is your mother?
This might sound like a ridiculous question. The vast majority of people, the vast majority of Catholics would immediately name their earthly mother, the one who raised them.
For some from broken or blended families, it might be more confusing, bringing in the possibilities of stepmothers or other mother figures.
Secular psychologists on the need for a father and a mother
Psychologists and attachment researchers Daniel P. Brown, Ph.D. and David S. Elliott, Ph.D. in their 2016 book Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair found that having a good father and a good mother was so important that they created the Idealized Parent Figure Protocol to help clients with severe parental attachment trauma – in simpler language, clients who had received bad parenting.
The IPF protocol consists of visualizing an ideal mother and an ideal father figure in your imagination – a mother and father who are perfectly attuned and attentive to the needs you had as a child, and who respond to those needs with perfect support, encouragement, and connection. In other words, in the IPF protocol, you imagine being born into and being raised in a completely different family, a family with an amazing father and mother.
After some preliminary work of “relating” with these imaginary parents and establishing a “connection,” you then bring in past or present experiences of distress, where the idealized parents are with you in a way that soothes, calms, and helps your emotions and body to be more regulated. The imaginary parents provide a sense of felt safety, a feeling of being seen and known, comfort and reassurance, a sense of being cherished and love, and a felt support for you becoming your best self. This Reddit post aggregates many resources about the IPF protocol into a single central hub for those interested in learning more.
It is so interesting to me that Brown and Elliott bring in both a father and a mother. Not just amorphous “parents.” Why? As Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper explains in his book Faith, Hope, Love, there are major differences between paternal and maternal love:
“A mother’s love for her children is “unconditional” in a unique fashion; that is, it is not linked with any preconditions. Because of that it corresponds to the deepest longings of children and, indeed, of every human being. Maternal love does not have to be “earned”; and there is nothing anyone can do to lose it. A father, on the contrary, tends to set conditions; his love has to be earned. But that likewise repeats a fundamental element peculiar to all love: the desire that the beloved not only “feel good” but that things may in truth go well for him. A mature person’s love must, as has rightly been remarked, contain both elements, the maternal and the paternal, something unconditional and something demanding.” [p. 273]
As human beings, we need both a mother’s love and a father’s love. Both are necessary. We were made to receive the love of both a father and a mother. As Pieper notes, fathers and mothers bring different dimensions
There are some indications that the IPF protocol is helpful to those struggling with serious attachment disturbances. In addition to some testimonials on the internet (see here and here for examples), a small pilot study supported the efficacy of the IPF protocol in a sample of 17 adults with a history of childhood trauma and complex PTSD diagnoses.
And some Catholic psychologists whom I respect have used the IPF protocol and reported success.
But I’ve never found it appealing. Why?
Part of it is philosophical. I believe that getting healthier involves a greater contact with reality, not entering and investing in an imaginary world. I believe getting healthier involves establishing real relationships, not relationships with imaginary figures.
And, because as a Catholic, I know that each Catholic already has a perfect Father and Mother. We don’t have a need to create imaginary mother and father figures.
Who is your mother?
Fr. Emile Neubert in his excellent little book titled My Ideal: Jesus, Son of Mary lays it out for us Catholics:
“… I want you to realize that Mary is your true Mother in the supernatural order, just as who gave you birth is your true mother in the natural order. A mother is one who gives life. Mary has given you life, the most real life…” [p. 10].
“Do you understand now how Mary, by making your participant in the life of God, is really your Mother in the supernatural order, just as the one who gave you human life is really your mother in the natural order? Mary is even more truly your mother; she is more truly your mother, first, because the ways in which she has given you life.” [p. 12].
Throughout his book, Fr. Emile Neubert (who was much admired by St. Maximilian Kolbe) makes the case for Mary being the primary mother of each Catholic.
So, in addition to the six facets of identity, all in relationship to the three Persons of Trinity that I’ve described in previous reflections, we now discuss our identity as a beloved little sons and daughters of Mary.
As a psychologist who is deeply invested in human formation, I find it fascinating that Christianity is the only major religion that has both primary spiritual father and a primary spiritual mother in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
[As an aside, I think one of the many tragic effects of the Protestant Reformation was the loss of devotion to and relationship with Mary as Protestant denominations sought to separate themselves from the Catholic Church. Protestants essentially lost their mother.]
[As another aside, I want to make it clear that I am not attempting to establish some kind of parity between God the Father and Mary because of their roles as our Father and mother. God the Father is God; Mary is a creature, albeit a perfect one. We worship God; we honor Mary.]
Making up for natural mothers’ deficiencies
Romans 8:28 states “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
There are no exceptions to Romans 8:28 for experiencing bad parenting, as important as natural parents are in a child’s development – God’s providence still holds, even in situations when natural parents are abusive, neglectful, traumatizing, etc. This brings up the question of theodicy, the field of inquiry which explains how God’s goodness and providence can coexist with manifest evil in the world, including bad parenting (for an excellent book-length discussion of theodicy with a strong focus on developmental psychology, check out Wandering in Darkness by Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump) .
