“Coming Out” as a Non-Believer to Family Members

Episode 12

0:20 John Dehlin Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. It is February 19, 2019, and I am Dr. John Delin. It's very good to be with you today. I'm joined by my brilliant partner, Margie.

0:38 Margi Dehlin Yes, Margie, glad to be here.

0:41 John Dehlin And as always, we effusively praise our partner in Wichita, Kansas. She is none other than the one, the only Natasha Helfer Parker, sex therapist, marriage and family therapist all around amazing human. Natasha. Welcome to the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis.

1:00 Natasha Helfer Thank you, John. And I thought we had said that. I am introducing people today, so I would like to introduce the fabulous, wonderful, one and only John Dehlin, who's always introducing Margie and I, and he is amazing.

1:19 Margi Dehlin Welcome, everybody.

1:21 John Dehlin We were even, welcome to my love fest.

1:24 Natasha Helfer It's a love fest. And I was even telling John and Margie how sexy and wonderful they are today. So there you go.

1:30 John Dehlin Sexy. We're sexy and we know it.

1:39 Margi Dehlin Remember that. I do sexy for my show.

1:43 John Dehlin All right, well, that's good. Well, now that we've gotten off to a rocking start, welcome, everybody. We're really excited for today's episode. Today we are going to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to many people's hearts. It's something that everybody kind of has to go through at one point or another when they're going through a faith crisis, at least within Mormonism, maybe not in other religious traditions. But we're going to be talking about, you know, what to do and how to come out to family members when you've lost your faith. And it's a sensitive and a difficult topic. And we know that you're going to find value here. We're probably going to go for several hours because this is a complicated and nuanced topic. And we're really excited because we're going to be incorporating the thoughts and the feedback from many of you, our listeners. So we were able to gather narratives of many of you and we're slotting them into our outline. And so we think that this is going to be really useful. So we're excited really quickly. We have a few points of business to announce. Let's start with our mission. Margie, what's our mission?

3:10 Margi Dehlin To provide positive, practical and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis or for those wishing to understand those in a faith crisis.

3:20 John Dehlin So this isn't just for people in a faith journey or faith crisis, but it's for their loved ones as well. And so we're trying to keep it appropriate and Sensitive and respectful. Respectful, good.

3:34 Natasha Helfer Well, in a way, I mean, we're doing what we're modeling, hopefully what we all should be doing. Because, you know, I think that a lot of times as you say that, I'm reminded that especially online communities, we tend to kind of like congregate with similar minded people. And what we're trying to do here and what we're trying to help people do in the transition of faith is knowing how to reach and build bridges across, you know, different ideas and beliefs.

4:02 John Dehlin Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. And the reason why we named the podcast this way. Yeah, the website. Sometimes this can feel like a huge catastrophe or a burden. And it often feels that way. And sometimes it even can be with the tens of thousands of people we've collectively counseled with over the years. What we found is that most people find this to be one of the biggest gifts of their lifetime. And so that's why we've named it as we've named it. You can find us on itunes, you can find us on YouTube, you can find us on Facebook. Heift of the Mormon Faith Crisis webpage. There are lots of ways you can find us if you're just stumbling onto this randomly. So tune in however you can. This is meant to be a weekly podcast and a website. And the website mentions not only the podcast, but also resources at people's disposal. The first is coaching. Natasha, tell us a bit about the coaching you do.

5:06 Natasha Helfer Yes, I offer both in office and online coaching and therapy services. So anything that you want to find out professionally about me that we don't necessarily talk about here, you can find on my website, natashaparker.org so that'll take you to my counseling and events. I do and things like that.

5:26 John Dehlin And you do marriage and family therapy. You do sex therapy. You do lots of stuff, right?

5:33 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I mainly work in the intersection between sexuality, faith, transitions, but also just run of the mill, you know, depression, anxiety, mental health concerns in general. So.

5:45 John Dehlin Yeah, Margie, tell us about yours.

5:49 Margi Dehlin Yeah, you can find me at my website, Beauty in the Now. I'm about to get a website, beautyinthenhow.org and I'm about to have a website revamp.

6:01 John Dehlin You excited about that?

6:02 Margi Dehlin I'm very excited.

6:03 John Dehlin Who's helping you with that?

6:04 Margi Dehlin So our daughter Maya is helping me with that. So that's fun that's coming.

6:09 John Dehlin And just tell us what type of coaching you do.

6:11 Margi Dehlin So I primarily do life transition work. So that's kind of relationships, wellness, self care, grief, identity.

6:22 Natasha Helfer All right, what do you do, John?

6:26 John Dehlin So my website's johndelune.com youm can go to private practice if you want. That's where talks about my coaching. I do a lot of mixed faith couples work. That's my specialty probably. I also do just personal faith crisis navigation stuff. Well, sometimes I do other personal things, just kind of life coaching, helping people achieve their goals. But it's a small practice and you know, reach out if you need something. You can email me@drjohndelinmail.com reach out if you need something.

7:04 Margi Dehlin Could be anything. Just if you need something.

7:09 John Dehlin All right. We also on our website, which is mormonfaithcrisis.com we also now are listing events that we're holding around the world. We had an amazing workshop in Orem, Utah last Saturday. Friday and Saturday, 25 people came. It was intimate, it was powerful. Shout out to all my Orem homies. Although it's not really accurate. We had people from Highland and Alpine. We had people from St. George. We had a dude flying from Sacramento to go to the Oreman workshop. We had lots of people from Arizona. Like people come from all over for these things. But the point is it was amazing and people loved it and they connected. We have several on our calendar. Some of these are. Some of these you can find at mormonfaithcrisis.com events. Others we're going to be putting up in the next few weeks, but I'll just rifle through them. Las Vegas is this week, so I'm traveling to Las Vegas. And on the 22nd and 23rd February, we'll be doing a workshop in Las Vegas. There are still a few slots open for that, so if you or someone you love need support in your faith crisis, sign up for the Las Vegas event. It's going to be amazing. Natasha, tell us quickly about your Mormon Matters event.

8:30 Natasha Helfer Yeah, so I'm partnering with Dan Witherspoon From Mormon Matters March 1st through 3rd in the Salt Lake City area. We've done these retreats before and have been really well received. We always get like 4.9 out of 5 stars per se in our evaluation forms. These retreats are typically meant for those who are still interested in engaging with Mormonism in some way or another. Maybe it's people who are maybe leaving less orthodox belief but wanting to still stay nuanced in their Mormonism or maybe still want to attend due to family relationships, things of that nature. It's a really good fit for mixed faith relationships. We've also had people come with like parents and adult children. Like I've had adults bring Their, their parents to help them understand kind of how they're going through these issues. It's very relationally focused. It's also spiritually focused in the sense of like, that's kind of the stuff that Dan works on is how to react, engage your spirituality when going through a faith transition. And I also focus on things like parenting, sexuality. So it's a really robust weekend with a lot of different topics. And if you want more information about that, again, you can go to natashaparker.org or the Mormon Matters website as well and hit our events page. So that's coming up in like a week and a half. We still have some slots available. I'd love to get that filled up. It's super helpful for those who come.

10:06 John Dehlin Most importantly, is or is there not karaoke?

10:10 Natasha Helfer There is karaoke, which is highly therapeutic, highly recommended and lots of fun. We always have a good time on karaoke night.

10:23 John Dehlin I love it. We plan on doing another workshop in Ogden March 8th through 9th. Natasha, Margi and I will be recording a mixed faith marriage webinar so that people who can't come to these retreats but want to just dig into how to navigate successfully a mixed faith marriage can purchase a webinar and appreciate that. We're going to be recording that in early April, early to mid April. April. Right now, the plan is April 2nd, 9th and 16th to do some live recordings of that. For those who want to join us. We'll be providing with information on how to do that. Julie de Azevedo Hanks and I, she's the daughter of Lex de Azevedo. We are doing a mixed faith marriage retreat in Salt Lake City for mixed faith couples. Julie's going to represent the believing point of view because she's faithful and active and engaged with church. Me, not so much. And together Margie's gonna come help out there. We're going to support couples who want to dive deep and do a mixed faith marriage retreat. So that's Salt Lake City, April 12th through 13th. Natasha is also hoping to do a workshop in Oklahoma City April 12th through 13th. So if you want to host that, if you're in Oklahoma City and you want to host that, reach out to Natasha and we'll get information on that up soon. I hope to come to Gilbert, Arizona, May 3rd through 5th. We're going to do something. We are going to do a really excited to announce a conference. It's going to be long time ago there was an ex Mormon conference called the Ex Mormon Conference. Every year it was canceled recently and a Bunch of us got together and realized what we need to do is have an annual conference for people here, healing and growing, sort of after orthodox Mormonism. So we're not sure what we're calling it yet, but mark off your calendars. June 7th through 9th, we're going to have an amazing conference in Salt Lake City to provide people with tools and support for finding community and leaving orthodox Mormonism. We're doing Switzerland in June, Colorado in August. Kansas City. Natasha wants to do something in September. I doing Southern California in September. And we hope to have another mixed faith marriage retreat in November. So lots of events coming up. In addition, I am holding free workshops in Salt Lake City once a month where we're going to be going into depth on these topics. We had 80 people at our last event last week. It was amazing. It was healing those dates. March 13, April 10, May 8, June 12 and July 10 will be coming to Salt Lake City for free. If you can't afford any of these workshops and you can check out mormonfaithcrisis.com events for more information, we always hold these free events at the Community of Christ Building again in Holiday, Utah. And if you cannot afford one of these workshops or retreats but really want to attend, we do offer scholarships so you can apply for one of those scholarships. And then we're also raising money for those of you who have attended these events and want to pay it forward. We were offering a scholarship fund where you can donate to these events and we'll use those donations to support scholarship applicants and we'll make sure you find out how your money got used. So that's a lot of announcements, but we just. These events just really make a difference. We don't do them because we're trying to make extra money. We do these events because they change lives and that's why we do them. So check it out. We also want to thank four of our new donors. Sunny, Courtney, Jennifer, and Christine are all new donors. You can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com and click on the donate button. And if you value these programs, 10 bucks, 25 bucks, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. You can become a recurring donor. We'll mention you on the podcast and you can know that this stuff will be available not only to you, but to your loved ones and to future generations. We plan on just leaving this content up for free as long as we have enough support to keep it up. So please donate and your money's going to go to paying for the editing, to paying for the hosting to paying for just all the time and effort and energy that goes into these podcasts. It's well spent, hopefully for you. So. So please check it out. All right, it is time for our what's Working section. We want to also just do a quick shout out to those of us who are joining us live. We have several people joining us live, including Toddy, Jesse, Leandra, and Bryce Bryce. I got a shout out to Bryce. Bryce donated his home for the OREM workshop. So a special shout out to Bryce. He made this possible. Also, Dana's joining us. We know Dana and Melissa and Laura and several others. So thanks everyone who's joining us today. Aaron's joining us. Aaron also gives us great tips and Wendy, shout out to everyone who's joined us. Now if you want to please spread the word, post this livestream to any group or family member or on your Facebook page anywhere. And you can just say, hey, guys. If you need tips on how to come out to family members in your faith crisis, they're talking about it right now. We'd love to have as big of a live audience as we can, Michelle. Say hi to Michelle as well. And also those of you who are joining us live, please share your tips and tricks and mistakes and best practices of your coming out. If you've already come out to family and friends, we would love to incorporate those into the show. How does that sound? All right, Natasha, anything you want to add before we jump into today's episode?

16:36 Natasha Helfer No, the only thing would be just if you are in the Oklahoma City area or Kansas City area, in order to make an event possible, I would need somebody to either, you know, be willing to host in their home or maybe have some type of office space that's available to them or something like that in order to keep costs down. That's, that's what I need. So if anybody, in order to even start really planning event, that's probably the first step. So please reach out to us. If that's something that you might be able to help me with, love it.

17:06 John Dehlin And that's actually true for everything in the sense that if you want to bring, you know, I had someone from South Jordan say, I want to do one of these in South Jordan, or someone else said, I want to do one of these in Saratoga Springs. Incidentally, the people you meet at these workshops or retreats are the most important part. You can make lifelong friendships. You can, you can meet other couples that are close to you in your particular area. You can make friends, get mentors, role models, et cetera. And just feel validated so you don't feel crazy, you don't feel so alone. So the value of these events is much more than just the content. It's the relationships. And that's why doing them in your local city can be so valuable. So no matter where you are, if you want to hold one of these events, we'd love to have you. So just reach out to us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com say, Hey, I want to host one of these. I've got lots of friends and family that want to attend and we'll make it happen.

18:05 Margi Dehlin True, true.

18:07 Natasha Helfer Yes.

18:08 Margi Dehlin Because that's how we roll.

18:09 John Dehlin That's how we roll. Crystal joined us. Hey, Crystal. Ok, so let's begin with the topics, but before we do, we have the what's working section where we all share something that's working. And listeners, if you're joining us live, if you want to share with us something in your life that's working for you, please do. Margie, what's working for you?

18:28 Margi Dehlin Yes. So I have something that it's working and then it started not working and now it's working again. And I'll explain. So I have a basic capsule workout routine that if you're interested, you can check out on my blog, beautyandthenow.org but what was happening? The weights portion of my workout started hurting me. So kind of over the years I've noticed I get these recurrent injuries, headaches, hold muscles and I try to do yoga after to kind of stretch out my muscles. It just wasn't working. So what I did was I replaced the kind of weight portion of my capsule workout routine with more of a barrel, like kind of weight building.

19:15 John Dehlin What do you mean by bar?

19:18 Margi Dehlin So like the bar method, it's kind of the idea is small movements, small muscle groups that get kind of burned out over time. It's a hard workout. My daughter Claire and I just kind of tried one out this past week. So that's something I'm going to be adding is a replacement in that kind of comes in the way of honoring my body, not wanting it to hurt and kind of checking in and realizing something that wasn't working and replacing it with something that actually feels better.

19:50 John Dehlin I love it. Natasha, what's working for you?

19:55 Natasha Helfer My thoughts for today are I'm kind of a mantra queen. I love mantras. I love little sayings. So I love refrigerator magnets that I put on my refrigerator and that have these fun little sayings. And so I'm going to share a few of Them with you. This one's from Emerson and I think this is kind of brilliant. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in. I love the word absurdity. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow's a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Oh, I love that one. Okay, John, you gave me this one. Be truthful, gentle and fearless, Gandhi. Love it. I love Blessings. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rains fall softly upon your fields. That's an Irish blessing. And this has got to be my all time favorite. This one is. I am fit, fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world. I think that's accurate.

21:07 John Dehlin I agree.

21:08 Margi Dehlin Clearly, clearly accurate.

21:09 Natasha Helfer I might wear a cape next time. How about that? And a tiara.

21:13 John Dehlin Get these women capes and tiaras. I'm passing on the tiara, but you guys need tiaras.

21:20 Margi Dehlin You would be great in a tiara.

21:27 Natasha Helfer I love mantras. Things that help me feel connected, things that remind me of the things that I want to feel are important in my life.

21:37 John Dehlin So fridge magnets are working for Natasha. I love it. All right, you know what's working for me?

21:44 Margi Dehlin What's working for you?

21:45 John Dehlin You guys want to hear?

21:47 Margi Dehlin Yes.

21:48 John Dehlin Bose noise cancellation.

21:51 Margi Dehlin How are they working for you?

21:52 John Dehlin Yeah. So I always have had crappy ear headphones and I decided I wanted to buy some nice ones, so I bought some Bose noise cancellation headphones. And they are amazing in so many ways. The best part about it is if I just want silence, they cancel out all the noise around me. Whether I'm on an airplane or in my room. You know, in my house, people are running around and I just want some quiet. But also, like, if I'm taking a bath, I've mentioned baths, how much I love baths. I'm addicted to baths. Today in the history of my life, it's the first time I took a morning bath. I got back from exercising and I'm like, margie, I feel like taking a bath, but it's morning. And you know what Margie said? What did you say?

22:40 Margi Dehlin What did I say?

22:41 John Dehlin She said, sweetie, take a bath in the morning. You can do that.

22:46 Margi Dehlin It's pretty cold here. So we were both really, really cold.

22:50 John Dehlin She said, exercise your power and take a bath.

22:52 Margi Dehlin So I did seize the day. Carpe die.

22:55 John Dehlin Yeah. And oftentimes when I'm in my bath, I put my noise cancellation headphones on, watch a little Netflix, watch a little whatever I want. It's fun. And also when I'm really tired and I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't sleep, sometimes I throw my headphones on and listen to a little meditation or a little audiobook or a podcast, and it helps me get right back to sleep.

23:22 Margi Dehlin Can you take phone calls with your headphones?

23:24 John Dehlin Yeah, you can take phone calls.

23:26 Margi Dehlin Is it higher quality? Is it easier to hear any upgrade there?

23:30 John Dehlin Yeah, definitely. It sort of cancels out all the noise, so it helps focus on the phone call. So check out Bose. Sony's got a pair. Lots of different providers have noise cancellation headphones. They're the ones that cover your entire ears. They don't just sit on top of your ears or go in your ears. They cover your ears completely. And they work for me. So that's what's working for me. Allison agrees. She says totally worth the money. They can be pricey, like 350 bucks. Beets also has really good pairs. So anyway, feels like we need to

24:07 Natasha Helfer say something like, you're not getting a kickback from any of these companies.

24:10 John Dehlin Yeah, we are not. We are not that many people. We. This is a free. This is a free endorsement.

24:22 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

24:23 John Dehlin Tamara says I need to get some of those too. I'm very sensitive to noise. You do that. You deserve it, Tamara. You deserve it. Go out.

24:30 Margi Dehlin Happy Valentine's Day month to you.

24:33 John Dehlin Yes, you need some self love, Tamara. Dawn is reflecting back on Natasha. Share. Dawn's sharing what works for her. And she writes, yes, I have thoughts up on my vision board in my office to remind me of my journey. One example, when I get into a place where I think I cannot hang on a moment longer, I will never give up then, for that is just the place the tide will turn. Okay, so that's her quote. Let me say it again. When I get into a place where I think I cannot hang on a moment longer, I will never give up then, for that is just the place the tide will turn. Thank you, Dawn. Thank you for sharing what works for you, Dawn. And if anyone else wants to share what works for them, we'd love to, love to see it. All right, that's the what's working section. And now it's time for our main events. Today's episode is how to come out close quote as a nonbeliever to close family and friends. Now, at the outset, both Margie, you and Natasha expressed you know, one thought about using that term, coming out. Natasha, do you want to share what your thought was on the use of that term, coming out, whether or not it's appropriate?

25:54 Natasha Helfer Well, I think that coming out is usually a term that we primarily think of the LGBTQ community, and that is a very sensitive, difficult process for a group that's been highly marginalized and discriminated against. And so there's lots of other people that use coming out as kind of a generic term to talk about any type of secret or any type of thing that you might not have felt comfortable sharing. So it's kind of like a coming out process. It's kind of a general way that we use that vernacular. But I do have some level of sensitivity that we're not by any means trying to compare or, you know, take over that term when I think it has its own place within the LGBTQ community. So I guess we're gonna use that term somewhat because it's kind of just normal. It's a cultural term, kind of like when we use addiction or depression when we're not really addicted or depressed. But just with the forethought of that, we're being mindful about that.

27:05 John Dehlin Love it. Anything you want to add, Margie?

27:08 Margi Dehlin No.

27:08 John Dehlin Okay. Thanks, Natasha. Totally important to be sensitive to those things. And so, yeah, thank you for that disclaimer. Having said that, I have had a lot of LGBT clients over the years tell me coming out as a non believer was actually harder for them than coming out as gay to their family and friends. That's obviously going to be different for every person, but it is ironic that that's what some members of the LGBT community say. So let's be sensitive. Gwennon wants to share something that's working for her, and I love it. She says she has this week. She has listened over and over again to Mindy Gledhill's new album, the Rabbit Hole. It's as if it were written just for me. It wasn't, but it was. That's awesome, Gwennon. And, yeah, we just released that. I did an interview with Mindy and a couple of her bandmates just last weekend, and it's. It's. And they perform six or seven songs in more of an acoustic, intimate format. And it's just a brilliant album. And Mindy's brilliant. And the interview with her talks about her faith journey from EFY singer to, you know, no longer LDS or active. Lds, anyway. And she's just really thoughtful and sensitive and wise. And check it out. Also, Mindy's going on tour and we just really want to support good art. So check out mindyglithill.com for tickets. She's going all through the Pacific Northwest and kind of places where there are lots of Mormons. She'll be in LA soon. Check out mindygledhill.com Again, an unpaid endorsement, but we love Mindy.

28:52 Margi Dehlin And you're not alone, Gwendon. We both woke up this morning having the same song in our head from the album. It is living and breathing in us even as we sleep. That's how powerful it is.

29:05 John Dehlin Yeah. All right, so we are going to now dive in. And Stacy reflects. I just listened to that Mindy interview this morning. It was great. Thanks, Stacey. That is on Mormon Stories podcast. You can check that out@mormonstories.org it is a product of the Open Stories Foundation. Of course. Natasha does a great podcast too, called Mormon Mental Health. Right? Mormon Mental Health Podcast, is that right?

29:30 Natasha Helfer It's MormonMentalHealth.org that's correct. Yeah.

29:33 John Dehlin So check that out as well. Natasha does great work there.

29:35 Natasha Helfer Thank you.

29:37 John Dehlin Okay, so coming out and we've got so much to cover today. And this is going to be a multi hour episode, so hold on to your hats. And the main purpose is when you're going through a faith crisis, this is one of the most terrifying parts because we've already talked about in past episodes how conversion is a family and a social event in so many ways. And that's why deconversion is too. But it's just so petrifying to come out because there's just this fear that your marriage, if you're married, was likely built on Mormonism. And so there's this immediate worry that if you come out to your spouse, they might divorce you and take the kids and wreck your life. You know, will my parents disown me? Will they still love me if I come out to them? Will they cut me off? Will they disinherit me? Your siblings, you know, your loved ones, your in laws, these are, I would say, probably among the most terrifying things, fears when someone's navigating a faith crisis. Is that your experience, Natasha?

30:50 Natasha Helfer Yeah, it is scary. You don't really know how it's going to go. And as we'll cover today, I mean, sometimes it goes so much better than expected and you're like, wow, I was worried for no reason. And then other times you really don't think it's going to be that big of a deal and you're kind of hit by tsunami of things that you didn't even know were coming. It's really hard to predict.

