The Essential Role of Grief in a Mormon Faith Crisis

Episode 24

0:20 John Dehlin Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. I am one of your hosts, John Delin, and I am accompanied to my right, potentially your left, by Margie Delyn.

0:36 Margi Dehlin Hi, everyone.

0:38 John Dehlin And joining us from Wichita, Kansas, the unmatchable, the amazing, the marvelous, the phenomenal.

0:50 Natasha Helfer You've got to stop this, John. I think I'm going to go for an adverb search, an adjective search, come up with like 20 new words that we don't typically use.

1:04 John Dehlin Natasha Alver Parker, everyone.

1:06 Natasha Helfer Hello, everyone. So glad to be here with you all today with the phenomenal, outstanding, amazing. Margie and John De Lit. I just can't come up with things as quickly as you can

1:22 John Dehlin compliment therapy. Has someone come up with that yet? Therapy where you just are complimented.

1:27 Natasha Helfer It's very strength based and I think we should do it.

1:30 John Dehlin Yes, let's write, let's write another book on complimenting therapy.

1:35 Natasha Helfer That's right.

1:37 John Dehlin So for those of you who are joining us for the first time, we want to share with you our mission for the podcast. Margie, what's our mission?

1:45 Margi Dehlin Our mission is to provide positive, practical and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis or for those wishing to understand those amidst a faith crisis.

1:57 John Dehlin So is this just for people having a faith crisis?

1:59 Margi Dehlin Why no, John, it's not.

2:03 John Dehlin Natasha, who else is it for?

2:05 Natasha Helfer Well, it's for family members and friends and ecclesiastical leaders and, you know, anybody who's part of the community or even other therapists who are working around some of these issues and want to know, you know, the types of things that tend to show up in our clinic. So, so lots of people could benefit from this, including maybe people going through different faith transitions in different religions because there are other religions that, although maybe they differ a little bit and how the transitions look like. It's, you know, a lot of the similar, a lot of the kind of basic processes can be similar.

2:43 John Dehlin I love it. All right, well, so what is our message, Natasha? We always like, you know, there's a message in the name. It's kind of a deliberate name and the color is also deliberate. Will you share with our listeners what our overall message is for the podcast?

3:05 Margi Dehlin Sure.

3:05 Natasha Helfer Well, I think, you know, the typical language is faith crisis or, you know, kind of a deep loss or dark night of the soul. We kind of hear those types of words a lot and there's definitely a part of faith transition that's difficult and yet we take a strength based approach and we talk about a faith transition as a gift that can really benefit our lives that actually fits into the role of human beings in general. Like, we're supposed to be changing. We're supposed to be re looking at things. And faith transition is one way that we can do that. So it can turn out to be a huge gift, creating a big, beautiful life with lots of new opportunities. And believe it or not, even people who are maybe the support systems, like a spouse or a family member that isn't going through a faith transition, oftentimes after several years or so, will also agree that it's been a gift, that it's made them rework their relationship or make them look at things in a new way, even if they haven't transitioned themselves. So these are, you know, change is hard, and yet we all know that change is often also good.

4:18 John Dehlin Love it. Thank you. Yes. We're here to help you heal and grow and to. And to turn this lemon, as it sometimes feels like, into lemonade. All right. For those who don't know, this podcast is available on itunes. It's also available on YouTube. It's on Facebook Live. So however you prefer to consume it, you can consume it in video or audio format Facebook Live at the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Facebook page, again on itunes or on YouTube under gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. If you are able and willing, please give us a positive review or a like or whatever you can on any of those platforms that really makes a difference. Really quickly, each of us offers ours. We're all super busy and booked, but we like people to know that we do offer our services as faith crisis coaches. And so, Margie, tell them really quickly about your practice.

5:25 Margi Dehlin Sure. So I'm a certified life transition coach and I am also the curator of the blog beautyinthenow.org so I do coaching and I also write on the side. So if you like what you hear here, you can also visit me and find me there.

5:43 John Dehlin Love it. Natasha.

5:45 Natasha Helfer I'm involved in a lot of different things. Support people in faith transition and sexuality and lots of other things. You can find all of that@Natashaparker.org, both the online practice that I run, as well as other podcasts I'm a part of, and my blog as well.

6:00 John Dehlin So Mormon faith, Mormon mental health podcast,

6:05 Natasha Helfer Mormon sex.

6:07 John Dehlin Sex info.

6:09 Natasha Helfer Yeah. Sex talk with Natasha.

6:11 John Dehlin Lots of sex in there.

6:12 Natasha Helfer Lots of sex.

6:15 John Dehlin Healthy sex.

6:15 Natasha Helfer Healthy sex.

6:19 John Dehlin Lots of good stuff.

6:20 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

6:20 John Dehlin And then you can find my coaching practice@johndelune.com coaching and again, I focus on mixed faith marriages, faith crisis stuff. I've done a lot of LGBT work But feel free to reach out if you're really in need. Okay. We do have an interesting announcement that we'll make really brief, and then we have a couple other events. We are excited to announce that we're about to pull the trigger on something that I think is exciting. When we first started, we first decided to do this podcast, we were wondering whether we should do it separately from the osf. We, you know, we had the idea of doing webinars, of doing books, and there was just enough turmoil and questions that we just weren't sure about whether doing it with the OSF or separately would make most sense. We launched it separately from the osf, but we've talked to the OSF board, and the board is very interested in us doing this podcast as part of the Open Stories Foundation. So that's what our plan is to do, is to integrate this into the Open Stories foundation along with Mormon Stories Podcast, Mormon Mental Health Podcast, the thoughtful faith podcast, etc. This really won't make a big difference to our listeners and our current donors other than it allows your donations going forward from, you know, let's just say from May 2019. Going forward, it allows your donations to be tax deductible. You know, every bit helps that that may not be a big deal for a lot of you. It also allows us to just not have to worry about marketing this on the Mormon Stories podcast that that's obviously the most widely distributed podcast, I think, in Mormonism. And we just realized that that's an important opportunity to share this content not just with our current subscribers, but also with the Mormon Stories podcast base. So we'll continue to release these episodes on the various Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis platforms, but we also have the option of releasing it on Mormon Stories Podcast and on Mormon Mental Health Podcast, where it can reach more people. So that's exciting and I'm excited for that. There are all sorts of efficiencies of doing that as well, so we just want to make that announcement. We've already emailed all our current donors to let them know if any of you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email us. But it should be a pretty transparent transition for all of you. Last thing is, we have a couple events for those who don't know. There's a really major event coming up. It's called Thrive. It's the Thrive Conference in Salt Lake City. Finding Healing and Joy Beyond Mormonism. Tons of really awesome topics. Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis Journey, Healthy Marriage, Committed Relationships, Improving Mental Health and Spirituality. Healthy Parenting, Finding new friends and community, Healthy sexuality, Navigating a mixed faith marriage.

9:34 Margi Dehlin Working.

9:34 John Dehlin We've got this phenomenal lineup of speakers. Margie and me are speaking. Natasha Hilfer Parker, Julie d' Azevedo Hanks, Christian Moore, Anthony Miller, John Larson, David Bacavoy, Jenny Morrow and Bryce Bowers, Elf on the Shelf, Alan and Katie Mount from Marriage on a Tight Wire, Steve Holbrook from the Tightrope.

9:54 Margi Dehlin I think so.

9:55 John Dehlin Thank you. Steve Holbrook from the Utah Valley Post Mormon Community, Crystal and Sean Escobar from Wanna Be Balanced mom book and many others. So it's June 7th through 9th, it's in West Valley and you can go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com to sign up for the wait list. We filled the current slots. We're currently negotiating a larger venue. If you want to make it into the event, you have to go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com and, and sign up on the wait list and that will get you in. So please do that if you're interested. It's going to be a phenomenal opportunity to meet cool people, to have fun, to hang out. We'll do karaoke, we'll do food, lots of fun things. So please check that out. Natasha, we're finishing up a little webinar that we did. Do you want to let our listeners know about that?

10:48 Natasha Helfer Sure. We did a three part webinar series for mixed faith couples. The first part was kind of explaining faith transitions in general and how they can really help a mixed faith marriage understand what's kind of going on so that we avoid blame game and meaning rut type of issues. The second part was really all about couple communication and strategies and ways to, you know, edify your marriage through a time that can feel really sometimes very painful for many people. And then the third part was all about parenting. So we had great attendees attend that and they really added to the conversation and several of them agreed to be on the recorded part of the podcast. So we have that as part of it. And so we'll be making that available for your convenience and your purchase ability probably in the next week, week or two, I believe. So that's going to be kind of an ongoing resource that will be available for mixed faith couples.

11:49 John Dehlin All right, well, that's. Was that too long?

11:52 Margi Dehlin No,

11:54 John Dehlin that was our announcements. Thanks to everyone for your patience. We do have a couple comments from our listeners. Weston says, happy to get in on this at the beginning. We're glad you're with us too. Weston, Tamara writes, also allows your donation to be your employer if you have that option. So, yes. Thank you, Tamara. Us going to the Open Storage foundation as a nonprofit does allow you to match your donations or to have your employee donate. And Fred says, exciting. I hope that works well for everyone, and I think it will. So thanks, Fred. Thanks to everyone who joined us. By the way, we're really excited to everyone who's joining us live on Facebook. We really, we live stream these for one reason. We want people to feel comfortable sharing and participating and asking questions or giving their stories or comments. And so we really welcome anyone who's listening now to post comments, questions, feedback, etc. On the live feed, and we'll do our best to incorporate them into the program. All right, so we want to shout out to a couple new donors. We've had at least five new donors sign up as monthly donors to the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. The names are. Do you want to read them? Margie?

13:11 Margi Dehlin Yes. Michelle, Stephanie, Melanie, Jared, and Heather. Thank you.

13:17 John Dehlin Thank you. We have a modest number of donors and a modest amount of monthly donations coming in, but right now, at least it's enough to pay for some of the basic expenses. None of us have actually been paid any money for this podcast yet, just as an FYI, but we're always grateful for those who sign up. We want to do this just because we care and we want to help people. But when people sign up and donate, it allows us to try and get paid for our time as well. So thanks to our new donors who are contributing to help make that possible. Thanks to everyone who's donated so far. If you want to donate, you can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com click on the donate button at the top right. And 10, 15, 20 bucks, whatever you can afford. It makes a big difference. All right, so let's move to the what's Working session. Natasha, do you want to tell us what's been working for you this past week?

14:14 Margi Dehlin Sure.

14:15 Natasha Helfer So it's been a few weeks is all I'm going to say as far as my own emotional regulation needs. So it's been a few weeks.

14:27 John Dehlin Are you talking about the. The reversal of the church's LGBT policy, the November policy, and then the excommunication of the Youngs, or are you talking about other things?

14:38 Natasha Helfer No, I'm talking about all of that started with the reversal policy and all the people that we needed to reach out to in regards to that regard or people that reached out to us. And then, of course, the comments in general conference that were so painful for so many. And dealing with the ramifications of that in my clinical office and then. Yeah. And then the youngs being considered apostate for things that just seem a little bit ridiculous to me. Well, that are ridiculous. So, yeah, it's just been a heavy month, I think for a lot of people in our midst anyway. So part of how I deal with that, and this is kind of very personalized. I don't recommend this necessarily for everybody, but for me, being on a regular birth control pill, especially as I hit perimenopause, is very emotionally regulating. I'm very grateful for my little birth control pill that I take every day because I do notice that that helps me just with a variety of things, but in regards to mood regulation, it helps with that as well. And then I was reminded of this book that came out. We hold you'd name when Gina Colvin. For those of you who are familiar with Gina Colvin when she was facing disciplinary action, Joanna Brooks and Kalani Tonga made a huge effort to gather very quickly. Lots of thoughts and poetry and blessings kind of from women to women facing it says Mormon women bless Mormons facing exile. So this has been kind of a little scriptural, spiritual, enlightening book for me to kind of dive into these last few weeks and feel benefit from that. So that's what's working for me.

16:26 John Dehlin Love it. Thanks, Natasha.

16:27 Margi Dehlin Can I ask you a question, Natasha? Is the birth control new? Is that a new.

16:32 Natasha Helfer No. I've been on it for several years.

16:34 Margi Dehlin Okay.

16:35 Natasha Helfer But then as I've gone in to talk to my physicians about, okay, I'm 47, you know, like what, if anything, should I be doing different as far as hormone regulation? I haven't really felt too different. But you know, wanting to be proactive about my health, at least for me, it's a good fit. You know, medicine is very personalized and not everybody. I'm not saying everybody should be on birth control. I'm just saying for me that works so far.

17:03 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Thank you.

17:06 John Dehlin Love it. What's working for you?

17:09 Margi Dehlin So what has been working for me amidst same kind of feelings as Natasha for the past few weeks? I feel like there's been a bit of some emotional overwhelm moments I feel. And so I've started this and I shared this in my blog as well on beautyinthenow.org but it's called a sense bath. And so for me it works really well going outside, it's just a way to kind of calm and so what I do, it sounds kind of crazy. Probably. But I go outside on sunny days in particular, and I sit directly in the sun and I close my eyes for a bit and I just deep breathe and pay attention to all my senses. So what I hear, what I smell, eventually I'll do what I see. I start not doing what I see because it's just kind of calming for me. But I really, really love it. I probably, you know, sometimes I only have five minutes, and yet in five minutes, I feel much more grounded. Sometimes I even lie down on the ground and do it. But just hearing the birds and just connect, getting out of my head for a space, being in nature just makes that easier for me. So getting outside and just sort of getting outside my head and paying attention and hearing the world and feeling warmth and, you know, it's just. It's been incredibly soothing for me. So that's something that has definitely been working for me lately.

18:46 John Dehlin I love it.

