Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Fantasies and Distractions

 
Introduction | Understanding, not Ignoring | The Definition of Fantasies (a k a Temptations) | The Relationship Between Thoughts and Feelings | Practical Suggestions | Distractions and Fantasies in General | Sexual Fantasies | Fantasies of Grandiosity | Evil Fantasies | Self-destructive Fantasies | The Jesus Prayer | “Do Not Lose Your Peace” | Be Gentle With Yourself

 
NY kind of distraction, whether thoughts or feelings, whether sexual or otherwise, is a common problem during prayer. Thomas à Kempis was agonized by his wandering thoughts during prayer (The Imitation of Christ, Book 3, ch. 48). Saint Teresa of Avila described similar problems as well; she concluded that the problem derives from Original Sin.

Understanding, not Ignoring 

Catholic mystics who have commented on the problem show us, therefore, that in the days before the psychology of the unconscious the common spiritual solution to unwanted thoughts and feelings was simply to ignore such disturbances.

Now, sometimes wandering thoughts during prayer are simply the result of an active mind that has not been drawn down into the heart. In other words, the prayers remain on the intellectual level and aren’t being felt as true spiritual feelings. In such a case, endeavor to focus your heart on wanting to love God and to feel the sorrow of your giving up on Him by giving in to temporal distractions. Moreover, feel sorrow for all the persons around you who have given up on God. Feel sorrow for the impiety and evil of magazines, newspapers, movies, television, video games, and music, created and distributed by those who have given up on God and who hate Him and want to drag others with them away from Him. Say to yourself, “The thought of hating God breaks my heart!” Let this thought be the motivation to resist distractions and, with ardent discipline, keep focused on heart-felt prayer.

There can be other times, however, when simple discipline may not suffice. Some distractions may keep intruding into your awareness despite your best efforts. Therefore, another course of action can be taken. Psychology, when carefully applied in a Catholic context, can allow us to do more than just tolerate such distractions. Instead of ignoring your distractions you can actually understand them (or, in psychological language, interpret them) as a way to assist your spiritual purification and growth.

  
The Definition of Fantasies (also known as Temptations)

Now, as used in the context of the psychology of the unconscious,  fantasies do not necessarily mean daydreams or something with a miniature story line or a well-developed plot. Nor are fantasies necessarily produced consciously by an act of will; they can just as well be unconscious products of the intellect.^[1] Hence, a fantasy can be just a snippet of a mental image that evokes a certain feeling or thought process.

Because fantasies can tempt us to act on them, we can just as well call them by their theological name: temptations.

Many people have the misconception that saints are born holy and are so pure that they have no temptations. But the truth is, we are all psychological beings, and so we all have temptations. Saints are those who have trained themselves to use self-restraint and to not act on their fantasies—that is, to not “give in” to the temptations.

 
The Relationship Between Thoughts and Feelings

In the realm of modern cognitive psychology, the relationship between thoughts and feelings tends to boil down to one basic concept: when an emotion (for example, fear) follows an event (for example, encountering turbulent air in an airplane), the event itself isn’t the full cause of the emotional reaction.

“What?” you say.

Well, let’s stop here and consider the way it seems to happen:

Event

Emotion

Behavior

Actually, here’s the way it does happen:

Event

Belief

Emotion

Behavior

That is, a belief  (i.e., a thought) comes between the event and the emotion. For example, when you first experience turbulence in an airplane, you might think to yourself, “Oh, no! Now we’re going to crash!” And so you feel afraid, and then you engage in behaviors (such as drinking alcohol) to cope with that feeling of fear.

But consider what would happen if your immediate thought was, “Wow! This is fun!” You would feel a completely different emotion than fear, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s the idea behind cognitive psychology. 

So, if you experience a feeling that seems to pop up out of nowhere, it would be a psychological and a spiritual mistake to claim that there are no fantasies connected to it; with some psychological curiosity ^[2] a connected mental image or thought can be identified. With that connection made, you can then begin to understand the psychological reason for the feeling—and with that understanding, you have the resources to restrain yourself from the inappropriate behavior of giving in to and acting on the temptation—or of punishing yourself for it.

Three basic steps can help you here:

1.	First recognize the situation in which the distracting fantasies arise. For example, are you praying while still feeling the effects of a critical comment from someone? Are you praying for someone who has some emotional connection to you? Or are you praying in meditation on a particular spiritual topic? This will give you a clue as to the event precipitating your turmoil.
2.	Then ask yourself what the fantasy could be telling you about your weakness in that particular situation. This will give you a clue about your beliefs and what you unconsciously desire in the moment.
3.	Then, knowing how you unconsciously desire to act, willingly choose to act with spiritually healthy behavior.

 
Practical Suggestions

The point of all of this is that, no matter what the fantasy may be, it “points to” a profound yearning for something hidden from conscious awareness. 

Therefore, the best antidote for any troubling fantasy is Eucharistic Adoration. This can be in a chapel ^[3] or it can be a mental process that is effective no matter where you may be. Remind yourself that God Himself—your most precious yearning—is hidden within the Sacrament and that His hidden presence is a Real Presence that more than compensates for anything lacking in your life.

