Courses for every kind of helper.

When God Feels Silent: Discerning Consolation in Prayer

Ever prayed and felt nothing? You aren't doing it wrong. In this Divine Mercy University course, discover how God speaks, why feelings aren't the goal, and how St. Teresa’s garden analogy shows if your prayer life is truly growing.

You Shall Not Be Overcome: Spiritual Vanity, Sacred Darkness, and the Peace That Persists

Why does prayer go dry? Fr. Groeschel reveals the hidden danger in spiritual progress — and the ancient promise that will carry you through.

Failure Is Not an Option: Leadership, Decision-Making & Virtue Under Pressure

An asynchronous, six-lesson formation course that uses six scenes from the film Apollo 13 (1995) — set beside the real April 1970 mission — as a case study in how good decisions get made and good character is revealed when everything is on the line.

Your Emotions Are Not the Enemy: A Catholic Christian Vision of Living Out Emotions

The capacity to feel is good, given by God, and your emotions can grow toward virtue. The work isn’t to stop feeling. It’s to learn how to live it out.

The Elephant in the Living Room — Counseling the Multigenerational Family

When adult children and aging parents share a home, family roles can become strained. Dr. Kathie Erwin shows how to address unspoken tensions, renegotiate roles, protect the couple’s bond, and honor older adults through Divine Mercy University’s whole-person psychology and Christian principles.

You Don’t Have to Wait Until It’s Bad Enough: Recognizing When to Seek Therapy

You Don’t Have to Wait Until It’s Bad Enough. Four signs it’s time to see a therapist — and the one belief that keeps people from going.

Pain Into Gain: Positive Psychology, Virtue, and the Flourishing Person

Dr. Paul Vitz shows how Seligman's positive psychology reshaped the model of the person—from one pushed by the past to one drawn forward by a chosen future. Grounded in DMU's Catholic Christian Meta-Model, it equips counselors to move clients from "what was done to me?" to "who am I becoming?"

When Children Grieve: Helping Kids and Families Through the Death of a Loved One

When someone dies, children take in far more than the adults around them realize, and they grieve in ways that look nothing like adult grief.

Rights Before the Constitution: The Law That Comes First

Where do our rights really come from? In two short lessons, legal scholar Hadley Arkes recovers the moral law that stands before the Constitution — and makes freedom make sense.

How Do I Know It’s God? Recognizing the Lord’s Voice in Prayer and Daily Life

Stop waiting for a clear feeling. Learn to recognize God’s voice the way you recognize a friend’s — through a relationship you actually live.

Your Wound Is Not Your Obstacle: St. Thérèse on Grace, Holiness, and the Little Way

Many of us carry the quiet assumption that we need to heal — emotionally, psychologically, spiritually — before we can truly give, truly pray, truly grow.

The Irreplaceable Human: Catholic Psychology in the Age of AI

Can a chatbot really heal you? Through Catholic psychology and the Meta-Model of the Person, this DMU course examines AI and psychedelic therapies and shows why suffering, the body-soul unity, and human presence make real healing something no algorithm can replace.

Wounded but not Lost: The Psychological Effects of Original Sin and the Healing Power of Christ

The deepest explanation of human psychological struggle is not found in neuroscience or developmental models alone. It is found in the truth of original sin.

Guarding the Gift: Pornography, Gender Differences, and the Restoration of Marital Intimacy

What drives pornography use — really? This course brings together clinical psychologists and spiritual directors to examine the emotional and relational roots.

Tracing the Hand of God: Spiritual Life Mapping with St. Paul

A spiritual life map traces God's hidden guidance through your past. Learn the practice through Paul's own journey—and start mapping yours.

What Your Child Isn't Saying: Recognizing Childhood Anxiety, Bullying, and Digital Risk — A Clinical and Catholic Formation Course

Clinical Indicators of Childhood Anxiety, Bullying, and Digital Risk — through a Catholic anthropological lens

Three Voices, One Relationship: Discerning God, the Enemy, and the World

Was that God — or was that just me? It's the question every directee eventually asks, and that can leave even seasoned directors reaching for an answer quickly.

Someone to Walk With: The Everyday Benefits of Spiritual Direction

You already suspect it would help. You’re also sure you don’t have time. This course is built around a man who thought the same — until he’d spent four years in monthly spiritual direction and couldn’t imagine deciding anything without it.

The Intelligent Heart: Emotional Intelligence, Virtue, and Healing Presence

Learn emotional intelligence through neuroscience and virtue: understand triggers, regulate responses, and build a grounded, healing presence for others.

The Threshold of Faith: Why Believing in God Changes Everything

Why is it so hard to believe, even for people who want to? Fr. Benedict Groeschel — Franciscan friar and trained psychologist — answers that the real obstacle to faith was never a shortage of evidence but a proud and self-sufficient spirit.