18:47 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I love that. I love the sun.

18:50 John Dehlin Judy, one of our listeners writes. I'm doing that too, Marky.

18:53 Margi Dehlin Oh, I love that.

18:54 John Dehlin Shout out to Judy.

18:55 Margi Dehlin We're doing it together, Judy.

18:56 John Dehlin I believe Judy's in Louisiana, so. So if I'm wrong, Judy, you'll have to correct me. But thanks, Judy, from theoretically Louisiana, and also Fred writes. Visiting national parks and other wonderful outdoor locations with my wife and kids for little hikes has been working for me.

19:14 Natasha Helfer Love that, Fred.

19:15 John Dehlin That's great. Tamara writes, I do that as well. I am a gardener, and my garden has become my safe haven. And recently I started practicing yoga. And generally I use the same breathing techniques when I go out and sit in the sun.

19:32 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

19:34 John Dehlin So, Tamara, you can come hang out with Margie. If you want to do it with Margie, message us later. We'll give you our home address. Wait, is that a boundary? Did we just cross a boundary? Actually, maybe I need a lesson on boundaries. Judy confirmed. She's in Louisiana. I'm in a silly mood today. What's working for me is the Secular Buddhism podcast.

19:57 Margi Dehlin Oh, yes.

19:58 John Dehlin I'm not sure how much I've mentioned this in the past. My dear friend Noah Rashetta was a listener for Mormon Stories for a long time. Then he decided to start his own podcast because he's read like 60 or 70 books on Buddhism, and he's become kind of a Buddhist teacher. So we started a podcast called Secular Buddhism Podcast. For me, I use it for a couple reasons. One is the wisdom is sort of like mental hygiene. For me, it's just positive mental health and spirituality stuff. I don't have the benefit of Going to a Mormon church these days, personally, for mental health and spirituality. So Noah's podcast is one of a few resources that fills that need for me. Also, I tend to kind of. My brain sometimes starts racing around three or four in the morning, and I used to get up and work. That wasn't good for my health, physical health, or my emotional health. What I do now is I keep some earphones by my bed and my phone. And when I'm up at 3 or 4 and need to get back to bed, I put on Noah Rashetta's Secular Buddhism podcast. And either I just spend that time. It takes my mind off the rumination. So instead of ruminating, I am listening to something healthy and constructive. Then sometimes it helps me actually fall asleep. And even if I fall asleep while listening to it, I have to believe that it's somehow subconsciously penetrating my brain, even if I'm not actively listening. Is that possible?

21:39 Margi Dehlin I think it's possible.

21:40 John Dehlin Natasha, you're an expert. Is that possible?

21:42 Natasha Helfer Sure,

21:45 Margi Dehlin sure.

21:47 John Dehlin All right. Well, that's what's working for me. You can find that podcast@secularbuddhism.com now, am I right?

21:52 Margi Dehlin You also interviewed Noah.

21:54 John Dehlin Oh, yeah. You can find.

21:56 Margi Dehlin Interview is fabulous.

21:57 John Dehlin A few interviews of Noah on Mormon stories. We also posted it to the Mormon Transitions podcast.

22:04 Natasha Helfer Yeah, he's great.

22:04 John Dehlin He's great. So check those out. It's really worth it. So those are the things that are working.

22:13 Natasha Helfer Weston Brooks says that he's listening to ancient Nordic music.

22:19 John Dehlin That's good.

22:20 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

22:21 John Dehlin And Tamara wants us to know she's in Austin and we love Austin, so welcome, Tamara. All right, it looks like Courtney's joined us. Courtney and Juliet and Monica, Several of our dear friends have joined us. Shout out to them. We love you guys and we hope to see you at Thrive or some other time soon. I know, Julia. We have a Juliet. We have a karaoke date sometime in July with a lot of other friends, so. And so anyway, let's start today. The topic is, we titled it the Essential Role Grieving in a Mormon Faith Crisis. And we're going to begin probably by talking about the Kubler Ross model of grief. Now, Natasha, is this a model that you are sort of comfortable talking about, or do you talk about grief from a different framework?

23:23 Natasha Helfer No, I totally talk about this, but at the same time, I'm probably going to have to look it up just to make sure I get all of the different. The seven.

23:31 John Dehlin No, it's okay.

23:33 Natasha Helfer There's like a five step model and there's like a seven step model. There's little models about it, but I use this all the time and I really, really love it.

23:42 John Dehlin Okay, well, that's going to be the framework for today. But before we begin, there are going to be people that are like, oh, grief, it's emotions. It's like theoretical. It's a faith crisis. I'd rather talk about Fawn Brody or, you know, the Kinderhook plates or the Book of Abraham or how mad I am. You know, leaders like, I don't want to talk about emotional stuff. I don't want to talk about some abstract model. Markie, from your perspective, is grief a really important thing to talk about for a faith crisis? And if so, why? And then, Natasha, I'm going to have you answer that question too.

24:21 Margi Dehlin So, yes, I clearly feel like grief is a huge, I don't know, component of the grief of the transition process. And I think part of that is because of the loss involved. And so loss always, I think, takes us to places that we may not exist kind of in our daily life or in our rational minds as we're. And it points us to the deeper things we live for, how we love our, what we connect with and so what we grieve. There's a tremendous learning and insight to be gained in that grief process. I also find, and this has been true, I think, for both of us and for, you know, most people I know, if you don't tend to grief, grief tends to you. And what I mean by that is, you know, you can proactively grieve or, or grief tends to show up in you in other ways to try to have you pay attention. It shows up in our relationships. It shows up in our health. You know, it shows up in our stress levels. And so this is just, it's something that is very much a part of living, breathing and loving.

25:44 John Dehlin I love it. Yeah, I'll just before we jump to you, Natasha, I'll just say that some of the most common things I see dealing with clients in faith crisis, number one, just the feeling of shock and betrayal that's related to the grieving process. There's this stereotype that post Mormons or questioning Mormons or doubting Mormons or ex Mormons are angry. And, you know, a lot of people are like, how do I get out of the anger? I don't want to be stuck in the anger. That's relevant to a discussion about grief. There are different ways that you can negotiate a faith crisis and handle it. That ties back to this issue of bargaining, which we'll talk about. And then one of the most common emotional reactions to a faith crisis, after the anger or before it or during it, is depression. And I know a lot of you are concerned about depression, and depression is a common side effect of a faith crisis or co occurrence with the faith crisis. And then we all want to talk about healing and growth. You really can't heal and grow in a faith crisis without understanding grief. And if you don't understand the grief process, you end up getting stuck in a lot of unhealthy emotions. And we're going to talk about that.

27:04 Margi Dehlin I feel like grief almost becomes the soil in which you plant your new life. That's how I would look at it.

27:11 John Dehlin I love it. Almost like the fertilizer in the soil. Kind of like that, because sometimes it smells bad.

27:19 Margi Dehlin The other thing too, just real quick, and then we can throw it to Natasha is just something stunning to me about the power of grief is it's present. It's definitely in your present moment experience. But grief can extend retroactively. Oftentimes with faith transitions. You see people grieve for deceit they didn't make or for. And so it's a very interesting dynamic because it can be very much in your present moment today. It can extend back retroactively to all these decisions you made or didn't make or didn't feel like you had the choice. And then it extends to future people mourn a dream or a future of something that they had hoped to have. And so it really extends into sort of this full human lifetime experience.

28:09 John Dehlin I love it.

28:10 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

28:11 John Dehlin Natasha, why, other than the things we've already said, what's important about talking about grief in terms of your experience and expertise?

28:20 Natasha Helfer Well, I think just here in the United States, which is, I think the majority of the population we're talking to through this podcast is we're not an emotionally, a super emotionally intelligent culture. You know, I think that we have valued as a society things like independence and intellectualism and hard work and being in tune with our emotions has always been seen somewhat as a weakness in American culture. And that's coming to come back to bite us in the butt to the point where, you know, you're having like commercials now with pretty important famous people talking to men in particular about how important it is to talk to your doctor about whether or not you're feeling sad and blue, you know, and things like this. So we're trying, I think, as we're kind of recognizing as an overall culture that this hasn't been a healthy state for us to be in. And I hope that we've talked about this enough through previous podcasts when, you know, we've talked about the elephant and the rider and all that that most of you know by now, hopefully, if you've listened to us long enough, that emotions are just as important as rational thought. Right. And so that they play off of each other in very different ways, and they're all part of what makes us human and complete and well balanced. And you can't. If you. If you think you're super rational, there's usually emotions there that you're not very aware of. And even when you're very. When you feel very emotional, there's rational thought driving that as well, you know, so there's this really neat interplay between those two things. So I think that why it's important is, first of all, self awareness is a huge part of, you know, kind of any growth process. I think a lot of people can feel very lonely or isolated in that grief. Like, why is this happening? Especially if you don't understand something or understand that it's kind of a common, natural part of any process. You can feel weird or, you know, like there's something broken about you. And so you kind of pile on the shame, which we never want that unnecessarily to happen. And then, you know, first you go to self awareness so that you can propel forward and know how to better deal with some of those things. And I just want to remind, you know, because I think what Margie is getting at when she talks about the soil or John, the fertilizer is that it's not. It's not. It's not that we want to move away from grief so that we never revisit it. You know, and a lot of what I like about this model is that it's a circular model. And. And so this idea that we are supposed to feel difficult things throughout our lives, it's not something that you just feel once and then you're done with it.

31:02 John Dehlin Absolutely. We're going to cover all that.

31:04 Margi Dehlin Yep.

31:05 John Dehlin That's a great setup. Thank you, Natasha. All right, so going to the Kubler Ross model, maybe I'll just read a little bit about it. Just talk about. I'll just lay out, you know, the different stages that are listed, and then we'll give our disclaimers about what this model is and isn't saying what the limits are to the model. And then we're going to dig into each level and we're going to read a ton of your questions or comments or Statements because we have a mountain of really good ones and we hope to incorporate them as well. So basically, I'll read off the seven stages. So this modified Kubler Ross model, it's more extended than sort of the base model, but it begins with. So the first stage that it mentions is shock, which in this slide is defined as initial paralysis at hearing the bad news. So it says you should experience at some point shock. A second stage that it mentions is denial, which it defines as trying to avoid the inevitable. That's the second stage. A third stage that it mentions is anger, and it mentions a frustrated outpouring of bottled up emotion rage. I can add all sorts of things. A fourth stage it mentions is bargaining, which it describes as seeking in vain for a way out. Maybe, you know, bargaining and denial can be cousins a little bit. A fifth stage that it mentions is depression, which is final realization of the inevitable. A sixth stage that it mentions is testing, which is not always mentioned. And it defines testing as seeking realistic solutions. And then a seventh stage that it mentions is acceptance, finally finding the way forward. So those are seven stages of grief. Now, Natasha, do you want to give us the disclaimers about whether or not this, people should expect this to be sequential, whether these things can co. Occur at the same time. And we don't want to drill too much into that just because there are a lot of people who give illustrations of these points. But I do want you to, if you don't mind, to provide some of the disclaimers about how this model does and doesn't work.

33:58 Natasha Helfer Yes, I mean, there's nothing like super. I mean, these are theoretical concepts, Right? So first of all, there's not like we can stick people into a laboratory and go, oh, we are measuring you and you are definitely in the denial phase of the grief cycle. Right. So these are kind of more theoretical ways of describing a process that has been shown to be fairly appropriate for a lot of people going through a difficult time. It is cyclical, so it doesn't, it's not linear, it's not like, oh, I'm done with, you know, the anchor phase, phew, now I can, you know, squarely move into the next phase. Right, Bargaining. And so, and some of these phases you can even kind of do a rapid, you know, like you can move from shock into denial and anger, like within a five minute, you know, kind of point. Especially if, if there's something really sudden like a death or something like that. A lot of times when, if anybody's gone through like, especially an unexpected death of A loved one. The shock part is something that then people feel guilty about. It's like, well, I didn't. I felt numb or I didn't cry or I didn't have these, you know, like this amazing moment that I thought I would have if something like that ever happened to me. But that's part of what being in shock is about. Right. So anyway, they can happen very quickly. You can go back and forth. They're not like super clinically well tested. Right. These are theoretical framings. I guess that's what I would say as disclosures. What would you add to that?

35:25 John Dehlin What would you add, Margie? Anything.

35:30 Margi Dehlin I think you mentioned this, Natasha, too, but sometimes you may not have a stage. You may not, you know, the seven stages. You may not have two, or you may. It's just. It's incredibly personal and by nature very unstable. Right. Like, there's not a great. Like, it is very common to feel blindsided or. And so, you know, it can very much feel like you're out of control a little bit.

36:05 John Dehlin Yeah. You can get flooded with emotions. You can think you're past something and then all of a sudden something can come and trigger you. These are things that can be episodic, where it's once a month or a couple times a month. You'll feel it, but then it'll pass like a wave, but then the wave comes back. It can hit you at any time. You can go years and think, okay, I'm over the anger now. And then all of a sudden anger will hit you, or depression. It is something. Yeah. That can be not only nonlinear. These things can happen simultaneously and they can, you know, hit you at different levels of intensity. And again, sometimes they can creep back up on you a single time or multiple times when you least expect it.

36:53 Margi Dehlin And one other thing is too, it can bring up other losses. So you may be. If you're in a place of anger, it can connect with prior angers that may or may not have been processed. So in that way, it can feel very disorienting too, because it can bring up past griefs or past losses as well, where all of a sudden you think you're dealing with one thing, which is a faith transition, and you end up, you know, maybe going back to a prior betrayal or to a prior. And so you kind of have. You can be triggered, you know, in different sort of places in your life, different griefs that you've gone through.

