Do you ever just feel “off,” but you don’t know why? Everything seems to be fine, daily life is running along relatively smoothly, but you just feel down, melancholy, or disconnected from life/others? A new study out of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Texas A&M reveals that making small changes—such as smiling more—can make an impact on our emotions and overall mood. It seems like a small change, but a meta-analysis of 138 studies demonstrates that smiling really can… Read more
June 10, 2019
The Small Changes That Lead To Greater Happiness
June 10, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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June 5, 2019
Teaching Kids How To Talk To God
June 5, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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We all want to teach our children to develop their own faith identity and relationship with God, but how do we do it? For kids to own their faith, the most important thing is to help them experience Jesus Christ in a meaningful, personal way. The best way to do that is to teach them to talk to God just as they would talk to the person who knows them best and loves them most—because he does. While FORMAL prayer… Read more
May 22, 2019
Increase Your Happiness in Less Than 20 Minutes
May 22, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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As the weather warms up, our ability to spend time outdoors increases. While we are aware that this may make us happier in the moment, new research shows that spending time outside has a significant impact on improving our mental health. A recent study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research reveals that spending 20 minutes in a park, regardless of physical exercise, can have lasting health and mental health benefits. “Principal investigator Hon K. Yuen, Ph.D., OTR/L,… Read more
May 8, 2019
Praying With Small Children
May 8, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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Praying with small children can be difficult. They tend to be wiggly and have short attention spans. When little ones are involved, it’s easy for family prayer time to seem more like…Wrestlemania. But you can have a meaningful prayer time with small children if you remember that little people need different spiritual food than bigger people. Faith develops in different stages from early childhood, to middle childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Children around 6 and under are in what’s called… Read more
May 6, 2019
The Circle of…Stress?
May 6, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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Are you stressed? Having difficulty sleeping? Is your difficultly sleeping causing you stress? You’re not alone. A recent study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology discusses how stress can effect our ability to sleep or stay asleep and the negative ramifications this pattern can have on our health, particularly cardiovascular health. Although the greatest risk of increased blood pressure and other negative health effects come from a combination of stress and lack of sleep over the course of… Read more
April 23, 2019
Suicidal Fruit: What Happens When the Mental Health Profession Fails Post Abortive Women.
April 23, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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The #AmericanPsychologicalAssociation asserts that there is no causal link between abortion and depression (which is ridiculous anyway, because virtually no social science research can ever assert causation. But that’s a different TED Talk). And a recent talk in Ireland by Dr. Lucy Johnstone of the British Psychological Society actually recommended abortion as a treatment for the trauma of unwanted pregnancy. (Because the British have always had the best interests of the Irish people in mind….) Sadly, 21 yo Jade Rees… Read more
April 8, 2019
How To Pray Together as A Family
April 8, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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When you’re praying as a family, is it better to use the formal prayers of the church–like the rosary, traditional Grace-at-Meals, or a chaplet—or more conversational prayer? We say, “Why not both?” It isn’t that one type of prayer is better than another type. It’s that they serve different purposes in our spiritual lives. In our family, we like to think of formal prayers as the, “family prayers of the Church.” They connect us with the saints and angels and… Read more
April 1, 2019
To Cohabitate, or Not to Cohabitate. That is The Question
April 1, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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Celebrity couples live together, regular couples live together, if everyone’s cohabiting, that means there has to be some benefit to it, right? Not so fast… A new study published by the Institute for Family Studies found that cohabitation is rapidly becoming more popular than marriage, even “shotgun cohabitations” are statically more common than “shotgun marriages.” However, research released by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and The Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University has reveled that married… Read more
March 25, 2019
How to Cultivate Meaningful Family Prayer
March 25, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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Praying together as a family—at all—can seem intimidating. Life is busy, and because of this, most families are happy just to make prayer happen, much less make it meaningful. But there’s good news! You don’t have to be a saint or have perfect kids to have an awesome family prayer time. So how do we make our prayer time meaningful and teach our kids to have a personal relationship with God? First, make family prayer a regular part of your… Read more
March 18, 2019
You Can’t Judge Depression By Its Cover
March 18, 2019 By Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak
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“They seem/seemed so happy.” “They have everything together.” “I/They don’t have any reason to complain.” Chances are you’ve said at least one of these things about someone, or maybe you’ve even said them about yourself. Researchers are discovering a surge in this topic that many are calling “smiling depression,” or the more technical term, “atypical depression.” These terms describe individuals who seem to “have it all together,” who appear happy—but under their external facade or appearance are struggling with depression. … Read more
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