IIC 5: Your Catholic Mindset and Resilience in Crisis

Dr. Peter explores in depth mindsets and how to identify your own in a crisis, using an example from The Lord of the Rings. In this podcast, he will guide you through an exercise to help you begin to understand your own mindset in a crisis, in the service of building resiliency.

[00:00:01] What is a mindset? How can I understand my mindset? And how can I understand my mindset in a crisis? These are the questions we will be addressing in depth in this episode today. And to help us, I’m inviting in Denethor the second, steward of Gondor, in his moment of crisis. Here you go, you Lord of the Rings fans. So in The Return of the King, the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series, Denethor is in an extremely difficult position. He is the leader of the Kingdom of Gondor, and Gondor is one of the few kingdoms left standing against evil Sauron and his army of Mordor. Gondor is in a strategic position to defend against Mordor. But now the vast, powerful army of Mordor is laying siege to the gates of Denethor’s castle, and the situation looks very grim. But let’s rewind just a bit. Who is Denethor and what was his mindset? Denethor is hard headed, traditional, old fashioned. He’s a grim political realist. He’s pessimistic. He’s lonely. He is lonely. His wife died many years ago. He’s self-reliant. He relies on his own resources to resist the powerful, evil ruler, Sauron. Denethor is a father of two sons. His elder son, Boromir, has died. This increased his distance, bitterness, and detachment. Denethor also secretly uses a seeing stone, a Palantir, to gather information. A seeing stone or a Palantir is a ball of indestructible crystal. It’s used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world, events from the past or the future.

[00:01:56] Some might describe it as a kind of crystal ball. Denethor believed that he could control the seeing stone. The seeing stone can only show him things that were true, real objects or real events. But the seeing stone is not a reliable guide to action. It’s unclear whether the events shown in the stone are from the future or from the past, and it doesn’t show everything. Sauron, the evil Sauron, biased what the seeing stone showed Denethor, selectively choosing real events and positioning the presentation to convey a lie. So in this moment of crisis for Denethor, the vast evil horde of Mordor is arrayed outside his castle walls. And then Denethor’s younger son, Faramir, is brought in on a stretcher. He’s pierced with arrows, and he looks like death. In the darkness of his hopelessness, Denethor says this to Gandalf. “I have seen more than thou knowest, gray fool, for thy hope is but ignorance. Go then, and labor in healing. Go forth and fight. Vanity. For a little while, you may triumph on the field for a day, but against the power that rises there is no victory. To this city only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. Even now, the wind of their hope cheats thee and wafts up the Anduin a fleet of black sails. The West has failed. It is time to depart for all of you who would not be slaves.” Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.

[00:04:02] I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode five, Your Catholic Mind and Resilience in Crisis. And it is Friday, April 3rd, 2020. We are one week away from Good Friday. Mindset. Mindset is one of the four pillars of resilience in crisis for Catholics. This episode builds on the last one in which I introduced you to the four pillars of resilience. These four pillars are critical for you to be able to not just survive, but to thrive in times of crisis like this moment we find ourselves in now. Now we’re going to go into much more depth on mindset. So what is mindset? Our mindset is the general position or attitude of our intellect. Mindset captures how we habitually apply our thinking to the situations we face. It’s the soil in which our cognitive processes grow. Mindset is not our thinking, per se. It’s the mental attitude from which our thinking flows. So here’s a simple example to clarify. A person with a pessimistic and bitter mindset looks at a glass, sees it as half empty, and considers how he doesn’t really want water anyway. He wants iced tea with a twist of lemon. He thinks about how he never gets what he wants. Now, on the other hand, a person with a providential mindset recognizes that four ounces of water is exactly what he needs right now.

[00:05:42] And he gives thanks to God for that gift. You can think of mindset as a filter through which we perceive our situations, other people, and ourselves. Our mindsets can range all over in terms of the accuracy of their perceptions and the quality of the thinking that they produce. Think about it. You’ve seen this in others, when they totally misunderstand you in a situation. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll remember times when your perceptions of situations have been really misguided by your mindset. And as a reminder of what we discussed in the last episode, our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking, but also our behavior. It’s much easier to act well when we have a healthy mindset. So back to Denethor. Let’s discuss his mindset. What was Denethor’s mindset? Think about it for just a second. Was it despair? Well, he did move to a mindset of despair, but only at the very end. Remember that mindsets can change and flux. Denethor was in trouble with his mindset long before the host of Mordor gathered at his doorstep, long before the battered body of his son, Faramir, was hauled back to him in the castle. So what was the original problem with Denethor’s mindset? It was this. Denethor believed that he needed only to rely on himself. He was a man of great capacity, many talents, a strong will. He pursued the good as he understood it, to the limits of his strength.

[00:07:25] But he was self-reliant. He tried to carry out his mission alone and isolated. And that mission was greater than any one man could ever face alone. None of us has the strength in our own will and in our own character to face the challenges without help. Relying on our own strength is a prescription for disaster. I empathize with Denethor. Parts of me really want to be self-reliant as well. I want to be independent. I want to not rely on anyone else. That resonates with some of you as well. So I get Denethor’s mindset and the temptations he faced. There was another problem with Denethor’s mindset. Denethor assumed that he could master the seeing stone, the palantir. He presumed he could avoid Sauron’s attempt to control him through the stone. He lacked intellectual humility in his quest for clarity about the future. He was driven by fear and uncertainty. He had to know the future, so he relied on the seeing stone, and he succumbed to its misleading guidance. Denethor wildly distorted the visuals he sees in the stone, and he assumes the horde of Mordor outside his castle walls means doom. And so he despairs. He ends his life by burning himself to death. Gandalf says this of Denethor, “But his wisdom failed. And I fear that as the peril of his realm grew, he looked in the stone and was deceived. Far too often, I guessed, since Boromir departed. He was too great to be subdued to the will of the dark power.