Fully Alive: The Human Person and the Call to Flourish

Discover what it means to truly flourish through six formation sessions for Regnum Christi lay members. Grounded in the CCMMP, RC spirituality, and Church teaching, this course explores vocation, grace, and the call to love every person as a gift, with Christ at the center.

Heart Speaks to Heart: A Catholic Introduction to Mental Prayer

Most of us were taught to pray by learning prayers. But there is a form of prayer the Church has treasured for centuries that goes deeper.

The Living Word: Scripture, Revelation, and the Human Person

Dr. William E. May explains the Catholic biblical canon and shows how divine revelation in Christ reveals God, humanity, freedom, and truth.

Drawn into Friendship: Catholic Prayer and Spiritual Growth

A 5-lesson course on Catholic prayer, exploring it as a relationship with God, with guidance on mental prayer, contemplation, and liturgical life.

The Examined Leader: Character, Trust, and Christian Anthropology at Work

Forty years. Remarkable results. One Catholic CEO's conversation on character, trust, and what Christian anthropology actually looks like at work.

Part of the Cure: How to Help Someone You Love Who Has PTSD

Loving someone with PTSD can leave you feeling helpless. You’re not. Experts explain what PTSD really is and what you can do to help. You are part of the cure.

Peace in the Storm: A Catholic, Whole-Person Approach to Managing Everyday Stress

You already know the drill. Stress builds, so you push it down, scroll your phone, raid the fridge, and hope it passes. It never quite does.

The Soul’s Journey: Moral Conversion and the Three Stages of Spiritual Growth

Why does spiritual growth stall in devoted believers? Fr. Benedict Groeschel says it often hinges on an unnamed threshold: moral conversion.

Grace Through Weakness: Psychological Struggle and Spiritual Transformation in the Lives of the Saints

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR — psychologist and Franciscan friar — takes you inside the lives of saints who struggled psychologically and grew spiritually.

Meeting the Soul Where It Is: The Stages of Spiritual Direction

A Wall Street executive spent twenty years in spiritual direction under three very different priests. His story reveals a pattern every helper needs: the person in front of you is somewhere specific, the guide has to meet them there, and the real work belongs to the Holy Spirit.

Free to Become: How Our Choices Shape the Soul

Guided by St. Thomas Aquinas, learn to tell the object of an act from its intention and its circumstances, and the hard, freeing line between judging an action and judging a person.

Meeting Souls Where They Are: The Art of Spiritual Direction

A candid 20-year faith journey reveals one essential skill in spiritual direction: meeting people where they are. Learn how listening, relationship, and discernment can guide spiritual growth at the person’s own pace—grounded in the wisdom of spiritual masters and whole-person care.

When Fear Becomes Faith: Fr. Groeschel on Childhood Wounds, Trust, and Prophetic Living

"What if your difficulty trusting God began long before you understood what trust was?" -Fr. Benedict Groeschel

From Hatred to Wholeness: A Catholic Psychological Guide to Forgiveness and Healing

Why is forgiveness hard? This 3-lesson course explores the roots of hatred, the choice to forgive, and pastoral approaches to healing and self-worth.

More Than Qualified: Women in Leadership through the Lens of Catholic Psychology

Have you ever been invited into a leadership role and wondered: Why me? I'm not qualified for this. You are not alone — and you are almost certainly wrong.

Charitable Toughness: What Makes a Spiritual Director Effective

Hear from a directee of twenty years, exactly what makes accompaniment effective — accountability that makes growth visible, challenge that lands because it is charitable, and preparation that meets the person, not a profile.

Beyond the Score: Aptitude Testing and the Art of Professional Counseling

A client looks at solid data about their abilities and says, "That's not me." Now what? This short course shows why aptitude testing and counseling need each other, and teaches one move: going with the resistance, so clients reach honest self-knowledge on their own.

The Healing Relationship: Human Relating Skills for Spiritual Direction

Learning to listen, to stay present, and to speak a hard word with love is not the private property of therapy. It is older and deeper than that, drawn from human wisdom and the Catholic tradition, and Christ himself is its model.

The Relational Laboratory: How Groups Heal What Individual Work Cannot

Why groups? Dr. Harvey Payne puts the question to Gabriel Dy-Liacco, and the answer reframes group work entirely. A group is not several therapies in one room — it is a shared relational field that offers hope, trust, and the end of isolation, and a good leader learns to use it on purpose.

A Life Worth Living: Suffering, Aging, and the Legacy We Leave

Dr. Paul Vitz shows how the way we carry suffering in old age becomes a gift to those who love us. Learn why every life is worth living, how to respond when an older client feels like a burden, and how to help others find meaning in pain.

When Good Intentions Aren’t Enough: The Three Sources of Morality for Helping Professionals

This one-lesson course provides a Catholic framework to distinguish moral acts from well-intended mistakes using three sources: object, intention, and circumstances. Grounded in Veritatis Splendor and Aquinas, it helps professionals judge actions clearly while honoring human dignity.