31:17 John Dehlin Yeah, it is super hard. And so what we want to do is give you as many tips and tricks, not just from our experiences and from our coaching, but from many of you. Many of you have written in and shared your stories. And so we are going to be sharing stories along the way. In addition to adding tips and tricks and stories and lessons learned from our live listeners, we're gonna incorporate all that. So by the time you're done with this two, three, four hour episode, I don't know how many it'll go. You'll have what you need to be able to plan your coming out in the most effective way possible. We want to start with the disclaimer. And it was prompted by one of our listeners. Becca wrote really vulnerable. And candidly, she wrote, I am actually sad. This is a question. So much pressure to leave the right way. Nothing is good enough for a true believing spouse. You share your thoughts as you learn them. It's wrong. You respect them and keep them to yourself. You are hiding things. You lose no matter what. And I think Becca is reflecting just this sense that it can feel like a lose, lose, lose, lose no matter what you do. If you share, then you're offending people and challenging their testimony. If you don't share, you're accused of hiding things and covering up. And she's just saying it's a lose, lose. Margie, what do you think? What would you say to Becca, who just feels a little bit of cynicism and despair about the prospects of coming out?

32:57 Margi Dehlin Hmm. Well, I validate that. Clearly Becca and I connect to the vulnerability and this sense that there is no way to sort of secure, you know, a positive result. It's unknown. And I think part of that makes stem from this idea that you are going against, you know, that kind of conditional love paradigm. By doing this, you are inserting a change to the system that will, I think, change it on some level. What do you think about that? Yeah, change from just by. On a level. I think disclosing a difference or a change, it changes. It changes that paradigm of control or conditional love that now all of a sudden you've done something to our relationship, to our. That was supposed to never change. It was supposed to always be. And I think that's part of why it hits so deeply and foundationally. It's hard stuff. And I think there are a lot of gifts amidst the process.

34:12 Natasha Helfer Yeah, well, and I'll just say that and not to be by any means like a church basher because that's not really usually the role I play on this either. But I will just say that, you know, the recent resources that are coming out from on high, as far as, you know, I think. Is it Rasland? Is that how I say his name?

34:35 John Dehlin Resalind?

34:36 Margi Dehlin Yes.

34:37 Natasha Helfer There's two of them now that start with an R. And I'm like, I always like Renlund anyway. He gave a talk about faith transition. And then there was just one recently, I think in Kansas City that was specifically for mixed faith relationships. And the advice given is just really subpar. It's really unfortunate. It's not relationally driven. It's more about, you know, I think the leaders anxieties about people losing their faith and that's kind of where they keep the focus. Instead of really being more about relational skills and how to really bridge divides. I've been really disappointed to see people being left kind of without a lot of, you know, resources or recourse on how to manage these things in a way that are going to, it's going to edify marriages instead of bringing them apart or edify family or friendship relationships.

35:36 John Dehlin But the good news is we're here.

35:38 Natasha Helfer Well, right. And that's, I think, Yeah, I think unfortunately that's. Well, fortunately, but unfortunately there's not a lot of resources. We're hoping to be a very positive, relationally driven resource. And every now and then LDS Living comes out with a good article or the Ensign even has an article that I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good. It's just not good enough. And there's not enough resources with as many people as are really facing these kinds of issues today.

36:07 John Dehlin Yeah, I remember a lunch I had with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland where I expressed him my concern about how, you know, losing your faith should never wreck your family. And it would be just so amazing if the brethren could make a statement in General conference to that effect. Do not abandon or disrespect your spouse if they lose their faith. These are often very courageous, truth loving people. And Elder Holland was very honest and candid with me. He said maybe when the church is a little more mature, and I read that to mean certain apostles die off honestly will be able to say things like that in General Conference. And that made me feel like he recognizes the problem and wants to be able to keep families together, but he just recognizes that the church isn't quite there yet. And I respected him for being honest. And at the time I think Boyd K. Packer was still alive. So I understand that sometimes it just takes time and that, you know, they've got to have a lot of support in the quorum to be able to make those decisions. But yeah, so, yeah, I think it's hard and I think that's why we wanted to say at the outset there's not one right way for everyone. And our goal isn't to tell you the right way. To address Becca's point. We're just here to give you lots of things to think about, lots of options and to help you be as thoughtful and as careful and as deliberate as possible. You're also going to do things wrong and you may do it wrong sometimes and right at other times. Wrong with some people, right with other people will definitely encourage a strong sense of acceptance and self compassion because no one's going to do this perfectly and you can do it perfectly and it can still go catastrophically wrong from the recipients. So we want to just acknowledge Becca's concern. You're right, Becca. There's not one right way. In some sense you're always going to have to experience some suffering. But we also want to say that you can be surprised, Becca. Sometimes really, really good things come out of this and sometimes you can do it right or you can do a better. You can do better versus worse. And we know for sure that there are people who say I did it and very positive things came from it. So good things can't come from it.

38:41 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

38:41 John Dehlin And so that's why we're, that's why we're talking about today. Now, Margie, before we actually dig in, one of your points, I think we should kind of start with why don't you talk about, you know, before you ever actually come out, what your advice to our listeners is.

38:59 Margi Dehlin Sure. So something that's come up quite a bit in my coaching practice is this idea of finding a mentor. And that can be someone that's a close friend of yours along the journey too, that's, you know, in parallel or on the path as well, or a coach or a therapist. And I recommend this kind of foundationally before beginning, just because of the nature of transition. I feel like oftentimes our brain, our emotions are flooded for a while trying to sort through information, trying to decide how to move forward, what it means to rebuild, that there's this tendency to have a lot going on, that we actually have this need to offload. Right. We want to kind of get it out there. And so I think having someone that, who is safe, that you can share your thoughts and feelings with oftentimes allows you to offload that to feel heard and understood. And that allows you to feel less inclined to talk to people in your life who may not need to or, you know, hear it to the wrong people. So finding a transition, mentoring, or even following us actually on this podcast, sharing openly and providing that space for your emotions can be tremendously helpful in allowing you to have a safe space for that so that you don't do it with relationships that actually that would be less healthy to share.

40:34 John Dehlin And I just like the idea of being able to practice what you might say or if you're gonna write something, to run it by some people, to let them give you feedb. Because sometimes we don't write or say our best prose when we're emotionally triggered.

40:52 Margi Dehlin That's right.

40:53 John Dehlin So they can give us an objective perspective. Natasha, I have a question. How would you recommend people find a mentor, especially if they feel alone and like, they're the only one in their family?

41:06 Natasha Helfer Well, and I guess before I even answer that, I just want to second Margie's opinion here because I think one thing that we're not talking necessarily about is that if things don't go well in your coming out process, that can be an extremely vulnerable time where you feel rejected, where you feel isolated. And if you don't have that kind of like, mentor or fallback system to rely on, this is where risk for suicide, risk for depression, risk for, you know, isolation can really increase exponentially. And so I think having somebody in your corner before you even start, you know, the more scary process of, you know, confronting those people that you don't really know how they're going to respond, I think is very, very important. Otherwise you leave yourself at high risk. As far as how to go about it, I think Margie had some good ideas. Whether it's, you know, groups like these, there's a lot of positive support groups online that deal with faith transitions. Maybe if you happen to know somebody in your own personal life who's been through a similar journey, and if you don't, that's what professionals are there for as well. Coaches and therapists are people that. And especially finding somebody who is trained specifically to understand faith transition sometimes. My experience working with therapists is that you can have LDS therapists who can be uncomfortable with the faith transition process and kind of, you know, project their own fears or anxieties around it. You can also have non LDS therapists who can be kind of minimalizing, like, what's the big deal about this? You're just changing your beliefs. Why is this such a big deal? Who don't really who aren't culturally competent as to why this is a very big deal in Mormonism. So I think finding, I don't know that it matters so much that a person Is or isn't LDs, but that they're culturally competent to faith transition. So that's what we're experts in. That's, you know, Mormon Mental Health association is a place where we also have a referral list where I have personally vetted all of the therapists on there to make sure that these are kind of issues that they're competent and able to deal with effectively.

43:26 John Dehlin Love it. Fred writes for me, I was not able to find a safe space with people I know in real life, but using anonymous spaces such as the ex Mormon Reddit definitely helped me with that aspect of transitioning. And that's right, if you go to Reddit and you can create an anonymous account, you can go to Exmormon Reddit and It's got over 100,000 people in it now. And you can share a letter you're thinking about writing or your situation, your approach. And you can get hundreds and hundreds of responses, very thoughtful responses from people who can give you feedback and tell you their experiences. You can also join the we actually have a community associated with this podcast for those who contribute to the podcast. It's called the Mormon Faith Crisis Support Group. And we hope that you guys will, those of you who are able to support the podcast can join that and support each other. And Margie and I and Natasha will do our best to monitor that support group as well. There's also the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook community. It's got like 12 or 13,000 people in it that's on Facebook. And you know, there are a lot of different groups online. You can also go to mormonspectrum.org, the mormonspectrum map, mormonspectrum.org map and there's this huge globe and you can find pushpins all throughout the world. Even in Columbus, Ohio or Austin, Texas. You can join meetup groups or Facebook groups that are local and through Mormon spectrum. Find members of your community locally that you can use as real life mentors in addition to virtual mentors online. So lots of ways you can find mentors.

45:16 Margi Dehlin Good, great.

45:18 John Dehlin All right, so that's Margie's first point. I like it. All right, so before we jump into how to tell, I want to start with the question of if to tell. And there are several people who shared their experiences of not telling some of them or partially telling some of them turned out well, and some didn't turn out so well. So we'll read through a few. Is that all right? Okay. So Tory writes, I messed it up so bad I had doubts, was a non literal believer for years and kept that under wraps. When I decided to leave, it was on the heels of a broken engagement. And when I was having other mental health issues, I decided that it would be easier to let people think my experience had broken me rather than admit the true reason. Then I didn't tell people and my mother came to leave me a birthday surprise in my apartment using my spare key only to find my coffee maker and beer in my fridge.

46:27 Natasha Helfer Oops.

46:28 John Dehlin I hurt a lot of people without meaning to, however. And then she spins it in a positive way. My relationships have been mostly quite resilient. My best friend to this day is someone who was quite her when I left. A former mission companion, I had helped dress her mother's body for burial in the midst of my decision to leave the LDS church, and she had a very hard time wrapping her head around it at first. More than anything, the process forced me to improve as a communicator. My communication style prior to leaving the church was truly dysfunctional and sound like her communication style was non communicating. I was frequently passive aggressive and went along to get along. Since leaving, I've had to learn to set boundaries and advocate for myself, my needs and my health. It isn't always easy, but I firmly believe I am better off for it.

47:21 Margi Dehlin Aren't we all? Tori?

47:22 John Dehlin So Tori shares what went wrong. Natasha, what's your reaction to Tori?

47:28 Natasha Helfer I think that this is a very normal way to go about it. I think we, you know, I often talk to people about how we are pain avoiders. That's a very common theme. None of us want to really experience pain and we actually have wiring and nerves that will force our hand away from a fire. Right. Because it's painful. So yeah, so it's very easy actually to get into passive aggressive communication patterns or avoidant communication patterns. And I think there's some cultural things as well. I think as United States Mormons anyway, we tend to be Anglo Saxon and we're not Latin and we're not African and we tend to focus. We tend to have these kinds of issues of communication even outside of Mormonism. So I think this is very normal. I'm so glad that she spoke about the resiliency of relationships and that's why I think it's important to not necessarily focus on whether I did this good or bad. A lot of times we Think we did something good or bad due to the response we get. And it's more about just seeing it more as an ongoing process.

48:39 John Dehlin I love it.

48:40 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

48:41 John Dehlin Margie, your awesome brother Tim is commenting. And Tim was actually a leader in this regard. Tim was the youngest of your siblings. Margie has five siblings. She's one of six and Tim's the youngest. Did Tim. I guess Tim and Chris were two of the first to leave in your family, right?

49:00 Margi Dehlin They were the pioneers.

49:01 John Dehlin Yeah. Tim, shout out to Tim. We love you. You want to read Tim's comment?

49:05 Margi Dehlin Sure. Tim writes, I did not have a hard time with siblings. Closest thing to actual mentors I had, by Margie's point. I had a hard time with parents because I was young and they were the ones with true investment in my faith in the way things should be for. For me. It wasn't very traumatic for me, but I did go through a few months of punishment for refusing to be a churchgoer. Fortunately, I'm stubborn on certain things, so people got to see what I believed in, changed what and who I wanted to be. Did not.

49:36 John Dehlin And Tim's still that awesome kid. Like adult, young man, old man, whatever you are, Tim, you're still awesome old man. And yeah, thanks for sharing, Tim. Isn't it nice to have your brother joining us?

49:49 Natasha Helfer Yes, absolutely.

49:50 John Dehlin Love you, Tim. Thanks for your leadership. You've been a classy. You've handled your faith crisis really classy. And I've never sensed you belittling people or mistreating people. You've been a classy guy. So good job, Tim. Tim writes. I also like what Natasha said about having a mentor. I have not had that support. It has exponentially added to my depression, thoughts of suicide. Tim, we are so sorry to hear that. Tim, please find support. Even if you have to find a coach, a therapist, you know, we're here for you, community. Do not go through this alone. Tim, thanks for being vulnerable.

50:31 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

50:32 John Dehlin Okay, so a couple others. Miles. Miles is an awesome friend. Miles, this point goes to. So Tori's point is the risks of hiding. If you hide, you might get discovered. And that's the point.

50:50 Natasha Helfer That.

50:50 John Dehlin That's the reason why I brought Tori's on, is you can avoid it. You can think you're hiding. And sometimes the risks of hiding and avoiding is you get found out, whether it's you're not wearing your garments or you didn't pay your tithing or you. You get caught with some beer or whatever it is you do and people feel betrayed. And, you know, in the one sense, it's none of their business and you, you have a right to privacy. On the other hand, if it's people that you have an understanding that you guys really love each other and care about each other and are honest and open with each other, they can feel betrayed. So you have to decide if not telling and or hiding is worth the potential risks to that relationship, at least in the short to medium term. That's why I brought that up. Yep. And to some degree it's kind of like like you said, Natasha, a little pain now or a lot of pain later. Sometimes we avoid disclosure thinking that we're avoiding pain, but we actually choose a lot of pain later over a little pain or moderate pain before. There's also the lost time and we'll discuss this later. The lost opportunity Sometimes really unexpected good things come out. We just had one of our listeners, Lindy, who helped us organize our AURUM workshop last weekend. Hey Lindy. She wrote. She wrote, we told all our families. I think she means after our workshop, she wrote emails or letters to all her family and her husband did as well. And then she wrote, my sister even told me she was gay. And so basically she's saying she had other family members who were also struggling or doubting come out as a result of her coming out. And that's just to speak to the unforeseen blessings or opportunities that coming out can afford. So while everyone needs to decide for themselves if non disclosing or hiding is the best thing, you know, we want to make sure you understand what the trade offs are for them.

53:09 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

53:11 John Dehlin The next point we're talking about non disclosing is, you know, the importance of not outing other people and or the risks of being outed. So Miles writes, and this is Miles Germer. He's awesome. He's a friend of ours. Myles and Amy attended a mixed faith marriage retreat. Miles writes, my buddy Jeremy Young. And Jeremy's been on Mormon Stories podcast. He and his wife Molly now call themselves the Mormon Wine Snobs. But Miles writes, my buddy Jeremy thought I had already come out to my extended family and tagged me in a photo at a 2016 Mormon faith crisis workshop with John Dehlin in Phoenix, Arizona. That night my mother left the most heartbreaking message on my phone. I can only hope she was on medication because she was crying and sobbing like a person who had lost a child. Luckily, I already had my quote letter written, so I emailed it out to the family that same night. This is probably not the best example of how to come out to your family. But overall, my relationship with my parents and siblings is pretty great. So it turned out okay for Miles. But he's saying maybe he wished he could have come out in a different way. He ends up, he writes, most of them didn't want to know any details about my concerns. We'll talk about that dynamic later. Those that did ask questions were not swayed by my concerns, which is fine. I do worry about them just like they worry about me. Smiley face. One good part of coming out is that another family member confirmed to me that they were already out too. Just under the radar.

54:47 Margi Dehlin Yeah, that's common.

54:48 John Dehlin So again, that's common. The unexpected benefits of coming out.

54:53 Margi Dehlin Yeah. And something kind of that is striking me about both of those two kind of sharings is this idea of being conscious and aware of what we're choosing and, you know, this sense of empowerment and control. Right. That can come in a time where many things can feel out of control, that there can be something empowering and I don't know about really going about it in a deliberate way. Right. As opposed to having things happen to you. Right. And then reacting in the moment. And that's. That is a piece that I think is worth considering in the conversation.

55:33 John Dehlin Anything you want to add, Natasha?

55:35 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I'm just thinking through a lot of these dynamics. I mean, sometimes, you know, information is not yours to control. If people know things, they may share things without your permission or without realizing that they didn't have permission. So that's a dynamic that can happen. And to your point, Margie, you know, how much. How much do you want to be forward versus not? And one thing that I know we're going to talk more about kind of further down the line today is the level of intimacy in these relationships to begin with. You know, so I think a lot matters. Like even the betrayal piece that John, you were talking about matters depending on the level of intimacy you're sharing. So if it's a spouse, that's a very different type of intimacy than maybe a friend or an acquaintance in your ward. Right. As far as how much information you want to be sharing or how much information might be felt betrayed by if it's not disclosed. So it's tricky. There's so many different factors.

56:44 Margi Dehlin I think that if there is kind of a huge one, huge part of what we're sharing today, that would. That would be it. This idea of really being aware of what level relationship we're talking about in these scenarios and then adjusting the vulnerability and the disclosure accordingly.

57:02 John Dehlin And we're going to Talk about that's in our outline. Yeah, we're going to come to that, but it's always good to talk about it. Okay, the next point is the risk of telling the world via social media, but not telling your director, immediate family members. So this is Melanie. She writes, we wrote a letter so they could process it in their own time and way. And I wrote several blog posts with more in depth reasoning. I feel it went well because we didn't get guilt tripped and I didn't need to argue and people could choose to read my reasoning or not. The only thing I didn't really like about it is that both of our families are conflict avoidant. So now we never really talk about it. And you also have people who will share things on the Internet, but not with their family members. And I think sometimes that can leave family members feeling betrayed. It's like, why are you telling the world but not us? And so again, it's just this tricky concern about it going poorly. So you avoid the conflict, but then you come out and sometimes it just, it's everything but healthy, direct communication.

58:15 Natasha Helfer Well, and I think Mormonism too, we have certain markers and whether we like to think about our culture this way or not, we're somewhat kind of taught from a pretty early age that we kind of micromanage each other. You know, just kind of like the classic idea of seeing whether or not somebody's wearing garments has a lot of meaning as to whether or not they're in the tribe or out of the tribe. So when it comes to social media, I've had several clients, people talk to me about how even just forwarding a political piece, you know, or a social justice piece on their page created this kind of angst. And there may be more orthodox or conservative family members or friends that they saw that as a threat to, you know, the overall faith journey of this person. So people may be outing themselves in ways that they don't even realize they are. Like, I just shared, you know, a piece on how I support, I don't know, Obamacare. Right. Or something like that. And all of a sudden people are, you know, questioning whether or not I'm having a faith transition. So we, we do live in kind of a hyper vigilant, micromanaging culture.

59:35 John Dehlin Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, I noticed that after my excommunication, the number of likes on my Facebook wall declined significantly because once I was, you know, othered by the church, people were scared to like, friend me or like any post or comment that got made. Even sometimes in Some of these podcast live streams, people will like or comment on the podcast and other family members will find out. And sometimes people do that out of courage and a desire to just be authentic, which is fine, but people should kind of measure their risk. And if they, if they don't want people to find out, if they don't want to be outed, you know, be careful what you like on Facebook, be careful who you friend, be careful where you comment. So we also had two very interesting approaches to not telling. I kind of just was operating under the assumption that you should basically always come out right, you should always disclose that in the end. That's always kind of the right answer. But we had two listeners who said they consciously chose not to tell family members. So I'm going to read each one. So Jeff Gardner shout out to Jeff. He and Chelsea are dear friends. Jeff wrote, I don't pretend to have answers here, and it obviously depends greatly on individual circumstances, but I've rarely seen a great announcement or letter or meeting or whatever go well. I think it emphasizes differences, which was the last thing I wanted to do. Parentheses. The church's tendency to build walls is a major reason I think it's so unhealthy. Close parentheses. So says Jeff. We didn't say anything. We decided we'd answer questions if they asked to the extent we felt comfortable, like we would with any other deeply private matter. We're going on four years and I think it's gone well. I think my wife would appreciate it if it were more of a comfortable conversation topic, but I just don't think that's possible for them. And I certainly don't think a big letter would have enabled that at all. Also, I just don't think it's charitable to open up world rocking conversations like this to those who haven't asked for it. Some people are ready to rethink their religion in their 70s, but these aren't those people. They're happy, they're content. Why shake that up? What do you say to Jeff?

1:02:08 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I think, you know many paths, there are many ways. And I do like some things about this common. I like that they're consistent considering the source, who they're talking to, their stage of life, the intimacy that they share. And so it kind of goes back a little bit to me with regard to Natasha's comment and this idea of right level of relationship and intimacy. But I love the intentionality of it and it sounds like they're feeling good in that scenario and that matters.

1:02:42 John Dehlin Absolutely. Natasha, anything you want to add To Jeff.

1:02:47 Natasha Helfer No, I think these are points that, you know, I would have thought, you know, you think about developmental stages of people's lives, you think about relationships, even spousal relationships. There's, there's very different quality of spousal relationships. There's some that are highly toxic, chronically, kind of disturbing marital relationships where you may not want to disclose right away until you figure out relational issues at a different level. So it is, I think looking at your family culture, where people are at in their age and their own development and their own differentiation skills is all part of the equation of whether or not you want to introduce this type of intimacy with them.

1:03:33 John Dehlin Fred writes, such a good point about only sharing world show, shaking things with those who actually want it. Many times I preamble my responses with, I have no desire to hurt your faith, so let me know how much you want to know and we'll talk about how much to disclose later. But thanks, Fred. Matt writes, I've been out of the church for about 20 years and if I try to say anything about why I left the church, they immediately go into telling me their testimony and won't hear me or discuss. And that's addressing the point we're gonna make soon, which is who to talk about and what to disclose, who to talk about it with and how to disclose. There's one more. Cheryl Adams Robison writes, I came out to a few close friends early on, but after that experience I decided that I wouldn't make any grand announcement to my two sisters who are the only remaining of my immediate family besides my children. They're both active believing Mormons. Just think I've gone inactive. I know that it would be painful to them if I told them because that's how they believe and they would be concerned about my salvation. It's not worth it. In my humble opinion, they each have their own journey and may or may not learn about the church if they choose to. If that happens and they need some help with their process, I'll be there because I'm their sister. Nobody can keep me from loving them, not even them, and especially not some controlling belief system in a religion. Another, more wisdom from Cheryl on not not disclosing.