37:35 Natasha Helfer Which is a really good point, because I think a lot of times people, when they're going through something Difficult, like a faith transition, are very confused when somebody else going through a faith transition or maybe somebody else with similar information who isn't going through a faith transition could be doing it so differently. Right. Like, how is this information, same information, not affecting us all the same way. Right. And so people have a lot of things in their kind of accumulated baggage, luggage. Right. That we carry around that will affect us differently. And then one last thing that I might add, especially in the acceptance phase, is that we're not talking about acceptance, like going back to a similar space. Right. And so I think a lot of people have heard the term the new normal, and that's a good way to think about grief, is moving you into a new normal. You're never really going to be able to go back to the way things once were. There's like either a loss of innocence or a loss of, you know, it just. Things will hit you differently. You'll be triggered differently by different things that come up. You'll have those moments of even 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road, you know, you can still have a tinge or twinge, right, of something that hits. That's part of that new normal, because you're no longer in the space you were once in. That's what loss is about. Right? You lost something that is not coming back.

39:07 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

39:07 John Dehlin Yeah. It can leave a hole. And Margie and I were talking about how different it can be for different people just this morning on our walk, you know, the way I perceive. And I had a client email me recently and just say, wow, I'm in such a different place. Both my husband and I, in their case, are out of the church. He's sad and misses it and doesn't want to talk about it. And she said, but I am listening to podcasts and reading Reddit and wanting to go to therapy and talk about it. And it's almost like he misses it and is resentful and is silent. And I am, like, into it and talking about it and processing it. And that reminded me of. Of Margie. I feel like Margie cried initially, but I feel like Margie just, like, freaking zipped through the stages of grief. And, you know, within a very short amount of time, it was just like, all right, I'm gonna focus on yoga and Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh and Dalai Lama and let's move on, you know, and here I am 19 years later, 19 years, processing it with the world. And, you know, and part of that is the way that I've turned this into A sense of meaning and purpose and fulfillment, which can be part of the grief process. But my point is, is that for some reason, for Margie, it was just very quick and for me it's been a very lengthy process. And Margie, you had a theory about how, you know, what factors can cause the grief process to be different for different people, right?

40:50 Margi Dehlin Hold this loosely, people.

40:53 John Dehlin This is an empirical evidence based.

40:56 Margi Dehlin This is just something that I have observed and thought about. I'm curious what you would think about it too, Natasha. But one thing I've noticed is for those who were where the church kind of appeared at a time when they had loss, and so they were either like, it could be family or a death or. But it really came in and provided it was a substitution or like a savior of sorts to come in. And it met a really deep emotional need for people. I do witness that that transition hits much more deeply, foundationally for, you know, people where that is true than when it happens to say, a person where the church was one of seven grounding forces in their life and where the church came in in kind of a neutral position, inviting something new or, you know, know, they kind of had it as part of their family culture. But there was a lot to the. I see just kind of it having a different emotional effect, if you will. So what would you say to that, Natasha?

42:15 John Dehlin Yeah, what factors can influence how you end up grieving or not and how

42:20 Margi Dehlin deeply it hits you?

42:22 Natasha Helfer No, I think that's a really interesting consideration. And I would say that probably anecdotally fits, you know, know, with some of my. When I think through some of my cases and even personal experiences with it. One thing that I've noticed too, this is also very anecdotal is depending on how quote unquote black and white of a structure you came from, oftentimes I see kind of like the. The opposite end of that being, you know, the end the pendulum swing that needs to be swung. So I kind of tease. I hope I'm not going off tangent here, but, you know, I've presented a lot of Mormon stories retreats, and I've presented a lot of what were Mormon matters retreats. Right? And Mormon stories typically tends to have people who are leaving or have left or angry. And Mormon matters retreats tend to have people who are trying to nuance and, you know, stay and, and be still engaged in the faith in a nuanced way. And it seems to me like if I could measure it, I would say 70 to 80% of the people that attend the Mormon Stories retreats are like pioneer history. You know, we've been in it forever. Grew up in very rigid homes. Everything was very structured, very, you know, whereas I go to the Mormon material retreats and it's like, well, my parents were alcoholic, we were somewhat active. We were not. It was like there was a lot of really room and flexibility for how they grew up Mormon. So I was, I wonder sometimes if the more structured, rigid space you come from, it's a harder fall versus things were never really that great to begin with or it was kind of a more flexible system we came from anyway that there's more room than for messiness. I would just add that as part of maybe, but there's no research to support that. That's just my own personal.

44:20 Margi Dehlin Just musings really.

44:23 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. In the mixed faith marriage retreat that I just did with Julie Diazevedo Hanks just a couple weekends ago, really, really rewarding and exciting thing. I do this with Natasha as well. We hope to do one in November. They're so good. And we had about 18 couples there and there were a couple, you know, believing members with quote, non believing spouses who were taught about all the problems with the church growing up. They were taught about peep stones, they were taught about polygamy, they were taught about all those problems and they were taught by parents that they described as Sunstone Mormons. In fact, one just got so used to having sunstone on the coffee room table that he thought Sunstone magazine was a church publication.

45:20 Natasha Helfer That's awesome.

45:22 John Dehlin And so when he got to. When this person got to adulthood and the spouse had a faith crisis, apparently they hadn't talked about some of these issues. Sometimes you don't know until you know that it's a thing. The non believing spouse was all freaking out and sad and betrayed because their worldview was so monolithic and absolute and totalitarian that it was devastating for the person raised progressive or liberal. They're just like, oh well, I've always been dealing with, you know, with ambiguity. There is no such thing as one true anything. I was taught from the beginning that the church was problematic. And ironically it was that person who didn't experience a grief or even a faith crisis. It's just like, yeah, we've always known this. Whereas for the other person who was raised, like you said, more rigidly, it was catastrophic to them.

46:19 Margi Dehlin That's an interesting observation.

46:21 John Dehlin We have a few comments from listeners that are directly relevant to this topic. Leanne writes, yes, explains a lot. Lost my mom, the church stepped in. Now she's grieving both. So that goes to how your particular situation, you know, depending on your situation can really play into the faith crisis. Sarah writes, that is exactly how Todd and I are. I am ready to be positive and move forward, but he seems to still be stuck in this negativity rut. Todd's listening, so I hope Todd's smiling and Sarah and Todd are holding each other's hands. Sarah says he's been going through this for several years, but it's only been a year for me. And she puts a smiley face there. So yes, clearly Todd is and that's why we want to talk about the stages of grief because. Because sometimes you can get stuck. Sometimes you're going to get stuck or it's going to take longer just because that's your process. Other times, if you don't understand the grieving process, you can get stuck. And we'll have to see how that applies. Or not to Todd. But thanks for sharing, Sarah. Marcus writes, after realizing the church history is not the way I learned, I lost my anger and went straight to a depression. So Marcus is talking about how you can just skip certain stages and go right to others. That's true, Courtney writes. So true. Thanks Courtney. And then Margie, why don't you read Lisa's comment?

47:58 Margi Dehlin Sure. I think coming from a more structured and expectations of religious living type home can cause a larger fall because you have to then deal with so much more loss. You lose relationships, trust, family structure and have to find a way to cope with your own loss as well as how you now fit differently within the family. So this kind of plays back to what Natasha was saying, right. Where within those more conservative or you know, black and white thinking it can be a tougher can add some challenge.

48:35 John Dehlin Yeah, love it. Anything you want to add, Natasha?

48:37 Natasha Helfer No, those are all great comments. I appreciate everybody weighing in.

48:42 John Dehlin Okay, so is there anything let's just really briefly, you know, is there anything to say specifically about each stage as it applies to a Mormon faith crisis? And then we can go right to people's questions and comments and we're going to do the the majority of our processing today will be through your questions and comments and stories that you want to share. But let's just talk about each stage really quickly. The first is shock. Natasha, what do you want to say about shock?

49:18 Natasha Helfer Well, just kind of like what I said originally is that you don't Shock is an initial protector. It's when your adrenaline is going really fast and it kind of initially protects you from the issue like you think about the classic thing I think about with shock is maybe like a war scene, right, where somebody's limb has just been cut off. You know, they're looking at it and they're even maybe picking up their limb. I'm sorry if this is like triggering kind of language. But, you know, they're not necessarily in pain, they're not necessarily screaming. They're kind of like in this, wait, what's going on? And trying to make sense of it. And I think there's that initial protection, a self protection type of space where your body can't quite catch up to what's happening and it's giving you some initial kind of padding. Does that make sense?

50:15 John Dehlin Yeah. And I've even seen some therapists or coaches talk about trauma, talk about religious trauma and that, you know, when you think of, when you, when you mention a violent or a warlike scene, I think that for many it's not erroneous to compare it to the shock of, you know, seeing an accident or a natural disaster or something violent. Not to minimize the severity of other types of very severe trauma like sexual abuse or child abuse or physical abuse. But, you know, Natasha, what do you think when people ask, is there such thing as religious PTSD that would, number one, imply that there's a trauma that would really involve something like shock that is in some way comparable to some of these more severe things? Do you think that's over dramatizing it or can this idea of your entire worldview falling apart, feeling betrayed, feeling like everything you based your life on has now dissolved? Is it fair to liken that to trauma in your opinion?

51:36 Natasha Helfer Yeah, this is a complex question, so I'm just going to say you're putting me a little bit on the spot, but I'm just going to be very honest about how I feel about it. So here I go. So I think I'm very, very picky as a clinician when it comes to language. It's kind of, you know, if anybody follows me in my sex sexuality work, you know, I'm a big proponent of not using the word sex addiction. Right. Because I feel like it comes with a lot of implications about treatment, about kind of how people self, self understand themselves, self identify and. But there are, you know, there are. When you look at like some of the criteria, you can see why it would be a very easy way to think about certain sexual issues. You know, like, I feel out of control. I feel like I'm doing something I don't want to be doing. How is that not an addiction? Per se. Right. But when it comes to clinical assertions, there's really big problems with using that language. So I will just say that there currently is not anything in the diagnostic codes that would say there is religious people, PTSD or religious trauma syndrome or anything along those lines. Now there is in the DSM 5, religious and spiritual concerns in the back, kind of like as a reason why people might be struggling. And we do. And so I think that for me, it's just important to denote the difference between a classic diagnosis with best standards, standards of care, versus, I think what is actually falls more under an existential identity crisis that many people go through and is actually part of a lot of times, normal life transitions, and yet also adding to that that we do have certain aspects of that that make it harder in Mormonism, just because of how structured Mormonism is, how community focused it is, and how oftentimes if you don't quote, unquote, fit the mold, you're kind of kicked out. We've talked about this, right, with tribal dynamics and things in the past. So I'm not trying to minimize that. It doesn't feel traumatic, and I'm even comfortable using that word, traumatic. And it can lead or exacerbate to real diagnosis, like clinical depression, anxiety, even symptoms that mimic or are part of a PTSD criteria, such as like rumination, nightmares, things of that nature. Doesn't necessarily mean that that. And sometimes there is a PTSD diagnosis that can go along with a faith transition. But that doesn't mean that there's religious ptsd, does that? I'm not sure if I'm making more of a mess of this than I need to be.

54:24 John Dehlin Well, and I just want to. There's three things I'm hearing you tease out. One is that we certainly don't want people who have experienced very significant or violent traumas like rape or physical abuse or assault or witnessing something very violent to feel like we're cheapening or minimizing what they've experienced. That's one thing I hear you saying. Second thing I hear you saying is that there's a process for the psychiatrists and psychologists who developed the DSM to qualify certain diagnoses. And that's not a perfect process. They're changing all the time. That's why we're on a DSM 5 and we'll have a DSM 6 someday. So they're always taking away and adding new diagnoses. But there is a formal process for that. And we don't want to loosely distribute fake diagnoses when there isn't, you know, as if to give the impression that there's a formal one when there isn't. And I hear you saying, let's make sure we're. Because a lot of. Because those diagnoses are always based on, you know, scientific studies, on evidence based analysis. And so we want to be very respectful of the scientific process when we start throwing around diagnoses. Is that a second thing I hear you saying?

55:46 Natasha Helfer Yes, yes.

55:48 John Dehlin And that's true. And having said that, that doesn't mean even those diagnoses are just constructs that somebody puts together and then a scientific community can agree upon. So they're to be respected and they're not written by the finger of God. And so who knows if someday there will be a religious PTSD subcategory in the DSM 7 or whatever, but we have to just be precise in our language.

56:15 Natasha Helfer Yes. And there has been quite a bit of research talking about the impact of faith transition in a variety of settings. Right. I'm not talking about Mormon research, I'm talking about research in general. So this isn't something that, you know, is only happening within the Mormon community or that we're the first ones thinking about these kinds of ideas, these ideas about religious kind of concern and the impact religious transitions have on people. These ideas have been researched for decades.

56:47 John Dehlin Right, Very good. Okay.

56:51 Margi Dehlin So we were kind of talking about shock, right?