Living the Rhythm of God's Word: A Spiritual Director's Path to Encountering Scripture in Every Season

Let Scripture set the rhythm — so the well you pour from stays full. A short, practical course for spiritual directors and those learning to accompany others, on weaving God's Word through your day, week, and season.

Meeting the Soul Where It Is: The Stages of Spiritual Direction

You cannot walk someone forward if you do not know where they are standing.

A Wall Street executive spent twenty years in spiritual direction under three very different priests. His story reveals a pattern every helper needs: the person in front of you is somewhere specific, the guide has to meet them there, and the real work belongs to the Holy Spirit.

The First Person You Lead: Self-Awareness, Servant Leadership, and the Use of Self in the Helping Professions

The best leaders are not the ones with the most impressive résumé. They are the ones who can see themselves clearly.

Someone to Walk With: The Everyday Benefits of Spiritual Direction

You already suspect it would help. You’re also sure you don’t have time. This course is built around a man who thought the same — until he’d spent four years in monthly spiritual direction and couldn’t imagine deciding anything without it. Watch his story, see what actually changed in his prayer, his family, and his work, and learn from DMU scholarship and the classic spiritual writers what makes accompaniment work.

The Irreplaceable Human: Catholic Psychology in the Age of AI

Your clients don't need a better algorithm. They need you.

Can a chatbot really heal you? Through Catholic psychology and the Meta-Model of the Person, this DMU course examines AI and psychedelic therapies and shows why suffering, the body-soul unity, and human presence make real healing something no algorithm can replace.

The Dignity Beneath the Diagnosis: Understanding Clients Through the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person

Every counselor carries a picture of the human person into the room, whether they name it or not. In one hour, this faith-integrated course helps you make it explicit and whole — so you can see a client’s dignity beneath the diagnosis.

The Cost of Caring: Recognizing and Preventing Compassion Fatigue in Helping Professionals

The capacity that makes you good at this work is the one that wears down. In this one-hour lesson, clinical psychologist Dr. Benjamin Keyes and a Divine Mercy University panel explain what compassion fatigue is, how it forms, and how to build resilience so you can keep caring.

Male and Female, Body and Soul: The Science of Sex Differences for Clinicians

What the body knows about men and women

Sex differences are real, measurable, and clinically relevant. Explore the biology, brain, and complementarity of man and woman through a Catholic view of the whole person, and learn to accompany clients with science, clarity, and respect.

When the Spiritual Looks Clinical: Assessing Extraordinary Religious Experience

A client tells you something outside them has taken hold. The language is religious, the fear is real, and it fits no category you were trained to name. In this course a working exorcist shows how he answers that moment, and it starts the way any careful evaluation should: sit down, listen, and rule out mental illness before considering anything else. You will learn to reason from base rates, to honor a client’s spiritual worldview while running a rigorous differential, and to recognize the point where consulting clergy or referring is the competent move.

More Than a Decision: Discernment and Human Development for Helping Professionals

Listening, Growth, and the Movements of the Heart

Earn 1.0 NBCC clock hour and gain a whole-person, developmental way to help clients hear the deeper question beneath a major life decision.

The Elephant in the Living Room — Counseling the Multigenerational Family

When adult children and aging parents share a home, family roles can become strained. Dr. Kathie Erwin shows how to address unspoken tensions, renegotiate roles, protect the couple’s bond, and honor older adults through Divine Mercy University’s whole-person psychology and Christian principles.

The Disclosure: A Catholic Christian Meta-Model Approach to Premarital Counseling for Helping Professionals

Two Weeks Before the Wedding — Honesty, forgiveness, and the whole person in premarital counseling

A woman discloses a hidden past two weeks before her wedding. How do you respond? In this 1-hour NBCC CE course, a Divine Mercy University faculty panel models a whole-person approach to a client's disclosure through honesty, forgiveness, and vocation. For counselors and pastoral pros.

The Other as Mystery: Diversity, Uniqueness, and Cultural Humility in Clinical Practice

A single clock hour on diversity that changes how you see every client, grounded in the conviction that no person is reducible to a category.

Cultural competence usually arrives as a checklist. This course starts somewhere harder and more useful: the conviction, from four DMU psychologists, that each person is created uniquely and can never be reduced to a category, a diagnosis, or your own assumptions. Watch a short faculty conversation, read two focused enrichments (clinical and spiritual), and take a 10-question post-test.

Goals That Move the Group: Setting Direction Across Group Therapy Models

How direction actually emerges in process and psychoeducational groups.

Goals matter in every group, but they are not set the same way in every group. In this conversation, Prof. Gabriel Dy-Liacco shows Dr. Harvey Payne how direction emerges in a psychodynamic process group — through honest expression, linking, and shared themes — and how that differs from the direct goal-setting of a psychoeducational group. You will leave able to read a group’s design and set direction accordingly.