1:05:03 Natasha Helfer Yep, yeah, I love that. And I'll just share a personal experience. So, you know, I. I'm kind of a slow burn faith transitioner. Right. So I've been having little things all along the way that have kind of helped me think differently about my faith. And along the way, of course, then certain family members of mine have had the Opportunity, let's say, to listen to my complaints and my ideas. And one of these people is my mother in law who is very active, very believing, very devout to her faith. And I remember a few years ago, you know, when I was kind of probably going through one of my disgruntled moments of sharing something with her that I was upset about, she just kind of very quietly and you know, in a boundaried way said to me, natasha, I need you to understand that this church and my involvement in it makes me happy. It's like. And she just kind of kept it at that. Like it's, it's centered around her happiness. And it was kind of a profound moment for me. And I kind of looked at her and I kind of got it. I kind of got it that maybe I'm having a different experience. My disgruntlement and my issues and all of that are valid, but so is her experience. And I needed to back off because I was causing discomfort and kind of ongoing angst in our relationship as I was continually pressuring these kinds of things. So just like I don't appreciate being given lectures or enzyme talks or things like that. Sure. People don't appreciate my constant, you know, also bringing up issues on the way that I see things. So that was, I think, really good and it helped me kind of create this type. What I think these people with Jeff and Cheryl are talking about is that with certain people I'm just going to let it be. It's not a conversation that's worth having. It's not a conversation that enhances our relationship. Intimacy is not forthcoming and in fact, it hurts our relationship.

1:07:12 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I love that too. There's another part to that that I really love, and that is as we talk about boundaries later is, you know, as we learn boundaries, we're not really great at it, but as we kind of learn to do that, it's also really important that we can identify being given a boundary and accepting a boundary graciously and with warmth. In the same way that we kind of also give a boundary. And that's something that I see that you did there, that when you're given a boundary that you can say, I'm so glad you shared that with me. That means a lot to me and I respect that.

1:07:52 John Dehlin And we've got a section on boundaries later too, so we'll definitely go into boundaries. That's crucial. Yeah, very good. All right. So a huge thanks to Jeff and Cheryl for sharing.

Episode 13

0:19 John Dehlin Okay, so if we've forwarded the option of not telling, that kind of begs the question, why ever tell? So, Natasha, what would be some reasons why you would even be willing to explore with your clients the possibility of telling? What would be some reasons to tell?

0:44 Natasha Helfer Well, there's lots of reasons, I think, right off the bat, I think, about showing up. I mean, most of us want to be able to show up. And, you know, the kind of the tag word we use a lot is authenticity, and that's a very popular word, you know, in faith transition circles. I want to feel authentic. I want to be authentic. I think most of us who grew up in a Mormon context have values that really prioritize things such as honesty and integrity. And so we carry those with us even into our faith transitions. And so feeling like we can't be who we are or talk about what we think is important or express ourselves or share our beliefs, then has consequences too. So one of those consequences, and this is something that I want, if there's believing people who are listening to us, that I want them to understand, is that consequences of shutting down those conversations is that you are just naturally limiting the level of intimacy you will be able to have with any person that you're uncomfortable having any conversation with. Now, granted, sometimes there's good reasons, like we talked about, to have those boundaries, and it's okay to not have a level 10 intimacy level with everybody, right? So some people you might have a level five intimacy with or level six intimacy with or level eight or nine. So that's perfectly fine. But you will be limiting the level of intimacy and vulnerability that somebody can share with you. The other thing, too, is that I think that there are real issues for mental health. Again, so the less likely we can show up, the more increase there is in anxiety, possibly depression, feeling isolated, relational health issues such as marriages and parenting. All of those things cause, of course, sadness and distress, which we can be resilient about, and we can find other ways to manage. And at the same time, it's important to recognize that if we don't fix those things right in the relationships that matter most to us, those will have some negative consequences as well. So that's just off the top of my head, but we could probably dissect into a lot of those.

3:12 John Dehlin Yeah, so true. That last one you mentioned about mental health, it's a really big one. And honestly, when we talk about sharing the term coming out not just with faith crisis situations, but also with the LGBT community, I think there are fair parallels in the sense that anytime you're living in the closet, anytime you're living in a box, you're hiding who you are. There's shame in that. Shame is not good. You're hiding. You're often. It takes a lot of mental energy and emotional energy to hide things. You're always in fear of being discovered. Living in fear is not healthy. Oftentimes you're lying. And lying, I just would argue, is bad for your mental health. And all this stuff causes anxiety and ultimately depression because you're not being who you are. And just like authenticity is often compared to stepping out into the sunlight, not coming out is kind of like staying in a dark closet for a long period of time. And we just know we need sunlight, the vitamin D from sunlight and. And air and oxygen. And without light and oxygen, things die. And that's true for plants, and I think that's true for humans. And so at the end of the day, I think it's just unhealthy. Now, there are lots of different ways to come out, and there are right and wrong ways are healthy and less healthy and different levels of coming out.

4:51 Guest Not a full disclosure or.

4:53 John Dehlin But I rarely recommend with something as important as religion, just not just kind of living in the closet forever. I think it can lead to depression, anxiety, autoimmune diseases. Serious diseases, I think can come from living too long in fear and in the closet and with shame.

5:17 Guest I so agree.

5:18 John Dehlin I think it wreaks havoc on your physical and mental health.

5:22 Guest Yeah. And I think particularly ISO. I so see that, and I see that in your story as being part of that perfect storm that made you come to me and kind of share that evening as well. But another thing that comes to mind, particularly, I guess this would be most in marriages, but also it's this idea of growth, mindset. Right. That there comes a time when in the hiding and the kind of process of keeping it in the dark, if you will, that you're kept stagnant. You're kept kind of in this place where you cannot move forward. And so I also like this idea of, you know, philosophically or ethically feeling like I'm born here, I'm born to grow. I'm made to sort of move forward. And I want that, and I want that for myself, but I also want to try for that in my relationship with my partner. And this is one way that you can. It's an opportunity for that.

6:29 John Dehlin I love that quote. If a man or a woman arrives at 50 with the same point of view they have when they were 20, they basically wasted 30 years.

6:39 Natasha Helfer Well, and I think what we're saying too, just to be clear, is that even when we're saying it may not be helpful to disclose to certain people or at certain times of your life to certain people, I think what we're definitely saying is that it's important to disclose to somebody, you know. And again, even if that's just a mental health professional, that's where you start, like where we started to begin with. It is important to be your honest, authentic self in some space that you're creating in your life. So to be completely in the dark, completely in the closet, so to speak, is. We have research to support that that will only elicit mental health and physical health concerns, like John just mentioned.

7:23 John Dehlin We got a great comment from Wendy that goes to, I think, the point of authenticity and family. She writes, could you speak to this phenomenon about why we feel so responsible for how family members will feel about our transition and the exaggerated attempt to. To control how everyone in the family will respond to our personal choices? Isn't part of our personal development about having the difficult and vulnerable conversations so we can live a more authentic life? Isn't life asking us to grow up in our diplomacy skills and our relational skills? And I would even add in our differentiation skills?

8:07 Guest For sure.

8:08 John Dehlin I think Wendy brings a good point. What do you say to Wendy, Natasha?

8:12 Natasha Helfer I say this is Mormonism 101. This is what we've been taught to do, is to caretake and to pretend that we're all fragile creatures.

8:22 John Dehlin Enmesh, enmesh, enmesh, enmesh, and to outsource

8:26 Guest our worthiness and okayness. It's like we ask people, people tell us all the time, I'm okay.

8:31 John Dehlin Are you okay? Am I okay? Am I okay?

8:32 Guest Right. We have hierarchy that kind of fills in. So. And it's deeply tribal. Right. Wired this way.

8:38 Natasha Helfer And I just, I want. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Margie.

8:41 Guest I love that last point of kind of the growth piece. And, you know, it may not feel comfortable in that moving forward to develop authenticity and differentiation. And yet it is what the opportunity at hand. So, yeah.

8:59 Natasha Helfer And I just, I like to tease our own culture. Right. So, I mean, I'm just kind of making. When you're part of a culture, you can tease it. Right. I think that we do tend to focus a lot on protection of others that also is high on our values, being kind, being generous, being caretakers. Mormon women in particular get a lot of messaging around this concept of taking care of other people's feelings. At the expense oftentimes of our own. And why oftentimes in Mormon culture, we see some boundary issues and mental health implications that go along with that. So I oftentimes try to say it's not like we're a culture that has it out for everybody and says we must be enmeshed. I mean, these things come from, I think, well intentioned spaces. We do want to be caring people, but one of the consequences to that is that we don't do as well with differentiation skills. We tend to be what I call protection focused instead of intimacy focused. And even though protecting somebody may feel like a good intent and you want to be protective of others, what you're really doing in a protective stance is making decisions for another person instead of allowing them the empowerment to, like she's saying, like Wendy's saying, to differentiate themselves, to empower themselves and to manage their own feelings about how you are now showing up in their life. So I tease in good, you know, in good fun. At the same time, it's very understandable why these things happen.

10:35 Guest That's good.

10:35 John Dehlin Natasha, what I hear you saying is you can, with a motive of protecting, you can limit their growth or just offend them or hurt them or deprive them of any sort of opportunity, right?

10:53 Natasha Helfer Yes. And I think too, to Wendy's point of why are we uncomfortable in the sense of when somebody else is hurting, that elicits discomfort in us. First of all, I'm glad that's happening because otherwise you're antisocial and you've got other issues going on. You've got a personality disorder. There's nothing necessarily wrong in feeling discomfort at somebody else's pain, especially when what you just said or what you just shared elicits that pain. So we need to understand that that's a normal response. How do we tolerate it? That's what differentiation skills are about. How do we learn how to tolerate that discomfort? Sit with it instead of run away from it. A lot of people just in that moment cut off communication because they don't want to sit with that pain.

11:41 Guest Yes.

11:42 John Dehlin And that limits our growth.

11:43 Guest Yes.

11:47 John Dehlin I'm going to read a comment from Kristin Gluth Cranny. We love Kristen's comments along with her sister. She writes, I know the situation is so different for different people, but one thing I've discovered recently with coming out to friends is that being open and honest can be very healing. I decided that giving voice to my journey is important. If a true believing friend sincerely wants to know what is going on and personally asks me. I tell them that I am reserved to share my story with them and other believing members because I don't want to offend them. But if they truly want to hear my story and journey as an honest seeker of truth, and they don't mind hearing hard things, I will share. Both of my friends I've shared with appreciated me asking permission to share things that are hard for them to hear. At the end of the conversation, I say that I know this was hard for them to hear and sincerely thank them for their love and concern for me. Their response usually is, well, I asked for it and grateful that I was honest. My journey has been a painful one, so I decided it deserves my voice and honesty. This is my part in trying to create change for good in the church. I don't want friends or others thinking I left the church because I was offended or I just got too busy. That doesn't reflect me at all. So for me, speaking my truth and not making excuses has been good when done in a respectful way with those I feel are friends who are genuinely wanting to know. That's a great framework. Shout out to Kristen, you're awesome.

13:19 Guest Kristin, I like the question. Yeah, it's a nice. A nice addition.

13:24 John Dehlin Yeah. So that's a beautiful summary. How about this? Natasha and Margit, I'm gonna read a comment someone posted and then. And we've kind of addressed this, but I just want to tackle it head on. Eileen writes Eileen Meierman One Sunday, after attending all the tedious meetings and listening to repetitive testimonies, I sat down in front of my husband at the kitchen table, looked him in the eye and said, I can't do this anymore. I was terrified of what he would say. He looked up at me and said, neither can I. I had my husband's support. He had wanted to do this for a long time, but wasn't sure how I would respond. Our children were married or going to school, and it paved the way for us by leaving the church a few years ago. I'm grateful that our family is on the same page now regarding the truth claims of the church. We are all very fortunate in that regard. So it's this idea, and this goes to what Kristin was saying, but also, Natasha, what you were saying, what if a motive to come out is people deserve to know the truth or at least to know other perspectives around the church and truth and some may even be secretly where you are. And so one of the reasons to come out, number one, is to educate other people so that they can see the world through at least a different perspective, if not potentially a more accurate one. I know that's going to be controversial, but also for those coming out as an act of altruism, for those who are privately or secretly struggling, it lets other people know they're not alone. It lets other people know you're an ally. And the more that people come out, the more it builds a genuine awareness or a general awareness in the church culture that smart, honest, good people are questioning and leaving so that so many people aren't stuck. Silence. And in the closet out of fear, there's kind of this strength in numbers idea. And so what do you guys think about the idea? Margie, I'll ask you first. Coming out as an act of altruism or courage or support for others who either want to know or are hiding in secret out of fear.

15:54 Guest Well, I think this is an example of I can, you know, where it can work. It can work. So I feel for that, and I think I understand the gist of what you're saying, and there is great potential there. But I would fall back to the elephant kind of idea that coming out and giving information or, you know, trying to kind of build this kind of meta reality can also backfire. I would go through. I would go by again, level of relationship and emotional connection, because emotions are kind of where we live and where we're changed as opposed to kind of facts. So that is always. It is always effectiveness to me, is always going to fall back to kind of the quality and nature of the emotional intimacy in that relationship. That's just me, though. Natasha, what would you say?

16:51 Natasha Helfer Well, as you're talking, John, it reminds me again of some parallels with the LGBTQ community in that, you know, I think that there were a lot of discussions amongst those folks, you know, 20, 30 years ago, where they started saying, you know, if we continue to live in the closet, less people know we're there, less people, we continue to stay marginalized. So there was kind of this call to come out and to be authentic and to be forthcoming. And many LGBTQ individuals have done that, have been part of kind of that movement of pride and empowerment. And as they have done that, and those of us who are straight or cisgender get to know more people like that, then walls do start coming down, and there's more understanding and potential for bridging divides. So I think that that's a good call. I just want to give a big and to this is that you need to make sure that your first of all, if you're in a closet so to speak. It is not necessarily your responsibility to manage this type of social change. You can be part of social change, and if that's empowering to you and if that's helpful to you, great. But I just want to be careful because, again, if it doesn't go well, if you're not in a good space yourself, if you're vulnerable, putting that level of responsibility on yourself can actually be more harmful than helpful. So for some, I think that's an empowering way to face the world and say, you know what? I'm gonna come out. I'm gonna share things with people. The more people that come out, the more the society gets to know. There's a lot of us out here. We're not as isolated. We're kind of forcing. And we are seeing that in, I think, Mormon circles, that more and more people do know somebody who has left or who has gone through a faith transition or who is in the ward, but kind of has a nuanced, you know, position. And more people are having to deal with, come to grips with those realities, and yet always, always, always prioritize self care first. So if you're not in a position where you can do that or that leaves you more vulnerable, choose yourself first,

19:10 John Dehlin and then I would say relationship second. The relationships come before activism, for sure. I mean, not everyone's gonna feel that way. Some people are gonna feel called to be an activist, and even if it destroys all the relationships of those close to them, and we can't sit in judgment of that. But I just want to say, in my experience, you want to choose family and love and relationships over trying to save the world.

19:36 Guest That's just my opinion and relationship to self. I love that you put that in there. Natasha. It's not other people centered either. It actually starts with you and your awareness of yourself and where you are, for sure.

19:50 John Dehlin Margie, your brother Tim writes, I'm hesitant to say that you should be a banner for other people in such a personal matter. And that's fair, Tim. And I hope people don't feel like I'm saying that's what everyone should do. I'm bringing up the point because sometimes when you come out, it really does help other people. Either find someone who can help them when they're struggling alone, even with suicidal thoughts. The act of coming out can be a bomb for people. Help them know that they're not alone, and it can help educate. I remember the Harvey Milk movie. If any of you saw Milk. And they're trying in the 70s, trying to spread awareness and support about the LGBT dilemma. And there's this point where Harvey Milk picks up the phone to all his closeted gay volunteers and activists and says, come out to your family and friends, because when one of them knows one of us, they vote for us 2 to 1. In other words, if the LGBT people were ever going to get legislation passed to support the rights of LGBT people, they first needed to come out. And we all know it's happened to me and Margie. When Margie's cousin Scott came out to us as gay, you know, things were never the same for us. We had sympathies before, but when it was Scott, when it was personal, it was totally different. And so it can have that effect. So we're not saying everyone should do it recklessly. We're not saying everyone should trigger the backfire effect by shoving in everyone's faces. You should be careful about if you do it, how you do it, where you do it, when you do it, with whom you do it. And we'll be covering all that more and more. But there is a trade off. There are some altruistic social benefits to coming out that help other people. And sometimes you can think you're helping people, but really you're just being selfish and you're alienating relationships and pushing people through the backfire effect to become even more resilient in their beliefs. So it's tricky.

22:03 Guest It is tricky.

22:05 John Dehlin But we're glad Tim spoke up.

22:08 Natasha Helfer Just two thoughts I would give really quick. So the Family Acceptance Project, if people want to look that up, has a great pamphlet that talks about. It's geared towards LGBTQ support, but it has a great pamphlet actually geared towards LDS families. And in it it has what are considered rejecting behaviors and accept. So I would just point that out as a resource that can be definitely applicable to faith transitions. And it also shares a lot of the research that John mentioned earlier about how rejecting behaviors can lead to mental health concerns. The other thing that I think, you know, I just think about. So Oasis is a secular community that also deals with faith transitions of other faiths. And their big mantra is people are more important than beliefs. And I think, again, it's really important to remember that as believers and as transitioners, because both sides of the table, like Margie mentioned with the Elephant and the Rider, which we talked about in a previous episode, we can get very caught up in our beliefs and our truth and our wanting to advocate and in the process, harm relationships. I really love that very simple mantra, people.

23:22 John Dehlin That was Oasis, right? Oasis, Is that right?

23:25 Guest Yeah.

23:25 Natasha Helfer People are more important than beliefs.

23:27 John Dehlin Yeah, it's true.

23:28 Natasha Helfer Which both John and I have presented at Oasis locations. Yeah.

23:33 John Dehlin So Anne's challenging all three of us. Ann Jensen writes the keep sweet approach. And that's a reference to Warren Jeffs. He used to control the women in the FLDS church. He used to have the saying keep sweet. I think he even wrote keep sweet on his shoes. And when he put his shoes up on the table, he would send that message to the women. Keep sweet. Which means know your place, stay quiet, behave, don't speak out. So Anne writes, the keep sweet approach was giving my soul cavities. I am blunt and agitated and many do not like this about me, but also may come to me for support, knowing I have said what they wish they could. I cannot shut up about the church's wrongs. Margie, is Ann wrong.

24:26 Guest Natasha, is Ann wrong?

24:30 Natasha Helfer Well, what I would say is that Ann, does this approach work for you? And it sounds like in many ways it is. And so maybe Ann has the types of relationships that are resilient to her approach. Maybe Ann has the personality or mental health skills that help her kind of, you know, have this approach so great. That's why it isn't about wrong or right. It's about finding what works for you. And for some people, to be an agitator and to be an advocate and to be very upfront and kind of firm is very healthy. And for others, taking a more passive approach, but still in a kind of an integralist way within their own kind of quiet mind is also very healthy. So this isn't about certain approaches being better than others. It's about knowing ourselves well enough to know if how we're going about these shifts and these relationships are enhancing our life or detracting from our life.

25:32 Guest So well said. And that reminds me of how many times a values approach, why, you know, having people really sit down and consider what they value most in their relationships, let alone in their lives. There are so many values exercises that I think can be a great part of this, part of transitioning, where it allows you to feel like, you know, it's self honoring the decisions that you're making. It's actually you're being very present and honoring to the types of relationships you want moving forward.

26:08 Natasha Helfer And what I also want to say about Ann's approach that is a reality is that although she may be bothering or distancing certain people in her life, she's also accruing new relationships. And sometimes transitions in life are about that are about finding a new tribe or parts of a new tribe or finding new people that will. Because I don't think it's healthy either to be the only person in your group that thinks a certain way. We need a little bit of confirmation bias to be healthy in our lives. We don't necessarily want to be all involved in confirmation bias, but we need people who are going to kind of get it and understand us. So what she's basically saying is that as she speaks up, although she may distance certain people, she's also gaining new relationships in her life. And that can be really very rewarding.

27:00 John Dehlin Can be huge.

27:01 Guest It's huge.

27:02 John Dehlin One of the biggest gifts of a faith crisis can be a new set of authentic friendships or even family relationships that you never would have had if you hadn't have gone through the faith crisis. How many of us know that sibling, the scenario of that sibling, or that uncle that was always kind of distant from all the family? It was kind of cut off because they fell away or made bad choices. And really what happened is they kind of got isolated and marginalized and cut off. And for all that time, we're living their truth, but also living alone, and we're sad to have been cut off. And as soon as they find out that someone in their family has had a faith crisis, you make a new friend of a sibling or an aunt or an uncle or a cousin that were lost. Now they can become some of the dearest, closest relationships you ever have, even sometimes more unconditionally loving and deeper and supportive than any current relationship you have. And so those are the hidden jewels in the gift of the faith crisis. All right, well, the next point we want to cover, and this. We're not going to try and cover all this today, by the way. We're going to cover a point or two more, and then we'll do two hours today, and then we'll come back next week and do more. Is that okay, Natasha?

28:34 Natasha Helfer Yes, that would be great. Because when you said, oh, we're going to be at it for three to four hours, I'm like, oh, really?

28:43 Guest Talk about communication.

28:46 Natasha Helfer I do have children that come home in an hour.

28:48 John Dehlin So, yeah, we got to get lunch. But also I meant for the entire conversation, not just for today. So I think this. I think it'll take us three or four hours to cover everything we have today, but just, we won't do it today. Is that okay?

29:06 Guest Yes.