56:53 John Dehlin Yeah. So as we talk about this, we want to. And Marcus said, what is ptsd? That's helpful. Thank you, Marcus, for asking. We can sometimes throw around acronyms without people really knowing what they are. Judy writes, my brain went straight to self reassurance. When my shock hits, it'll be okay, Judy. I understand. I thought it was God talking to me. That's very helpful, Judy. And we are gonna be going through these seven stages. So we want to invite ahead of time our listeners to share their experiences, you know, with each of these stages as well, because that would be interesting to incorporate as we talk through it. That was Margie's idea. So shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance. If any of you want to start writing now, any of your thoughts or experiences about any of these, you can, but I just will say that, you know, whether if you think about the movies that represent the faith crisis, whether it's, you know, Matrix with the red, the red pill and the blue pill, or, you know, the Truman show, when the light falls out of the sky for the first time and Truman starts to realize that something different is going on here, or you Know the village or you know, Pleasantville, or, you know, when the person knows this for the first time, that people are turning colorful or tangled. You know, when the Rapunzel character realizes that there's a world outside that's beautiful, even though she'd been taught by her mom to never leave the tower and that it's dangerous out there. There is, there is something very emotionally significant that happens that I think is very shocking. And that shock can be horror, but it can also be exuberation. And I think if you ever want to Google something fun, google the tangled clip where Rapunzel's feeling all these emotions and one minute she's cartwheeling, the next minute she's sobbing, you know, the next minute she's pensive, and then the next minute she's scared and terrified and fearful and self loathing. It's a beautiful little clip to illustrate all the emotions that you're gonna experience. And you will experience them all, not just anger, and you'll experience them up and down throughout. And all of that, I think is often tied to just that initial shock. Other people are listing their favorite faith crisis movies. Emily writes Smallfoot, another Emily writes the Island. You know, we can all list our favorite faith crises movies because they're just all very useful.

59:41 Natasha Helfer Well, I'm just really quick. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Margie.

59:44 Margi Dehlin So in thinking about shock for me in particular, I think, you know, loss is not all the same. And I think losing a person and having a faith transition or experiencing kind of other losses, they have similarities, right? And one thing I've. One thing you learn as you navigate the terrain of loss is kind of what, how shock shows up for you or how anger shows up for you. There are similarities for me, as different as those terrains may be, you know, and so for me, what I've realized when I am in that stage of shock, for me it's very amygdala oriented. So my brain actually does not work properly in grief. It changes. I lose a sense for details. I forget I am emotionally more chaotic. But in that moment of just sort of that shock moment, it's like a slowing of my brain. And I have these responses that almost make it like an out of body experience for me where I'm having a really tough time understanding what is happening right around me and deducing. And so to me, and that has been true, you know, in all of the times. And these can be personal losses, people, relationships, as well as faith transition. And so I just kind of want to insert that was how shock felt for me. And also this idea of as you navigate loss, you get to know yourself with regard to how you grieve and you'll notice patterns emerge as you learn to kind of navigate your internal terrain of grief.

1:01:50 John Dehlin It's a really important opportunity for self discovery. I love that Margie. So often the way that we sometimes are raised, we're disconnected from ourselves and we're disconnected from our emotions. And that shock and all the emotions that accompany a faith crisis throughout the grieving process are all opportunities to just get to know yourself better. Your emotional profile, they're all important signals. Natasha, what were you going to add to what Margie was saying?

1:02:22 Natasha Helfer Well, it's not to what she was saying. It's kind of like a different. I just want to remind people that we're not in trauma competition. Right. And so what I mean by that is that first of all, we know that a lot of people will have resilience skills and all kinds of ways to deal with difficult situations due to a lot of things we can't control. Our upbringing, our personalities, you know, tons of stuff that just make us wired the way we are. And then I will say, you know that some people will say to me, look, my, you know, I was sexually assaulted. And that was much easier to deal with than a faith transition. Right. Where some people would say faith transition, yeah, that was hard, but nothing like being in this car accident I was in, you know, or so it's not. That's why I think it's hard to, you know, when I think about PTSD or these kinds of clinical diagnoses, they can happen for a variety of reasons. And it's not necessarily that everybody who goes through a religious transition will have, you know, symptoms of that nature, but some will. And that's okay. We don't have to like blame or shame each other or ourselves by why am I having such a hard time if this person isn't who's gone through something similar similar or vice versa.

1:03:32 John Dehlin I love that idea. Let's avoid the tendency to have to have a trauma or a grief competition. Let's let everybody have their experience and let's be patient. And if you have a spouse believing or non believing, and by the way, a spouse's non belief can trigger a believer sort of series of grief right at mourning. So we shouldn't restrict the stages of grief just to the person who's lost their faith. And this will be coming in a comment later. We should also apply the stages of grief at a faith crisis to the believing spouse. If There is one who now has had the foundation of their marriage and this sort of contract, the marital contract with their spouse, in many cases forever altered. And that's going to send even the believer through sometimes a very significant and painful grieving process. There's grieving that goes around to all sides, and that's. And I just like the idea of let's just have compassion for an acceptance for ourselves wherever we are in the grieving process, but also for our partners. Let's not be annoyed at our partner. And if their grieving process wasn't as long or as painful, and let's not be angry or resentful of them if it's longer and more painful. We have to just agree that people are where they are and it's not a competition. And let's not be jealous or envious or critical.

1:05:14 Natasha Helfer And that goes into extended families, too, you know, like parents who are grieving their adult children's transitions or siblings or close friends, et cetera.

1:05:25 John Dehlin Now, Kristen, one of our supporters and regular listeners, Kristen writes, and I'm going to throw this to you, Natasha. Whenever I talk about the church, often my body will start shaking. Even as a teen and young adult, discussing the church would cause this shaking, she says, because my dad was disaffected. What is that called, Natasha, do you have a thought as to what that might be called?

1:05:55 Natasha Helfer Well, I don't know if you'd agree with me or not, but I don't necessarily see that as necessarily stages of grief. I see that as an anxiety response to a very difficult situation that has. We kind of learn our responses, right? So she has learned, learned that this is not a safe topic, that this topic has a lot of implications or whatever. And so her system has responded with anxiety about that. So every time it comes up, words brought up. So this is kind of like a trigger, you know, it's kind of what we would talk about, which is an anxiety response.

1:06:30 John Dehlin Penny writes, I shake like that, too. So you're not alone, Kristin. And I think a lot of people

1:06:37 Natasha Helfer would share that these are physiological responses that are clues, right? They're clues to you. Like, huh, isn't that interesting that that's what's happening to me physiologically? My body is giving me information that something is awry. And so how do you know? How do we make sense of that? You know, is it. Do I need to place a boundary? Do I need to talk about it with somebody? Do I need to remove myself from the situation? I mean, there's like, lots of different things that would look different for a lot of different people.

1:07:09 John Dehlin I love it. All right, that's shock. And we're just gonna talk briefly about each one. Denial is the second one. When I think about denial, I had. Sometimes I think of the shelf, the Mormon shelf. You know, how we talk about, oh, I learned about polygamy when I was young, but I put it on the shelf. Or I learned about. I had questions about the Book of Mormon, but I put it on a shelf. Or I was abused by an early church leader, but I, you know, put that on the shelf. And so I think of shelf when I think of denial in the Mormon faith crisis context. But as I think about my own process, I had significant doubts in high school, but I never was willing to entertain the possibility that the church wasn't true. It was just. I needed more information. So I would either talk to my seminary teacher and get the best answer they could provide me and just say, okay, that solves it, or I would just kind of put that question on the shelf. And even after I had a really difficult mission experience well into our marriage, I was not willing to entertain the possibility that the church wasn't true or that I would ever leave it or doubt it. And so for me, this denial phase, you could argue it lasted, you know, 15 years. Margie, did you. What do you have to say about denial? Anything coming to your mind?

1:08:35 Margi Dehlin I think denial, for me probably would have shown up in the way of kind of business as usual, where our actions didn't change very much. It's kind of like holding information in a place where you're not ready to integrate it. To me, and so it kind of. It's kind of compartmentalized and. And so very much for me, denial was. Our life looked very much the same for a long time. And that's what, for me, the denial stage probably looked like.

1:09:08 John Dehlin What are your thoughts on denial, Natasha?

1:09:10 Natasha Helfer There was a comment from somebody, and it was kind of tongue in cheek about apologetics and things, that they're in a state of denial. And I think even though I don't want to just sweep a whole group of people under this, I think when I think about it, for me, too, denial is more about this idea of really trying to hold desperately to what was the issue or what was the original construct. And so when you have new information, you are. You're like, well, okay, maybe that's true, but I'm still gonna fit it in here somewhere, right? And so it's gonna have to make sense. And so I think some apologetics do fall under that kind of, you know, idea or even the idea of confirmation bias, right. Or these, these mental gymnastics we often talk about is a form of denial. I mean, I remember even very young, you know, thinking what if there isn't a God? And that was such a scary concept for me that it was just kind of like, I'm not, I won't even let myself think that again. And that's kind of a form of denial, you know, is that I don't even want to go there.

1:10:17 John Dehlin Right. Yeah, I like that. And someone did compare Mormon apologetics both to denial and bargaining. I think it can fit in either one, but it probably goes much beyond that. Natasha. I think labeling people who doubt as core whores or as knee whores or as anti Mormons, you know, us putting up a wall when somebody comes to us and cutting them off, in a sense, you know, who would ever cut off a loved one or a friend or even heaven forbid, a family member? But I think sometimes we do that just out of self protection. It's not that we're mean. It's not that orthodox Mormons are evil, bad people that don't care about others. I think so often we just don't want our world to be completely disrupted. And so there are lots of ways with, you know, with our actions in terms of who we, what books or movies we're willing to look at, what people were willing to associate with, what questions we're willing to entertain in our minds. All the, you know, doing the shelf thing. All of those things can be different ways of just trying to avoid the inevitable.

1:11:31 Margi Dehlin That's right. And I do, I love the way you were talking about it, Natasha. This idea of, you know, the way I heard it anyway, is kind of preserving the structure.

1:11:42 Natasha Helfer Anything to preserve. Well, because it's really, it's an avoidance of pain. Right. Most of these other after shock and denial, most of are kind of starting to lean into the pain. These first two are really about avoiding pain, which is what we're wired to do. To your point, John, I think people aren't intentionally mean, but they are acting in mean ways because we avoid pain and we do that a lot as humans.

1:12:04 John Dehlin Who wants pain, right? Kristen, do you want to read Kristen's comment? Natasha? She's responding to your anxiety comment. I think it's worth throwing in the

1:12:15 Natasha Helfer one that starts with I'm so sorry. Yeah, I'm so sorry. It's awful. Apparently we are experiencing major anxiety. I find that the more informed I become intellectually on the issues reading everything, the shaking has improved maybe I feel more confident and secure in my own right. I hope you can find more peace. I love that. Kristin, I think that's, you know, information is power and although I often talk about that's the first step of growth because I wish it was easy, as easy, easy as information. Then all the self help books would be all we would ever need and I'd be out of a job real quick and I would love it. I can go be a banker in the sense of like, you know, we wouldn't need. It's the processing parts of practicing the processing.

1:13:02 Margi Dehlin Right.

1:13:03 Natasha Helfer So in learning something is the first step towards power and then it's the continual practicing. When you notice that feeling again when you're in a situation where that trigger comes up, it's like now I've got new tools and now I have to put them into practice. Which doesn't always happen super easily. But over time it does really get better. I mean it does.

1:13:23 John Dehlin We have several listeners that are chiming in on on the stage of denial. Margie, do you want to read Landy's comment? And then Natasha, I'll have you read another one.

1:13:31 Margi Dehlin So many times I would say I don't need to worry about that. God will take care of that in heaven. Especially when trying to make sense of an eternal family who is full full of sinners. Yeah, very common.

1:13:42 John Dehlin Landy highlights a very common Mormon form of denial which is just the God will take care of that in the afterlife. We don't understand. All things Scrolling up a bit, Natasha, Jenna shares a comment about denial. Do you want to read Jenna's comment?

1:14:01 Natasha Helfer Gosh, I'm not sure I'm seeing as I'll read it. We're seeing. Sorry.

1:14:05 John Dehlin Jenna writes, I processed through denial pretty quick and haven't come up against it again. It lasted for maybe a week because I dove into the history really deep and it was undeniable. So I think one of the points made illustrated by Jenna is just that for some people something like denial can be really quick and she feels like she accepted it and has been moving on. I do feel like one of the characteristics of many progressive and post Mormons or doubting Mormons is that they really obsess about church history and polygamy and polyandry and peep stones and Book of Abraham and you know, Book of Mormon historicity and Mountain Meadows Massacre and just all those things, the Mormon temple ceremony. I really believe that part of that is actually a processing where they can reassure themselves because it's just so scary and traumatic to leave. And so it's sort of an antidote to denial. And we'll talk about the bargaining and acceptance later. But anyway, Jenna's point is just that for her, the denial phase was really quick. Now, Natasha, are you able to find these comments?

1:15:17 Natasha Helfer Yes, I just pulled them up on my phone.

1:15:20 John Dehlin Okay, Emily's got one a bit more above about denial. Do you want to read that one?

1:15:25 Natasha Helfer Let's see here. Emily on my mission is that one.

1:15:28 John Dehlin Nope. It says my denial was such that. Well, it's right above Jenna's. If you don't have it, go ahead. I'm sorry, Margie, go and read Emily's.

1:15:39 Margi Dehlin My denial was such that I would actually forget the things that were up on the shelf. People would mention things like divining rods or freemasons, and I would be like, oh, yeah, I knew about that. But then my mind would just shut it right out again by simply not thinking about it. I was able to stay in denial for about 11 years.

1:15:56 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

1:15:57 Margi Dehlin Never, never underestimate the power of denial.

1:16:00 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. And I think there are a lot of progressive questioning and post Mormons that will relate to that because they'll. They'll go to their family members and they'll say, but polyandry. But, you know, but. But Book of Abraham or Mountain Meadows, and. And the family member believing family member will respond and say, oh, I've known about that forever. But there's a difference between, like, having heard the idea or the term or the noun or the adjective or the verb. There's a difference between just hearing about it and really thinking about it and processing it. Like, you might hear the term kinderhook plates or polyandry, and you lump all that with polygamy. But it's one thing to just sort of have the understanding about polygamy, for example, that, you know, there weren't enough men on the plains. And so, you know, God provided polygamy so that all these women who weren't getting married would have a husband to take care of them. Well, that's certainly, you know, hearing about polygamy and let's just say an untrue, simplified narrative of what happened. But those who really dig into it and process polygamy and learn the facts, learn that that's a false narrative, that in reality there were more men than women, you know, on the plains, and the polygamy had nothing to do with that. And so there's hearing about it and putting on a shelf, and then there's really learning about it and processing. And the only Thing I'll just say is that one of the things can be really maddening and frustrating for believing, question for questioning progressive or post Mormons is when they talk to a family member who said they've progressed process something, who's believing, but in reality, they. They don't really know the true facts and they haven't really thought about it and processed it on a deeper level. Not to shame them. We've all been there. I remember in the mtc, someone wrote me about, you know, masonry in the temple, and I'm like, don't ever write me again. You know, I wasn't ready. So you're not ready till you're ready.