The Presence That Heals: Human Relating Skills for Spiritual Direction

The most powerful skill in spiritual direction isn't a technique. It's you.

Decades of counseling research looked for the magic-bullet technique and found something else: the practitioner's presence matters most. Learn why your way of being is the first instrument of accompaniment — and how to form it.

Meeting Souls Where They Are: The Art of Spiritual Direction

Accompaniment across the stages of the spiritual life

Most people who need spiritual direction don't know how to ask for it. Learn the one skill that changes everything: meet the person where they are.

Too Busy for God: Spiritual Direction for High-Achieving Men

How to reach the man who says he doesn't need it

This asynchronous, self-study lesson (1.0 NBCC clock hour, content area: Human Growth and Development) equips counselors, pastoral care providers, and spiritual directors to accompany high-achieving men at midlife. Working from an interview with an experienced director, it analyzes a replicable direction method and grounds it in the psychology of self-regulation and virtue formation (Vitz, Nordling & Titus, 2020; Matous, 2015; Titus, 2006, 2024) and in the classical spiritual tradition (Teresa of Avila; Tanquerey, 1930). Learners complete a reflection activity, discussion questions, and a 10-item post-test (70% to pass).

Worth Their Time: Accompanying Busy Men Toward Real Change

No Time to Waste: Challenge, Accountability, and the Care of Busy Men

Earn 1.0 NBCC clock hour and gain a concrete way to keep a guarded, time-pressed man engaged in real change instead of coasting or complaining.

Pain Into Gain: Positive Psychology, Virtue, and the Flourishing Person

In under an hour, gain a coherent, faith-integrated way to move clients from “what was done to me?” to “who am I becoming?” — and earn 1.0 NBCC clock hour doing it.

Dr. Paul Vitz shows how Seligman's positive psychology reshaped the model of the person—from one pushed by the past to one drawn forward by a chosen future. Grounded in DMU's Catholic Christian Meta-Model, it equips counselors to move clients from "what was done to me?" to "who am I becoming?"

Practicing Virtue: Helping Clients Turn Insight Into Lasting Change

A Catholic-Christian approach to character, self-control, and human flourishing for the helping professions.

Most clients already know what they should do. Knowing has not been enough. In this 45-minute, CE-bearing lesson, psychologist Paul Vitz reframes virtue as a performing art (something practiced, not just understood) and shows counselors how to move a client from insight to rehearsal. Grounded in DMU’s Catholic Christian Meta-Model and the Christian spiritual tradition, it gives you one clear principle you can use in your next session.

Your Personal Journey Matters: The Formed Self as an Instrument of Healing in Group Therapy

You were taught to keep your own story out of the room. Dr. Scrofani spent fifty years proving the opposite. In this one-hour course, he traces his path from a Little Italy tenement to a career of more than 120 therapy groups, and shows why he came to believe that the curative factors of group therapy are, at heart, the classical virtues. Grounded in Divine Mercy University's Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, you will see how your own history, character, and faith are not the background to your clinical work but the instrument of it.

No One Is Interchangeable: The Image of God and the Dignity of Every Client

A single clock hour that changes how you see every client — grounded in the conviction that no person is interchangeable.

You already believe every client has dignity. This one-hour course gives you the foundation for why — and shows what changes in the room when you treat each person as irreplaceable. Built by DMU faculty.

When a Client Says "I'm Struggling": A Whole-Person Approach to Same-Sex Attraction

When a client discloses same-sex attraction, the first move matters. In this one-hour course, a Divine Mercy University faculty panel shows you how to keep the whole person in view, distinguishing the person, the attraction, and the action, so you can accompany clients with clarity and compassion.

The Whole Person in the Group — Facilitation Through the Catholic Christian Meta-Model

What changes in a group when you see the whole person.

A group is more than a room where people work on their problems. In this panel, Dr. Harvey Payne, William Nordling, Gabriel Dy-Liacco, and Su Li Lee show how the Catholic Christian Meta-Model reframes group work as the formation of the whole person — through vocation, virtue, self-giving, and shared suffering — and what it asks of the leader who bears the group’s burden.

When Words Aren’t Enough: Creative Therapies for Trauma Counseling

A recently widowed client placed one figure in a sand tray and couldn’t move it across a bridge. What her counselor asked next changed everything. Dr. Kathie Erwin on the creative methods that reach trauma clients when talking hits a wall. New from DMU’s Life Long Learning Institute.

You Are Mine: Accompanying Same-Sex Attraction with Truth and Mercy

A short formation course on accompanying people who experience same-sex attraction with compassion, truth, and respect. Grounded in Catholic teaching, Sacred Stories, and the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, it equips helping professionals to uphold both Church teaching and human dignity

Beneath the Symptom: A Catholic Christian Approach to Eating Disorders

The eating disorder is rarely on the intake form — and it’s often the most dangerous thing in the room. Learn to see it.

