For you
Are you looking for help on your road to flourishing or healing?
You do not have to be in crisis, and you do not have to have a name for what is wrong. Presence+ starts somewhere else: with what is right with you, and with a person to walk beside you. Ask for help in the Presence+ app and a trained person in a community near you responds within a day. Or start on your own, with a short course and a pathway of your own.
If you are in danger right now, call or text 988 in the United States, or your local emergency number. Presence+ is not an emergency service.
What's right with you
The most important part of getting better is already in the room. It is you.
Decades of research on how people change come to a conclusion most of us were never told: the single largest factor is not the method, the diagnosis or even the helper. It is the person asking for help, and what they already bring.
You have survived everything so far
Whatever you are carrying, you have carried it to this point. The strengths, habits, people and faith that got you here are the raw material of getting better, not an afterthought to it.
Your own ideas about what helps are the best place to start
People get better faster when the help fits their own sense of what the problem is and what would make a difference. A good helper asks you, and listens to the answer.
Problems are not the whole of you
A hard season, a diagnosis, a habit: these are things you have, not what you are. Starting from what is working makes room for change that starting from what is broken does not.
The relationship matters more than the technique
Feeling understood, agreeing on what you are working toward, and being able to say when it is not helping: these predict change far better than which approach a helper uses. That is why you are asked, after every conversation, how it is going.
Drawn from Barry L. Duncan, What's Right with You (2005) and the Heart and Soul of Change research; the research behind STEP.
Eleven things that are true of you
The Model of the Person, said plainly.
Every Presence+ helper, from a friend to a psychiatrist, is formed in one account of what a person is, drawn from psychology, philosophy and theology together. Here it is, in the second person, because it is about you.
1
Created
You are good, and you matter. Not because of what you can do or how you are doing this week, but because you were made in the image of God. That is where everything else starts.
2
Wounded
Something has gone wrong, in the world and in you, and it hurts. Pain, anxiety, low days, habits you did not choose and cannot seem to drop. None of that cancels the first point. Wounds are real; so is what they are wounds in.
3
Redeemed
Healing is possible, and you were not meant to do it alone. With the help of other people, and open to grace, people change harmful patterns, find meaning in what they have suffered, and flourish. There is a basis for hope that is not wishful thinking.
4
One whole person
You are not a mind carrying a body around, or a body with a mind attached. Sleep, food, movement, prayer, grief and thought all belong to the same you, and healing in one place reaches the others.
5
Called
You are drawn toward what is good, true and beautiful; toward the people you have committed yourself to; and toward work and rest that mean something. Flourishing is finding and balancing those three callings, not only feeling better.
6
Growing in virtue
Character is built by practice, the way strength is. Patience, courage, honesty, self-control: each one grows a little every time you act on it, and each one makes the next hard moment easier.
7
Made for relationship
You were made for family, friendship, community and God, and you are formed by them all your life. Most healing happens inside a relationship, which is why a person walking with you matters more than any technique.
8
Sensing and perceiving
You take the world in through your senses, your memory and your imagination, and that is how you recognize people, remember, imagine a different future and notice beauty. Those capacities can be healed and trained too.
9
Feeling
Your emotions are good. They tell you something true about what is happening and what matters to you. They can run too hot or too cold, and they can be brought back into balance; they were never the enemy.
10
Thinking
You can seek the truth about yourself, other people and the world, and finding it is itself healing. Self-knowledge gives you a say in what you feel and do.
11
Free
You can choose. Not everything, and not without limits, but enough to be responsible for your own life, to forgive or withhold forgiveness, to give yourself to others. Every step toward health is also a step into more freedom.
The full account is the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (Vitz, Nordling and Titus, Divine Mercy University Press, 2020). How helpers are formed in it.
01
Ask for help in the Presence+ app.
Say what is going on, in your own words. A coordinator in a participating community near you verifies it and responds within eight hours, and you are matched with a trained person at the right level: a Companion, a listener, a minister, a coach, or a licensed clinician if that is what you need. After each conversation you say how you are doing and how it is going, and that is what decides the next step. Your pathway to flourishing lives in the same app.
Ask
In the app, on your phone or the web. No diagnosis required, and no cost to you.
Be matched
A real person from a community you already belong to, or one near you, within a day.
Say how it is going
One minute after each conversation. If it is not helping, that is heard, and something changes.
Some of the people who help
Real people, already in the app, who have said yes to walking with someone.
These are a few of the coaches and guides who help through Presence+. Each wrote their own introduction. Behind them in every participating community are Companions and trained listeners, and licensed clinicians when that is what you need.
Grace Morrison
Certified Catholic life coach
A periodontist, mother of seven and homeschooler for 25 years, three of whose sons are priests. She accompanies women and parents through the joys and challenges of everyday life: families with a member who has drifted from the faith, children with special needs, and young women discerning career and life choices. Also a trained Stephen Minister.
Michele Simpson
Certified Catholic life coach, CRAFT-trained family coach
Works with Catholic wives and mothers watching a husband or child destroy themselves with addiction. She coaches the person who knows and loves them best to use a clinically proven approach that increases a loved one's motivation to seek treatment, while protecting their own peace.
Sharon Murphy
Certified CliftonStrengths coach, Catholic mindset coach
Helps people navigate life transitions, strengthen family relationships and discover their purpose and mission, with a particular passion for women in midlife embracing God's call for their next chapter.