1:18:07 Margi Dehlin That's right.

1:18:08 John Dehlin We've all been there. Natasha. Emily has a. Oh, go ahead.

1:18:12 Natasha Helfer Can I just say I should have donated my shelf to Di a long time ago, so I thought that was cute. And plus, there's some German conversation going on in our thread that I think is fascinating as well. Even though I don't understand.

1:18:22 John Dehlin I think a couple Germans have found some soulmates to talk to each other in German, and so they're having their own side thread. Natasha, can you see Emily's comment?

1:18:31 Natasha Helfer The one on my mission?

1:18:32 John Dehlin Yeah.

1:18:34 Natasha Helfer On my mission in the South, I met so many anti Mormon preachers. My denial would just be me turning my brain off in order to end things peacefully with the preacher rather than internalize what they were saying. But they were definitely planting seeds for my faith crisis 10 years later. And this really reminds me again of the conversation, you know, of the podcast we did on Kind of Elephant and the Rider. You know, I think that there's lots of information out there. We all process information differently. Again, we want to watch our bias that we're the enlightened ones. Right. Or we're the ones. It's just information is just processed differently. And there are people that know all those issues and have processed them and still come out with, you know, faithful narrative that makes sense to them. You know, I think of my dear friend Jody England, who grew up in a Sunstone reading family. Right.

1:19:27 John Dehlin She's the daughter of Eugene England.

1:19:29 Natasha Helfer Right. And she's. She's very. She considers herself faithful and very active and is a temple worker and has a very nuanced approach to Mormonism. Right. And so I think we just want to be careful to not assume that everybody who doesn't agree with us is

1:19:45 John Dehlin in denial or dumb or ignorant or any of those things.

1:19:48 Natasha Helfer Right.

1:19:50 John Dehlin I love Aaron's comment. Aaron writes, some people are okay with denial their whole lives. Finding that There are many members who don't care that it's not all true, or they love it so much, they don't want to ever consider the possibility that it's not true.

1:20:07 Margi Dehlin It's the cost benefit kind of ratio thing, where the benefits outweigh.

1:20:13 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. So that's a great point. Some people are never.

1:20:18 Natasha Helfer I'm always just a little hesitant with the truth. I'm hesitant with the true on either side of the equation, you know, when. Because these arguments can be used the same way against those who are transitioning. So people are just not comfortable with the truth, you know, to buoy up belief, and then, well, it's just not. It's not true. People just don't want to face that. And I just want to invite people to think that it's a lot more complex than that. Even if it's true or not true for you, Those are usually difficult ways to talk about this issue in a way that's really gonna help us understand each other.

1:20:55 John Dehlin Yeah. And I think if I had to kind of flesh out a little bit what Aaron's saying, there's a version of the meaning of the word true, which I think in Mormonism. Natasha, I remember early on in the Sunstone workshop we did together, we talked about the translation machine, you know, if I had to translate what oftentimes in a Mormon testimony context, we mean as true. You know, oftentimes we mean it's good or it's inspired or it's whole, or it works or it makes me feel really good. And in that sense, you know, that's the way people mean to say it. I think there's a reason to look at that word true in the context. Sometimes we use that word in a binary way, like something is either true or false. Like it's either almost as if it's whole, imperfect, or if it's a big fraud. And even sometimes general authorities lead us to think of things that way. And I think many wise people that I know question whether anything can be true. In that sense, people aren't either true or false. A ham sandwich isn't true or false. And in that sense, some wonder whether that word even belongs as a descriptor for a testimony or for a church. It can contain truth. It can, you know, be the most true for you. But I do think it's fair to just. And I've even seen Patrick Mason recently in a webinar. He's giving, saying how this true, false narrative can really be destructive to people's, you know, religious devotion and participation because if we do buy into the true false narrative, we find that some things aren't true or are false or misleading or downright harmful, then we feel like we have to throw everything out. And so I think even from a believing perspective, we should look deeply at what that word means and hold it loosely.

1:23:00 Natasha Helfer I agree. And I really actually like that Erin said in her comment, don't care that it's not all true because again, she's not making a black or white statement there. She's leaving room for nuance and that's really healthy.

1:23:15 John Dehlin Love it. Great comments from everybody. So thank you. All right, so we've talked about denial. The third stage is anger. And this is probably the most, I don't know, stereotypical phase for post Mormons or at least how they're often questioning or doubting or progressive or post Mormons. It's often how they're unfairly characterized. It can be a really hurtful stereotype. Natasha, talk to us about anger and what we need to understand about it is an emotion. This might be one of the most important things we talk about today. What is the value of anger? What's the, you know, what are ways that we misunderstand it?

1:24:01 Natasha Helfer Okay, I'll try to give a two minute recap on anger versus the three hours I'd like to spend on it.

1:24:10 John Dehlin We'll come back and do a whole thing on anger.

1:24:12 Natasha Helfer Oh, good, good. Okay. So anger, you know, like any other emotion is an emotion. And I always like to think of emotions as information carriers, you know, so they're little detectives going around, you know, telling us things about ourselves. I think why anger gets a bad rap. And I definitely fall in this category that at times some of my most regretful moments or things that I regret saying or doing were in a space of anger. So sometimes we're willing to step into behavior that we wouldn't be willing to step into if we weren't so angry. There's a double edged sword on that because I find anger to be a huge motivator. Many times it's actually healthier to be angry than to be depressed because at least anger propels you somewhere, whereas depression can kind of have you sit still in pain and grief and anguish. So there is something very healthy and motivating about anger kind of moving us past that point of no return. Like this is no longer going to be okay and I have to do something different. So I find it very motivating in that regard. I think it's also just a place where, again, we're not Always our brightest selves. Anger is usually, you know, cluing into the fight flight freeze concept that we've talked about here before too. So your IQ is usually lessened when you're in a space in a phase of anger. You're not always your best self. And at the same time, again, a lot of yes ands it is a time that usually there's righteous anger. You know, there's reasons, there's not. A lot of times I think we again, we personify anger as this immature or silly or out of control emotion that we shouldn't even be experiencing to begin with. And that's where I think we do a lot of damage to ourselves and to others. And one thing I will say again, just from thinking about this, from an emotional intelligence idea, and especially United States culture or Anglo Saxon culture, we're very uncomfortable with staying in spaces of anger. And so I typically hear a lot like, oh, I've been in the anger phase for so long, or my spouse has been in the anger phase for forever. And when I ask about that, it's like three months, right, Or a few weeks or even a year, which in the course of like a 30 year faith journey isn't really that long, you know, And I doubt that that means that they were in anger every single day at that year long process. It just means that we're working through a certain phase of being, you know, sensitive to things that elicit that kind of righteous anger. So it's complex. I love it. I love Inside out because it personifies anger as this cute little red guy, right, that blows his views and he's super cute. And I love my little red anger person, but I'm Italian, so there you go. Or at least I have Italian heritage.

1:27:13 John Dehlin Yeah, love it. A couple other things I just want to add, and we've got some great comments coming in about anger. In addition to anger being information, I like to think of anger as being, well, I just like to say it's healthy, it's important. The feelings of anger are essential. We would not have evolved or if you believe in a creator, we would not have been created with anger if it weren't really important. And for me, some of the functions of anger are, they make you feel strong, anger makes you feel strong and empowered. And if you need to get away or protect yourself from a threat, it is appropriate that you feel anger or that your fight or flight system gets kicked in because that gives you the strength and the energy and the courage to stand up against something. So most people who are angry have an unresolved issue that they have not stood up to and processed. And so anger gives you energy, it gives you motivation. Anger also focuses your attention, and so it can help you focus on something that needs attention. So the feeling of anger is really, really healthy and important. And when we talk about anger, teaching you things, basically the best thing I've ever thought of when you think about anger, and again, we've talked about this before and you may have already mentioned it, Natasha, is that it's really important to think of anger as healthy, but not something that you just react to. In other words, feeling angry is different than acting angry. So you don't want to hurt people, burn bridges and cause collateral damage. So how you behave, it's okay to feel anger and to express your anger, to learn from your anger, but you don't want to act angry in ways that are hurtful to yourself or others. But anger as a teaching tool is really important because usually anger, like you said, is a secondary emotion, which means that underneath the anger, you're feeling sad and you're feeling scared and you're feeling vulnerable. And the anger, if you can use it as a teaching tool, it's just like, oh my gosh, I'm really angry right now. I wonder why. Let me take a minute and think about what's the feeling that's under the anger? And it's almost always, I'm afraid or I'm scared. What else would you say is a primary emotion under the anger? Margie, anything comes to mind for you?

1:29:55 Margi Dehlin Oh, it can be betrayed or it can, it can be. Huh? So like, yeah, hurt in some way. I love what you're saying. I love that idea of going a little bit deeper. It gets, gets your attention and therefore you can ask it questions and then go deeper to see what it's pointing to.

1:30:16 John Dehlin And if you want the magic wand for a mixed faith marriage where you're fighting all the time about religious stuff, simply try this exercise. Oh, my gosh, sweetie. I realize we're both angry. Let's stop, take deep breaths, and I want you to just describe how you're feeling under the anger. And so each of you just takes turns. I'm afraid that fill in the blank. I'm scared that fill in the blank. And I've seen in coaching and in therapy, these couples who were just furious at each other stonewall, you know, turning their backs on each other, feeling rage as soon as they change the conversation to looking at the primary emotion, which is again, fear or loneliness or, you know, something of that nature. All of a sudden they go from anger and stonewalling and hurting each other to. To vulnerable and insensitive and thoughtful and emotionally expressing. And you see the couple move from repelling each other to be attracted to each other. Because as soon as you're moving from I'm angry to I'm scared or I'm hurt or I'm sad, your partner, if they have a soul and if their amygdala isn't too triggered, their heart is going to be softened and they're going to turn to you and actually you'll get closer together instead of hurt each other more if you'll simply move to vulnerability. Move to vulnerability and primary emotion. Anytime you or your partner notice that you're feeling angry. So that's a huge. And that's the metaphor for how to get out of anger. Usually if you're stuck in anger, it's because you're suppressing it, avoiding dealing with it. And that can last. And again, Natasha, I want you to talk about coping mechanisms that avoid us processing our anger. But if we will just be in our anger, lean into our anger, learn from our anger, accept our anger, be curious about our anger, and then go deeper. Anger is going. Leaning into the anger is going to point us out of the anger by getting to the fear and the sadness and the loneliness and the feelings of betrayal. And once we can articulate those and process it, we can make peace with those wounds, and then we'll find that we're not as angry.

Episode 25

0:20 John Dehlin Now, Natasha, we didn't give you a chance to talk more about anger.

0:24 Natasha Helfer I started the conversation. That's fine. That's exactly where I would have headed next. And Sydney asks, you know, I've heard anger is a cover emotion, and I prefer the word secondary because cover up almost feels like it's doing like something sneaky or that it shouldn't be doing. I think anger is a legitimate emotion. It's real all on its own. And at the same time, there is usually. It's not usually like you just get angry right away. It's like something is painful and then anger is one response to that pain. Depression can also be a response to that pain. Lots of things can be a response to that pain. But what's painful? And even if you're not in a mixed faith marriage, this can be really helpful just from an individual perspective. You know, next time that you're listening to a church talk or next time you have a friend say something or when you're triggered, it's kind of like, what about this? This particular information was painful to me. And do some journaling on that or do some contemplating or talk to somebody who kind of gets it from your perspective on those types of things. Those can be useful tools to help you tune into the underlying pain that is, you know, kind of firing up the anger. But yeah, I love, I mean, I even love the imagery we have in the scriptures of, you know, Jesus, the perfect one, throwing tables around and being all pissed off and pissy because of this. He, he had an anger response that had to do with social justice and had to do with taking care of vulnerable people. And that's an illegitimate, appropriate response. So whether you see that as symbolic or literal, as a story, there's a lot of power in a perfect being having a response of anger. I love that

2:13 John Dehlin Jenna asks a good question. She asks, if we are stuck in anger, it is because we are not feeling it. So by not feeling it, we are ensuring that it lasts. And that's a question. And I think that's the core issue of the movie that you just mentioned, Natasha. Inside out.

2:32 Natasha Helfer Inside out.

2:33 John Dehlin In that case, the target emotion was depression, not anger. But this is true with depression, just like it is with anger. Any emotion that you avoid and oppress grows just like a pot, like a lid held tight on a boiling pot of water. If you keep that lid on tight and the boiling emotion festers, you're going to explode or start to deteriorate with all sorts of physical manifestations of stress. You know, autoimmune diseases, deterioration of your, you know, mental health and well being with anxiety, et cetera. It's exactly that irony that by trying not to feel something, by suppressing it, you're going to make it worse and you're going to ensure that you never heal. How does that sound?

