Is Tending to Yourself Sinful? Self-Love, Family Wounds, and the Catholic Case for Interior Attentiveness

Something one participant said near the end of their first group cohort stopped Shae and Adrian in their tracks: tending to the self doesn't just feel selfish — it feels sinful. In this episode, they unpack why that belief is so common, where it comes from, and why they believe the opposite is true: that interior attentiveness is not a detour from holiness but the very ground it grows from.In this episode:Why the fear that self-focus is sinful is so deeply formed — and why it masquerades as virtueWhat self-abandonment actually looks like in everyday life: people-pleasing, lack of boundaries, resentment, numbness, and the "dam breaking"The difference between emotional neglect that's dramatic and the kind that quietly stacks up over time in otherwise loving familiesWhy that internal voice that says "they did their best" or "other people have it worse" isn't always the voice of maturityWhat true emotional maturity actually holds: that someone tried their best and fell short, and that both things are realThe Lenten/Easter framework: why we aren't meant to skip over the suffering to get to the resurrectionLuigi Giussani's concept of "the I" and why losing touch with your interior life means losing touch with where God actually meets youThe difference between processing and weaponizing — and why it matters for healingWhat it looks like to begin tending to yourself in practical, ordinary termsHow self-love, rightly ordered, is what makes the free gift of self actually possibleReflection prompt from this episode: This week, notice one moment when you're talking yourself out of the way you actually feel. Don't shame yourself for it. Just notice. That's where this practice begins.Connect with Shae and Adrian: Website: adrianandshae.com Email: [email protected] Instagram: @adrianandshae