Dr. Peter Malinoski

Dr. Peter Malinoski occupies a distinct place within Catholic psychotherapy. As a clinical psychologist and co-founder of Souls and Hearts, he integrates Internal Family Systems, Catholic anthropology, and Carmelite spirituality, particularly through his Interior Integration for Catholics podcast.

It is wildly popular. Probably for many reasons.

What stands out to me is his willingness to take the complexity of the interior life seriously without making it feel impossibly clinical. Rather than treating anxiety, anger, perfectionism, or spiritual struggle simply as problems to eliminate, he asks what those reactions may be protecting.

He also makes the work personal. In one episode, he describes medical trauma he experienced at age eleven and reflects on how those experiences affected his own formation. In another, he reportedly introduces twelve of his own inner parts—including one named Petrus. Using himself as an example gives his teaching some warmth and occasional humor. He is not presenting parts work as something only troubled people need; he is showing that all of us have a lively interior cast of characters.

This overlaps strongly with Insight Anchors: helping people see what is happening within them so they can respond with greater freedom and integration.

Parts, Self-Love, and the Inmost Self

Many Catholics are suspicious of the language of self-love. Dr. Malinoski challenges this by arguing that ordered self-love is necessary for loving God and neighbor well. I've heard him speak on this subject again and again.

In “Healing Our Parts So We Can Love Better,” he explains that shame, self-contempt, and internal conflict can interfere with our ability to receive love or give it freely.

Ordered self-love is not self-indulgence. It means treating our interior world with the charity, patience, and truth Christ extends to us. In Insight Anchors language, healing does not happen by attacking the heart. It begins by understanding what has become divided within it.

Drawing from Internal Family Systems, Malinoski describes the psyche as containing different parts that carry fears, memories, beliefs, and protective strategies:

Part of me wants to speak up, but another part is afraid.

Part of me trusts God, while another part feels abandoned.

These parts are not fundamentally bad. Anger, anxiety, avoidance, addiction, and perfectionism often began as attempts to protect the person from pain.

A perfectionistic part may be trying to prevent rejection. An angry part may protect someone who once felt powerless. An avoidant part may be working hard to prevent emotional overwhelm.

Healing does not mean excusing harmful behavior. It means understanding what the behavior is attempting to accomplish.

Malinoski distinguishes these parts from the Innermost Self (or inmost self), the deeper center from which calm, clarity, compassion, courage, and spiritual maturity can emerge. He has publicly described his journey of integrating IFS with his Catholic faith, including the challenge of building a bridge between psychological parts language and Catholic anthropology.

When anxiety or anger takes the steering wheel, the goal is not to destroy that part but to lead it from a more grounded place:

"I understand why you are afraid. You do not have to manage this alone."

This resembles the center of the Insight Anchors heart: the place of identity and spiritual depth from which the rest of the person can gradually become reordered.

Learning to Receive Love

One of the most moving ideas in Malinoski’s work is that some people have developed an “allergy” to being loved.

They may believe intellectually that God loves them but still feel unsafe receiving that love. Tenderness feels threatening. Rest produces guilt. Dependence feels dangerous.

Early attachment wounds often shape the images we carry of God. Someone raised by a critical, distant, intrusive, or unpredictable caregiver may unconsciously expect God to relate in the same way.

A Catholic may profess that God is loving while feeling:

• I must earn love.
• God will be disappointed if I fail.
• My needs are too much.
• I should not need comfort.

The goal of experiential healing is not merely to think more accurately about God. It is to help wounded parts become capable of receiving the love the person already believes in.

This is central to Insight Anchors as well. An insight becomes transformative when it reaches beyond intellectual understanding and begins to reorganize emotional memory, attachment, bodily expectation, and action.

Attachment and Integrity Needs

Malinoski also distinguishes between attachment needs and integrity needs.

In healthy relationships, both can coexist. But children in unsafe relationships may feel forced to choose:

Do I remain connected, or do I remain true to what I am experiencing?

Because attachment is necessary for survival, children often sacrifice integrity to preserve connection. They suppress anger, ignore fear, assume blame, or become whatever the caregiver seems to need.

Over time, one part maintains the relationship while other parts carry the anger, fear, shame, or unmet needs.

This distinction fits naturally within Insight Anchors. Attachment relates to the circle: communion, connection, receptivity, and safe haven. Integrity relates to the triangle: agency, boundaries, direction, and alignment with the good.

Healing requires both. Communion without integrity becomes self-erasure. Integrity without communion becomes isolation.

Malinoski gives Catholics a language for understanding interior conflict without reducing everything to either sin or psychology. He shows that a sincere desire for holiness can coexist with frightened, angry, or mistrustful parts—and that self-compassion is not opposed to repentance.

For me, this is where his work intersects most clearly with Insight Anchors. The purpose of a map is not to force someone into a system. It is to help them recognize what has been happening within their heart and, from that insight, begin moving toward freedom, communion, integrity, and love.

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