29:06 John Dehlin Okay, so the next topic that you guys have already touched upon, you know, we've talked about if to tell. You know, we've talked about if not to tell. We've talked about why tell or why not to tell. Now we're going to talk about who to tell and who not to tell and maybe the priority of when to tell who. So my initial question and my thoughts was number one, what are the factors to consider on whether or not to tell someone and more specifically who to tell. So you're thinking about do I tell my parents, do I tell my spouse, do I tell my kids? You know, those are generally, you know, let's just say it's spouse or partner, children, siblings and parents. Can we safely say that for on average that's kind of the inner ring now they're always going to be stepparents or adopted parents or just people, loved ones, grandparents who raised you. There are always going to be non traditional families or foster scenarios or other scenarios where important people rise up who aren't immediate blood relatives. But what about this idea that generally speaking it's kind of spouse, children, siblings and parents who are our first obligation generally speaking, do you guys like that or not?

30:43 Guest I don't know. For me personally I think people may feel differently and this is something maybe to reflect on. For me personally, spouse is a little bit different than children but they're in the same kind of realm of circle. But they're clearly different because the nature of the relationship is different. And then parents and in laws would be on a different level for me as well.

31:07 John Dehlin A more distant level.

31:08 Guest Yeah, spouse and then children, that's just for me personally but I love the idea of asking the question. I think a lot of this should be a reflective exercise for the people who are in this situation of really thinking about, you know, disclosing now, knowing

31:24 John Dehlin that your sibling is listening, where do siblings fall? If you've got significant other, ring one. Children, ring two. And parents ring three. Where do siblings fall for you? Margie, what are you keeping from Tim is basically what I'm asking.

31:38 Guest I had a bit of a public disclosing but I would say, you know, siblings are not all created equal either. Right? You can be closer to some siblings.

31:49 John Dehlin You can, some siblings can be your dearest, most close to trustus advisor, sometimes even more than your spouse.

31:56 Guest So this is highly personal and these are great questions for people to kind of consider as they go about it. A great pause.

32:04 John Dehlin What do you say, Natasha?

32:06 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I would say the only one that I would have very strong feelings about is a spouse.

32:11 John Dehlin Talk about that.

32:13 Natasha Helfer Well, assuming that you're in a relationship where the understood contract is that you are my primary person you know, that you are my primary confidant, that you and I have a level of relationship that we really don't share with other people. Now I'm not, not all marriages are created like that and not all marriages have necessarily those, I guess, assumptions. But if, you know, I think for the, for the most part in Western romantic kind of ideas about being married, we have this sense that a spouse is kind of on a different level from any other relationship, even dear friends. And I think this is where there's the most potential for feelings of betrayal, feelings of how could you have kept something so intimate or so personal from me? Especially for those who choose not to share or disclose with a spouse, that's going to be at a very different level of emotional reactivity than I think even a dear friend, I think everybody else. I mean, maybe the second most feelings I have are with children, but again, adult children are very different than, you know, a three to five year old child. But I guess my feelings are that we want to have authentic relationships with our children and that all parents should have a right to that authenticity with their children. So I have very strong feelings about either a believing spouse keeping a faith transitioner from sharing things with their children, or a faith transitioner making demands on a believing spouse to not share certain things about their beliefs with their children. I think that's a very important thing to negotiate right in the forefront of a faith transition in a way that both parents can feel authentic. Because I think that's a whole other level of betrayal is when you have a child, and I have a lot of adult children in my office who talk about this, that they then came to find out many, many, many years later that their parents had gone through something of a faith transition and kept it from them, or that one parent had different beliefs or, you know, so there's a lot of potential for betrayal there as well. So for me, it's spouse, then children, then everything else is kind of up for grabs. Because I think that all of that really depends on the level of intimacy you have or want with different people in your life. So whether that's friends or siblings or parents.

34:42 John Dehlin What have you heard from children who were upset that their parents did not disclose? Just give us an example of two of how that can backfire on a parent.

34:54 Natasha Helfer Well, in particular, this shows up in the scenario where one of the parents stopped believing in an orthodox way, but kept on attending church to keep the family peace and, you know, never disclosed any of that to the child. So maybe had historical information about the church that was never disclosed to the child or who knows what, you know, different scenarios. And now that child in their 30s or 40s is going through, or even their 20s is going through their own kind of critical thinking process, maybe coming across information, disclosing that to a parent, and the parent saying, oh, yeah, I've known about that, or I felt that way too 10 years ago. And the kid being like, so you're saying I'm going through all this pain, all this angst, all this worry, all this not knowing me how to manage my own relationships, and you've kept this from me. That can feel very off putting to an adult child. So I don't think that that's helpful for a believing parent or a transitioning parent to have a child then really torqued off at both of them for having kept that type of dynamic secret.

36:06 John Dehlin Yeah. When it comes to missions, you know, kids can get hurt on missions. I had a roommate at BYU who was killed on his mission, you know, so mission is a pretty serious decision. It's two years of your life. Education is a serious decision. And going to BYU to study elementary education, because that's what good Mormon girls do versus pursuing a career because you decide that's what you want to do, can be a very serious thing for a woman, as an example, and then who you marry, how soon you get married, how many kids you have, all those decisions are so significant. I would never want one of my kids to make any of those decisions under false pretenses and with the false understanding of where I stood regarding the church, such that they would go, oh, well, dad believes. So I'm going on my mission. Dad believes I'm getting married in the temple. Dad believes I'm, you know, I'm going to go work for CES and then come back to me in their 30s and 40s and say, you mean you knew all this that whole time and you lied to us or hid it from us, and I now am not having the best marriage or chose a career I wouldn't have chosen, and I would never have done that if you had been honest with me. I don't mean to be all fear and gravity negativity based, but that's for me. I'm just echoing your feelings, Natasha and Margie, about the importance of disclosing the kids.

37:41 Natasha Helfer Yeah. And I just want to say that I think that there are wonderful ways to do mixed faith marriages where it doesn't have to be like, oh, the church isn't true, or the church is true, or there's definitely Ways that we, and we'll talk about that in many other episodes. So this isn't about, oh, one parent coming in and saying none of it is true. And therefore you now have to agree with me. There's mixed faith ways to do this very, very well and effectively. But again, we don't, I think believers need to understand, and faith transitioners probably already understand this, that a big part of faith transition anger directed at the church because they feel that the church was not forthcoming with information. So you don't want as a parent to fall into that same category where all of that anger is now being directed at you because you weren't forthcoming with information with your children. And there's ways to do that that are very effective. And again, even that protection, intimacy, when we want to protect, especially older teens and young adults, that starts becoming an inappropriate type of relationship with children. We want to start the process of having our children become colleagues and peers not under our kind of control, as you would like a six year old. Right. That needs to be more under control. So all things that I'm sure we'll talk about much more in depth when we talk about kids.

39:12 John Dehlin Totally. All right. Victoria writes. Great comment. Very true. Such good advice. Shout out to Victoria, our friend in the uk. We love you, Victoria. We're glad you joined us. And Margie, Tim's writing again. You want to read Tim's comment?

39:27 Guest Sure. So he says, I agree with Natasha. Don't you put Margie on the spot. Spouse is intrinsically deeper and more important. Trust is the foundation of a spousal relationship. Which is not to say it's not important in other relationships, but it's not the same. I don't think I find family more important. And personal experience is that if you start with friends or those you know, agree, you will be more centralized in anger or discontent or criticism. Your family, on the other hand, is about knowing you and the relationship.

40:01 John Dehlin Wow.

40:01 Guest Really, really wise.

40:02 John Dehlin That Tim kid is wise.

40:04 Guest He's super wise.

40:06 John Dehlin Are all Webers that wise? Wait, that's putting you on the spot? Okay, I take it back. I respectfully withdraw the question. Kylie writes. Let's see. Thoughts on a spouse being present for the hard conversation my husband needs to have with his parents or the in laws. Kylie, I'm going to hold off on answering that. We really want to answer that, but we're going to deal with that in another episode. But we want you guys to send your questions and we will include them. So thank you, Kylie, for asking. All right, so we've sort of Established that we owe our best to our significant other if we have one, and maybe children if we have them as a second tier. Let's just now go really broad regardless of who we talk to. Natasha, you shared early on in our retreats and you talked about this in the 1 to 10 scale of assessing. I like to use a 1 to 5 scale just because it's a little bit of a narrow range. But tell us about your idea of pairing safety and value with disclosure, depending on who we're talking to. Do you mind sharing that idea?

41:31 Natasha Helfer Sure, I'll try my best. And some of this is also probably mirrored in Brene Brown's work on Volt. I think sometimes when we think about vulnerability or disclosure, integrity, authenticity, those are all words we resonate with. And so we just want to tell the world. We want to shout from the rooftop. So we want to show up and then when we're surprised or, you know, feel very rejected when that doesn't go well. And so I really like to look at this process as a two way street. You know, you can only control how much you know you can do. You cannot control another person's response. And so you may be. And I do like to use a kind of a pretend measurement scale. So with one being, this isn't a person I'm very intimate with at all. Maybe we just barely know each other, say hello in the hallways at church, attend being, you know, of intimacy, being hopefully the ideal of what you'd want to be with a spouse. Although I think probably most of us are not at a 1 or a 10 with most anybody. We're somewhere in between. So if you're at, let's say a very close friend of yours where you feel like you have a level 7 intimacy with them and you start sharing some of these issues about faith transition and the walls start going up and they get very defensive and upset with you. You may have to grieve the fact that even though you're doing your best work, you're giving that person time and you're giving that person your best process, that relationship may shift from a 7 to a 3, let's say. And there is grief work in that process. And even if you do all the suggestions and all the right things, that may never change. So I want to be very clear in just expectations. It's not that, oh, if you follow Natasha and John Margie's advice, everything will go peachy keen because you have zero control over what's happening for that other person. And I think too that the measurement Scale is a good thing to assess just all of your current relationships, you know, so kind of go through and say, okay, well I think that I'm currently at a, at an 8 with my spouse or I think I'm currently at a five with my mother, or I think I'm currently at a nine with my sister, you know, so depending on how you would measure those relationships, that probably is a good way to think about how much I want to start disclosing how well I can project that it might go. Because it's probably going to have more statistical probability that it will go. Well, the closer, the more intimacy you have in that relationship to begin with. And not a guarantee, but you know, if, and then sometimes it's more about accepting, you know what, I'm at a 5 with my mom, I wish we were at a 7. It may not happen. So I'm going to keep my relationship and my conversations at a level five, which is kind of what happened with my mother in law. Like I was trying to have a seven with my mother in law when we're really more at a five and that's okay. And I had to accept that and that was her boundary with me and I had to just say, okay, I've got to accept that and enjoy the five I have and not worry about getting to the seven. So is that what you were looking for from me?

44:47 John Dehlin Yeah. That's really great. Just assess, assess the. You know, I like to look out on a couple of axes. What's the, what's the safety? So if somebody's gonna scream at you and abuse you verbally, you probably don't share with them a lot or if at all. Right. If they are the most unconditionally loving person that you know is gonna love you no matter what, you could tell them you're a mass murderer and they're gonna visit you in jail weekly for the rest of your life. There are those types of people, then you know you're safe to tell them everything because they just love you that unconditionally and they're safe. So there's sort of the safety to you and then there's also kind of the safety and value to them. I always use the extreme example of an a 95 year old dying grandmother who is a pioneer ancestry and the church means everything to her. She's got weeks to live. Do you need to sit down with her and explain to her polyandry and peep stones and Joseph's lying to Emma and you're leaving the church or do you Just kind of focus on helping her have the happiest final moment she can in her life. There are probably also people that just need or choose faith because it, let's say they're. I don't want to pathologize belief, but if somebody happens to be, let's say a recovering addict or struggling with mental illness or the church is kind of what keeps the wheels on their wagon, so to speak, you know, why not just let them enjoy the church? Because it's really useful and meaningful to them. Why bother doing anything that could disrupt them? And I think Jeff mentioned that point earlier. So I like considering safety to you, safety to them, and also the value of disclosure. Sometimes it's just it's going to be useful, other times it might just be damaging and then not useful. And of course there's always considerations like your job, inheritance, you know, family relationships. So just be mindful of all that.

47:08 Natasha Helfer I just want to add one thing that with safety I think is really important, especially when we said spouses are super important. But if there's some type of domestic violence, either physical or emotional, that is enough of a red flag to also come consider whether or not or how you're going to disclose. So don't just assume all marriages are meant to be disclosed upon because your own safety may be at risk.

47:34 Guest Right?

47:35 John Dehlin Absolutely. So those are some things to consider when disclosing, you know, we like to talk about. And Natasha, you are really good about talking about this. We one of the favorite words of doubting and post Mormons is authenticity, authenticity, authenticity. Got to be honest, got to be true, got to speak my truth. And what I always like to remind people is that we're not, you know, we don't just value one value. Yes, we value honesty and truth. But as my wife taught me early on in our marriage, as I tend to be very blunt and direct and candid. Margie said sometimes honesty without compassion is cruelty. And so we have other values in addition to honesty. We have the values of compassion and kindness and love and well being of other people and just the values of family relationships. So don't club people over the head with your values of honesty and authenticity at the expense of other values you cherish such as kindness, compassion and family and love and support for people's self determination.

48:52 Natasha Helfer Yeah, the language that I use around this is systemic authenticity. So I think sometimes when we think about authenticity we forget. We think that compromise is selling ourselves short. And so I think that compromise is part of any relationship and doesn't downplay our authenticity. And the silly example I give is that there's nothing authentic about me changing poopy diapers. I don't like the smell. It makes me have a little bit of a gag reflex. And yet I've changed thousands of poopy diapers my whole life. Why would I do something so inauthentic? And so, but the idea is systemically, I'm a mom or I'm an aunt or I'm a babysitter. And what is authentic is the care of that child. So I'm willing to do something distasteful or even something that I don't totally find pleasurable or helpful because I know it's helping the authentic relationship of my care to be my caretaking role in that particular situation. And this is why I think people can compromise on church attendance and even when they, you know, garments and whether or not to have a coffee maker in the home or things like that, it doesn't take away from your authenticity either as a believer or a non believer to compromise on those issues. It's more about I'm choosing the authenticity of our relationship.

50:13 John Dehlin Love it. Erin Gluth Spencer's joined us. She writes good points, John. Thank you, Erin. You're awesome. And Kristin Gluth Cranny, Erin's sister, is also joining us. Kristin, we'll have you know that before you joined us, we read a quote from you. So go back and listen if you want to hear yourself and your wisdom quoted. And Aaron, we've got quotes from you coming up in our next episode. So lots of goodness from the Gluth sisters. Kristin writes, I find some true believing friends are safe and loving. They truly want to know what you're going through. Then you tell them openly, honest, you tell them openly and honestly and, and everything is great. But then they never call you again. Oh, well, that's hard. Kristen.

51:06 Guest It's also true.

51:07 John Dehlin Yeah, it is true. And that's self determination. I just believe that it's hard to maintain Orthodox faith in 2019. You really have to build walls because there's so much information, so many social justice causes, so many people leaving that if you don't build walls really high around your faith, sometimes it won't survive. It's like these awful waves of truth and history and family members and LGBT stuff and feminism and social justice and racism pounding on Mormon testimonies in 2019. And so people know themselves they have the right to self determination and some are going to decide that they can't have that. This means the death of their relationship with You. We're going to talk about this at the end of the final episode in this series, on coming out or disclosing. But the best you can do is accept that, accept the right to determination, support them, and then go out and find amazing other friends and community and family to replace the casualties of the friendships you lost. But my heart goes out to you, Kristen, for that happening. And I'm guessing you're not the only one listening to this episode who's had that happen.

52:26 Natasha Helfer I would also complicate this by saying that I think it's a normal response to grief. So even when you think of somebody dying in your life or, you know, if you're going through a very hard time in your life, oftentimes people in your support network will actually distance themselves from you instead of come to your support network. And we see that in a variety of settings. And I think it's because people have that anxiety of not knowing how to help or not knowing what to say or not. And so then that angst kind of keeps them almost subconsciously distant from you. So sometimes it's not even, I think, a conscious decision.

53:01 Guest I can see that. And I also feel like this is one of those natural filtering things that happens amidst transitioning. And I actually view it now on the other side of that as a tremendous gift, because on the other side of that, what feels fills up in that space. And it's really important to note that for a time, for most people or for a lot of people, you feel like you're losing more relationships than having actually finding new, authentic ones. That it's normal to feel like you've got this vacuum of kind of relationships that have fallen away or been filtered out quite naturally. But it will come. It will come that you will build this and fill in that space with relationships where they're more authentic and honest than ever before. And they are the people who, when you lose a family member or you need, can. Can absolutely show up for you. That's what I found anyway. So a really natural filtering process. That's a tremendous gift for me in my life because now I feel like I'm tending to relationships that truly matter and will last.

54:22 John Dehlin Love it. Stacy writes, referring to safety of others, disclosure and considering the safety of others. Stacy writes, like my missionary sister who already suffers from anxiety, depression and fibromyalgia. So she's on a mission. She's depressed, anxious, and has fibromyalgia. I haven't told her because she already has way too much stress and pressure on her plate. That Sounds like a move for compassion, Stacy. And by the way, if a parent or a spouse or a sibling yells at you after for not disclosing and your intent wasn't to hide so that you could do things that would violate their trust, but instead you chose to not disclose out of a sincere concern for them, you can tell them. You can tell them why you didn't disclose. I was just concerned about your health. You were struggling with a lot. You had a lot on your plate, and I just didn't want to add to it. And if they're healthy and reasonable, compassionate people, they'll understand. Don't you think? Maybe. Yeah, that was a lot of maybe.

55:36 Natasha Helfer It might take a minute.

55:37 Guest Yeah, I think that that's the whole thing. We keep coming back to that. Right. Trying not to control reactions. People will have reactions that oftentimes may be hard for us to.

55:49 Natasha Helfer Yeah. And there. And that's why we focus on repair, repair attempts and ongoing process, because sometimes it takes a minute.

56:00 John Dehlin Kathy writes. Victoria writes. Yes. Margie Weber Delynn. So you've got a fan in Victoria. Kathy writes. Please address the pros and cons of disclosure now. Kathy, I'm guessing you joined us late because I think we really did cover a lot of that at the beginning. We talked about the benefits of disclosing include authenticity, increased emotional intimacy, honesty, integrity, a concern for others. Those are some of the things we mentioned. Some of the cons can be destroying relationships, harming relationships, eroding intimacy, risk of job loss, risk of being cut out of wills, also. Anything else? What am I not mentioning the consequences?

56:53 Guest And she just did say she just came in.

56:54 John Dehlin Okay. Yeah, go back and listen, Kathy, if we didn't include those, cover those topics adequately, email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com we'll cover them next week when we continue this episode. Kristin writes. Thank you. Y' all rock. I'm so thankful for these awesome podcasts and the opportunity to learn, grow, and contribute to the discussion. Kristen, you're awesome and your sister's awesome. And I want to meet you guys someday. And we want to meet you guys someday and thank you for the kind words. And also you remind us, Kristen, as we are kind of wrapping up this episode, we want to remind everybody, we want to thank you for your support and just say if you appreciate these podcasts, these videos, these resources, the website, the events, there's a few things you can do to support us. You can like our Facebook page. You can leave our Facebook page a positive review. Same with itunes. Positive review. Really helps. You can donate 10, 15, 20, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. These donations are what keeps this possible. You aren't just paying for yourself, you will be paying it forward to generations of people who will benefit from this content. So so please support us if you can. Please share Spread the Word Please share these episodes with friends and family that you think could benefit from this. We consciously try and keep the discourse at a level that would feel safe or comfortable, or at least as much as possible, believing family and friends. So we hope you'll share and spread the word and let people know about this. And then of course, we've got these events, these workshops coming up. We've already discussed them, but for those who are joining us late, we'll be in Vegas next week, February 22nd, 23rd. This week, Natasha's doing Mormon Matters Retreat with Dan Witherspoon March 1st through 3rd. We'll have some information up about that very soon on mormonfaithcrisis.com events. We're doing Ogden in March. We're doing a mixed faith marriage stuff in April, Oklahoma City in April. If someone volunteers to work with Natasha Gilbert. Arizona in May. We're doing a conference for people who are leaving the church who have left the church in Salt Lake City in June, Switzerland in June, Colorado in August, Kansas City in September. Southern California, September. Lots of events coming up. And then there's the Free Mormon Faith Crisis events in Salt Lake City one each month that I'm conducting. Margie's going to be coming to some of those. The next one's March 13th in holiday support these events. We won't do the events if people don't sign up. But if people do sign up, it's an amazing way to meet people nearby who need support, who can be your friends, who can be a support to you, and who can be all of you can build a community of support for each other. So thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Thanks to everyone who's joined us today. Thanks to everyone who's joined us live. Your comments have made all this much better. For those of you whose comments we weren't able to discuss today, like Aaron just asked, I'm wondering, in a marriage, if not disclosing true feelings could compromise trust, how important is it to keep spouses in the loop to go through the changes together? Aaron, I think we did talk about that earlier in today's episode. So for those of you who didn't hear the earlier part of this episode, please check it out. I think we'll cover a lot of your questions there and there are others as well. But we also want you to know, oh, Joe writes, what is it called where you can't convince someone with evidence when they came to their beliefs by emotion? We call that the elephant and the writer that comes from Jonathan Haidt. Joe, we've talked about that in prior episodes. Look up the book called the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is spelled H A I D T. And it's just this idea that we make decisions emotionally and then use reason or logic to justify through confirmation bias. And so as we've said before, you can't deconvert someone intellectually from a position that they arrived at emotionally. That's the rider and the elephant, Jonathan Haidt. And you'll hear it in past, present and future episodes on the gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. Thanks for asking that, Joe. Tammy says Margie's skin is amazing. Thank you, Tammy.

1:01:38 Guest Oh, thanks, Tammy.

1:01:42 Natasha Helfer That's due to a great vacation in the sun.

1:01:45 John Dehlin Yeah, vacation in Mexico doesn't hurt. And Victoria writes it's probably all the meditation she does. Yes, meditation is the cure to skin blemishes.

1:01:56 Guest It's the gift that keeps on giving.

1:01:59 Natasha Helfer Meditation.

1:02:00 John Dehlin Thanks for joining us everybody. Please spread the word. And we are going to come back next Tuesday with the conclusion to this topic of coming out or disclosing to believing family. So please join us for more episodes. Coming soon to Mormon Faith Crisis podcast near you.

1:02:21 Guest Yes, good to be with you all today.

1:02:23 John Dehlin Anything you want to say to close Margie?

1:02:26 Guest Just a great episode. Really, really happy people participated.

1:02:30 John Dehlin Natasha, final word? Natasha?