With this reminder, you can then do something spiritually practical about your distractions. Here are some specific suggestions.

 
Distractions and Fantasies in General

In the most general sense, when you are tempted, think of wanting to love God and feel the sorrow of your giving up on Him by giving in to the temptation. Moreover, feel sorrow for all the persons around you who have given up on God. Feel sorrow for the impiety and evil of magazines, newspapers, movies, television, video games, and music, created and distributed by those who have given up on God and who hate Him and want to drag others with them away from Him. Say to yourself, “The thought of hating God breaks my heart!” Let this thought be the motivation to resist temptations and to keep focused on your healing work.

 
Sexual Fantasies

Sexual fantasies, whether thoughts or feelings, often arise as images of satisfaction when, because of other circumstances, we are feeling deprived, ineffectual, weary, unrecognized, or alone. The experience of genital arousal points to a yearning for an intoxicating existential merger with an “other” to hide the unwanted reality of your own brokenness, so that you can experience the ecstasy of transcending the “unknown” or of “seeing” or “feeling seen” (common male fantasies) or of “being filled” (a common female fantasy).

Same-sex attraction fantasies can reverse these roles: a man can desire to be filled with the strength of a father (who in reality was weak, or absent, or cruel); a woman can desire to see, or be seen by, a mother (who in reality was cruel or neglectful or smothering).

Please note a very important point here: Having same-sex attraction fantasies does not mean that you are homosexual. Instead, these fantasies point to a certain lack of unconditional childhood recognition, guidance, or acceptance that resonates with a current lack—that is, deprivation—of recognition, guidance, acceptance, resources, or time. What you yearn for in fantasy you are unconsciously yearning for symbolically in your mother (if you are female), or in your father (if you are male), or even in yourself.

Sexual fantasies can also derive from conscious memories of past sexual activity or unconscious emotional memories of molestation in infancy—that now carry feelings of shame, guilt, regret, or resentment.

When working to understand sexual feelings, keep in mind that the only two feelings we should be experiencing in prayer are a spiritual feeling of compunction and a general spiritual feeling of warmth in the presence of God. But if this warmth takes on the quality of the natural feeling of genital arousal, then consider it to be a sexual fantasy that requires psychological exploration.

OVERCOMING SEXUAL DISTRACTIONS AND FANTASIES If erotic fantasies disturb you when you are troubled by feelings of ineffectiveness, weariness, helplessness, loneliness, or doubt, train yourself to seek only in Christ—not in the body of another person, and not in your own body—to find true recognition and comfort. Moreover, keep in mind the incessant reminder that God has intended sexuality for reproduction and that any other use of it is an abomination to God. So if you feel the urge to look at or touch or kiss someone erotically, tell yourself, “It’s futile. There is no point in thinking this way because it will not lead to Holy Matrimony and family.” Let your love for God overshadow your craving for the human body.

 
Fantasies of Grandiosity

Fantasies of mild grandiosity (e.g., being a hero, or having notable strength or poise to get the upper hand in a social situation) are common in normal psychology. These fantasies usually derive from experiences of hurt, or insult, and they represent a desire to overcome feelings of helplessness with images of feeling powerful and “in control.”

Note, however, that as emotional wounds increase in intensity or duration, fantasies of grandiosity can become increasingly disordered, resulting in a personality disorder, in mania, or in a preoccupation with the occult (as a way to feel powerful because of what you know).

OVERCOMING FANTASIES OF GRANDIOSITY If grandiose fantasies of revenge disturb you when you are troubled by insults, train yourself to trust in God’s perfect justice—not in your own power or pride—and to entrust the pain to God.

 
Evil Fantasies

“Evil” fantasies (e.g., violence or killing) can result from a desire to compensate for some sort of perceived injury with acts of hatred and revenge.

OVERCOMING EVIL FANTASIES If evil fantasies disturb you, remind yourself of Christ’s command to not hate your enemies but to love and pray for them. Train yourself to say to the fantasies themselves what Christ Himself said when hearing something contrary to His mission: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an obstacle to Me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23).

 
Self-destructive Fantasies

Self-destructive fantasies can result from perceiving the behaviors (or the actual words) of a rejecting parent and then internalizing the parent’s feelings as your own beliefs, thereby desiring to punish yourself. Moreover, this desire to punish yourself can have two components.

•	First, by inflicting pain on yourself, you get to control its intensity and duration, rather than feel like a helpless victim.
•	Second, self-inflicted pain can be a punishment for the guilt you feel for being angry with your parents because of the pain they inflicted on you.