Eating disorders are more common than counselors think and easy to miss. Dr. Fredericka Vyvlecka teaches you to recognize anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, read the red flags, and assess the whole person behind the symptom. Grounded in DMU’s Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person.

Presence Over Platitudes: Human Relating Skills for Accompanying Suffering

When someone asks "Where is God?", most helpers reach for a reason. In one hour, learn to reach for presence instead.

A grieving father whose child may not survive asks his spiritual director where God is. Watch a competent, well-meaning director lose him, moment by moment, and learn what genuine accompaniment would have looked like. One hour of NBCC continuing education on the skill no technique can replace: staying.

When God Feels Absent: The Relational Art of Accompanying Spiritual Dryness

Presence is the intervention. Learn how to offer it.

Sooner or later, everyone you accompany hits a wall in prayer, and they arrive frightened that their faith is going with it. In one real 17-minute session, watch a spiritual director accompany a devout woman through that exact crisis without reassuring, fixing, or explaining it away. Learn the relational skills — reflective listening, validation, working with a person's own images — that carry someone through spiritual dryness.

Free to Become: How Our Choices Shape the Soul

Every choice is quietly building someone. This course helps you meet them.

For Catholic adults who sense that their daily choices matter but have never been shown exactly how, Free to Become turns St. Thomas Aquinas' account of the moral and spiritual life into one clear, personal hour. Unlike a rules-and-sins approach to morality, it explains the inner mechanics of a free act and the growth those acts produce, and it does so with enough rigor that counselors and pastoral workers can earn continuing education from the same material.

The Wound No One Names: Post-Abortion Healing and the Work of Project Rachel

A one-lesson course on Catholic post-abortion healing through Project Rachel. Learn how sin, grief, and trauma shape recovery, why spiritual and psychological care belong together, and how counselors can accompany those carrying hidden wounds with compassion, listening, and hope.

Fully Alive: The Human Person and the Call to Flourish

A Regnum Christi formation course for teams

Discover what it means to truly flourish through six formation sessions for Regnum Christi lay members. Grounded in the CCMMP, RC spirituality, and Church teaching, this course explores vocation, grace, and the call to love every person as a gift, with Christ at the center.

You Don’t Have to Wait Until It’s Bad Enough: Recognizing When to Seek Therapy

Four signs it’s time to see a therapist — and the one belief that keeps people from going.

You Don’t Have to Wait Until It’s Bad Enough. Four signs it’s time to see a therapist — and the one belief that keeps people from going.

Two Diagnoses, One Person: Treating Co-occurring Disorders

Two diagnoses. One person. One hour.

Most clients don’t arrive with one clean diagnosis. Dr. Kathie Erwin, a licensed counselor who has practiced and taught for nearly twenty years, walks you through what actually happens when two diagnoses live in one person: how to use the DSM-5 to aim, why trauma and culture and a client’s spiritual strengths belong in the plan from day one, and how a whole-person approach turns five separate problem lists into one coherent plan.

Testing: everyday life

This is a brief description.

Beautiful and Holy — Preparing Couples for the Wedding Night

Accompanying the Body, Heart, and Soul Toward Self-Giving Love

Help couples prepare for a wedding night — and a whole married life — that is genuinely beautiful and holy, without freezing when the intimate questions come.

Peace in the Storm: A Catholic, Whole-Person Approach to Managing Everyday Stress

You already know the drill. Stress builds, so you push it down, scroll your phone, raid the fridge, and hope it passes. It never quite does.

When the Ground Gives Way: Trauma Care and Resilience After Disaster

When disaster strikes, the people caught in it do not need an expert. They need someone who shows up. In this one-hour lesson, Dr. Ben Keyes of Divine Mercy University explains how to steady, support, and help survivors recover, and why your presence may be the most protective thing you can offer.

Listening Where God Is Already at Work: Spiritual Direction and the Human Sciences

The best thing you can say in spiritual direction is often nothing at all.

You do not need the perfect thing to say. You need to learn to listen. In this single-session course, Fr. Robert Presutti of Divine Mercy University shows how the best spiritual directors get out of the way so a person can hear God for themselves. Draw on the classic masters and on what the human sciences have learned about deep listening, and earn 1.5 NBCC clock hours in an evening.

The Test Is Not an X-Ray: Reading the Person, Not Just the Profile

Give personality-assessment feedback that reads the person, not just the profile.

Reading the person, not just the profile — a Catholic-Christian approach to personality assessment feedback

Accompanying Couples Through Intimacy, Suffering, and Self-Gift

Be ready for the questions about intimacy that couples actually bring — the awkward, the painful, and the ones no class prepared you for.

Explore the intimate questions married couples actually ask and learn how to answer with competence, compassion, and the Catholic understanding of sexuality as self-gift.

When Clients Can’t Forgive Themselves: Guilt, Mercy, and the Path to Self-Acceptance

A one-hour, NBCC-credited course on guilt, mercy, and the move from self-forgiveness to self-acceptance.

