GABRIELA OSORIO VILLASEÑOR PSY. D. WWW.PSICOTERAPIACATOLICA.COM 10 And at this point the question that comes up is-are all religions the same for living better and more? Is it the same to believe in Buddhah, Muhammad, Vishnu or Yavhè? Absolutely not! Without going into the complex discourse of the historical truths of the various religions, the miracles and lives of Catholic saints, demonic manifestations, possessions and deliverances from evil through exorcisms, acheropite images such as the Holy Shroud and the Tilma of Guadalupe, without considering so many other arguments that give extreme rationality (even scientific rationality) to our Catholic faith, we can limit ourselves to two very simple considerations. POINT 1: Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only God who gave his life for each one of us, dying crucified in excruciating suffering. He is the only one therefore who has credibility, the only one who did not remain in the "little cloud" but became flesh to point us common, stupid mortals to the truth. POINT 2: Catholicism is the only religion that gives positive meaning to the experience of pain. It is the cross that opens the door to Heaven for us. For Hinduism, pain is part of a "retribution," a karma to be paid, a purification to reach Nirvana. For Buddhists it is inevitable and inescapable, the result of an attachment to the earthly world that prevents one from reaching full "enlightenment of consciousness." For Muslims and Jews, pain is a form of spiritual growth, sometimes a divine punishment, however, unlike Catholics it has no redemptive value. Instead, for the Catholic faith, (physical) pain and (spiritual) suffering are forms of active co-participation in God's saving plan. "Therefore I rejoice in the sufferings I endure for you and complete in my flesh what is lacking in Christ's afflictions," is written in Paul's letter to the Colossians. In essence, "by changing the form of seeing things, things change in form," as the famous American writer Wayne Dyer said. Following this line of logic, we Catholic psychologists can lead our patients to change the form of seeing pain, suffering and the inevitable difficulties of life by giving the whole a higher sense of transcendence and sharing in the sufferings on the cross of Jesus. Conventional psychotherapy, on the other hand, shows a general tendency to victimize the patient, who is often justified because of past traumas or a conflictual relationship with one's parents, and then oriented only to personal self-realization and the total rejection of suffering, which is contrary to what Jesus Christ proposed in the gospel of Matthew 16:24-25: "If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever has lost his life for my sake will find it." In conclusion, there are indeed many benefits of integrating faith into psychotherapy. One last one that can be mentioned, not so much for the therapist as for the patient, is economic. It is not because psychologists with such an approach are less professional and should cost less than others, we would miss it ... but a mental health professional who calls himself a Catholic, and works not only for mere profit but also for the "salus animarum," has a moral duty to come to the aid, always of course within the limits of what is possible, of people in economic difficulty, for example by lowering or ratcheting down his or her fees. God will hold us accountable for our actions as "doctors of the soul"... What's more, Catholic psychotherapy has a "brief" approach, because the activation of internal resources for change, with help from faith undoubtedly takes place in a tighter time frame, and also in solitude.
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