Fr. Emile Neubert in his book Life of Union with Mary writes that:
“Undoubtedly, God does not will all this; He permits it. But God does not permit as we permit things – we who permit and tolerate what we cannot prevent. He could have prevented these trials had He so willed; He permits it because He wills to permit, and He wills to permit for our greater good.” [p. 63].
How might this work with bad natural mothering? I believe that God permits bad natural mothering because he plans to draw greater good from it. I have seen, repeatedly, how clients and others with terrible maternal traumas, horrible mother wounds, have developed deeper relationships with the Blessed Virgin Mary as their primary, spiritual mother that otherwise would have been possible.
In fact, I believe that those who have suffered severe mother deprivations and attachment injuries have the possibility of a deeper, richer, more intimate union with Mary as their mother than those who didn’t experience such traumas. I know that may be hard for many people to believe. But I have seen it, personally, and many saints had bad or missing natural mothers or mother figures (see here, here, and here for examples) and those saints developed a deep, intimate relationship with Mary as their Mother.
Each part of you needs a mother
Mary is the primary mother of all of you, all of your parts. And each part of you needs his or her mother. Often, the burden of one’s mother wounds or deprivations is carried by one or more exiled parts, so that the implications of the mother loss or mother deprivation does not overwhelm the whole system.
These parts that carry the mother trauma and need are exiled, but they continue to search for and seek healing from a mother. They are like the little bird in P.D. Eastman’s book Are You My Mother? which is read aloud on this YouTube video.
Fr. Neubert’s books My Ideal: Jesus, Son of Mary and Life of Union with Mary are both excellent and have had a profound impact in my own life. They continue to be some of the most important resources for the spiritual means of developing a deep and intimate union with Mary as our Mother.
But they focus on spiritual formation, not our human formation.
And that’s a problem because so many of the obstacles we have in relating with “mother” are at the human, natural level. Any difficulties you have relating with mothers or mother figures you will bring into your relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
So our Catholic Church has amazing resources and a long tradition of love and devotion to our Lady as our Mother.
We at Souls and Hearts supplement that by bringing in the human formation resources to help us recover from maternal attachment injuries and wounds, bringing in the best of all resources, not just those that are “Catholic.”
Each part of us needs to be included in our relationship with Mary as our mother. That requires interior integration, that requires a kind of inner harmony that Mary can help us with as our mother. I am fascinated about how God and Mary can help us in our human formation; I discussed this at length in episode 131 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, titled “On God’s Role in Your Human Formation.”
Today is the last day to apply for the Resilient Catholics Community!
The entire focus of the Resilient Catholics Community (RCC) is to overcome the natural-level human formation obstacles that keep us from a deep and intimate union with God in the three Persons of the Trinity. We see so many spiritual problems as really spiritual consequences of human formation deficits. So, we bring the best of both Catholic and non-Catholic human formation resources together and ground them in a Catholic understanding of the human person to help you flourish in love, in carrying out the three loves in the two great Commandments: to love God, your neighbor, and yourself.
And that starts with tolerating being loved, in all your parts, receiving the love that you need from a father and a mother, and not from some idealized, imaginary figures, but from your primary parents. And we help you tolerate that, because it can be very frightening and very difficult for many of our parts, especially those who have carried the burdens of different kinds of parental neglect or trauma.
We at Souls and Hearts have developed a year-long, structured, step-by-step program that brings in the needed human formation elements that have been missing from so many Catholics’ journeys. And we do this together, in community, in relationship with each other.
Weeks 38, 39, and 40 are all about “spiritual confidants,” focusing on overcoming the human formation issues that hinder you from a deeper intimacy with the three Persons of the Trinity, Mother Mary, and other saints, and also angels (including your guardian angel.)
So many RCC members have experienced healing and growth, not only in the natural realm in their human formation, but in many other ways as well, because when you shore up the natural foundation for the spiritual life, everything gets more stable. Check out the testimonials on our RCC landing page, watch the informational video, listen to the 19-minute experiential exercise to help you discern about applying to the RCC. And if you are ready, start the journey by applying to the RCC.
Today is the last day for the St. Jerome cohort – applications will be taken until midnight Eastern time, and then we are closed for months until the next cohort.
If you apply, you’ll take the PartsFinder Pro before the beginning of the RCC journey to help you connect with 12-15 of your parts, and you’ll take it at the end of the first year to assess your progress. The RCC is the most data-informed Catholic human formation program on the planet; we conduct outcome studies to help us tune our materials.
Questions? Reach out to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or on my cell at 317.567.9594.
Warm regards in Christ and His Mother,
Dr. Peter