Moses Nunez
Ministry leadership coach
Nearly a decade in ministry. He helps ministry leaders build sustainable ministries so they can lead with clarity, freedom and joy, and walks with young adults through self-doubt, perfectionism and overwhelm.
Alecia Turner
Catholic mindset and relationship coach
Wife, mother of eleven and co-founder of Desert Blossom Wives' Ministry. She helps women grow in emotional and relational health when marriage feels discouraging or disconnected: understanding what they feel, recognizing patterns, communicating clearly, setting boundaries, and reconnecting with their own God-given agency.
Catherine Johnson
Catholic parenting coach
Wife and mom who helps Catholic mothers live their vocation with less stress and more joy: parenting from peace, building strong relationships with their children, and growing confident in their calling. Resident faculty for Metanoia Catholic and a repeat guest on Relevant Radio.
Meet them in the Presence+ app Level 3 coaches and guides, with Companions and listeners in each community and licensed clinicians through Mindspirit.
02
Start with a course.
Short courses, about an hour each, from Divine Mercy University faculty: on healing, virtue, discernment, relationships and the hard seasons of a life. Enroll, create a free MindSpirit account, and it opens right away and joins your pathway. Many are free. Below, they are sorted by what you might be looking for help with.
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Ian Masson
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.
1 hr 15 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Ian Masson
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.
12 hrs · 6 lessons · Beginner
With Dr. William Nordling, Craig Steven Titus, S.T.D., Ph.D., Lisa Klewicki, MAT, Ph.D., Gladys M. Sweeney, Ph.D., Paul C. Vitz, Ph.D., Stephen Grundman, Ph.D., Julia Klausli, Ph.D. and Stephen Gross, Ph.D
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Lisa Klewicki, MAT, Ph.D. and Craig Steven Titus, S.T.D., Ph.D.
What we have built
For you, we have built 63 courses.
the courses that were written for the person living the question, not the professional treating it. They start with what is right with you: a course on human flourishing, one on how your choices shape the soul, and one that says plainly that your emotions are not the enemy. There are courses for the hard seasons, on everyday stress, on fear that can become faith, on the wound that is not your obstacle, on the wounds everyone carries from the beginning and the healing that is possible, and on knowing when it is time to seek therapy. There are courses on prayer that is friendship, on mental prayer, and on how to recognize God's voice in a decision. There are courses for your home: raising a child who is not saying what is wrong, helping a child grieve, being part of the cure for someone you love who has PTSD, preparing for marriage and restoring it. Every one is about an hour, taught by Divine Mercy University faculty, and many are free. Take one on your own, or let a person who is walking with you suggest the next.
Get help with
Courses, sorted by what you are facing.
Each group holds the three courses closest to that need. Every one opens on Emmaus after a free sign-in and joins your pathway.
Get help with anxiety, stress and emotions
Everyday stress, fear, and what to do with feelings.
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.
1 hr 15 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Ian Masson
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.
1 hr 15 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Ian Masson
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.
1 hr 30 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Paula Darcy and Khris Ford
Get help with faith, prayer and discernment
Prayer that has gone dry, decisions, and hearing God.
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Marc Foley, O.C.D.
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.
2 hr 30 min · 4 lessons · Intermediate
With Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Fr. Charles Sikorsky, LC, J.D., J.C.L. and Stephen Auth
Get help with grief, loss and suffering
Bereavement, aging, trauma, and the question of why.
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.
1 hr 30 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Paula Darcy and Khris Ford
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Marc Foley, O.C.D.
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Paul C. Vitz, Ph.D.
Get help raising children
Anxiety, grief, screens, and the long game of being present.
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Ian Masson
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
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Ian Masson
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.
1 hr 15 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Dr. Kathie Erwin, Ed. D and Fr. Charles Sikorsky, LC, J.D., J.C.L.
Get help with your marriage
Intimacy, conflict, repair, and preparing for marriage.
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Advanced
With Harvey Payne, Psy.D., Lisa Klewicki, MAT, Ph.D., Julia Hogan, LCPC and Dr. John Hopkins
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.
1 hr 15 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Dr. Kathie Erwin, Ed. D and Fr. Charles Sikorsky, LC, J.D., J.C.L.
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Frank Ochberg, MD & Angie Panos, Ph.D.
Get help with habits, addiction and self-control
Pornography, substances, compulsion, guilt, and the practice of virtue.
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.
1 hr · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Fr. John Bartunek, LC
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
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.
3 hrs · 4 lessons · Advanced
With Paul C. Vitz, Ph.D.
Get help with identity, sexuality and the body
Same-sex attraction, gender, body image, being a man or a woman.
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Intermediate
With Ian Masson
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Dr. Tammy Tenaglia
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.
4 hrs · 6 lessons · Intermediate
With Fr. John Bartunek, LC
Get help with work, calling and purpose
Vocation, leadership, meaning, and being too busy for the things that matter.
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.
45 min · 1 lesson · Beginner
With Dr. Tammy Tenaglia
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.
12 hrs · 6 lessons · Beginner
With Dr. William Nordling, Craig Steven Titus, S.T.D., Ph.D., Lisa Klewicki, MAT, Ph.D., Gladys M. Sweeney, Ph.D., Paul C. Vitz, Ph.D., Stephen Grundman, Ph.D., Julia Klausli, Ph.D. and Stephen Gross, Ph.D
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.
2 hr 50 min · 4 lessons · Intermediate
With Gladys M. Sweeney, Ph.D.
Everyone is both
Everyone in Presence+ is helped by someone and helps someone. When you are ready, the door for helpers is open to you too.