1:02:32 Natasha Helfer No, I agree. I love having everybody comment and it just really adds to the depth and just the meaning of these conversations that we're having. I'll also just say if anybody wants to steal me away from Oklahoma City or Kansas City, it's anywhere I can drive. So if anybody's in Omaha or the Dallas, Texas or north of that, reach out to me so I'll make those weekends happen.

1:02:56 John Dehlin Same with us. If cedar City or St. George or Logan or, you know, Idaho, anywhere you think 20 people or more might be able to gather, we would love to have you host a workshop. West Valley, South, Jordan, wherever. And we've got, did I mention Ogden and Davis county coming up? Yeah, March 8th and 9th. So anyway, please do reach out. We'd love to spread the love. And Aaron is arguing for northwest Arkansas. Natasha.

1:03:31 Natasha Helfer Hey, you got a house.

1:03:33 John Dehlin I'll be there to organize something in Arkansas. That'd be fun. Who doesn't want to go I would

1:03:40 Natasha Helfer love to go to Arkansas. Hey, no shaming. The Midwest. We are awesome.

1:03:46 Guest Not here.

1:03:47 John Dehlin Or the Northeast. New England, South. I'd love to come back to Dallas. Or Houston, Austin, San Antonio. We want to do events wherever there's a need. So let's do it.

1:03:58 Natasha Helfer Yep.

1:03:59 Guest Great.

1:03:59 John Dehlin All right. Thanks, everybody. We love you. Please join us again soon@mormonfaithcrices.com for more episodes on this podcast. Take care, everybody. Thanks so much.

1:04:08 Guest See you next time.

1:04:09 Natasha Helfer Goodbye.

1:04:09 John Dehlin Thanks, Natasha. You're awesome.

1:04:11 Natasha Helfer You guys are awesome, too. Thanks.

1:04:13 John Dehlin You, too. You're awesome. All right, see everybody.

Episode 14

0:20 Natasha Helfer Hello, everybody. This is Natasha Helfer Parker, and I am here with John and Margie Delinque for our podcast series, which is called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, which you can find at mormonfaithcrisis.com and we're here to talk about, really part two of a series or a topic that we're doing about how to disclose our concerns about our faith transitions to those who are closest to us. So, like spouses and close family and. But before I do that, I want to say a little bit about John and Margie and myself. So John's usually the one who starts out and he says all these amazing things like, oh, I'm here with the wonderful Margie. I wanted to do that and say, I am here with a fabulous, smart, kind, loving John De Lid who cares so deeply about these issues. And we've been at this type of work for like over 10 years now. It's just been incredible. And his beautiful, smart, articulate, wonderful wife, Margie, Natasha, who just like brings this wonderful aura to our whole energy because John and I are way too similar. We definitely need the Margie. Anyway, so. Yeah. So why don't we all spend a little bit of time just kind of telling people about ourselves and what we do and who we are? Does that sound like a good plan?

1:59 John Dehlin Sounds wonderful. You did a great job introducing us.

2:01 Margi Dehlin Natasha, you're hired.

2:09 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So, John, tell us a little bit about what you're doing and where people can figure out where you're practices, if people want to see you professionally, etc.

2:18 John Dehlin All right. I'm best known for my podcast Mormon stories podcast@mormonstories.org I'm also the CEO, Executive Director of the Open Stories foundation, and I have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. And occasionally I do coaching and workshops and retreats. You can find my coaching practice@johndelin.com and that's me.

2:43 Natasha Helfer Awesome. Margie, take it away.

2:46 Margi Dehlin Sure. So I am a certified life coach that specializes in life transition work. You can find me on my website, beautyinthenow.org which is currently receiving a revamping, but you can still kind of check it out there. So that's me.

3:05 Natasha Helfer Wonderful. And you offer coaching services as well, Correct. That they can figure out there. Okay. And as far as I'm concerned, that's

3:11 John Dehlin the beautyinthenow.org and I have a coaching tab.

3:14 Margi Dehlin They can get ahold of me right on the website.

3:16 Natasha Helfer Perfect. Perfect. All right. And people can get ahold of me by going to natashaparker.org people can listen to me on Mormon mental health podcast and I also do Mormon sex info podcast. So those are two things that I feel very passionate about as well as I offer professional services through either coaching or therapy office and online. So all of that you can figure out through my through my natashaparker.org page. And I also do events. In fact, I have one that's hopefully going to be planned in Kansas City. So Midwesterners, I'm looking at April 12th through 13th and wanting to find. We're kind of. I'm working with a few people to see if we can find a venue there. But if anybody has a home environment where you could fit maybe 15 to 20 people, probably max, we would love to have you host our retreat for the price of the registration and that would be great. So, yeah, let me know if you're interested in that. And John, I believe you have an events registration up for that, correct?

4:26 John Dehlin Already I do at mormonfaithcrisis.com events.

4:30 Natasha Helfer Okay, great. So that's the first one that's coming up and there's lots of other events on there, so John is doing a bunch of them. Do you want to talk about where you're going gonna be next?

4:39 John Dehlin This Saturday morning, We're doing something March 9th in Salt Lake City. We also have Another free event March 13th in downtown Salt Lake City. We're gonna be at Community of Christ talking about communicating, believing, family and friends. That's the March 13th event. The March 9th event is just a mini workshop for those who need support in the Salt Lake area. I'll be doing a mixed faith marriage retreat. Margie May join with Julie Diazevedo Hanks April 12th through 13th in Salt Lake City. And we're considering one in Gilbert, Arizona, May 3rd through 5th. So if anybody's interested in any of these events or others again, check us out at mormonfaithcrisis.com events.

5:27 Natasha Helfer All right, so I think I'll turn it over to you guys now as far as just getting us going on our content today, correct?

5:36 John Dehlin Well, yeah, and I just want to do a shout out to Maddie and Michelle. Those are two new donors that we have received since our last recording. We're really grateful to Maddie, Michelle and to all our monthly donors. If you are enjoying this podcast and if you'd like to see it Continue, we've got 11 episodes up now. We have many more that we want to record over the next year or two. We actually have 13 episodes up and we're going to be working. We are working on a book furiously if you value all of this content and want to see it, stay up not just for yourself, but for others in the future. We want to leave this content up in perpetuity. Please go to mormonfaithcrisis.com click on the Donate button and you can sign up as a monthly donor and 10, 15, 20, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford will help keep this podcast alive for those who need it. It's a way to pay it forward. So we appreciate anyone who's donating now or who's willing to donate in the future. We really appreciate it.

6:42 Natasha Helfer And other ways too that you can support the podcast are to share these episodes on social media like our Facebook pages. A positive review on either Facebook or itunes is very helpful. Helps us kind of speak, spread the word, make a comment, or participate with us during these events when we have them live. We love to hear from you. It's a huge part of what makes these events more successful. So lots of ways to support and participate in the project.

7:14 John Dehlin Shout out to all those who are joining us on Facebook Live, including Michelle, Carolyn, Emily and others. It's really nice to have you. We really try and incorporate real time listener comments and questions into these episodes. So we're really grateful for our live viewing audience and we hope you guys will contribute for today's program. All right, so we have released already two hours on coming out as a non believer to family members and we've covered several topics, you know, including a disclaimer on why this is so hard and there's not only one way to do it. We talked about finding mentors to help. We talked about if you should tell and experiences of not telling. Most people find that when it's very close family members. And we'll talk about this in a bit, that not telling has a lot of risks and that there's a lot of risks in hiding and avoiding. But we did talk about some good reasons to not tell, depending on your safety and the safety of those you might confide with. We also talked about the possible benefits of consciously not telling people. We talked about why you should tell, the ethics, you know, in terms of ethics, honesty, authenticity and intimacy, mental health and care for others. And then we talked about who to tell and who not to tell. And particularly we talked about prioritizing a significant other's spouse, children and parents and immediate family and how you kind of make the decision on who to tell and who not to tell. So that's what we talked about in the first two episodes today. Oh, and by the way, Emily writes, this is my new favorite podcast. And so, Emily, we just want to say thank you so much for that kind comment and for reaching out. That makes us happy. So thanks, Emily. All right, so we are going to start out today, the next portion, talking about when to tell and when not to tell.

9:36 John Dehlin And I think it makes sense to

9:38 John Dehlin begin by talking about the spouse or the significant other. Now, of course, not everyone here who listens is going to be married. We will have single people. We will have divorced people. But I would say the majority of our listeners and of our audience, our core audience, are people who are married or have a significant other in some way. And so let's begin by talking about the benefits and the costs of waiting. Natasha, you have kind of some strong feelings about this as it relates to waiting to tell your spouse.

10:15 John Dehlin I do, too.

10:16 John Dehlin And Margie does, too. Do you want to kick that off? Sure.

10:20 Natasha Helfer Actually, this is really good timing because I just came back from presenting in Salt Lake City around faith Transitions with Dan Witherspoon, and we spent a weekend with a lot of faith transitioners, and there were particular two mixed faith relationships in that group. And this was a big deal. This was a big part of what the believing spouses said was such a part of how they felt. In their words. They used the word betrayed because in both cases, the spouse who was transitioning had not shared what they were dealing with or thinking about for many, many months, if not a few years before they told their spouse about it. And I think, like we've mentioned in the past podcast, there can be some really good reasons that people think it's wise not to tell a spouse. And what I usually find is that people think, well, when they start having doubts and questions. Oftentimes a transitioner at that point isn't thinking they're a transitioner. Right. They're just thinking, well, I have a question, and this doesn't quite make sense. And. And so I'm going to look into it, but it already starts a bit of anxiety for them. And so they kind of come at it from this place of, well, why even bother my spouse with this kind of doubt that I'm having? Because I'm going to look into it and I'm sure that I'll figure it out and I'll find some answers, and I won't even have to worry my spouse with these doubts or questions that I'm having. So. So that's a very typical way that it starts for some of the transitioners, as well as a concept that I talk a lot about which is, I think in Mormon culture we tend to be more about protection in our intimacy styles rather than kind of getting real, you know. And so we, because we are taught to care for others and care about others feelings and in particular a spouse, we're kind of taught to protect them and be kind and be, you know, kind of considerate of their feelings. We will choose oftentimes protection of information instead of dealing directly with the information, which would actually be a more intimate approach. But we're not necessarily taught those skill sets in general. That's a wide sweeping brush in Mormonism. So that's my initial thoughts about it. I think it's important to begin earlier than later. And you, especially with a spouse, letting them in the door, that's all super legit.

12:57 John Dehlin And I'll just add 2 cents and that's that there also is just legitimate fear or concern that the spouse will be devastated that, you know, divorce could be imminent if you come out, or that it could really disrupt the family or jeopardize important relationships. And so there's just, can be deep, deep fear of consequences.

13:25 Natasha Helfer Yeah. And that's more of like a protection of self, which is a whole nother very legitimate. I mean that's a legitimate thing. You know, a lot of people might say, well that's selfish. But I think in a lot of cases, especially when you're dealing with more traditional religious cultures, those are real concerns. Those, you know, it's much more likely that you have a higher risk of divorce in a Mormon mixed faith situation than you do a Unitarian one. That's just the reality.

13:49 John Dehlin Yeah. Presbyterians and Lutherans and Methodists and Episcopalians don't have to fear coming out as non believers to family members. And this is a, this, this makes it interesting as to why you really want to get an expert coach or therapist dealing with the mixed faith marriage. Because non Mormon therapists are just going to kind of go, what? Coming out as a non believer threatens your marriage? I don't even get it. It's just a dumb religion.

14:14 Margi Dehlin Move on.

14:15 John Dehlin They don't, they totally don't get what it's like in an orthodox or fundamentalist religion like Scientology, Jehovah's witnesses, you know, Seventh Day Adventists, Orthodox evangelical Christianity, Orthodox Judaism, etc. It's a totally different ballgame and people just don't get it. So the big fear that I like to talk about is just this fear of number one, Mark, you talked about lying. Why don't you just talk really quickly about how non disclosure kind of Presents that risk.

14:57 Margi Dehlin Sure. A thought I had was just psychologically, we know that filtering oftentimes causes distress. Right. Psychologically and those that are trying to do that. So there's a cost to not disclosing as well as I think, you know, once your behavior and your mood and your start to register these thoughts and changes in behavior, I think coming up when you're. You're coming up with explanations, because your spouse will most likely pick up on that, that sort of not only filtering, but that when you're starting to explain. I just really love the idea of maintaining integrity in that as opposed to, you know, and it's a great marker of. It's probably time. It's probably time to actually have a conversation.

15:53 John Dehlin Yeah. And I've mentioned other times and I'll mention it often. It's difficult enough for a believing spouse to deal with, with their kind of the pillars and the foundation of their marriage and their lives falling through. It's a whole other level of difficulty to feel betrayed by their spouse for hiding or not disclosing. So for many, that doubles the pain and doubles the difficulty and the complexity. And, you know, even if you're good at hiding it, I always talk about kind of over time, the ships diverging just through a few degrees of difference. If you wait a few months or a few years and you start, you know, drinking on the road in a business trip, or not wearing your garments when you're gone, or not paying your tithing and not telling your spouse or confiding in a friend, the longer you go not being open and honest with your spouse or your significant others, you risk growing apart in a way that could jeopardize the intimacy of your relationship, the trust. And it could put you down paths of hiding and confiding in others and change in behavior that really could not only make your spouse or partner feel betrayed, but also threaten the relationship in ways where it wouldn't need to be threatened if you just came out early, candid and honest in the relationship. It's sort of like a little bit of pain now or a lot of pain later, or a lot of lot of pain now or irreparable pain later. That's kind of great point.

17:36 Margi Dehlin Yeah, great point. And I also like it for the person too, anytime you're kind of filtering or hiding. I don't love the idea of reinforcing the shame model things living in the dark. I think just living that way can, you know, unconsciously reinforce shame. Right. That you have something to hide, that you have something to. And that's something I like to be aware of as well.

18:00 John Dehlin Yeah.

18:01 Natasha Helfer Yeah. I really like the thoughts of you're not going to avoid pain, you know. And again, just coming off this weekend, it's so fresh in my mind, the comments of these believing spouses. Just saying it was so much worse. Feeling left in the dark, feeling like I didn't have say, feeling like I didn't know what was going on. You know, one of them in particular said, I knew something was going on, but I just didn't know what. And I felt like I was going crazy, you know, because my spouse continually told me nothing was wrong. Right. And so just a lot of unnecessary heartbreak. But it is going to be hard. And, you know, we do avoid pain as a natural way of being human. And so I think just kind of acknowledging that, yeah, there is some fear here. There is some ambiguity. We don't know the results of, you know, disclosure all the time. But being willing to lean into that, I think is an important way of adulting in faith transition. For sure.

18:58 John Dehlin I love it. So we want to encourage those listening to share comments and experiences.

19:07 John Dehlin Let's see.

19:08 John Dehlin I'll just read one from Sifibwe. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing it right. Safeway writes hello from Africa, specifically in South Africa. Wow. Super excited to have South Africa represented on this in our listenership. Mormon Stories has helped me a lot to navigate through my faith crisis. Sad thing. I've been separated from my spouse for almost two years now. I'm really healing, but it is tough to separate with spouse. Both of us feeling betrayed, me by the church and her by me. Sofiwe, I really appreciate you reaching out. If you'll message me, I would love to interview you for Mormon Stories podcast. We have not had anyone on Mormon Stories podcast from South Africa, and I would love to interview you. So if you're interested, that's an open invitation. We're just really glad you're willing to share. So thank you for reaching out and we're sorry for your sadness and loss, and we hope that something we share today can help you. We've had several listeners write in some of their experiences. Margie, how do you feel about reading Rachel's comment about disclosing to spouse? Because different people kind of tend to do it in different ways. And this is one interesting comment from Rachel.

20:29 Natasha Helfer I think it's Rachelle, by the way.

20:31 John Dehlin Oh, Rachelle.

20:31 John Dehlin Sorry. Thank you.

20:35 Margi Dehlin Sure. So telling my husband early on was good so we could research and go through things together. Word vomiting Every piece of troubling history and hyperventilating, crying, sobbing at him was probably not the best, though I guess it made him realize I wasn't taking it lightly. Concise and basic Letter to the rest of the family worked pretty well for some people. Others were not pleased with the format, but I think it wouldn't have mattered how I presented it. They just didn't like what I was saying to begin with and would have been unhappy no matter how I said it.

21:08 John Dehlin Now, let me just say we're going to talk about how much to disclose and how later, but let's focus with Rachelle's comment on telling the husband early on so they could research and go through things together. What do you think about that, Natasha?

21:22 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think that's really important. Again, just including the spouse along the way, they feel like they're part of the journey with you. You may or may not come to the same conclusions. That's very important, normal and typical. And yet you feel like you're at least joined together in that journey. And the difficulties then just, you know, are more about how we differ, how we're similar versus the betrayal piece is not there.

21:50 Margi Dehlin Yep.

21:52 John Dehlin Yeah.

21:52 John Dehlin And I really liked what others have written, just that instead of, you know, later dropping this bomb like the church is not true and I'm leaving it like. Which is overwhelming, the earlier you start, it can be positioned more as, hey, man, I've learned some of these things. Let's learn about these together and let's talk about it. And that's just less of a shocking and traumatic and jolting way to begin the conversation. And again, it's like you said, Natasha, it's exploratory. You can do it together. And it's something that allows for a slow build instead of some dramatic, chaotic crash.

22:32 Natasha Helfer Right. Plus, just in the, in the concept or process of disclosure in general, if you. The more you keep something to yourself, the more you've had time to think about it, come to conclusions, you know, and so then you have it all kind of organized in your mind and now you're dropping that package onto your spouse, let's say, who hasn't had any time to think about anything. And oftentimes people don't respond well to disclosure because you think about all the time you've had to think about things and to go through your own kind of, you know, dark part of the soul and your own crying and your own kind of, you know, figuring things out. Your spouse is just starting that. Then, you know, so you haven't given Them the same time to even get to experience what you've been experiencing.

23:19 John Dehlin I love it. Emily writes, my husband and I met each other on our missions. He hid his transition from me out of fear of my leaving. I was so afraid of completely leaving our origin story. I stayed for an additional year and now we are much happier. Married for nine years. Well, that's a success story from Emily. We're so glad that happened. Jenna writes, are we only talking about spouses or discussing other family members too? Jenna, in this series of coming out, we're talking about everybody. Just for this bullet point, we're talking about spouse or significant other. But we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about it all. So thanks for that question. Okay. Merlin has another suggestion. Merlin is offering what we're calling the delay until you can't delay anymore approach. Now, that's different from the tell your partner or spouse as soon as you can approach. But here. Natasha, do you want to read Merlin's, Merlin's story?

24:23 John Dehlin Yeah.

24:23 Natasha Helfer And I think that this is probably more in line with kind of extended family or people that maybe are, you know, kind of the next step down from a spouse. But he says, I waited as long as I could to tell my family. I wanted them to know I was still the same good guy, that I can participate in family activities and not make the spirit leave, quote unquote. My mom finally confronted me after I declined going to the temple with them for the third or fourth time. So this is that kind of that next level. It's like people who you're not living with necessarily or sharing a life with like you would a spouse or a significant other, but they're involved in your life sufficiently and you have rituals and traditions where they're going to start noticing if you're not necessarily participating in the same way that you once used to. So these are like very close friends, maybe siblings, some of your extended family, you know, people who really play a big role in your day to day

25:18 Margi Dehlin life, which we'll delve more deeply into in another podcast.

25:23 John Dehlin Right, but, but I like this idea of thinking about who's most important in your life. And that's kind of ring zero. And maybe that's your spouse or significant other. And then in that's ring zero. I'll call it then ring one might be your children or maybe your parents,

25:41 John Dehlin or maybe your parents are ring two.

25:44 John Dehlin And your children, if you have them, are ring one. Or maybe your best friend or your siblings that you're closest to are ring one. And then of course you know, maybe, you know, aunts and uncles or cousins or grandparents, maybe their rings, two or three. And, you know, you don't need to tell everybody all at once. You can tell the people you trust most or who are most important to you earlier on, then delay for other people on a need to know basis.

26:17 Margi Dehlin That's right.

26:17 John Dehlin I like that idea. Nathan has what we call the wait until I move away approach. Nathan wrote, I didn't want to deal with it, so I waited until I finished grad school and moved away from Utah. Then I sent a long email. Everyone freaked out, but they freaked out far away from me. Thanks to Nathan for sharing that, you know. And again, we started all this by saying there's not going to be one approach. So these are just some different approaches that have and haven't worked. But that's kind of our discussion about when to tell and when not to tell. I tend to feel like earlier and more authentic tends to be better, especially when it's with people you trust and who are very important and central in your life.

27:07 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I agree with that. Especially personalizing the message to the level of relationship that you have with that person and with that person's quality relationship. Quality of relationship to the church. I would approach it differently if I had a spouse who is a die hard believer. My coming out or my disclosing would look different than to someone who was, you know, more liberally minded or does that make sense? All those things?

27:37 John Dehlin Emily says she likes the faraway freakout approach.

27:40 Natasha Helfer Yes.

27:40 John Dehlin So we've got an endorsement from Emily on that. Oh, Natasha.

27:46 Natasha Helfer Just to ask you all a question, are we, you know, we're talking about when to tell and when not to tell. We're not including ecclesiastical leaders here, right?

27:54 John Dehlin No, that's going to be its own episode.

27:56 Natasha Helfer Thank you. Just want to make sure.

27:57 John Dehlin Yeah, thanks for asking that.

27:59 John Dehlin And that's a good reminder that we'll be covering that in a future episode

28:03 John Dehlin because that's a super important topic.

28:04 Natasha Helfer Right.

28:05 John Dehlin Okay, now we go to how to tell, which is different from when to tell. And how to tell might be the most important thing to discuss. How to tell and how not to tell. We have several listeners who wrote mistakes in how to tell and I'll just share a couple. So Jonathan writes, I handled it in a less than stellar manner. We all sat down as a family and I shared a summarized version of my story. My wife was fully aware of the journey I'd been on and the conclusion I had reached. My five children, who ranged in age from 19 to 9 had no idea what juices I'd been stewing in for the prior two years. I did not spend enough time thinking about the range of their reactions, which ran the gamut from obvious joyful relief to stunned silence. I'll never forget my oldest daughter asking, so what are we supposed to believe now? As a committed Mormon patriarch who'd exercised priesthood authority in a very upfront manner as a stake presidency counselor, bishop, stake mission president, etc. I'd been the primary source of teaching

29:12 John Dehlin them what we believe.