3:29 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think that sounds really good. And I think it's sometimes confusing because people are like, well, but I feel like I'm feeling angry all the time. That's why I'm angry. So what do you mean I'm not feeling it right? I think a lot of people, there's different ways that people process anger. Some people have, like, kind of anger that's suppressed. And until they really kind of talk in therapy, like in a therapy or coaching kind of scenario, they don't even realize that anger was kind of there. But a lot of people kind of realize that they're raging, you know, and that they're kind of easily flustered and easily kind of, you know, treating people, especially in their closest circles, oftentimes not very well. And their people are telling them that, like, why are you so angry? And why are you constantly coming at me? And why, you know, why do I feel like I'm the church that you're constantly beating up on, you know, or things like that? So I think some people are very aware that they're in a state of anger, and yet the work is still leading into what's the pain about? Because anger, in some ways, although it's very motivational and it can be very healthy, it can also protect you from the deeper pain. Work. It's easier, especially I think, for men and for some women, like, even for me, because I'm feisty and I'm all, you know, whatever. It's easier for me to express anger than it is to really break down and show emotion of the painful kind. To cry in front of somebody is much harder for me than to express anger. So I think that there is work that's kind of in conjunction there with. It's not just raging. It's really doing the work about what the anger is about that we're talking about. And that means getting into the pain.

5:18 Margi Dehlin Yeah. And I love how we've talked about anger so far and this idea of, you know, being able to be reflective on how anger is showing up in us and what it feels like and what being able to go a little bit deeper and do that work. I also really love and value being able to see anger in those we love and being able to identify, because I think it is an emotion that can feel scary for many of us, especially if you're on the receiving end or you're feeling it from someone you love. Being able, I think, to navigate and hold anger from someone else and being able to kind of do that pivot where you can hear it, you can hold it, and you pivot to questions that might prompt more vulnerability to go a little bit deeper. And that's where, just as you were saying, Natasha, that's where the good stuff is, that's where the deep processing is, and that's where the healing is.

6:24 John Dehlin We're getting great comments from our listeners. Weston writes, I wish I had known this my whole life. He goes on to write, exercise has been my go to for pushing the anger back down. And that's important. We use all sorts of forms of self medication, some of them stereotypically unhealthy, like alcohol or drugs, you know, binge watching this or this or that. And then sometimes we can avoid through more healthy coping mechanisms like exercise. But at the end of the day, if you're avoiding dealing with your emotions, it's gonna catch up to you in some way or another. And so, Weston, we're really glad you shared that. Yeah. So lots of people want us to do an entire podcast on anger, so that's valuable. Debbie who? I think Debbie's a therapist. Do you want to read what Debbie writes?

7:27 Margi Dehlin Margie, can you talk about how to respond to someone who is stuck in right fights? Like when the adult child is the exmoor and the parent is the member. Like, better ways to respond when the other party gets triggered? What is the pain about? Can we get out of ourselves enough to ask that question? And then continuing Mormon culture shames anger and tears in the church and out of it. I see it on both sides.

7:57 John Dehlin Natasha, do you want to respond to Debbie?

7:59 Natasha Helfer Well, I think that's a really good question. And in some ways you've given some examples of this. If I'm going to just use some two really simple words that are much more simplistic than the process of actually doing this work, which is very hard when you are also usually triggered as well by somebody's reaction to you in a truth fight. But I would say process, focusing on process and focusing on validation. So validation is a very simple way that you can just kind of repeat what the other person is saying. So what I hear you saying, mom, is that for you the church is true and that this doctrine is kind of the way it is and that God would want it this way. You know, you can say Something like that, without necessarily agreeing with it. Does that make sense?

8:43 John Dehlin Or. Mom, I'm. I can tell that you're scared that this is breaking up our eternal family, and that must be really hard for you.

8:51 Natasha Helfer That's process.

8:52 Margi Dehlin That's.

8:53 Natasha Helfer So that's not validation.

8:54 John Dehlin Okay, okay.

8:55 Natasha Helfer Does that make sense? So. But. Right, exactly that, exactly what you just said. That's a process. Like I'm feeling your defensiveness or your fear, or I'm, you know, I think you're worried. It's like you're picking up on their process. Right. And so then now, all of a sudden, you're getting again, deeper than the superficial doctrine discussion. It's like, what are you worried about? What are your wishes? What are your hopes? What are your fears? How is my being different in this particular way, in a sense, threatening a lot of your wishes, dreams, hopes, you know, fears, types, things. So you can validate. You can offer a validation, which is just repeating what they're saying. You can offer a process, kind of, you know, like checkup. Like, it seems to me like you're worried about me, Mom. Or it seems to me like you're sad that I don't agree with you on this point.

9:50 John Dehlin Right, right. And. And just this goes back to the primary emotion discussion, but just this exercise of, you know, each of you. You don't have to talk about content. You don't have to agree. Your job is to listen empathetically to the other person to the point where you could restate back to them what they said and what they were feeling. And if you can show that you understand and care about how they're feeling and that you understand their concern, oftentimes that's all people will really need. I mean, it would be nice if everyone agreed with us and everything we thought and everything we did and vice versa. That's not really maturity. It's not healthy. It's not reality. But so often, if we can stop the fight, call a timeout, do empathetic listening, restate back what we heard the others say, and then more importantly, empathize with the emotions that we heard, that that can go a long way to dealing with someone who's really angry and that there's some people who are just angry and they're not going to be able to change and they're too triggered and this is too sensitive. And in those cases, you just have to boundary and say, you know, either we're not going to talk about this as long as you're not in a healthy place to talk about it. That's one way to put up a loving boundary. And another way is just to say, as long as you're in this place of making me feel bad saying hurtful

11:21 Margi Dehlin things,

11:24 John Dehlin you know, I'm not going to be able to have this close of a relationship with you. And so sometimes boundary is the only way to deal with anger. Depending on the person's openness.

11:35 Margi Dehlin Or another way to boundary is to say, you know, I really can see that this is now creating, you know, some pain between us. And I care so much about this relationship that I really feel like, you know, for now, let's just, you know, move on in a place of love and we won't talk about it. I really love sort of this idea of boundarying for the relationship. You're doing it out of love and out of respect for the relationship and stating that, you know, you know, I love our relationship and value it so much that, you know, we don't need to have these kind of right, fight conversations. You know, we can dwell in other places.

12:18 Natasha Helfer I think one of our biggest themes here, Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, is keep it relational, not doctrinal.

12:24 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Yep.

12:27 John Dehlin I love it. Thanks, Debbie, for those questions. Debbie writes, beautiful. Thank you. You guys are amazing. So many angles covered. I love healing conversations. Well, thanks, Debbie. We like that you're joining us and everyone else who's joined us as well. We love to have partners in these healing conversations. If any of you want to share this conversation on your wall, your timelines, in groups, in email, if you think this conversation would be helpful to people, share it because we want to get the word out. One last thing about anger, just because it's so heartfelt. Lisa writes an experience she had at church. Natasha, I'm not sure if you've got that in front of you. If you don't, I'll read.

13:12 Margi Dehlin Starts with two weeks ago.

13:15 John Dehlin Oh, I'll read it.

13:17 Natasha Helfer I don't have mine. Doesn't scroll.

13:19 Margi Dehlin I'll read it.

13:20 John Dehlin You respond to it. Lisa writes, two weeks ago, I went to church with my parents to show them I am willing to attend, even though I don't believe we were sitting in Relief Society talking about respecting mothers and how to be a good mother, which I have said before. I will never be a mother. As the lesson began, I hear the sunbeam singing, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. I started thinking how we start so early. Then, as the lesson is coming to a close, I hear the primary children singing praise to the man. And anger so harsh surfaced to the point I couldn't hold back the tears from flowing. It was almost a release and understanding I am on my own journey of change and I don't have to hold on to was a life expectation of who I needed to be. Natasha, what do you do when you're flooded like that? It's going to be something that a lot of people just get caught by this unexpected huge wave of anger. What do you recommend people do when they're just flooded at church or in a family Thanksgiving dinner? In a family conversation? What do you recommend people do when they're just flooded with overwhelming anger?

14:31 Natasha Helfer Well, I would hope that all of us, just as a matter of good mental health practice, would have a nice list of about 20 to 50 things. And I'm not kidding, 20 to 50 things that you can do in a pinch that would help you self soothe. So anything from like a breathing exercise if you really kind of can't leave, like maybe you're in a driving car, you know, or something like that, to excusing yourself to go to the bathroom and splashing water on your face, to calling a supportive friend, to journaling to, you know, 500 ways. And of course that's going to be unique to every single individual, what's helpful to them. Go outside and get some fresh air, go on a little walk. A lot of these things you can do even in a church building, right? You can always go to the bathroom. Nobody's going to fault you for that. You can, you can take a break in that regard. You can sit there and cry and just notice yourself. Kind of do a body scan of where, how it's showing up in your body. Oh, it's interesting that my cheeks feel red and my neck feels constrained and my shoulders feel tense and so just kind of helping yourself tune into your body language. I think these are all opportunities to learn how to self soothe, including support networks. It doesn't have to be always by yourself. Like you can call a friend or you can, you know, ask somebody to watch a comedy with you so you can kind of get your mind off of something or you can ask somebody to go on a walk with you or it doesn't have to be alone. It's just a way that you've said I can do this, I can do this particular thing. There's something though that I want to say just about that, that space that I also feel like in just listening to her comment, I still can't read, sounds like it was almost empowering for her to go through that flooding moment. Like something almost clicked and kind of like, yeah, this is a space where I am no longer feeling health and wellness and edification and there's something powerful about. Again, we don't want to always just soothe our way out of the flooding. We want to have the flooding inform us.

16:46 John Dehlin Love it. What were we going to say?

16:47 Margi Dehlin Yeah, that was exactly what I was going to say was I felt like that comment was such a great example of going deeper to really be able to identify why the anger was showing up. And it was showing up in a way because, you know, she was feeling negated on some level for her decisions and for who she feels at the core she is and what she wants from her life. And that is so, I think, informative and good to know and empowering, you know, as far as kind of moving forward. So I absolutely love that comment. And it also, as you were talking about soothing, Natasha, one of the things I really love for me in the grief process was, you know, coming out of, you know, a number of grief processes, instances in my life where I have had to grieve deeply is, I do feel like it is this opportunity to like, I've gotten very good at sort of what tools work to soothe. And I love the immediate soothing. So you're in a situation and all of a sudden you're overcome with emotion. But I also love it structurally in your life amidst a faith transition, amidst the grief of, you know, mourning the loss of someone. This idea of having structural things in our lives. That's what yoga was for me. That's when I started medit. I started meditating at a time of loss and really being able to build up this kind of repertoire of healthy coping. And it's something that you will be, you know, you can revisit and add to, but it is something that you can use for a lifetime. It will last a lifetime and you will always kind of revisit. And it's sort of like a, you know, a tool belt, if you will, that you can turn to. So I just loved that.

18:42 John Dehlin I love it. We've been digging into anger because it's such an important part of this grieving process. We should do an entire episode on it. Marcus says, I love the things you do. It's late in Germany. I'm going to bed. Is it possible to get these steps as a PDF? Well, Marcus will be, you know, we'll be sharing this full episode, multi part episode on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis website, on the YouTube page and on the Facebook Live site. So you can access all this later and listen to it. At your leisure. We do hope to work all of this into a book. We're slowly working on that and your support will help make that happen. So thanks for a reminder, Marcus. We will work towards getting a book out. In the meantime, please check out the podcast and. And listeners, the sooner you want to see a book out, please support us. That will help make that happen. All right, so I think we should move on past anger. Is that all right, Natasha? Is that all right?

19:52 Natasha Helfer Yes, yes.

19:53 John Dehlin There's a lot more to say, but we'll save it for another episode. So we'll talk about bargaining. Bargaining is, you know, trying to seeking in vain for a way out. Now, there's a difference between bargaining and testing. Testing is realistic solutions. Bargaining is when you are still in denial, but you're trying to find ways out that of a situation that's unavoidable. So I do think apologetics is a really, you know, common example. So can for some, liberal, progressive Mormonism can be a bargaining stage. Now for other people, it can be an endpoint. Cause there are people who have found a way, like let's just say Dan Witherspoon or Janice Spengler or others, Thomas McConkie, who will say that they've been doing this for years and have arrived at a place of stasis where they've been able to go through, let's just say Fowler's stages of faith and go from stage three to stage four to stage five, where they've integrated their a new worldview. And this is where Richard Rohr comes in. You know, you can find a way to make religion less literal. It's not about true or false. It's more about good and bad. And it's about a pragmatic, utilitarian view instead of a, you know, a validity approach where you can just say, I don't look at the scriptures literally anymore. I don't see this as the one true church. I take the good and I leave the bad. I take a buffet approach. For some, that's an endpoint, and that probably comes out of realistic testing. So we'll talk about testing and bargaining together for others. Bargaining. And I would say there are other people that follow the apologetic route. For example, I've talked to many, many, many former members of FAIR or even the Maxwell Institute, who for many, many years, apologetics was their way to avoid the inevitable, which is to try and stretch and flex your beliefs into something that for some ends up being not really Mormonism, but their own little version of Mormonism created in their heads. That for some, ends up, ends up not working out. And so there are many, many people that follow the stale DS model that I wrote about. There's a whole manual on how to stay in the church after a crisis of your faith. You can go to stale ds.com and find that essay and read it. For some, that was just postponing the inevitable because they tried to become a buffet Mormon. They tried to become a metaphorical Mormon, they tried to become a liberal Mormon, but in the end, it was just not possible. And so that is one example of bargaining, which is trying to avoid for what many becomes this inevitable conclusion. The church isn't what I claim to be, isn't what it claimed to be. It wasn't what I was taught. Or the church isn't something that I can be a part of anymore. Or the church hurts people and I can't be complicit in the anger. That's where some people end up. But everything before that phase is the bargaining, which is trying to make it, you know, the. The inevitable, you know, avoidable. Trying to make something inescapable, escapable. Margie, do you have any thoughts on bargaining?

