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.