29:13 John Dehlin Her question was more than appropriate. My answer was inadequate, too clinical and

29:18 John Dehlin convenient, because I hadn't prepared for anything

29:21 John Dehlin other than sharing my story. I'd failed the simple test of empathy.

29:25 John Dehlin If I were doing it again, I'd

29:27 John Dehlin spend at least a week in which I thought solely about my spouse and each of my kids individually. One day for each loved one.

29:36 John Dehlin Even that might not be enough prep time.

29:39 John Dehlin So that's Jonathan being vulnerable. And thanks Jonathan, for sharing just about how he didn't give it enough thought. He did it all at once. It was overwhelming to those he loved

29:51 John Dehlin and he probably disclosed too much.

29:56 John Dehlin Why don't you read Gale's Margie summary?

30:00 Margi Dehlin If I had to do it over again, I would have told them that that Christmas, while we were all here together, all would have heard it from me. Perhaps Christmas would always be sad for them. Who knows?

30:14 John Dehlin Okay, so you know, that's another interesting approach. Not necessarily sure if it's right or wrong, but what this is touching on is how much do you tell at the beginning? Do you tell them everything? Do you write the full letter which is like 10 pages long, which is basically a rehash of the CES letter where it talks about polyandry and peepstones

30:45 John Dehlin and the Book of Abraham and listing

30:48 John Dehlin all of Joseph's 40 wives and you know, quotes from the journal of discourses, etc.

30:55 John Dehlin Many, many, many of our listeners have

30:57 John Dehlin written those letters or emails only to find what type of reaction Natasha More

31:06 Natasha Helfer either silence or kind of a double down effect, defensiveness, a send back of all the other information. Now you get into doctrinal debates type of stuff. You get a lot of enzyme articles sent your way and things of that nature. It's not usually oh thank you so much for sharing the light with us. And now we totally see why you think the way you do. And thank you so much for pointing us in the right direction. It doesn't usually end that way.

31:37 John Dehlin Right?

31:38 John Dehlin And so this always goes to this idea that I like to share. Just like when we talk about when sooner is usually better than later. How in terms of the content, I like to say less is usually more

31:55 John Dehlin and more. What I like to basically give people

31:58 John Dehlin in terms of language is something to the effect of saying something very brief, which is just, you know, when you're ready to disclose, it's just something like, hey, and again, we talk about this love sandwich. Natasha, I think this is an idea

32:13 John Dehlin that I heard from you.

32:15 John Dehlin It's sort of like, I love you so much. That's never going to change. I'm so committed to all the values that our life has been built upon. I'm totally doing so well in so many areas. However, now here's the little.

32:35 John Dehlin The meat of the message.

32:37 John Dehlin My feelings or my beliefs about the church are somewhat in transition or I no longer see the church like I used to and then immediately followed up

32:48 John Dehlin by, but I love you and don't worry, and I'm still that same person.

32:53 John Dehlin Nothing's going to change. And I want you to know that I have no interest in, like, what were you going to say?

33:00 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I respect your beliefs.

33:02 John Dehlin I respect your beliefs. I'm never going to do anything to try and change them. I don't even want to talk to you about the details, really, because I just want you to feel safe. And so it's sort of this combination of I love you, something very brief, and then reassuring them and doing your best to make them feel safe. That's usually what I found to be the most effective initial approach.

33:28 Margi Dehlin I agree. And it kind of serves in a couple ways because there's a lot of calming language in the delivery of that message, which I love. And I also feel like it provides a tester of sorts, their reaction for you to be able to gauge, you know, how to proceed from there. And I think that's really, really useful information to have.

33:55 John Dehlin Yeah.

33:55 Natasha Helfer Another way that I conceptualize it is keeping it relational versus informational. Right. So a lot of what John is saying and Margie is, you know, you're focusing on the relationship, the love, the trust, the safety, the how you want to continue in relationship with this person that you're talking to. You're not getting bogged down with details and information and, you know, the doctrinal aspects or the questions that, you know, may or may not be an issue for them and may or may not even be things that you want to be talking about at this point.

34:29 John Dehlin Right.

34:32 John Dehlin And this is often,

34:35 John Dehlin you know, one

34:36 John Dehlin thing I also really like to talk about is the backfire effect. One of the things you want to definitely avoid when coming out is triggering their defensiveness. Because we know that when somebody, and this is called the backfire effect, when someone is presented with evidence, evidence that's factual and true, but that contradicts their closely held identity or their cherished beliefs, what often ends up happening is that information doesn't weaken their faith, it actually strengthens it and they hold on to their position more. That's called the backfire effect. And that's why you don't want to ever fall into the pitfall of confronting them with any information that's going to make them defensive and cling tighter to their beliefs. That's actually the opposite of what you want to do. And so again, that's kind of the less is more approach. And time and time again, we have seen this work.

35:45 John Dehlin Go ahead.

35:45 Margi Dehlin I was going to say, I actually, in my coaching practice, recommend oftentimes a light scripting, which sounds maybe a little bit hokey, but I think because, you know, many of these conversations are difficult and we don't have experience or training to kind of go about these conversations, it can really help just to have sort of a script that you're using and sticking to. Because what you find oftentimes, even in earnestness, the, you know, people will ask you questions. And as you start explaining, even if you're starting out in this warm, safe place, all of a sudden you're crossing these bridges in earnestness because you're, you're being posed questions and then you just want to answer, you're answering in earnestness. And before you know it, the conversation feels really different and we're in the defensive territory and that's why it's tricky. And we will take talk a little bit about boundaries as well, because you want to be able to control the message somewhat and keep the information. As John said, less is more. And so it can be tricky to do at times.

37:04 Natasha Helfer I totally agree, Margie. I mean, it's, you know, you can say the best script ever, like something that John just said, and most people aren't going to go, oh, thank you, thank you for that. They're going to follow up. They're going to be like, well, what do you mean? What are you struggling with? Or, well, what questions are you having? You know, or so people. That's a very normal response that you'll get from people. And at that point you can have other things prepared. Like, you know, at this point, that's all I'm ready to share. Or I'd like to just, you know, take a few weeks before I even talk about this even more. Or maybe what would be some of your questions and, you know, give them to me and I'll think about, you know, whether or not I'm ready to talk about them. There's lots of ways that you can play these kinds of boundaries that you're talking about, Margie, so that you're not having to have at least that first, you know, session dive into this kind of doctrinal whirlpool that is hard to come out of. And you can even say, like, you know, this is exactly what I. What I don't necessarily want to get into.

38:07 Margi Dehlin Right.

38:07 Natasha Helfer Because this. I know these things matter to you and I love you. And those are exactly the types of questions. Now, over time, we can talk about some of those, but today I just really like to focus on how important our relationship is and that I really don't want anything getting in the way of that.

38:26 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I think one of the barriers. I'll just say this and then leave it, but one of the barriers to how we conceptualize boundaries is that we can conceptualize it in a way that it feels kind of rude or, you know, I don't know where. It's like a cutoff of intimacy. That's why I really love the idea of boundaries. Feeling. In most situations, they should feel warm. They should feel like, you know, this is the whole thing. I love our relationship. I value our relationship so much that this really isn't something that I want to get into right now, or it's not important for me to get into the nitty gritty. I appreciate you being curious, but at this point, what I really. I just respect our relationship and wanted you to be updated. But, you know, for now, this isn't really going to be helpful, probably for either of us. And so having it be really warm, as if, you know, speaking to the value of the relationship boundaries can feel actually quite nurturing.

39:28 Natasha Helfer Yeah. And one thing, too, that I've heard John talk a lot about is that even when you are willing to, you know, let's say they do have some questions like, well, what do you know about polygamy? Or what do you know about this or that? To have some resources ready to kind of direct them to. So. Well, if you're curious about that, here's a podcast you can listen to, right? Or here's a blog that you can go read, or here's an article instead of you being the purveyor of that information, which then again, can be a higher risk of the defensiveness of the information being in the relationship between you and that person. So having good resources and I don't know if you want to speak more to that. John.

40:15 John Dehlin Yeah. Let's incorporate a few of our listeners comments really quickly and then we'll come back. Is that okay?

40:23 Natasha Helfer Yeah, for sure. Okay.

40:25 John Dehlin So Julia Juliet writes, all my Ring one relationships escaped at the same time.

40:31 John Dehlin But I'm being.

40:33 John Dehlin But I'm being demonized by Ring two. I've tried to set boundaries, but it's hard. The relationships now seem so fragile. We don't want to share our lives with them anymore because we feel the weight of disapproval.

40:45 John Dehlin And the ongoing narrative we are confronted

40:47 John Dehlin with is that being Mormon was too hard for us. It's insulting.

40:52 John Dehlin Not sure where to go from here. Yeah.

40:56 John Dehlin Love to you, Juliet. So glad you've reached out. Juliet's talking about how to deal with that.

41:03 John Dehlin You know, when you do do everything

41:06 John Dehlin right and your family responds in sort of demeaning or disrespectful or less warm

41:15 John Dehlin ways, how do you deal with the. With the disapproval and an ongoing narrative

41:22 John Dehlin that they pin upon you, which feels insulting and doesn't feel authentic? That's kind of its own episode, I think, Juliet.

41:32 John Dehlin But in one word, I would say

41:36 John Dehlin it starts with acceptance.

41:39 John Dehlin There are some things that we're just

41:41 John Dehlin never going to be able to. Life has suffering. It's one of the founding principles of Buddhism. And there will be casualties of relationships to this faith crisis. And as good as we manage it, as perfect as we may communicate it,

41:58 John Dehlin because of other people's worldviews and their

42:03 John Dehlin own emotional state and the way that

42:04 John Dehlin they view the world, they're going to

42:06 John Dehlin be people that just can't handle this supportingly or gracefully. And there's this backfire effect where the more you try and manage that, the worse you can actually make it. And so for many, instead of trying to change people's minds or repair their image of you or even convince them that you're doing well, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is just say, for now this relationship has been

42:36 John Dehlin downgraded, maybe even damaged, and I'm going to mourn that and grieve it and

42:42 John Dehlin accept it because I can't change it. And I'm going to lick my wounds and practice self care.

42:51 John Dehlin And I'm going to focus on the

42:53 John Dehlin relationships that are worth focusing on until either this relationship can get repaired or has had time to heal, or until I can readjust that relationship and engage with it in a way that erects the appropriate boundaries so that they don't continue to hurt us. That's a short answer, Juliet, but there's a lot of pain and difficulty and complexity, so we should probably have that be its own episode. But anything, Margie, you or Natasha want to add or.

43:23 Margi Dehlin Juliet, I was just going to say really quickly how much I feel for this, number one. And just like you said, acceptance and really processing loss. I know for me, when I've been in situations where I feel like I'm facing a change in relationship or something that feels like a change in the love. What's helped me is to realize that really what this is about is bringing to light a conditional love paradigm as opposed to an unconditional love paradigm. And sometimes we can't control relationships. We can't control the types of love that we receive or are offered from others. But I do love, sometimes the only healing we have is our awareness of that. And if we have our own children or in our own relationships, really creating this type of unconditional love paradigm where we slowly rebuild around our. Our belief in offering a love that allows for differentiation, that allows for different beliefs, differing opinions, and that actually can be tremendously empowering and healing. And I would offer. It's kind of what we have, but the loss and feeling the loss is real. And then the second thing I would just say is just the importance of connecting to the internal, to your own identity, to your own values amidst it. I found that very grounding to be able to say what's important to me. What do healthy relationships look like? What level of relationship is this right now? Not how I felt about it when I was, you know, obeying or looking conformist in their eyes, but really, what level relationship is it now and what do I value? And those two things were tremendously empowering in allowing me to move forward, feeling like I was creating healthier relationships for myself.

45:35 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think the only thing I would add. Well, I would agree that we probably need to do its own episode on this. And, you know, I would just always invite people before they completely write off relationships, especially if it is, you know, relationship that used to be very meaningful, is to hopefully at least have attempted to make a relational request, you know, in the form of something along the lines of, you know, mom, I've noticed since, you know, I talked to you about our faith transition or since we've left the church, that things are different between us, you know, and, you know, invalidate, you know, like, I get that it's probably from your perspective, a disappointment or, you know, very painful for you to have us go in such a different path. Than maybe you expected. And at the same time, I feel, you know, marginalized. I feel disrespected. I feel like my path isn't, you know, of worth. I feel like it's really damaging the way I can feel close to you. Like, have we really taken the steps to really say those things directly? Sometimes I feel like we say things snarkily or we say things, you know, kind of superficially and we kind of understand it's not safe space. But again, depending on how deep the relationship is, how willing are we to take, you know, kind of to take that risk and put your heart out there now it may get broken again. To your point, Margie, you have to sometimes just accept what is you don't have control over. But are we at least willing to make that step with the people who matter most to us? And sometimes that can soften or heal things, and sometimes it doesn't.

47:16 John Dehlin Right? Very good.

47:18 John Dehlin Well, thanks, Juliet, for sharing these. These, you know, these sharing moments make this so much more real and meaningful. Tamara writes, I remember previously Margie had said that you cannot change someone's emotional conviction with logic or a theological discussion or a doctrinal discussion. Tamara says, I feel these discussions need to start with how you feel as an individual and set those boundaries early on. I really like this idea that, Natasha, you have of keeping the focus in the discussion on the relationship instead of the information. Do you mind talking a little bit more about that, Natasha?

48:03 Natasha Helfer Just, I think it can always come back to that. Like, even if you're finding yourself in kind of a doctrinal kind of mess, you can hopefully pull back. I mean, the problem with some of this is that we get into that fight flight freeze response mode very quickly, right? And then we are kind of off to the races. So it can be hard to stay self aware sufficiently to press the pause button and come back to the relational aspects. But if you kind of have that as your script in the background, like Margie says, to have something prepared, I think whenever you're feeling that sense of exasperation, of confusion, of feeling unheard, those are good clues to pause and to come back to relational language to validate the other person even. So what I hear you saying is, you know, can we offer that to other people? Can we offer what we desperately want ourselves? Right? And so that's a lot of times what I mean by that relational approach. And just back to, you know, even a timeout can be relational, like woof time. I'm feeling like I'm overwhelmed. I can see I Can feel myself getting irritated. I can feel myself getting upset. I just, I need to take, you know, a 20 minute break and come back because I love you and because I don't want this to get so upsetting between us that we can't come back from this.

49:26 John Dehlin I love it. Margie, let's read a couple more comments from our listeners.

49:30 Margi Dehlin Sure. So Jenna writes, I came out to a very good TVM friend over dinner because I knew she would not judge. I was right. She was respectful and our relationship hasn't changed. We just don't discuss religion or politics now. That was a success. I don't delve into the details with her. Love that.

49:49 John Dehlin Good job, Jenna. Yep, thanks for sharing.

49:51 Margi Dehlin And then Ann writes, I have never once known one TBM that deserves my vulnerability. They do not respect anyone else's journey, no matter what they say about love. And I think we should be more concerned with our own safety than theirs.

50:07 John Dehlin Natasha, what do you think about that? Ann has been burned by true believing Mormons or TBMs. What would you say to Ann?

50:15 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think that that comment shows a lot of pain and I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why she feels, you know, unsafe. And the reality is that, you know, in our Mormon culture we oftentimes don't do difference well. So. And at the same time I would just remind her that she's sweeping with wide brushes. Right. And so even though there may be general generalities that are true or that are based in truth, you know, here you've read two comments that, that show very different experiences with the same quote unquote type of people. So people are bigger than our labels and again, depending on the risks we want to take, then we can possibly have some really wonderful experiences with certain people. Sometimes you take a risk though, and like I'm sure Ann has, it doesn't go well and then that can become very difficult to want to take that type of risk again.

51:12 John Dehlin Anna has a wonderful quote for us.

51:13 John Dehlin Why don't you read it, Margie?

51:16 Margi Dehlin Boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing. The basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself.

51:41 John Dehlin That's good stuff.

51:42 Margi Dehlin Love it.

51:43 John Dehlin The wisdom of our listeners, it's, it just never, it never stops. Boundaries is just so important. So thank you Jenna and everyone who's been sharing. This is just such a, such an

51:58 John Dehlin important and a good conversation.

52:02 Natasha Helfer One comment I'd like to. Oh, I'm sorry.

52:04 John Dehlin Go ahead, please go ahead.

52:05 Natasha Helfer Well, one comment I wanted to point out since we're talking about the how Emily says with my siblings and friends, I used church approved literature or doctrine to support my uncomfortableness. It will backfire if you cite outside sites, blogs or books. And this is the thing I talk about often. It's like use your cred. You know, use your, use your language. Use your common language. We have a lot of language in Mormonism about agency, about personal revelation, about, you know, personal journeys and personal testimonies and you know, kind of the whole even idea of Mormon doctrine that Heavenly Father allowed for choices and not everybody was going to go the same path. You know, I often tease parents about how they love Satan's parenting style versus Heavenly Father's parenting style. Right. Because Satan was all about control and making sure everybody made it back and everybody's gonna follow one way. But sometimes we act like that. Right. So use your Mormon cred. Use your Mormon language to keep that common denominator as you are transitioning, explaining concepts so that it stays within that language. I really liked Emily's thought on that.

53:12 John Dehlin Yeah.

53:13 John Dehlin And there are a lot of resources

53:15 John Dehlin you can share that are legitimate. The church has these gospel topics essays that come straight out of lds.org that admit issues around Mountain Meadows Massacre, polygamy,

53:26 John Dehlin the Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon issues.

53:29 John Dehlin Sometimes those can be useful. You have, you know, general authority quotes from Uchtdorf and others, Ballard saying how important it is for members to become aware of these issues. You even have Ensign articles and articles on the church's blog encouraging family members to learn about and show empathy and

53:48 John Dehlin support for their members who have gone

53:52 John Dehlin through a faith crisis. And of course there's Fair, the apologetic website that that sometimes can be helpful with mixed results. But on the one hand, so yes on the oh, and there's books like Patrick Mason's planted book by Thomas McConkie, one by John Ogden. There are books written by progressive Mormons that help even Terrell and Fiona Givens, the Crucible of Doubt, others these books sometimes and resources can be helpful in sort of a safe way helping discuss these issues. But I'm just going to also remind people that getting into the details more often than not is just it's a briar patch.

54:46 John Dehlin So I want to encourage people to

54:51 John Dehlin consider having other, you know, encouraging your believing family members to do their own investigation but not feeling like it's your job to provide them with links or podcasts or moments of education. Because the risk is the backfire effect. The risk is making them feel like you're trying to change them. The risk is, you know, making them feel scared. And instead, I'll just say it again. You want to make them feel safe. You want to reaffirm their right to self determination. You want to assure them you're never going to do anything to harm their beliefs. Definitely. If they have kids or siblings that they're trying to protect. You don't want to make them ever feel like you're a threat, or you're going to be spreading the virus of doubt or disbelief to others. And again, like Dantasha says, focus on what hasn't changed. Focus on your common values, focus on

55:47 John Dehlin the common ground, and focus on the

55:51 John Dehlin relationship and what you want out of the relationship. I interviewed my dear mother yesterday for Mormon Stories podcast, and she's still a believer. And, you know, she's loved me, you

56:02 John Dehlin know, my whole life, including the past

56:05 John Dehlin 18 years, where I've no longer believed the church was true. And she summarized the whole interview just by saying relationships over beliefs. And you need to model that. And going back to Juliet, you're going

56:20 John Dehlin to have to grieve.

56:21 John Dehlin It's going to be hard. But remember to be patient. You've had months or a year or years to process. Many of your believing family members are just hearing a lot of this stuff for the first time. Maybe it's only been weeks or months for them to kind of adjust. So you need to give them time to mourn, be patient, give them space to grieve. And you'll often find if you act safe, if you give them space, if you teach them appropriate boundaries and give them time, and you're super respectful and loving. And if you live this healthy, happy, fulfilled, meaningful life, over time, healthy, reasonable people are going to adjust. And either you just won't talk about the church or Mormonism when you get together, and you'll find other things to talk about and build your relationship on,

57:14 John Dehlin or eventually they may, you know, discover more things and you may find others joining you on this quest of learning and growing and stretching perspectives. But it often just takes time. And we sometimes want to force them immediately to celebrate us and accept us and to rejoice. And that's just unrealistic. Let's see.

57:43 Natasha Helfer And just to clarify too, when I say use your common language, you know, it's not necessarily, oh, go look up, you know, the Mormon essay, but it's I'VE prayed about this. Even something simple like that. You know, I've prayed, which is actually usually true of many transitioners. They've spent many hours on their knees praying about these doubts. And, you know, so just being able to say something like, you know, I've prayed about this. I've read a lot. I've thought about a lot of this. I really love our concepts of agency, and that takes me down a different road. You know, that's. That's really kind of what I'm talking about as well.

58:16 John Dehlin Yeah. And our awesome listener, Kristen Gluth Cranny, she echoes that. She says using that you've been led by the Spirit can be really helpful.

58:27 John Dehlin I've actually seen mixed results.

58:28 John Dehlin So there's this idea that when you say to a believing Mormon, I've prayed about it and the Holy Ghost has told me the church isn't true, or I've prayed about it and God told me to leave the Mormon Church. Sometimes that can work, or at least it can help try and put you guys on common ground. I've also seen that backfire because a true believing Mormon, I think it's often beyond their realm of possibility that the Spirit could ever lead you out of Mormonism or lead you in another path. And so it can.

59:03 John Dehlin I don't know, it can have mixed results. What do you think, Margie?

59:08 Margi Dehlin Again, I kind of feel like it's individual. Right. And it depends on who you're speaking to, and it depends on your own experience and whether that feels true for you or so. Yeah, yeah.

59:21 Natasha Helfer And I probably wouldn't follow it with I've prayed about it and the Spirit told me the church isn't true. I probably say something like, you know, I've spent a lot of hours on prayer, and I'm just feeling certain things. You know, I would probably say it a little bit differently than. But just, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that, you know, oftentimes it's the God card that trumps. And so I'm just saying Mormons aren't the only ones with God cards. Right. And so you can say something spiritual or something enlightening for your own experience, and then it becomes. It becomes less doctrinal, first of all. And it also kind of stays in that sound. So like, it's kind of like feelings. I can't argue with your feelings. Right. So if I feel angry, whether or not I think you should be angry while you still feel angry. Right. And so it's kind of using that spiritual language sometimes just says hey, I'm having a journey here, too, that is spiritual in my mind, you know, and it's harder to argue with that. So that's all I'm. And you're right, it may not. It may not help or work in all cases.

