Young people’s increased exposure to technology and social media is reducing their ability to live in the present moment, Catholic psychologist Dr Greg Bottaro told Sydney Catholic youth at the latest instalment of the popular “Fidelis” series.
The US founder of the CatholicPsych Institute said that young people are increasingly living in their imaginations online, taking away from the “mindfulness in a Catholic perspective” of God’s call to live in the present.
“When we’re looking at the screen, our brain is reacting to the images that we see—we’re not with our phone, we’re with our imagination and all of the things that are activated cognitively and the ways that that is affecting us,” he said at Fidelis, held on 25 September at Canterbury Leagues club.
“Mindfulness tells us to plug into the present moment and with the phone, we’re bombarding our brain, our neurological systems all day with anti-mindfulness.”
Dr Bottaro said while psychologists continue to talk about self-awareness and self-care, his profession fails to go deeper into those topics to help people discover self-determination and identity as a gift from God.
He likened St John Paul II’s understanding of the person and family to the world of psychology, that “real human freedom is when we make conscious acts moving ourselves towards the true the good and the beautiful, these cosmological objective truths.”
“We have to know what’s actually good. That’s knowledge, but we have to know what’s actually even motivating us.
“It’s not just that it’s so great to know what emotion you’re feeling and that you can make a smiley face or frown face or whatever. No, we’re called to follow Christ, which means to be a gift of self, to love.”
More than 350 people came out to hear Dr Bottaro speak alongside Fr Ben Saliba for the Fidelis event, which collaborated for the first time with Fr Saliba’s Against the Grain podcast.
Surprise guests Jacob Kiraz and Bronson Xerri from the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs were also in attendance to hear the discussion and help give away tickets to both the NRL Grand Final and upcoming A-League Men’s Sydney Derby.
The young attendees were interested to know how faith and psychology can help people deal with mental illness, addictions and gender dysphoria.
Dr Bottaro sees the spiritual, theological and psychological as interconnected components in these matters but finds the majority of doctors only attempting to treat the latter.
“It’s a whole cycle that has a lot to do with shame and it has to do with actually avoiding something that’s even deeper,” he said.
“Underneath that, in the light of faith, the only way to access what’s really deeper is through love.”
Yet whether a person believes in Christ or not, focusing on their humanity can foster discipleship.
“Change our disposition, enter in with curiosity. Try to have a little bit more compassion for ourselves and others and then that will open up access to what’s really going on.”
Attendee Alfred Sahyoun said the effects of mental health are “as big an issue among Catholic laity” as it is in the wider community and was glad to start “hearing Catholics bringing these issues out into the world.”