You can prove a client's guilt is out of proportion to what happened, and it changes nothing. This short course shows you why — and how to accompany people whose felt guilt has outrun their real responsibility. One video, one hour, 1.0 NBCC clock hour.

Rights Before the Constitution: The Law That Comes First

In about an hour, understand where your rights actually come from — and why it matters that you do.

Where do our rights really come from? In two short lessons, legal scholar Hadley Arkes recovers the moral law that stands before the Constitution — and makes freedom make sense.

Failure Is Not an Option: Leadership, Decision-Making & Virtue Under Pressure

Leadership is what your character does when control runs out.

An asynchronous, six-lesson formation course that uses six scenes from the film Apollo 13 (1995) — set beside the real April 1970 mission — as a case study in how good decisions get made and good character is revealed when everything is on the line.

How Do I Know It’s God? Recognizing the Lord’s Voice in Prayer and Daily Life

Stop waiting for a clear feeling. Learn to recognize God's voice the way you recognize a friend's — through a relationship you actually live.

How do you know it's God, and not just you? It is the question every directee eventually asks, and the one that can leave even seasoned directors reaching for an answer too quickly. In this short, practical lesson, a Divine Mercy University faculty panel of experienced spiritual directors answers it the way the saints always have: you recognize a voice you know.

Beyond Symptom Management: A Catholic Christian Approach to Anxiety

For counselors who keep meeting anxious clients that techniques alone don’t reach, this one-hour NBCC course uses a single, memorable case to teach a whole-person frame that makes your existing tools work better — and earns 1.0 clock hour while you do it.

Made for the Gift: Vocation and the Theology of the Body for Helping Professionals

Earn 1.0 NBCC clock hour and gain a whole-person way to help clients hear the deeper question beneath a major life decision.

Vocation as self-gift: eros redeemed, marriage and celibacy as one spousal love, and the body's language—free, total, faithful, fruitful.

Your Emotions Are Not the Enemy: A Catholic Christian Vision of Living Out Emotions

The capacity to feel is good, given by God, and your emotions can grow toward virtue. The work isn’t to stop feeling. It’s to learn how to live it out.

Tracing the Hand of God: Spiritual Life Mapping with St. Paul

You can't always see God working while it's happening. You see it looking back.

You can't always see God working while it's happening. You see it looking back. In about 45 minutes, learn the practice the saints used to recognize His hand across a whole life, starting with the one map we know best: St. Paul's.

Three Voices, One Relationship: Discerning God, the Enemy, and the World

Stop interrogating every spiritual experience. Learn to read where a soul is actually moving — and to trust the God who is already at work in it.

Was that God — or was that just me? It's the question every directee eventually asks, and that can leave even seasoned directors reaching for an answer quickly.

Removing the Boulders: Spiritual Direction and Catholic Psychology in Partnership

I'm helping to remove boulders so they can do the work they need to do

In under an hour, leave with the signs to watch for and a way to make a referral that respects the person.

Part of the Cure: How to Help Someone You Love Who Has PTSD

Loving someone with PTSD can leave you feeling helpless. You’re not. In about 40 minutes, two of the world’s leading trauma experts explain what PTSD really is and what you can do to help — in plain language, with no medical background needed. You are part of the cure.

The Threshold of Faith: Why Believing in God Changes Everything

It was never the evidence. It was the pride.

Why is it so hard to believe, even for people who want to? Fr. Benedict Groeschel — Franciscan friar and trained psychologist — answers that the real obstacle to faith was never a shortage of evidence but a proud and self-sufficient spirit.

More Than the Wound: A Catholic Christian Approach to Treating Trauma

Trauma does real damage. It does not get the last word. In this one-hour lesson, Divine Mercy University faculty apply the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person to trauma care — showing how to treat the wound without reducing the person to it.

More Than a Mirror: Accompanying Women Beyond Body Image

A Catholic-Christian, whole-person framework for clinicians and pastoral caregivers — with Divine Mercy University faculty.

A Divine Mercy University faculty roundtable on why body image presses so differently on women — and how the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person helps you treat the whole person, not the symptom.

When Children Grieve: Helping Kids and Families Through the Death of a Loved One

Whether you sit with grieving families professionally or you are simply the adult a child turns to, this course gives you what to say and what to do.

When someone dies, children take in far more than the adults around them realize, and they grieve in ways that look nothing like adult grief.

Steady Presence: Calm, Limits, and Connection in Child-Centered Play Therapy

The Two Mistakes Every Beginning Play Therapist Makes — and How to Avoid Them

Grounded in the child-centered play therapy tradition and in a Catholic Christian understanding of the child as a free, relational person made for growth, this course gives you something you can carry into the very next session.

Seeing the Whole Person: The Eleven Premises of the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person

A clinician's framework for assessing the whole person, for clients of any faith.