[00:09:05] He saw, nonetheless, only those things which that power permitted him to see. The knowledge that he obtained was doubtless often of service to him. Yet the vision of the great might of Mordor that was shown him fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.” The overthrowing of Denethor’s mind that Gandalf refers to is the shifting of Denethor’s mindset from self-reliance to the broken depths of despair. Denethor’s mindset finally broke his will, strong as that will had been. So what do we know of mindsets from our Catholic faith? Let’s listen to what God in Sacred Scripture has to tell us about our mindsets. This is from Isaiah 55, and we’ll hear this reading in our upcoming Easter Vigil readings. This is where God tells you and me, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts and neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Denethor’s thoughts were not God’s thoughts. Denethor’s suicide flowed from his distorted, confused mindset, caught in his false certainty of doom, fueled by his relational isolation, his pride, and his lack of any alternative frame of reference. Denethor ruined himself in his moment of crisis and abandoned his duties to his family and to his people. So we can see how mindsets can shift. Those of you that have followed me over time know that I love experiential exercises. I love bringing you into some kind of experience to draw you into an experience in order that you have that kind of experiential learning.

[00:11:10] And so always with experiential exercises in this podcast, if it somehow feels uncomfortable or you notice some warning signs, feel free to stop at any point. Now let’s move to the action item for this episode. I want you to recall a dark time in your life. A specific time, a specific moment. It could be during this current time of crisis. It could be something relatively recent. It could be something from today, or it could be some other and difficult and dark time for you. But be specific about the time and the place. Write down your thoughts and assumptions when you were in that dark place. Let’s get a good picture of your mindset when you are in a dark, problematic mode of operating. What negative beliefs about yourself, about others, about God, about the future do you default to when you are afraid or depressed or angry? Or maybe your dark place is when you feel abandoned or lost or unloved. Whatever your dark place is, write down the beliefs, the assumptions, the ways of viewing the world when you’re there. It’s sort of like a fill in the blank type of question. When I’m in my dark place, I assume that… And then fill in the blank. When I’m in my dark place, I believe… fill in the blank… About myself. I believe… Blank… About God. Let’s get these beliefs into words.

[00:12:53] When you put them into words, when you speak these beliefs, when you articulate that mindset, all those beliefs and that mindset become much clearer. Those beliefs come up out of your preconscious and they come into your conscious awareness. And when they’re in your conscious awareness, your intellect and your will can work with them far more easily. Now some may raise an objection and say, Dr. Peter, Dr. Malinoski, these beliefs of mine are heretical. You know they aren’t true. I need to resist them. Okay, I get it, I get it. But the fact is, is that if those beliefs exist in your unconscious, they exist. They exist in you. And we all have beliefs and assumptions that are untrue. In our fallen state and our fallen world, we all have beliefs and assumptions that are not true. And if we repress those false beliefs, if we suppress those false assumptions, if we deny that we have them, then those false beliefs and assumptions can work on us in ways that we can’t see. When they’re suppressed, when they’re forced out of conscious awareness, the intellect and the will can’t work with them. It’s much better to acknowledge in humility that we have these beliefs when we are in our dark places. It takes humility to accept that we do have these problematic mindsets when we are in that dark place. Now I’m going to invite you to keep that writing handy, because in the next episode, we are going to get into how to become much more resilient and healthy in your mindset.

[00:14:31] And we’re going to refer back to what you wrote about yourself when you were in that dark place, about your mindset. In the next episode on Monday, I’m going to walk you through very practical ways to improve your mindset, to help you get it much more ordered toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. This is where the rubber meets the road. Don’t miss that. It’s going to be a great opportunity for you to learn critical information about yourself that’s going to be very helpful as you face crises. We’re also going to start exploring how mindset relates to the other pillars of resiliency for Catholics, heartset, bodyset and soulset. We’re going to look at how our emotions, our bodies and our spiritual lives interact with our mindset. So don’t miss that. This is going to come  out Monday, April 6th, early in the morning on the east coast of the US. Here’s a shout out and a big thank you to Fr. Don Kania, who has put this podcast, Coronavirus Carpe Diem, on LectioTube. Thank you, Fr. Kania. Check out LectioTube.com for the best of Catholic podcasts, shows and other media brought to you all in one place from all over the web. I’m also working really hard to get this podcast out twice, twice per week, every Monday and Friday. And if I’m supported by your prayers and by the grace of God, I can do it. But pray for me.

[00:15:50] Pray for me. I’m praying for you as well. I need something else from you in addition to your prayers, a way that you can really help me. I never imagined how difficult it would be for this podcast to rise above the noise of the internet and get noticed. If you find this podcast worthy, I need you to get the word out. Let your people know about this podcast, your friends, your family. Put it on the Catholic Listservs. Email your parish priest and office staff. Share it with your colleagues. Put it up on discussion boards. I need you to help me spread the word. I need you to help me spread the word so that others can benefit from what we have here together, and also what we have at soulsandhearts.com. You, you know, somebody or you know a lot of somebodies that could benefit from this. So thank you for that. We’re really doing a grassroots way of promoting this. We don’t have the budget for a big media push. We can’t hire a media relations firm or a public relations firm or a marketing firm. And that’s not our style anyway at Souls and Hearts. So don’t forget also that you can come to us at soulsandhearts.com. And you can find the full show notes for this episode all written out. And that’s a wrap for today. Let’s invoke our patroness and our patron. Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.