For example, consider a woman, newly married to a man who turns out to be irresponsible, and now despairingly pregnant with a child she doesn’t want. Right in the womb that developing fetus will be “infected” psychologically with the belief that “It would be better if you were dead.” Or maybe a woman is too emotionally immature to attend to an infant’s needs. As that infant struggles with the dark terror of its neglect, it will be “infected” psychologically with the belief that “It would be better if you were dead.” Or maybe the child is a living “accident,” the unanticipated result of raw sexual pleasure stripped of any responsibility to reproduction. As that child struggles with lonely emotional isolation from its parents, it will be “infected” psychologically with the belief that “It would be better if you were dead.” However it may originate—in the womb, as an infant, throughout childhood—the child’s unconscious desire will be to destroy itself in fulfillment of the rejection it feels from its parents. And that desire will persist even into adulthood, where it will wreak its own secret havoc, unless it is recognized and healed.

OVERCOMING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE FANTASIES   When They Result from Imperfect Prayer When you are praying and distractions interfere with your concentration, telling you that you can’t do anything right and that God must be fed up with you, say to yourself, “It’s OK. I don’t have to repeat the prayer until I get it perfect. My intent is love; I don’t have to be perfect to love.” When They Result from Impure Thoughts When “blasphemous” and impure thoughts intrude into your mind, if you try to fight them they will only get more intense, and you will become more anxious. The key here is to understand that God does not hold against us the things we think spontaneously, nor does He expect us to stop all spontaneous thoughts; all He wants from us is to grow in love by recognizing that certain thoughts are offenses to love and to tell ourselves so. Therefore, say to yourself, “It’s OK. I know these thoughts are an offense to love, and I don’t really intend to carry them out in actions. My intent is love; I don’t have to be perfect in not having intruding thoughts.”

 
The Jesus Prayer

Fantasies will not go away just because you interpret their motive. Therefore, after you have done the work of understanding the meaning of various fantasies, you will need one additional solution: drive away these intruding thoughts with one constant, holy thought. Recite the Jesus Prayer constantly. 

The prayer is simple: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.

The technique, too, is simple: recite the prayer constantly.^[4]

And, as simple as it is, it’s hard work. No sooner will you start to pray than your mind will wander and you will be off in your own thoughts. But once you realize that your mind has wandered from the prayer, stop thinking and return to the prayer. Don’t try to analyze what happened. Just immediately stop thinking and return to the prayer.

You have to hold in your heart the will to do this. But if you desire it more than anything else—more even than the desire to stay stuck in your fear and disability—you can do it. If you love God, and if you love your soul, you can do it.

 
“Do Not Lose Your Peace”

As I said above, fantasies will not go away just because you interpret their motive. The more you can train yourself through discipline to respond to the proper spiritual solution, however, the stronger you will become in perseverance and faith.

	. . . during these ordeals, do not lose your peace; live in My presence. . . . have the certitude that I am looking at you and supporting you. . . . if only you are willing to fight, know that the victory is always on your side. . . . by fighting bravely you give Me great glory and amass merits for yourself. Temptation gives you a chance to show Me your fidelity.
	—told to Saint Faustina by Jesus, Diary (1560)

   
Be Gentle With Yourself

Note also that spontaneous fantasies (“thoughts and imaginings,” as Saint John of the Cross described them) are, as I said above, products of the intellect, not the will. That is, true spontaneous fantasies are not created consciously.^[5] Therefore, you do not need to be overwhelmed with guilt about them. Be gentle with yourself and resolve to learn from them rather than fear them.

Furthermore, spontaneous fantasies do not need to be confessed sacramentally because they are venial sins, not mortal sins. (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1458).

Nevertheless, for the sake of your own spiritual purity, such fantasies do need to be confessed psychologically; that is, they must be spoken—consciously admitted by being put into language—so that their unconscious meaning can be interpreted, thus freeing you from slavery to their repetitive power.

If you act upon a fantasy, though, whether through masturbation or some other willful act of sex or violence or revenge, then you quickly step from the realm of venial sin to mortal sin.

Notes

1. The modern psychological term intellect encompasses two components which academic theology has traditionally distinguished: the intellect itself (a faculty of the soul) and the mind (or the imagination). Thus, instead of saying that “fantasies are products of the intellect,” it would be more theologically precise to say that “fantasies are products of the imagination”—but to modern ears the latter statement would sound meaninglessly self-evident.

2. In the technical language of psychoanalysis, this “curiosity” could be called free association, a mental process by which one word or image spontaneously brings to mind other words or images. So, in our present context, if you can identify a thought or mental image that occurs along with a feeling, you can focus your attention on that thought or image and ask yourself what other thoughts or images come to mind. Following the “tracks” of a string of associations can lead you to the original experience that engendered the feeling in the first place.

3. So what do you do if the fantasies are bothering you while you are actually in a chapel before the Blessed Sacrament? First remind yourself of the mental aspect of adoration: that Christ’s hidden presence is a Real Presence that more than compensates for anything lacking in your life. Then, as an act of prayer, discern what has been lacking in your life most recently. Then contemplate the spiritual remedy for that lack, as described above.

4. You don’t have to be concerned about getting your work done. When you need to think logically, or when you need to pray other prayers, the Jesus Prayer will not interfere. It will cease when you need it to cease; just remember to start it again when you become aware that it has stopped.

5. If you dwell upon a spontaneous fantasy for the sake of pleasure or satisfaction then it has become an act of your will.

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