Pastoral Counselor Offers Christ-Centered Coaching for Elite Athletes and High-Pressure Professionals
Counseling practice utilizes Catholic-integrated approach to empower individuals in demanding fields
At a time when many households tune in to watch the nation’s best baseball teams compete in the World Series, nationally-recognized pastoral counselor, Rachael Popcak Isaac is drawing attention to the mental challenges faced by professional athletes and all individuals in high-pressure positions. The Faith-Based Success and Performance Coaching Program, a division of CatholicCounselors.com, provides much-needed services to clients in high-tension vocations to integrate their Catholic identity into their goals, their mindset, and the way they manage both success and setbacks.
“As a lifelong athlete and self-professed perfectionist, I know firsthand the mental anguish and crushing pressure to succeed and compete at the highest level day in and day out,” admits Isaac, COO of CatholicCounselors.com and director and founder of the Success and Performance Coaching Program. “It doesn’t matter if you are a professional athlete, student athlete, performing artist, or working professional; all of these individuals ask the question, ‘How do I effectively perform at my best and still take care of myself?’”
The Success and Performance Coaching Program offers individual pastoral tele-counseling, team or group workshops, performance coaching, and mental skills training, all heavily rooted in St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOB). TOB provides a profound vision of the human person as a unity of body and soul, created for relationship and called to live in the freedom of God’s love. In Isaac’s work, TOB is vital as it keeps mental performance from being reduced to self-centered ambition and grounds it in a vision of human flourishing that is faithful, freeing, and life-giving.
“A secular sports psychologist focuses primarily on mental strategies to enhance performance such as visualization, focus, and stress management. While our approach integrates these evidence-based techniques, we must acknowledge that our work isn’t only about helping our clients to ‘get better results.’ For Catholics, performance is not just about achieving success in the world–it’s about living out one’s vocation faithfully and growing in virtue, peace, and purpose,” affirmed Isaac.
CatholicCounselors.com is the world’s largest Catholic pastoral counseling practice, with 20 full-time counselors providing more than 30,000 sessions annually to clients worldwide. Every tool, resource, and word of encouragement offered to individuals, couples, and families is rooted in Church teaching, respectful of Catholic values, and integrates psychological insight with spiritual truth. The Success and Performance Coaching Program helps Catholics facing burnout, anxiety, and perfectionism in high-pressure settings pursue excellence without losing sight of what matters most: holiness and union with God.