Most assessment models see one dimension of a person at a time. The Catholic Christian Meta-Model sees the whole. In this lesson, Drs. Craig Titus and William Nordling introduce the model's eleven premises and develop the first two: that the person is a body-and-soul unity, and that the person is fulfilled through vocation. Using a real family case, they show how these premises reshape assessment for clients of any faith.

The Soul of Psychology: Faith, Reason, and the Philosophy of the Person

Every therapy already assumes an answer to one question — what is a human person? — and in 45 minutes this course shows you the answer hiding inside your own practice.

Drawing on a classic talk by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., you'll trace the difference between treating the mind as a neutral measuring instrument and recognizing the living person-

Treating the Whole Person — How the Catholic Christian Meta-Model Transforms Clinical Care

Clinical training gives you partial lenses: one for the inner life, another for behavior, the family, the brain. Each is true, but none is the whole person.

Made Male and Female: Gender, Development, and the Catholic Vision of Human Wholeness

A one-hour continuing education course in Human Growth and Development. Drawing on the IPS Anthropology Project, the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (CCMMP), and the developmental research of scholars including Paul Vitz, this course explores the distinction between biological sex and the development of gendered personality, the role of peer belonging and family structure in sexual identity formation, and a pastoral and clinical framework for accompanying individuals presenting questions of sexual identity.

The Living Word: Scripture, Revelation, and the Human Person

1 NBCC CE Hour · Human Growth and Development

Why does the Catholic Bible have 73 books when Protestants have 66? Why can't faith just be a personal encounter without all the doctrine? Dr. William E. May answers both questions — and in doing so, opens the deepest truth of all: what God's Word says about you.

Accompanying Men: Principles of Effective Spiritual Direction

Five proven principles for reaching men who think they don't have time for God.

Most men do not seek spiritual direction — and many who try it once never return. Fr. John Hopkins has accompanied hundreds of men across decades of pastoral work. In this engaging interview, he shares five principles that transform resistant, skeptical men into committed directees: positivity, challenge, concrete homework, deep questioning, and loving accountability. Whether you are a spiritual director, priest, deacon, or Catholic counselor, this course will change how you see the men you serve.

More Than Qualified: Women in Leadership through the Lens of Catholic Psychology

Have you ever been invited into a leadership role and wondered: Why me? I'm not qualified for this. You are not alone — and you are almost certainly wrong. In this 15-minute interview-based lesson, Dr. Tammy Tenaglia, Ph.D., shares what she discovered when she joined a Catholic foundation board surrounded by corporate executives: her distinctiveness was the point. Her psychological expertise was exactly what the room needed. Drawing on Catholic anthropology, the science of impostor syndrome, and the spiritual practice of daily self-examination, this lesson equips Catholic women to step into leadership from a place of clarity, confidence, and conviction.

Guarding the Gift: Pornography, Gender Differences, and the Restoration of Marital Intimacy

A Catholic Clinical and Pastoral Perspective

What drives pornography use — really? This 1-hour NBCC CE course brings together clinical psychologists and spiritual directors to examine the emotional and relational roots of pornography use, with close attention to how those roots look different in men and women. Grounded in Catholic anthropology and current clinical practice, Guarding the Gift gives counselors and pastoral ministers a framework for accompanying individuals and couples with compassion, precision, and hope.

Made for Love: An Introduction to John Paul II's Theology of the Body for Helping Professionals

The foundation every Catholic counselor and pastoral minister needs to understand the whole person.

The Theology of the Body is not primarily a document about marriage. It is a comprehensive answer to: Who am I? and How do I live? It is rooted in the original dignity of the human body, the wounds of the fall, and the breathtaking destiny that Christ opens for every human person.

The Examined Leader: Character, Trust, and Christian Anthropology at Work

Leadership isn't a technique. It's a life.

Forty years. Remarkable results. One Catholic CEO's conversation on character, trust, and what Christian anthropology actually looks like at work.

Your Wound Is Not Your Obstacle: St. Thérèse on Grace, Holiness, and the Little Way

You don't have to be healed to be holy.

Many of us carry the quiet assumption that we need to heal — emotionally, psychologically, spiritually — before we can truly give, truly pray, truly grow. Thérèse of Lisieux never believed this. Fr. Marc Foley, OCD, shows us why she was right, and what her insight means for how we accompany ourselves and others.

What Your Child Isn't Saying: Recognizing Childhood Anxiety, Bullying, and Digital Risk — A Clinical and Catholic Formation Course

Recognizing Childhood Anxiety, Bullying, and Digital Risk — A Clinical and Catholic Formation Course

Ian Masson, LPC, NCC, RPT, Director of the IPS Center at Divine Mercy University, presents clinical warning signs of childhood anxiety across developmental stages — including bullying, digital safety risks, and the role of family relationship and faith community as protective factors.

When Fear Becomes Faith: Fr. Groeschel on Childhood Wounds, Trust, and Prophetic Living

Your fear has roots. Your faith can have wings.