23:29 Margi Dehlin So I have a question. I'm interested. You know, is. Is there. You know, that is the difference between bargaining then and this idea of testing out that you could be going down the same road. But what would make it bargaining is if it's in vain, it actually doesn't work. Right. So in the end, you know, it is too arduous or too psychologically taxing, and it's just not workable. Versus a testing out would be that, you know, you shift and, you know, you're more of a buffet Mormon, or you. You make accommodations and they end up actually working for you. Is that what I hear you kind of talking about?

24:09 John Dehlin It can go either way. And so for some, the liberal progressive route works. For others, the liberal progressive route is what they do before they leave.

24:18 Margi Dehlin Yeah. So the key is whether it actually works for you or not. And the key in bargaining is it does not work.

24:26 John Dehlin Yeah.

24:26 Margi Dehlin It is a vain attempt.

24:28 John Dehlin And again, for some apologetics works. It's just like taper. You know, when the Book of Mormon said horse, it meant taper. You know, when Joseph Smith said he translated the papyrus, what he really did is he didn't know what he was doing. And the papyrus was just what inspired him to channel revelation from God or, you know, polygamy, you know, was God's Abrahamic test that he asked these women to do something that was awful and terrible. Yeah, but you're poking me.

25:03 Margi Dehlin I know. I'm curious because I want to actually know for you what bargaining looks like, like, practical. What was bargaining for you? Did you bargain? Natasha, did you bargain?

25:16 John Dehlin Natasha, did you bargain? Are you bargaining or did we lose Natasha?

25:23 Natasha Helfer No, I was gonna say, why is this turning in on me all of a sudden? I was curious to see. How did I get into your marital discord around the bargaining?

25:29 Margi Dehlin I was thinking probably practical for people to have some way of identifying when they're actually bargaining versus testing out.

25:37 Natasha Helfer Okay, so I'm going to tell you how I think of bargaining, and I think it's a little bit. So when I was more. Maybe more religious or more, you know, and I saw this a lot in my clients. Of course, I've worked with a lot of religious clients, I felt like bargaining was almost like bargaining with God. Like, please. You know, you're looking at some, like, outer force, right, that can intervene into something horrific that you realize you really don't have any control over. I feel like bargaining is moving into this space where you start realizing you don't have control over what is happening. And so you're, like, looking to some outside force to intervene. Please. You know, and a lot of times, for a lot of religious people that's praying to God, like, please intervene. You know, like the classic, again, if somebody's died, it's like, please let this not be the case, or, please let there be a miracle, or please, you know, let there be something that could make this be different than the result it is. What I've learned about bargaining since then is that it really can look like a lot of the what if statements that we actually turn in on ourselves. A lot of people can turn, like, spend a lot of time in what if territory. What if I would have done this? What if I would have done that? What if I would have dealt with that differently? It's kind of like a form of bargaining, especially when you don't necessarily no longer believe maybe in a higher power, don't use that in the same way as before. And so it can kind of turn into this very kind of shaming what if territory, where you're focused on how you could have done something differently in order to prevent the loss or change. And I think, John, you talk about this a little bit just in some of the slides when we present together, that it's kind of like the prairie, right? The prairie mouse. What's it called? The prairie. What's it called? The prairie person. The little prairie dog. Prairie dog.

27:30 John Dehlin The Gopher.

27:31 Natasha Helfer The gopher. Yeah. Groundhog. And then they'll pop up, and then it's like, oh, never mind. And I want to go back to where I was before. And so to avoid a lot of the pain and discomfort. Right. So whether it's outward towards God, please intervene, or whether it's kind of like, please my past self intervene, which you can't really have that, but we can get stuck in a lot of that. What if thinking, then either one is just realizing that you're not in control, and you hate that, but you're kind of giving your control away. In some ways, bargaining is still about giving your control away. I think that. What's the next one that you're talking

28:14 Margi Dehlin about, the testing out.

28:17 Natasha Helfer Testing is you are in control. That to me, that. I see that as the difference.

28:23 Margi Dehlin Love that. I really feel like that was important.

28:28 John Dehlin Love it. Yeah. How did I. How did I bargain? You want to know how I bargained?

28:32 Margi Dehlin Yeah. What did it look like for you?

28:33 John Dehlin So for me, it was exactly, you know, I read. I read. I remember back to BYU and the books I'd read, like, A Thoughtful Faith and stuff by Leonard Arrington and Lowell Bennion. And I'm like, I think there have been people in the past who were Mormon, who were liberals, who still believed. And so for me, it was reading books by Lowell Bennion, Leonard Arrington, Eugene, England. Learning about progressive Mormonism because it has its roots in the 70s and 80s, even though it's been popularized in the 2000s and beyond. And so then it was also learning about Judaism and Reformed Judaism and the different forms of maturation in other people's faiths. And so then it was this. And I didn't have the benefit of Mormon stories or thoughtful faith or podcasts or blogs or even, you know, the New Order Mormon website was the first website that I found that encouraged a middle way. And that was actually my. Another important entree for me nowadays. People have never heard of the New Order of Mormon website 10 or 12 years ago. It was actually a really significant contributor to online Mormonism. I think at some point, the website was completely taken down, which is a tragedy. But then it became embracing my buffet Mormonism, which is like, you know, I'll pick and choose what works and what doesn't. I will nuance the temple, recommend questions so that I can answer them appropriately. I'll accept the callings I want and not accept the ones I don't. I'll learn about other forms of spirituality to supplement the spirituality. I'm not getting I'll do a lot of distress tolerance at church so that I can deal with the difficulties of church. And I will find a lot of friends and people to talk to and frankly start a podcast as an outlet for all the angst and frustration and fear and social justice concerns that I have with keeping my name associated with the church. And that lasted for. That allowed me to prolong my bargaining for over a decade. But I was always conflicted. And so for me, the excommunication was sad, but it was a huge source of relief because for me, trying to straddle that middle way, especially with certain policies in the church, the way women are treated, the way race and racial things are talked about, the LGBT issues, particularly the Prop 8 stuff in the November policies, and just the church's policies on LGBT people, there wasn't a way for me to remain an active member in good standing ultimately and pay tithing and serve the church, feeling like the church was harming people that I cared about. So for me, leaving was inevitable as long as those policies were in place. And so for me, those things were ended up being bargaining, but not, you know, testing in a more valid way. Did I answer your question?

31:49 Margi Dehlin You did.

31:51 Natasha Helfer How about you, Margie? How did it show up for you, do you think?

31:57 Margi Dehlin Probably similarly in behavior? I would probably say, you know, adding Buddhism to my lessons or saying that I would only probably. But I don't see myself as a huge bargainer. I don't feel like that's why I was kind of asking for clarification and some examples is for me, with regard to sort of a faith transition, bargaining was not a huge player for me.

32:28 John Dehlin Yeah, you were kind of done. Once you were done, you were done and you still went to church. But it was more.

32:34 Margi Dehlin The intention was familial support. It was to support our children.

32:38 John Dehlin It's like, yeah, it's a good place to raise our kids. But as far as the truth claims or trying to reconcile. Yeah, you just kind of moved on.

32:51 Natasha Helfer Well, I was just gonna say, I think for me, you know, because for me, the testing part, the seeking realistic solutions, I'm still doing middle way Mormonism. And for me right now that that's working. At the same time, for me, I think the bargaining part, especially looking at it from this perspective of kind of like, what could I have done differently? It's almost a sign to me now of I'm heading down an unhealthy path, because a lot of times I'll let the old Mormon narrative voice step in as part of that Bargaining, like, well, really, if you just prayed harder, Natasha, if you just did the Mormon path better, you know, you would get these answers kind of. And I know as soon as I have those kinds of thoughts or those doubts that I'm in that stage of bargaining for something that, first of all, I've already tested, and that doesn't work for me. And secondly, it starts that shame cycle that actually is not helpful and actually propels me towards unhealthy stuff and that, you know, I think many people talk about that. It's kind of like, I don't believe that. But that voice sure still is there. I can still have some anxiety around that voice or I can still have some. So I think, in a sense, that's bargaining is that, well, if I just do these things, then the storyline will be true. And that has not been a healthy way for me to Mormon.

34:15 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Yep, Makes sense.

34:18 John Dehlin Shout out to Victoria, who's joined us from the uk. It's always great to have you, Victoria. Let's see. Debbie writes, I had something similar, only the admonition was to slow down, like, let the truth unfold. I'm always in such a hurry. I wanted all the truth all at once. She says, God had to slow me down. And I learned why going too fast was too painful and too overwhelming. Lonnie, about the Buffet Mormonism says, and then the prophet Nelson just says no to Buffet Mormonism. So that is how Lonnie's interpreting something President Nelson has said. I think I can relate to what Lonnie's saying, that sometimes it's not always easy to try and be a Buffet Mormon. But I also want. I hear another voice inside me saying, make your religion your own. And I'm aware of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of successfully practicing Buffet Mormons. And so I want Lonnie to know that if it doesn't work for you, that's fine, but we all can claim our religious participation however we want to claim it. I think you would support that, right, Natasha?

35:31 Natasha Helfer Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, this is, of course, me projecting my own truth on everybody, but I just don't know how. You can't but be a Buffet Mormon, regardless of what President Nelson says. But I think her point is also. It's just that, you know, we consider these things and we are excited to adopt them. And then, bam, you know, it's like the more literal kind of conservative voice, which is the strongest in the organized church, comes in like. Like, puts a damper on all these things that could potentially be helpful for Us, it's like, nope, you're not allowed to do that. And so, yeah, it's hard. When you're in a top down religion like ours, there's not a lot of room for personal authority. There is in each individual person, but there just isn't a lot of room to really talk or be validated in that as the, the overall community.

36:22 John Dehlin Victoria gets a shout out for Buddhism. Lonnie also says loves, loves the book you guys recommended, Secular Buddhism. It's a book and a podcast. Penny is being vulnerable. Penny says, I'm crying now. I'm going for a walk in the beautiful sunshine before I start working. Thank you for this great podcast. Yeah, glad you're liking a Penny. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and for sharing. We're glad you're finding value. Okay, so we've been talking about bargaining, we've talked a little bit about testing, we're going to talk a bit more about testing, but let's hit a really important one really quick, which is depression. Depression is a stage of grief. It's also a clinical diagnosis. Natasha, you're closest to the clinical work of the three of us because you are, you know, you're licensed right now and you actively do this work. Can you talk to us about depression as a clinical diagnosis and, or versus or not? Versus depression as a stage of grief and what we know about it and what we should, how we should think about it?

37:42 Natasha Helfer Well, depression is a hard word, I guess, because it can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people from a clinical perspective. You know, you have to have so much criteria in place and for a certain amount of time before you'll get an official diagnosis of clinical depression. And those symptoms are very easy to Google, so I'm not going to bore you with all that. But basically, you know, loss of interest, loss of hope, loss of maybe an appetite or sex desire, loss of, you know, interest in the things that you usually find pleasurable. You know, just kind of the wah, wah, wah, right. Of life.

38:18 John Dehlin Low energy.

38:19 Natasha Helfer Yeah, low energy. And so, you know, we do have a diagnosis in the DSM 5 that I actually usually use a lot more for faith transition than the clinical depression, which is an adjustment disorder with depressive features. Right. So that's. Or anxiety features or both. Because that gives some room for this idea that if you're going through an adjustment that is difficult, it kind of normalizes. It's still diagnosis, it still goes on your medical record, but it at least normalizes this idea that adjustments are difficult. Inherently and that they might result in some of these issues that fit the criteria for depression and anxiety. And it's not only until you maybe have those symptoms for longer than six months, months, that you would probably move away from an adjustment disorder and maybe have the official diagnosis in of itself. But basically what that's saying is that in a sense, depression is the partner of acceptance. Because depression is, in a sense, you realize it's kind of like C3PO. It's like, you're doomed. We're doomed. It's kind of like this, okay, I've been in shock, I've been in denial. I got all angry, I tried to bargain my way out of it, and now it's like, oh, you know, now you're sitting in the muck of it and you're realizing there really isn't. It's not going to go away, it's not going to change. And that can be extremely depressing. And yet I think it's helpful to frame that as the beginning part of acceptance because in a sense, your system is having to really do that work of grief, right? That work of, ugh, it's just heavy. This is heavy. And when we deal with things that are heavy, yeah, we don't have a lot of fun with that, and it's not motivating. And I don't feel a lot of energy when I'm dealing with heavy. So that's a fairly normal response. Even though it still kind of fits this clinical perspective. I think that, you know, oftentimes again, we don't want to feel depressed, so. So we'll oftentimes run away from that feeling. We'll take a pill or try to exercise our way out, or happy thought our way out of it, or sleep out of it. And I think it's one of those things that it's a balancing act of how long you just kind of let yourself feel those things that are appropriate for you to feel and also not get into a rut where you're, you know, it's going to be harder and harder for you to get out of a depressed state. So that's a hard balancing act for a lot of people. And I think it's a good time, especially if you feel like you've been dealing with that for longer than six months to probably at least consider a mental health or primary caregiver type of assessment,

41:26 John Dehlin which can be psychiatry, which is medication. If it's something more severe or biological, or if it's more mild to moderate and situational, it can be exercise. It can Be talk therapy psychologist, marriage and family therapist, licensed clinical social worker. Lots of different ways. Behavior activation is often the way out. But you're so demotivated you don't feel like doing anything. And that's kind of where people get stuck. So sometimes just someone who can help you process it, talk through things, hold you accountable, help you set goals, help you kind of set milestones, that all can be really helpful. The only other thing I wanted to add is just that just like we talked about with anger, how anger serves a real important purpose, so does depression. It slows you down, it makes you look at what you've experienced. It helps you and that slowing down helps you learn from the experience. It draws your attention, slows you down so you can learn, so you can not be fooled again or not be hurt again. And it can slow you down enough to then be able to eliminate all the other distractions in your life and allow you to do, create space for the rebuilding of the, you know, basically of filling in all the holes that developed as a result of the faith crisis. Whether it's spirituality or identity or community or family or morality or sense of meaning and purpose or you know, beliefs or non beliefs, depression helps you sort of slow down, put a pause on or eliminate a bunch of extraneous things in your life, which allows you to have the space to look at and do the work, to do rebuilding, learning and rebuilding. So depression has a function that's very important.