1:00:24 John Dehlin Yeah, I think acceptance often works better than resistance. You know, there's this. These sayings from Eckhart Tolle. That which you fight, you strengthen. That which you resist persists. Just in my experience, trying to manage their perception of you, trying to manage their reactions to you, trying to manage their grief or their disappointment or sadness, in my experience, more often than not creates resistance and opposition and conflict. But, you know, mileage may vary. Emily writes, a true believer might say, in response to your claims about the spirit, they might say that you're being deceived by Satan. And that's the kind of fear that I have. Marg, you're liking a comment Carolyn wrote.

1:01:06 John Dehlin Why don't you read that?

1:01:07 Margi Dehlin Time is a huge piece of this crazy puzzle. At the beginning of a transition. You can't imagine how things will be a couple of years down the road. Now that I'm several years down the road. Many family relationships have improved just with time. They keep seeing us being the same people we always were, and it gets less scary for them.

1:01:26 John Dehlin I love that comment. Yeah, kudos to Carolyn.

1:01:30 Margi Dehlin I think that is, you know, very true.

1:01:34 John Dehlin Yeah. Be patient. Give them time. Give them a chance to grieve. And in many cases, again, if they're healthy, if they're reasonable, if they're not narcissistic, you know, if they really care about you deeply, you know, and you're living this happy, healthy life, sometimes that can really make all the difference, Right?

1:02:04 Margi Dehlin Yep.

Episode 15

0:19 John Dehlin Okay, so we've talked about many different approaches. See, let's go down. A couple listeners shared a couple different approaches. Daniel has what he calls the partial or curiosity approach. We refer to this a little bit earlier. Natasha, do you want to read that one? Do you see where that is? Roman numeral I.

0:45 Natasha Helfer Which one again? What was the name?

0:47 John Dehlin Roman numeral I. It's Daniel Lilligard.

0:50 Natasha Helfer Yes. Okay. Says I put much consideration into how I could share this with my wife without offending her. I ended up telling her that I had read a couple of things about the church that I did not quite understand. I simply asked her if she would be kind to read the same material to help me understand it better. The material in question was of course, the CES letter. A couple of weeks later, we were both mentally out of the church.

1:14 John Dehlin What do you think about the Daniel's partial curiosity approach, Natasha?

1:19 Natasha Helfer Well, I think it's great that it worked out for him. I think that it sounds like it wasn't necessarily an honest approach. It sounds like he was kind of strategic, like he was maybe already further along than just being curious, but that's how he presented it. So that's, you know, he found a safe way for himself. I just want to be very careful that people don't assume that the same result will happen. I've had many, many people say, can you please read this or listen to this podcast? And people are not interested. Many times, even spouses like, I don't want to, I don't want to read that stuff. I don't want to delve into that with you. And that's a boundary they're placing. Right. So that's okay too. And so to just be aware that that doesn't always work out that way, but it's great. It sounds like it worked out great for him.

2:07 John Dehlin Right. Going to other approaches, Jeremy has the space it out, space it out approach over time. Jeremy says, I planned a lot. I was very worried about the marathon effect, which is that the people at the front of the pack running a marathon are already a long ways through by the time the people at the back are able to take their first steps. In this case, my family was in the back over a six month period. I told them that I was feeling distressed about the church and uncomfortable with my membership. Then after a few months by, I brought them along another step even though I had taken many more steps during that increment. Then I let them know I was out whole family too. Obviously they took it hard, but the shock factor was reduced. It Also allowed them to plan for their reaction instead of overreacting to my announcement. I know they took it hard, but this softened the blow and worked for me. So thanks to Jeremy for sharing. What do you think about that approach, Margie?

3:14 Margi Dehlin Again, I do think there are some strengths to that approach in that you avoid a lot of information overload in the beginning or flooding and it kind of allows for things to remain a bit calmer. So there are definitely some positives to that. Ryan adds a little bit to that as well in saying, I think the best decision I made in the process was coming out as a serious doubter to my family before I made the official decision to leave. It gave them time to process it in bites and it also gave them the chance to give me answers to my questions. They quickly saw there were no good answers and that helped them validate my path when I did decide to leave. Recommend coming out as soon as your situation allows, ideally as you're still processing everything.

4:05 John Dehlin So coming out as a doubter before you move to I'm leaving the church or the church is a fraud.

4:12 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I like this approach quite a bit, especially for certain types of people. Like for example, let's say you're trying to figure out a mixed faith marriage, right? But you've got teenagers or 10 year olds or kids. I think this can be a very helpful way to talk to kids, you know, through slower kind of processes along the way. And I think it's also great with extended family, again with spouses. I think it's a little bit more complicated, but I think giving things along the way can be helpful. There's no, I often say there's no emergency in faith transition. Right. We don't have to. We can take it slow, we can pace ourselves. We can, you know, take the system into account as we're trying to make our own decisions.

4:58 John Dehlin Right. And then of course Chelsea talks about the blurting it out approach, or she calls it volcano mouth. Chelsea writes, my husband laughs. You want to read that one, Natasha?

5:10 Margi Dehlin Sure.

5:10 Natasha Helfer My husband laughs and recalled my coming out story to him. I'd been slowly not going to church as often and one night while out on a date I just blurted out I don't believe the church is true anymore. We've been married in the temple five years and at the time I was young woman's president. I think at the time it was just one of those uncomfortable lines that felt better to just outright say and then hash through it rather than tiptoe around it. Luckily, he is the most understanding person and had a very loving reaction, even though he was totally shocked. We have since both left and all is good. I don't think looking back, it would have helped to slowly tell him my thoughts. I needed to work through them myself first. I wanted to be resolute either way before I broke any news to him. Maybe that sounds selfish, but I just needed it to be my choice.

5:55 Margi Dehlin Wow. There are a lot of things I like about that as well. Just the level of awareness with regard to her husband and who he was and their relationship and the nature of their relationship and then as well to herself. And I think all of those things are really important factors.

6:13 John Dehlin Yeah, I'm feeling torn. I'm feeling like on the one hand we're giving our listeners lots of different options to try. On the other hand, I'm feeling like we're going to overload our listeners with a million different varieties of approaches. Listeners. I hope that's okay.

6:30 Natasha Helfer Well, I think what we're offering is some basic guidelines, you know, and anything that would come from us as professionals especially is guidelines. And so, you know, kind of like the sooner is better than later, especially with a spouse or relational is better than informational. But those are guidelines. And what we're seeing in the stories and in the narratives of people who are writing in is that, you know, different things, you know, different strokes for different folks is also what works. And you have to kind of trust yourself. So take information that we're giving you and then fit it into your own personal relationships with your own personal wisdom.

7:07 Margi Dehlin Exactly. And use that differentiation for each relationship that you have and don't necessarily have a bias, that because it's a family member that there's intimacy there or that vulnerability should be granted.

7:24 Natasha Helfer Absolutely. I love that.

7:26 John Dehlin Okay, so we've talked a lot about kind of the content and the framing and the messaging, you know, and the. And the quantity of what's shared. Let's talk really quickly about sort of the mechanics of sharing. We've sort of been assuming, I think, sort of this sit down approach where you sit the spouse or the children down and you have this kind of direct conversation. And I think that is wholly appropriate for many of our situations. But listeners remind us, many of you have reminded us that there are other options, depending on safety, depending on geographical location, depending on people's emotional profile and their maturity and their reaction styles. And so in addition to kind of the face to face sit down approach, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages being it's direct, it's personal, it's intimate, the downsides being it could blow up. It can be, you know, it can backfire, it can cause shouting matches, it can even cause fights. There are other options. There's the email option, there's the text option, which I don't necessarily ever recommend. I'm pretty much going to strike off the text option, but I guess it's something you could consider. There's the email or the handwritten letter or the phone option. And I'll just read one listener comment and then I'll have Natasha and Margie both share their thoughts. David writes, we let our family know by email. Should have done it in person. We felt we explained our exit in very brief terms. We should have followed John Dehlin's advice and kept it even shorter. We love you and want to always be a part of your life. This is what he's saying. They should have said, quote, they we love you and want to always be a part of your life. For reasons that we don't think it would be worthwhile explaining, we're no longer going to attend church. Close quote. Something basic and brief like that. And so David suggests, insist on avoiding getting into details. It will not go anywhere good. Okay. So he's saying he regrets email and thinks it would have been better to do it in person. I've said never do it in text. Natasha, what do you think about email or a handwritten letter or even a phone call versus a face to face?

10:00 Natasha Helfer I'm going to steal Margie's comment, which I'm sure she would say, which is it depends on the situation. And so I think that, you know, I've had people say we should have never done it face to face. And I wish we would have written a letter beforehand. Right. Sometimes, again, you're taking a risk, you're doing the best you know how. And it doesn't necessarily go as planned. I think there's benefits and there's consequences no matter what. I think that's something that is very helpful. There's consequences no matter what. Positive consequences, negative consequences. So what could potentially be the consequences of a sit down face to face? What could be potentially the consequences of an email or a letter? I think for some people, especially if they know that they get emotional very easily or that they're worried that they won't be able to manage themselves very well. Sometimes a letter gives, you know, some space, some boundaries. You can write a letter. Very well done. I oftentimes review people's letters before they send them as part of the work that I do with people as Far as my coaching practice. So, you know, especially if it's saying something along the lines that we chose to write a letter because we wanted to give you some time to be able to think through these things on your own. We want. I even had one person say, you know, just sharing their own anxiety. It's very anxiety provoking for me to share this letter with you all and if you would please honor my boundaries, that I really would prefer not to receive phone calls or, you know, feedback on this for at least a week. Like I need a week. So, you know, depending on each person and what they need and what they feel their family needs, those letters can look a little bit different for other people who are very relational, want that face to face. Especially again, depending on the person, it can be very helpful to do a sit down. Some people have huge amounts of extended family that they feel close to. They feel like they don't. By the time they have a minute to sit down with everybody, the phone tree is already going to be taking off. Right. So they don't want. They want everybody to kind of get the information at the same time. So that's another reason why people choose email or a letter. So it depends, you know, so think about your situation, think about the people you're wanting to talk to and what might be better for those situations.

12:15 John Dehlin What would you add, Margie?

12:17 Margi Dehlin Oh, I think you did a. I really love what Natasha said, actually. Just different strengths and, you know, unique situations, really. I also think connecting with your intention of why you're using what mode and can be helpful as well. So.

12:36 Natasha Helfer And I know I've mentioned this before and I see it bullet pointed here as well, John. But the for me statement is very good. So, you know, whether you're writing or whether you're saying it, it's like for me, you don't want to sit down and say something like, well, I have just figured out that the church isn't true because that's a huge. That's. You're making a factual statement, not an opinion, not a personal statement. Right. But if you start by saying, for me, I've gone down this certain path of thinking and this is what this means for me. And for me, this is no longer. Nobody can argue what is or isn't for you. And plus you're already implying just by saying that that you recognize that maybe for them it's very different. So it makes room for everybody's opinion on the matter.

13:25 John Dehlin I love it.

13:26 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

13:27 John Dehlin Yeah. So I guess our point with this bullet of the medium of Delivering the message is just understand that there are different options. Assess your situation carefully. For some it's a sit down face to face. For some it's bring your spouse. For others it's don't bring your spouse. For others it's do it by email. For others it's do it by handwritten letter. And for others it may be by phone. And I'm going to still stick with never text. All right, how about just quickly? What about what emotion to bring? I'll read Heidi. Heidi has this comment. What I did wrong was I got mean and burned some bridges with members that couldn't see my viewpoint. Those friendships are now rebuilt after years of forgiveness on both parties. I pushed folks away and claimed it was them. Heidi says I would suggest being loving and trying to not push your newfound beliefs on them and ask they do the same. I also think folks that leave the church often feel they miss something and and try to make up for it. She writes, sexuality, alcohol and other things they may have sustained from. Heidi suggests using caution and going slow on such things. She says she's been out 10 years now and it's been a rollercoaster of a ride emotionally. So she's saying, don't be mean. Margie, you've talked about warmth and safety, centering your emotions. Can you talk about that?

14:56 Margi Dehlin Yeah. So I think the idea moving into, let's say a conversation, if you're meeting someone face to face, face. One thing that I really like to emphasize is embodiment. This idea of, you know, in the conversation, what do you want them to feel from you, what do you yourself want to feel, what do you want to say? And really going from a place, coming from a place of embodiment. But I do recommend before the conversation having some space again. I love scripts and I don't mean word for word scripts, I mean in the case of like a love sandwich, that you have a sense for how you want to stack the things you want to say and you can connect very clearly to each level of, you know what you want to say and how. But I also like taking a moment to really still yourself, to center yourself before the conversation. Have an intention, I will be non reactive or I will be safe, I will be warm, I will be relational as to what Natasha says and really getting strong and firm in your own center and also aware of your own boundaries. Practice boundarying, practice actually saying with warmth things like that probably isn't something that I really want to go into right now. I just don't think it's going to be helpful right now to this conversation. When people have an intention to draw you out, or if you find yourself explaining, like, that's one place that I feel like people feel vulnerable and end up all of a sudden getting attacked or being picked apart, you can stop it right there and say, you know what? You know, I. This. Actually, I'm finding that this probably isn't helpful, but practice saying it. These things can be very, very helpful. In the process of having difficult conversations that make us feel vulnerable and out of control.

16:58 Natasha Helfer I think I would totally amen all of that by, you know, reminding people just about tone, which is, I think, something Margie's alluding to. A lot of times we start conversations just by bringing a certain aura, like, okay, I need everybody to gather around, you know, and people are like, oh my gosh, has somebody died? You know, like, what's going on? Vs keeping your tone more casual and upbeat. Like, hey, I have something I'd really like to share. I'm really excited to talk about some things that are really important to me. All of a sudden, the tone starts off very differently. And also to mirror what Margie is saying is let people know what process you're feeling. I think a lot of times people can really empathize if you all of a sudden tune them in. We oftentimes stay very cerebral. Like, but if you notice your heart rate is beating fast, or if you notice that you've got butterflies in your stomach, tell them that I feel like my heart rate is out of control and I feel so nervous right now. That helps them empathize with you too, right? You're letting the conversation be bigger than just information. It's process oriented at that point, and people will empathize with that.

18:14 John Dehlin And in response to Heidi, you know, talking about her anger and her meanness, you know, I always want to remind people that anger, as we always like to refer to it, is a secondary emotion, meaning almost always you're angry because someone you love or someone that you respect has hurt you. And so what you'll find, or because, you know, you feel very disappointed or sad. And so I just want to remind people when they are feeling angry to quickly go deeper and consider expressing the deeper emotion. So if you notice yourself getting triggered, you notice yourself starting to speak in an angry way, you pause and you go to the underlying emotion, which almost always is either fear or sadness. And so you. If you talk about how sad you are or how scared you are or how hurt you are, it's often something that people can emotionally connect with. And you can even share that as a commonality with the believer that you're speaking to because chances are they're feeling scared and they're feeling hurt and so, or maybe they're feeling betrayed by you. And so if you guys can get deeper to that more raw, sensitive, connecting emotion, it can actually sometimes be a bridge and help you avoid these more complex and fraught discussions around content, as I like to call it, or substance. Now, really quickly, what do we do? And by the way, Kristen writes she really likes the for me Natasha. So Kristin's given the for me a thumbs up. Erin, kristen's sister. We love the Gluth sisters joining us. We always love that Erin writes, decide beforehand how you'll react. Good idea. So she likes that as well. What do we do? And Margie, this is a softball. I'll launch to you. When our family was going through a really severe time last year where we were just triggering each other and it was this huge ping pong of triggering our coach. And Margie and I, by the way, and our children, we see therapists individually and collectively and as couplets, we see coaches. We spend thousands of dollars each year on therapy and coaches. When we had a really traumatic event last year with our family, can you tell them the tool that Liz taught us when things start to go emotionally sideways? Because inevitably, no matter how centered you are, no matter how careful you are in your framing, things can go emotionally sideways. And so I'm hoping you're tracking with the tool that Elizabeth shared with us that we want to give you as a tool.

21:15 Margi Dehlin Yes. So emotional regulation 101. This has been tremendously helpful, I think, for us in our family system. So the idea is shelving. So it does involve a level of awareness. You're in discussion with someone and you can tell that you are no longer, you're in fight or flight. Right. You are no longer feeling calm, safe. You're in this place of feeling triggered, of having sudden heat, of feeling unsafe. So a great thing, and we've scripted and practiced and it has really transformed our family relationships is to say, I really love you and I care about this conversation. And you always speak about yourself. So you don't want to speak about your partner or, you know, assign blame to your partner. You've really lost it. Like, I can tell you're really triggered. It's all from first person. So I can tell I'm feeling triggered. I really love you and I care about our relationship. And I think for now we should. Could we take a break and we'll come back to it at a time that I'm feeling a little bit calmer and that I can really respect and speak the way that I want to to you. Simple as that.

22:37 John Dehlin Yeah. And we'll just. Natasha, you mentioned the fight or flight or freeze response, the amygdala, the emotional centered brain. I don't think we can ever remind our listeners enough that once your fight or flight or freeze system is triggered, your IQ literally declines between 10 and 20 points, which puts you, if you're of average intelligence, into the disabled category in terms of cognitive impairment.

23:05 Natasha Helfer People say we're stupid when we're mad,

23:07 John Dehlin we're stupid when we're mad, and so don't do it. Don't discuss sensitive issues when you're angry. Call the timeout. Go like this. Timeout. Oh, my gosh, I love you so much. I love you so much. I care about you so much. We are going to take a break for an hour or a day or a week or a month or a year, whatever it takes for everyone to calm down and have a conversation in a calm, measured, affirming way where we're vulnerable and showing our love and our kindness and our compassion, not our anger.

23:45 Natasha Helfer The only thing that I'll usually add to the timeout strategy is that there's, you know, we tend to be. Some people tend to be pursuers and some tend to be withdrawers.

23:53 Margi Dehlin Right.

23:53 Natasha Helfer So it's typically the withdrawers that like to call the timeouts, and then the pursuers all get torqued. So I just say if you're calling the timeout, anybody has the right to call the timeout. But then it's your responsibility to bring the topic back to the table. You just can't disappear for the next month. And people feel like then there's nothing that's been resolved.

24:15 Margi Dehlin So important. I forgot that as well as well. It is recommended, too, that you have a deadline of sorts, because for people who do feel abandonment kind of things too, it can help to say, you know, we'll swing by, we'll come back and talk about this by this evening. Have it or. And that allows for people to just kind of feel a little bit more secure that there will be closure. They're not just hanging on for a week waiting for things to come out.

24:45 Natasha Helfer Yeah. I recommend that spouses and even family members already have rules around timeouts way before they use them. You know, like, kind of like I usually say, you know, at most, 48 hours is kind of like ideal. You know, the idea is 20 minutes, you usually need 20 minutes for that physiological response to calm down. But, you know, you shouldn't need to go more than two or three days, especially if it's immediate family, spousal relationships, you know. But if it's, if it's extended family or whatever, you can, again, just set a time so people know what to expect.

25:19 John Dehlin That's great.

25:19 Margi Dehlin And I do think bringing it back now to, you know, what we're talking about in disclosing that this is just, it is a great tool to have if for any reason, things go awry all of a sudden. Yeah, it's just a wonderful thing to have in your belt to be able to say, oh my gosh, I can tell now we've, you know, detour. I care about this relationship. Let's come back to it. I don't want to. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to damage our relationship in any way. And so we'll come back to it and again with a time frame. And so it's a wonderful tool.

25:59 Natasha Helfer Well, in staying on the. On the topic of emotions, Lisa says my favorite quote, it's great to be loved, but it's profound to be understood. And usually as faith transitioners, that's our biggest complaint, Right. Is that we're not understood. It's hard, I think, for believers to understand something they themselves haven't been through. So there's already a curve there that's harder for them. I would just encourage transitioners to remember that they also want that same thing. You know, it's one thing to love our believing families. It's much more profound to have them feel like they're being understood, you know, in their own reactions and their own weaknesses and their own struggles to understand us.

26:44 John Dehlin Yeah. My only thing, couple things I'll add, is that ideally, you know, one of the common reactions that doubters and non believers feel is that they understand the believing standpoint, so they get why believers believe. And I think for them, it's easy to forget that they were once believers, too. That's kind of the admonition I have to non believers or to doubters is don't forget that you were once a believer and that you once would have had many of the similar reactions that they do, which is a call to compassion for you and is a call to empathy and love and an extra sort of sense of generosity. And then, yes, we all want to be understood. What I think we forget as non believers or as doubters is that for many people, merely the act of truly understanding and showing empathy is a bridge too far, because as soon as they are willing to read or learn or put themselves in your shoes, you're basically asking them to dismantle their worldview and to potentially risk undermining everything that their life is based on and everything that matters to them. So sometimes an expectation of being understood is just a bridge too far for some of our believing family and friends. Not all, but some.

28:11 Margi Dehlin However, that desire to be understood I really think is important to be aware of. And so with a slight risk of being redundant here, we started with finding a mentor or finding safe places or relationships so that there are safe spaces for you to have that, so you don't place those expectations on relationships that actually they're not at a level for them to show up for you in that way. So it is important, though, to have those places for you to freely express, for you to be empathized with, for you to feel understood. That need I so hear. And you just want to find the right relationships for that.

29:00 John Dehlin Shout out to Lindy Lindy helped us organize our Mormon Faith Crisis Workshop in Orem. She did a fantastic job. Lindy writes. One of the hardest things about discussing with family so far has been being able to accept they don't understand. So she's talking about acceptance. They're sometimes going to think it's because of being offended or wanting to drink or something other than the belief factor. And that desire to be understood can result in wanting to share information about truth claims that they don't need to hear. So profound. Lindy, you're highlighting the trap that we all get in, which is so often our desire to be respected and understood compels us to try and dislodge their belief or to taint their belief, or to infect their belief with the CES letter and Mormon stories, podcasts and other things to doubt. And that just makes them respect us less and pull away from us more. And it really does create a backfire effect. So we have to resist that tendency to try and force them to respect or understand us and just give them space and accept that for a while, or even permanently. We're going to lose their respect and their understanding because whatever we do, we don't want to make it worse. And I think that's a really important rule to live by, is don't make it worse. If anything, just accept it and give it time. Jenna writes. Yes. Oh, sorry, Go ahead, Natasha.