What if your difficulty trusting God began long before you understood what trust was? Fr. Benedict Groeschel — one of the most beloved Catholic psychologists of our time — explores the childhood roots of fear, the saints who found their way through, and what it looks like to arrive at genuine surrender. Three lessons. Real tradition.

Grace Through Weakness: Psychological Struggle and Spiritual Transformation in the Lives of the Saints

Grace works through the actual person.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR — psychologist and Franciscan friar — takes you inside the lives of saints who struggled psychologically and grew spiritually. A counter-intuitive, profoundly consoling course for counselors, spiritual directors, and any Catholic who has wondered whether their brokenness disqualifies them from the spiritual journey.

Wounded but not Lost: The Psychological Effects of Original Sin and the Healing Power of Christ

A Catholic psychologist takes the deepest explanation of human struggle — original sin as the rupture of all our relationships — and shows what real healing, not merely symptom reduction, actually looks like.

Drawn into Friendship: Catholic Prayer and Spiritual Growth

What if prayer stopped feeling like an obligation and started feeling like a conversation with a Friend who actually knows you?

What does it mean to pray — really pray — as a Catholic? In five accessible video lessons, Fr. John Bartunek, LC explores prayer as a vital and personal relationship with God, explains the structure and methods of mental prayer, guides learners through the classical degrees of contemplation, and shows how liturgical prayer completes and anchors the interior life. Practical, theologically grounded, and spiritually formative. Available at your own pace.

The Intelligent Heart: Emotional Intelligence, Virtue, and Healing Presence

A Catholic Integral Formation Course for Counselors, Spiritual Directors, and Pastoral Leaders

This 6-week formation course integrates contemporary neuroscience with Catholic wisdom on character to teach how emotionally intelligent presence is developed. Drawing on Daniel Goleman's research, Thomas Aquinas's theology of virtue, and Benedict Groeschel's developmental psychology, participants will explore why emotional patterns formed in childhood remain real—yet malleable. Through guided reflection, regulation strategies, and dialogue with others, you'll learn to recognize your own emotional triggers, practice intentional responses, and develop the grounded presence that makes you a genuine healing force for others. This course is unique in connecting neuroscience (how the brain changes) with virtue tradition (why humans actually transform). Ideal for graduate counselors seeking NBCC CE credit, spiritual directors, and pastoral leaders committed to ongoing formation.

From Hatred to Wholeness: A Catholic Psychological Guide to Forgiveness and Healing

Because psychology can name the wound. Only grace can heal it.

Why is forgiveness so hard? Not because people are weak-willed, but because hatred delivers something they need. In this 3-lesson course, Dr. Paul Vitz — founding scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences — draws on Melanie Klein’s object relations theory to map the psychological roots of adult hatred: from the infant’s earliest experience of splitting to the depressive position, from the payoffs of resentment to the definition of forgiveness as a decision of the will. He then turns to pastoral practice: cases of forgiveness in authority relationships, the limits of justice in providing psychological closure, and the three roots of self-hatred — resolved only by the theological truth that every human person is made in the image and likeness of God. Suitable for licensed counselors, pastoral workers, spiritual directors, and educated lay Catholics.

The Soul’s Journey: Moral Conversion and the Three Stages of Spiritual Growth

Fr. Benedict Groeschel guides learners through the three classical stages of the spiritual life — purification, illumination, and union — with psychological insight and pastoral warmth. Discover why spiritual growth stalls, what moral conversion really demands, and how to navigate spiritual darkness with faith.

Heart Speaks to Heart: A Catholic Introduction to Mental Prayer

15 minutes a day. A lifetime of conversation.

This course introduces the Catholic tradition of mental prayer as a structured practice of the interior life. Drawing on Fr. John Bartunek’s Four Cs framework — Concentrate, Consider, Converse, Commit — learners engage both the method and the theological vision that underlies it. Recommended supplementary reading: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer.

You Shall Not Be Overcome: Spiritual Vanity, Sacred Darkness, and the Peace That Persists

Why does prayer go dry? Fr. Groeschel reveals the hidden danger in spiritual progress — and the ancient promise that will carry you through.

Something happens to serious Catholics that nobody warned them about. Their prayer, once warm and alive, goes cold. Their devotion, once effortless, becomes an act of will. God seems further away than when they started. And a voice whispers: What went wrong? Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR — Franciscan friar, clinical psychologist, and spiritual director — has a different answer. Nothing went wrong. In fact, something is going very right. In this three-lesson course drawn from his Spiritual Life Teaching Series, Fr. Groeschel names the danger of spiritual vanity, explains why God uses darkness to heal it, and reveals the promise that has sustained saints from John of the Cross to Julian of Norwich. You shall not be overcome.

Why Ethics Depends on a True Account of the Human Person

Ethics in psychotherapy is often reduced to resolving dilemmas and navigating rule systems. Instead, ethics begins with the nature of the human person.