30:29 Natasha Helfer No, and to understand this is a really normal human process. I mean, you think about people who've been through divorce or people who are foster parents or people who adopt or, you know, it's hard to get the empathy sometimes that you need from people that haven't been through something similarly, because it's hard to understand at that level. And that's why a lot of people, you know, join groups, grief groups, or support groups, depending on the particular problem they're going through, because that's the one area where they feel like people really get it right. And so that's okay. It's okay that we don't completely understand everything somebody has been through if we haven't been through that ourselves. So I just want to normalize it totally.

31:16 John Dehlin Let's read Juliet. You want to read Juliet's comment for me?

31:21 Margi Dehlin It's a. Which one? This one?

31:22 John Dehlin Yeah.

31:22 Margi Dehlin One thing that helped me keep my ward friends was to send personal messages telling them that while I left the church, my love for them was not because of my church membership. When I saw them in person, I reaffirmed that even though this wasn't my church, they were still my people. Helped a lot. Did that one thing right.

31:42 John Dehlin Good job, Julia.

31:42 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

31:43 John Dehlin Thumbs up.

31:44 Margi Dehlin Beautiful.

31:46 John Dehlin All right, we've got a few more minutes with today's episode, and we've got some closing points to make. One I have here is request confidentiality. And basically all we're saying there is, if we're going to agree that we're not going to tell everyone at the same time, that we're going to, at the earliest points, tell the most important, important people and then potentially reserve the right to tell other people at a later time, Sometimes it helps to explicitly request confidentiality. Some of the biggest breaches I've seen in a marriage is when the non believer comes out to the believer, and then the believer runs and discloses to the non believer's parents and extended family without permission, or the bishop is a way to have leverage, and it can really cause deep damage and a breach to confidentiality. Also, a believing family may. A believer may want to protect or choose their own time for when their orthodox family finds out. And so just this discussion of confidentiality and requesting it explicitly when you desire it can be really helpful. Were you gonna say something, Natasha?

33:06 Natasha Helfer No, I was just adding the bishop to your list of people that sometimes, you know, a believing spouse will go talk to their bishop before the non believer or the doubter even wants the bishop involved.

33:17 John Dehlin Totally.

33:18 Margi Dehlin So as just aside to confidentiality, which I love and I think is really important, I have. I have had situations where I did not tell someone because I knew that for them Filtering the confidentiality they would need to show me would require so much effort. They'd have to filter from holding it for someone else that they are really close to that I knew I wouldn't tell them at that time. And that's something that you can weigh in. Your process too is I waited until. So if you have a couple people that are really close in your family

33:56 John Dehlin or

33:59 Margi Dehlin I was, I don't know, try to be aware of people holding and filtering for you and for how long.

34:08 Natasha Helfer Yeah. Whether it's fair one. And whether they've shown that type of trust before.

34:13 Margi Dehlin Exactly.

34:16 John Dehlin Yeah. All right. So requesting confidentiality is something as far as what to respect. I just have kind of the scale on what we can expect when we disclose to somebody. And it can range anything from, you know, someone immediately saying, hey, I don't believe either. And I didn't. I've been, you know, scared to tell you. That can be a response that's probably rare, but it does happen. Sometimes that even happens amongst spouses or parent child relationships. Some are going to be supportive but hold their ground. That's kind of what my parents are. That's also probably a little more rare, but it happens. I would say the most common response is crickets. And what I mean by crickets is no response at all. Especially when you send an email or write that letter thinking that, or you post something on Facebook, whatever it is, thinking that everybody loves you and so they're going to all come running to you to want to understand why you've left and why you've doubted and what are the main concerns. Most people don't respond at all. And so I just want to set your expectations about that. Henrik writes, my wife and I wrote a letter that we sent to our parents the day after I talked to my parents and my wife with her parents. We mentioned in the letter that we don't believe in polygamy and can't believe that an angel with a drawn sword threatened Joseph if he didn't marry his teenager. So Henrik decided to throw in some of those details. And then he says, and we didn't talk to my siblings and they haven't asked why we don't come to church anymore. Then he writes, it's strange that they don't want to know why. We have a good relationship with our families and we have continued to celebrate birthdays and Christmas and so on. I think we did our coming out pretty good, even if our parents felt great sadness for a time. I just want to. I put that here. Henrik and others Just to sort of highlight that most people aren't going to want to talk about it. They would prefer to not know, and many of them would prefer to never talk about it in detail. And in some ways that's actually a good thing. That's preserving their health and wellbeing. That's preserving maybe in some ways your relationship, or at least in some ways that's a boundary. They're basically, without explicitly setting a boundary, they're basically saying, this isn't something we wish to talk about. And boundaries that aren't even explicitly set should sometimes still be respected. And that, you know, it means on many of our parts, that disappointment of thinking, well, this is my spouse, or these are my parents, or these are my siblings, or these are my ward members whom I've served for 30 years. If they really love me, they should want to talk about this. But the truth is, for just so many, that's not a possibility. And they can't go there and they won't go there. So just kind of know that that's in many cases the most common response. Is that fair, Natasha?

37:22 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I mean, it was, it was the response I received, I guess if you'd call it this, response versus cutoff. But, you know, we ended up, our family ended up kind of stop stopping attending church overnight due to an issue that happened with our daughter. And yeah, I mean, a ward that we had been completely active in, completely involved in. We didn't hear anything even from people that you think you'd hear from. Right. Like home teachers, visiting teachers, the bishopric for probably about a year and a half until my family was in a car accident. Then they all showed up with the casseroles because we're good at that. And then after that, there were a few attempts, but it's, it was very, I mean, on one hand, yeah, it's very. It can be. It can be less damaging than conflict in some ways. But in other ways, it felt extremely, profoundly betraying because it's like all of this energy that we had been and there was just, it's kind of like, well, you know, they're gone.

38:31 John Dehlin Yeah. In addition to the crickets response or the joining you response or the supportive but holding their ground response, we also have the trying to save you response or treating you like projects. And actually we have Juliet sharing, for me, it's the opposite. She writes, they keep sending me apologetics and won't give me space or acceptance. They take boundaries as an insult. And she also writes, my boundary hating sister outed me to everyone on Facebook. I wound up blocking her. Juliet has suffered from people trying to save you or treating you like a project or in some cases, trying to embarrass you. That's awful. It can even go to other more extreme and negative reactions, including restricting access from you, restricting trust from you, limiting or eliminating communication or intimacy or access to you or to their children or to their loved ones. Sometimes in the most extreme negative cases, people are cut out of inheritances or cut out altogether from the family. That is rare, but it's possible and it's awful. But this is the whole range of responses. And when it comes to, you know, when it comes to these more extreme responses of trying to save you or treating you like a project or outing you or other sorts of things. It brings us back to this discussion of boundaries. And we've had several listeners write about, you know, how to deal with people who treat you in an offensive or disrespectful or condescending way when you come out and let's just read a couple of those. Margie, do you want to read Kara's narrative?

40:35 Margi Dehlin Sure. I was naive to the fact that people would not take the news well. I informed a close family member immediately who was also going through her own faith transition. So that was a fortunate and bonding experience. I informed one of my closest friends too soon. I was still in the discovery phase, had not determined my status in the church, and was incredibly angry. We worked through things, but I did hurt and scare her in the beginning. I reassured her of my unconditional love and support through words and letters which helped mend that experience. Boundaries are so important in this experience. When family members did not respond well, it was important for me to take a step back before responding. During that time, I would consider what offensive things needed to be addressed and which I could let go. I would then have a meeting where mutual respect was requested. There was a time I was chastised and yelled at. At that point, verbal conversation did not feel safe. So I spent a few months away from that individual and wrote a letter. Luckily, I was shown respect and reassured the individual I would respect them. When a discussion about spirituality begins, I think it's good to address everyone's concern and. And that if either party crosses a boundary, they can feel safe saying they no longer want to discuss the issue. So this is kind of also back to shelving right, that idea of recognizing when things go wrong.

41:53 John Dehlin I think we need to have a whole episode on boundaries. But, Natasha, in one minute, can you give us sort of boundaries 101? How do you set a boundary with an obnoxious father in law, an obnoxious mother in law, an obnoxious parent, an obnoxious sibling, an obnoxious bishop? Can you just take us through the anatomy of a boundary setting experience

42:16 Natasha Helfer in 101? Okay.

42:19 John Dehlin In one minute.

42:20 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So a boundary is basically saying something along the lines of this is what I expect or would hope out of our interaction, understanding that you don't have control whether or not that person will agree to your request. Right. And so then it also kind of has attached to it a consequence like if it's not respected, then what do I have control over? How will I respond to whether or not my response, my request is respected or not? Now, boundaries can be flexible. So you may initially say, well, this is my boundary, thinking it's perfectly reasonable. And by the time you listen to the other person's perspective and their boundary, maybe there's some room for flexibility. But in general, that's kind of what you're doing. And then you have to make sure that you fulfill your part of respecting the consequence that you felt comfortable with and not just, you know, going. Which I think is why a lot of times people, especially in Mormonism, struggle with this is because we have been raised to be sacrificial, we've been raised to be caretakers, we've been raised to be forgiving. And so it's hard sometimes to see taking that part of that consequence. As you know, we tend to have a script about that, that it's non forgiving, that it's mean. Whereas like what Margie's saying and what many people have said on the posts is that it's not about being mean or kind, it's about being realistic and what you can or cannot handle for your own self care.

43:52 John Dehlin Love it. So good. Thank you.

43:54 Margi Dehlin A great resource. This is on YouTube. Just Brene Brown, you can look up under empathy or boundaries and it'll pull right up. And you can read about her studies with regard to boundaries and wholehearted people. People who you know, are wholehearted in their relationships and feel great empathy for people, how they protect those relationships. It's actually a protective measure.

44:22 Natasha Helfer All the research shows that people have better relationships, do better in their own self care, are more empathic when they have good boundaries. So it's a pro relational approach, not anti relational.

44:34 Margi Dehlin Love that.

44:34 John Dehlin Yep, love it. So remember boundaries and we'll do an episode on more boundaries. But boundaries are crucial and we Mormons are terrible at it. I always say we feel comfortable looking at people what underwear People are wearing and asking people about their underwear. We feel comfortable asking 12 year olds behind a closed door where they do and don't touch themselves. There's just a million ways Mormons are completely inappropriate with boundaries.

45:05 Natasha Helfer And we're not taught how to say no. Like you're supposed to say yes no matter what.

45:09 John Dehlin Yep. We accept all callings. Right. And we just need to learn to say no and not to think it's the end of the world. And to teach people that a boundary doesn't mean I don't love you. In fact, a boundary means I love you and what you can do whenever you want to set a boundary. One thing I would add is you can invite them to set a boundary with you so you can say, listen, I am setting some boundaries with you. I need you to respect these four things. But guess what? I want to respect your boundaries. So I want you to set boundaries with me and tell me how I can make you feel safe. And it could be something that you both share with each other and set with each other. And you can model your respect of their boundaries and the one that's just always worth offering. And I can never say this enough is to say, here's a boundary. All respect for you, your children, your siblings, your loved ones, everyone in the ward, if it's the bishop, I will never do anything to take anyone's faith away. I will never try and sow doubt. I will never throw in problematic or doubtful things. I will always show the infinite and ultimate respect to your right to believe, your right to self determination, to the things that you hold most sacred. And if you can model that, you're teaching them how to be respectful to you and you're showing them how to respect a boundary so that they can also respect one as well.

46:39 Margi Dehlin That's a great idea.

46:40 John Dehlin Thank you.

46:41 Margi Dehlin Yep.

46:41 John Dehlin Victoria, our super cool friend from the uk, says this is a really great episode. Thank you. Victoria, we love you and we want to have you on Mormon Stories podcast soon. Message me. We need to get that scheduled. Alan Mount. We love Alan Mount. We recommend Alan Mount's series called Marriage on a Tightrope. I think Alan writes, we had family tell my wife she should do the hard thing and leave me. Yikes. Yeah, that's awful. When believing family encourage their child or their family member to leave the doubting or disbelieving spouse. Hopefully, Alan, you had some luck erecting a boundary there because that's kind of unacceptable response. And we've heard of bishops doing that as well. Encouraging the believing spouse in rare cases or extreme cases to encourage the believing spouse to leave. And that just should never happen. I think even I remember talking to Elder Holland once and him saying an apostle would never encourage a believing member to desert a non believing member just because, you know, they're a believer. That in general they just think it's wrong to tell people who they should and shouldn't stay married to. And so remember that I'll just put

48:03 Natasha Helfer in a plug right then for. I mean, I think that if you are in a mixed faith relationship, and we've said this before, it's so important to get help as a couple. Because one of the things, if you really want your relationship to survive or to give it the best chances to survive, is to really become allies first. Because you will need to be allies, have each other's back in many ways with your community, with your children, with your extended family, with your ward. And in order to do that, you need to, you know, first of all get on the same page about some things. And that can be hard to do when you're reeling from the, you know, the stability factor of having one person in a different place with their faith than the other. So mixed marriage work is really, really important. And to get it from a professional who knows what they're doing.

48:53 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. I like to tell people I would never. If someone came to me with an eating disorder, I would refer them to an expert on eating disorders. If someone came to me with bipolar disorder, even though I'm a psychologist, fully trained, I would refer them to an expert in bipolar disorder. Same with drug addiction. I wouldn't try and treat someone with a heroin addiction. I would refer them. And my point in saying all that is a Mormon mixed faith marriage is as much a specialty or more as any of those things I just listed. And so find an expert. Use Margie, use Natasha, use me. Use people that we're happy to refer you to because you need an expert to help you through this in many instances. And we don't say that in any selfish way way. We just have learned by sad experience that people who don't specialize in these topics, whether it's a well intended believing member of LDS Family Services or a secular therapist that doesn't really understand Mormon culture, these people can do a lot of damage by being invalidating either to believers or to non believers. You need someone skilled to do this. Okay, a couple other final points. I want to make this point in terms of their reaction. I like to say this, their reactions. So remember this tool. Their reactions are almost always about them. Another simpler way to say that in fewer words is it's not about you. So if your spouse or if your parent or if your in laws or if your siblings or if you're bishop freak out, that's the door. If they freak out, do you want to get it while I'm talking or not? It's okay. Sorry, we're having lunch delivered, so thank you, sweetie. Sorry about that. If they freak out, it's about them. What it means is they're scared. It means they're worried, it means they're anxious, it means they feel like their worldview is threatened. And even if they call you names, even if they take it out on you, even if they mistreat you in the end, it's not that they care about you, it's that they're acting out of self preservation, they're acting out of sadness or frustration. And so try to not take it personally if people react that way. Try to remind yourself their reactions are about them, not about you. And that sometimes can be helpful. How does that sound, Natasha?

51:39 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I often say that that's when, you know, because I think a lot of people feel really guilty, like I'm going to break my mother's heart or I'm going to anger people or I'm going to, you know, again, that responsibility we tend to take. But I think you're absolutely right. People are in charge of their own work. They can get help from, you know, resources as well. And so you're not, it's not your job to manage another person's reaction. So I know we're all relational and we all, you know, coexist. And at the same time, you don't have to burden yourself with their reaction.

52:16 John Dehlin Yep, yep. Their reaction's about them. They need time to grieve, they need time to heal, they need time to adjust, they need time to observe. Oftentimes their initial fear is that you're going to wreck your marriage, wreck your kids, wreck their grandkids, throw your life in the toilet. But if you can live a healthy, happy, fulfilled, meaningful life, many of them will become reassured over time and say, wow, you actually seem healthier and happier. And that will assuage for many some of their more serious or significant concerns.

52:55 Natasha Helfer I guess another thing I want to say here, just to make it even more systemic, sometimes the reactions aren't so much about them or you. It's really about what the system has taught us. And unfortunately, I do give responsibility kind of to the overall culture of Mormonism that we have taught people to be scared of doubters. We have taught people to have a lot of angst about empty chairs at the table of the celestial kingdom. And on the one hand, I'm glad when you say things like Elder Holland has said things to you personally that he would never want anybody to leave. On the other hand, it angers me that they're not more forthright about giving those types of messages when they know so many people are struggling and in fact oftentimes do the opposite and add to the narrative like the classic Renlund talk that we've talked about before, that just happened just a few weeks ago, where they, they really cause more divide then. So I guess I want to also not just kind of remember that we're all part of a system here. Maybe that can help you empathize with some of your more believing orthodox people that some of that, even if it's very painful and even if it's inappropriate and even if it's abusive, sometimes comes from this place of how they were taught to respond.

54:15 Margi Dehlin So good.

54:16 John Dehlin Love it. Aaron writes, yes, exclamation point. Reacting how we've been taught to react. Victoria says, yes, lots of people like that. Systemic point. Natasha, a couple more things and then we need to close. Linda writes part of the challenge of setting boundaries with true believing family members is their belief in their stewardship. This is another systemic thing. She means by that. Grandparents, parents and other family members often feel and enmeshed eternal responsibility to their family. I think this belief motivates much of the rescuing and judging that occurs. That is so true, Linda. We validate that, we respect that and we'll reiterate that that's an important moment and opportunity to put up new boundaries and to say I get I love you. I so am touched by, by you, dad or grandpa wanting to taking seriously what you feel is your priesthood authority and wanting to coach or mentor us or exhort us or call us to repentance for what you think is the true path for us. And I just want to say thank you for that. But. And then you of course lovingly put up a boundary and say, but for now, I want to relieve you of that burden. I want to lovingly lift that burden from your shoulders and say, for now, if you could just show us unconditional love and support and we'll offer the same back to you, we'll get through this. And my goal is that we have a healthy, strong relationship. So please support these boundaries if you can. And I think our relationship will only thrive in and grow. Now, one last Thing Ann writes, many cannot afford a therapist. And Ann, I think that is a wonderful way to close this episode because, yeah, coaching and therapy rates are super high for many now. I think they're a lot cheaper than going to the behavioral health unit at a local hospital or down at the University of Utah Uni Center. I also think in many cases, coaching and therapy is much more affordable than divorce. But you're right, there are many people that simply don't have the cash to pay 100, 150, $200 an hour for a coach or therapist. That is why we at Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis are doing this podcast. So if you are concerned for yourself or others that therapy or coaching is too expensive, there's some things you can do. You can, like the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Facebook page. You can give us a five star review. We just noticed that. I believe Juliet just gave us a five star review. Please do that right now. Please like this podcast page. Please give us a positive review and Please consider donating 10, 25, 50, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. You can know that by supporting this resource, which is not only a podcast, but it's also these events that happen. If you want to attend Natasha's workshop or my workshop or retreats that Natasha and I do together or refer other people to them. If you have friends or family that are struggling, those retreats and workshops are specifically priced so that you pay less than the cost of one hour of therapy or coaching for sometimes one to two full days of coaching and support. That's why we do these events. We're pulling our hair out at how hard it is and how difficult it is to market these events. We know there's people in desperate need. We don't know how to reach them. So if you can, spread the word that there are workshops and retreats being scheduled every month to support people, whether it's in Oklahoma City with Natasha or Kansas City with Natasha, or Salt Lake City with me. We're thinking about Arizona, we're thinking about Colorado, we're thinking about other locations. There's a Switzerland thing planned for Europe. Please let people know about these workshops and retreats. They're much more affordable than individual therapy. Please become a monthly subscriber or donor to this podcast, not only for yourself, but to pay it forward. Surely you can afford 10 bucks a month either for yourself or for others, and then just spread the word. If you could just put on your Facebook, put on your Instagram, put on your Twitter that you value these episodes that Other people should check us out, spread the word. That is a way we can help people who can't afford coaches or therapists get the support and the help that they need.

59:10 Margi Dehlin Beautiful. And can I add another layer, please? So that is why we've tried to make this podcast interactive is we love this idea of meeting you where you are and having this be a shared space. And so if you find a topic comes to you or something would be truly helpful and write to us. Let us know of topics that you're facing that you feel like you could really benefit from being supported. We're here for you. And then also we have plans to do episodes on mixed faith marriage, on intimacy, on, you know, these topics because we realize that they are expensive. It was a major motivating factor for us to actually begin this podcast.

59:52 Natasha Helfer So we're always hoping to reach more than less people. We realize that if we all just, you know, work only one on one, that we're only going to be able to, to see maybe a few hundred people. Whereas I think through these venues, hopefully we can reach thousands. Another thing that's coming up that I'm not sure if it's up yet or not, John, but we're going to be doing webinars, interactive webinars. So we have a mixed faith marriage webinar coming up in April, three different dates. We're wanting to have you join us if you can. But they'll also be recorded so then people can purchase those for a much, very affordable price and then have some really, you know, very clear, specific strategies around dealing with a mixed faith relationship. So we're trying as hard as we can to on the one hand, you know, honor our value and honor our lives, you know, our, what is it? Livelihood. Right. We need to make a living and also try as much as we can to make these types of, make our skill set available to people in cost effective ways.

1:01:03 John Dehlin And we're getting a lot of really kind messages from our listeners. Safeway writes very profound. Toddie writes, you guys have been my therapy for the last year. Thank you so much, Lindy. Hey, Lindy. Lindy writes, the Faith Crisis workshop was so amazing. It is affordable and several hours long and you make lasting relationships and friendships with people who can relate to you. Excited for the June conference. She writes, of course we're doing something in Salt Lake City this Saturday. For those who are around Salt Lake City this Saturday, we're doing a little mini workshop. Aaron writes, this has been amazing. Thanks guys. Keep up the great work. People need this. Kristen writes thank you so much. These podcasts are so appreciated. Margie and Natasha, thank you guys.

1:01:53 Margi Dehlin Thank you.

1:01:54 John Dehlin John, you are amazing.

1:01:55 Margi Dehlin You're amazing.

1:01:56 John Dehlin We love you.

1:01:57 Natasha Helfer Natasha, you're amazing and you are both amazing and our listeners are amazing.

1:02:04 John Dehlin Haven't we gotten the best comments from our listeners? Yes, we love our loyal listeners and viewers. Thank you. And those joining us on YouTube or Facebook broadcasted later and of course those joining us by listening through our MP3. If you listen to us on itunes, please give us a five star review on itunes. Please like us there because those positive reviews also make a huge difference. And just thanks to everyone for joining us. We are really loving this stuff. And now we're gonna have episodes, I don't know, 14 and maybe even 15 in the can we have many more episodes coming ahead. We kind of try and record these things on Tuesdays. So join us again hopefully next Tuesday for another episode of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis.

1:02:54 Margi Dehlin Thank you for being with us.

1:02:56 Natasha Helfer Awesome. See you all later.

1:02:58 John Dehlin Thanks everybody. Thanks, Natasha.

1:03:00 Natasha Helfer Bye. Bye.

1:03:00 John Dehlin See you guys.