43:33 Margi Dehlin I love everything you're saying and I think, you know, in a culture that just really values, you know, fast paced productivity, instant results, we have a really like, you know, we have a difficult time seeing the function sometimes of depression just because there's so much cultural disapproval for how it manifests. But I love everything you talked about with it slowing people down. And for me it feels like too. I clearly come from a literature background, so I like, you know, analogies or. But I really love to think about it like for the longest time we, you know, amidst this grief process, we try to be so outward. There's this space we give to the world and we hang on to that as long as we can. And I really see it as the depression that really changes and allows us to be vulnerable, to be sad, to really go into a state of. And in that on that level it's kind of like we're given a flashlight and if we're houses and the exterior is what we show to the world and we have these approved of behaviors that are like the levels we take that flashlight and we finally go into the basement and we start looking at what. What's there in the dark. And it is some of the toughest work to be had. And it's where so, like, some of the great gifts are, you know, and so, I don't know, I really have just this soft place for this. This stage of grief, you know.

45:17 John Dehlin Oh, so brilliant.

45:18 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I so appreciate all of that because I think that, again, we tend to, you know, a very common goal that comes into my therapy room is I just want to be happy. And again, it's a word that we tend to use a lot in American culture. And I think that when we feel anger, when we feel grief, when we feel depression, we feel like there's something wrong with us, like we shouldn't be feeling these things. And although we don't want to get stuck in those things, you know, to the point that now our life, you know, our quality of life over years is dramatically impacted. There is something about seeing wisdom and seeing strength in us going through these stages, these negative feelings. I had somebody kind of put it in the language of that depression is a necessary step that begins to allow one to detach emotionally from the situation. And so it is part of a process that we've. I think you used the word evolve to John earlier. This is part of the wiring of transitioning. So it's a balancing act. Right. You have to kind of stay aware, like, how much of this is good for me to kind of muck and slow down and be patient with myself and understand I'm not just supposed to snap out of it and be okay. And at what point maybe do I need to get some more help to help me through a process, a phase that seems to be ongoing or it's too long or it's causing too much distress in my life.

46:55 Margi Dehlin Yeah. I would say a great counterpart to the depression phase is that self awareness to, you know, be connected enough to yourself to know when you're going to need some external support and help and even kind of processing movement if you start kind of feeling overwhelmed or stuck at any time, that self awareness, to know that you deserve extra support and, you know, it can feel like a stage of overwhelm, you know, where you can feel like it's all too much to hold, it's too much for. Or you have a really hard time ever setting it down. And sometimes you kind of need breaks to do that, you know, And I

47:45 Natasha Helfer don't know any depression plan from any type of therapist that doesn't include, at some level, connecting with a Support system. So in some ways, depression, I think, almost requires you to connect again in different ways with people than you were used to before. And in the context of faith transition, there's something really beautiful about that.

48:06 Margi Dehlin Yeah, yeah. Changes who you are and how you connect with others

48:12 John Dehlin and it can feel really crummy.

48:14 Margi Dehlin Mm, yes. Well, it's kind of like that cocoon analogy too, where you're in the dark and you can feel really alone and, you know, and if you kind of work that right, it is also kind of part of your becoming. But it does feel like you can feel so alone, so insular, so separate, so like you have so much to hold on your own that you have to actually be proactive in creating spaces where there are people who show up for you and where you can get a break from holding it all by yourself.

48:53 John Dehlin There's something about grieving that we haven't quite touched on that I want to just throw out there. And I think it's part of the depression. Maybe it's also part of the acceptance conversation. But there's. And I don't know how to articulate this, so I might need your help. But there's this idea when you're going through grieving where you're just basically saying, I'm sad, I miss this, or this hurt me, or life's never going to be the same again. What is that called? How would you guys describe that? It's maybe it's captured in some of the phases we've talked about, but it's sort of like being able to express what this means to you. The sadness, the loss, the frustration. Where is that in this process? The ability to articulate and come to terms with what this loss means to you and how it's affected you. What is that? Where is that in this process? Do you guys know what I'm saying?

50:02 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I definitely see it as in this depression part. And that's why I call it the first step of acceptance. You know, it's kind of sitting with the new normal and how sad and awful that is. It's interesting, even from a clinical perspective, when people die, we don't give a clinical diagnosis of depression. We call it bereavement because we expect people to struggle for a long time with the death of a loved one, especially an unexpected death or, you know, kind of a non timeline type death. Even expected deaths, you know, a parent or whatever can be extremely, extremely difficult. So I think that there is even in the clinical language, like we diagnose everybody with depression because that's how insurance covers you to get the therapy you need. But in reality, the DSM 5 calls this bereavement different than depression because there's something natural about going through all of what you just said. I'm so sad. I'm so heartbroken. And of course, you know, depending on the context of all these people going through faith transitions, there can be exacerbating factors, like how supportive is your extended family, how supportive is your ward community. You know, if you're going through an excommunication like the Youngs, that's a very different approach than maybe somebody in a ward where, you know, we love you no matter what you believe, and you're welcome anytime. I mean, I've heard of bishops and stake presidents saying those kinds of things. Right. So context matters, and it's very complex. But I think that's all part of this depression stage is just the sadness, the deep, profound sadness of it all, which can also go into all those other things, like, what have I done? Why was I brainwashed, per se. Right. Or all the opportunities I lost, or all the choices I made, all those identity crossings, crises. Parts of this, I think, fall very much squarely in both the anger and the depression phases. You know, as far as what were the implications for me. And having to really face those in the face is very difficult.

52:21 John Dehlin Judy makes the comment that it's a lot like death, it's bereavement. And there are a lot of questions that we'll get to next time on people who basically say it's a lot like losing a loved one. I'm sure there are ways that it's similar in ways that it's very different.

52:37 Natasha Helfer Yeah. Ourselves, we've lost a part of ourself. Mm. I mean, it's an identity crisis at the core.

52:47 John Dehlin Yeah.

52:48 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

52:48 John Dehlin And you lose so much. You lose, like I said, spirituality. Sometimes a sense of meaning and purpose, family, friends, community, you know, your sense of, you know, your solace about the afterlife. Sometimes it can affect your relationships in very real ways. And so, you know, of course you're going to feel awful, and of course it's going to take time to rebuild. And so all that's going to be a part of the depression.

53:20 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Something that comes up a little bit for me in depression is the word reckoning. And I do feel like, on a deep level, you are reckoning with reality. You're learning. And that's why I view acceptance as being a little bit further down the line as part of this process. Some of those questions do come up that Natasha was asking of, like, why me? Or, you know what? And it is this sense of you are really, really trying to integrate your experiences into a reality you can live with, a reality that now is going to feel like truer to you or more honoring to the life you want to live or. But reckoning for me is a term that I think is kind of appropriate for at least one aspect of depression while you're down there in the basement with the flashlight, looking at all that is down there.

54:22 John Dehlin All right, we're running out of time for today. We've got about five minutes left, so I'm just gonna. What we'll do is we'll cover these last two stages really quickly. And then what we're gonna do is come back next week and integrate a lot of questions and comments from our listeners. Because we've got at least another hour's worth of integration and questions, questions. And this is such a really important topic. I think it's worth giving it lots of time. So we've already talked about testing, but we talked about testing versus bargaining. So let's talk about testing as seeking realistic solutions. There are all sorts of ways that questioning and doubting and post Mormons test realistic solutions. That can be anything from looking for new churches to replace the church you were in. It can be finding new sources of spirituality. For us, it was Eckhart Tolle and secular Buddhism. It can be finding communities on the Internet through Mormon Spectrum or Waka or lots of the other groups to replace the community you had with the church with the new community. And some of those communities may work and some of them may not. Some people may find churches. Some people won't want to ever go to church again. Some people find a secular community like Oasis. There are lots of ways you can search for and test different communities. People can try on new identities, whether it's hiking or biking or fishing or camping or sewing or organic foods or essential oils or crystals. People try all sorts of different identities and things that they can pursue to forge new identities and support groups and friendships, etc. And then, of course, figuring out what you believe in God or the afterlife, or looking into secularism or atheism or agnosticism or turning, you know, again, turning to an evangelical Christian church or whatever it is. Lots of different ways to test. And I kind of think of this as filling the holes. It's basically, we had a whole episode about this is rebuilding. You can't just focus on what you're mad about, what you're against, what you're angry about what happened to you, kind of dwelling for too long in a victim posture. You have to rebuild and figure out what you're for, not just what you're against. And then you have to spend a lot of time, usually it's years reconstructing a life that focuses on what you're for. And sometimes podcasts and Reddit and, you know, post Mormon groups can get you stuck in anger and stuck inventing where you never ever spend much time in the rebuilding. And that's just a really important part. And testing is the process of doing that rebuilding. What do you think of with testing, Natasha?

57:25 Natasha Helfer I think the language I like the most about testing is that for me it kind of brings up this imagery of a laboratory, you know, and so there's no end result. There's no, like, we have to do it a certain way. We can try things out, we can see if it works or feeds us or if we need to shift again. And I really like the flower fluidity and the openness and the possibility of just the word testing. Whereas I think we come from a background where it's all already preordained and preset. And you're supposed to fit into this box. Now there's like 20 different boxes and you get to open them up and test them out and see if the product works for you or not. And if it doesn't, you can return it and if it does, you can add it to your toolbox or whatever. And this is an idea I really work with a lot of clients around is exploratory time frames. We don't have to make any final decisions today. Why don't you try something out for the next three weeks, come back, let's talk about what that was like for you. Take some introspection time during that time. I just really like this permission almost and this idea of exploration that the word testing just gives us just by being the word itself.

58:44 John Dehlin Debbie gives a shout out for secular Buddhism. Victoria gives a shout out for Eckhart Tolle. Were you gonna say something?

58:51 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I was gonna talk about just kind of what it means to me a little bit. I love it too, Natasha. The idea, just the terminology, testing out. And one thing I like to think of testing as being is sort of this. Now you have this emerging new self, right? So you went into the basement and what did you find? And you went into the dark and you spent time there. And it's this. It is this act of discovery and almost curiosity at who am I now? What do I love? What feels good? It's almost like an update. You're allowing yourself time to get to know yourself again with this new knowledge or with these new insights or, you know, with the things that you've kind of learned. And so I love it as kind of an information gathering. Less than some type of pressureful, gotta figure it out, gotta. But more of a curiosity, more of a trying to get to know yourself in this new place.

59:58 Natasha Helfer Yeah. And I think as Mormons, we can be uncomfortable with that because we don't really know how to do that. We want to almost sometimes, you know, trade one sure product for the next sure product. And so I see a lot of people kind of uncomfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing or not having everything figured out or not knowing what to tell their kids sometimes. And I think there's a lot of beautiful space in the. I don't know that we were never really taught to consult, you know, as in our Mormon upbringing.

1:00:27 Margi Dehlin I so agree. Where it's been, where we're so end oriented and testing is all about. It's equally about process. That's what I'd say. And it's just one of my favorite places to be with my clients is in kind of testing and information gathering for themselves. This is where it gets really, really good. You know, it starts rebuilding your identity. It starts rebuilding a life that actually now feels like you.

1:00:56 John Dehlin Yeah. When we've talked about when Jesus talks about being born again, when we've talked about the faith crisis being a gift, I think that's what we mean by the faith crisis being a gift. And when Richard Rohr talks about this, he talks about the first half of your life being building up a vessel that can contain, you know, a full, rich life. And that's your education, your ego, your sense of, you know, individuality, you know, your personality, your resources around you. Richard Rohr talks about that being the first half of your life, and then the second half of your life is filling the vessel that you created in the first half of your life. It's a really beautiful way to think about it. And it's this testing. That's another way of describing what Richard Rohr talks about. In his book Falling Upward, which I strongly recommend you guys check out. He gives you a framework for looking at this faith crisis as something that has always been what's supposed to happen. And that is almost a universal experience. At some point, you're going to lose your faith in the simplified system that was handed to you. But this is a great opportunity. Once you've built a life into adulthood and have resources, then you can spend your time creating the exact life you want. And that's where this testing becomes an opportunity for growth and fulfillment and meaning. And that's why we're not just being glib when we created a logo for the gift of the faith crisis that's got a sunshine, a sprouting plant. It's because we really believe that this is not just this curse and this bad thing that happened, but it's a phenomenal opportunity. You've been given the gift of the rest of your life. And so what are you going to do with it? Are you going to squander it? Or are you going to do amazing, fun, meaningful things? And that's the question, that's the opportunity. And so that's what we're talking about here. And so I think it's exciting and it's powerful, it's meaningful. We've got several comments. We'll just blow through them really quickly because we kind of have to run. Debbie writes, thank you for talking about breaking through victimhood and getting stuck inventing in post Mormon groups. I'm so happy that was said. Yes, Debbie, we're willing to acknowledge that here. She also really loves the testing concept we're exploring in patience. Natasha, do you have Victoria's comment in front of you?

1:03:37 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I felt lost a lot of

1:03:38 Margi Dehlin my, I felt I lost a lot

1:03:40 Natasha Helfer of myself when I joined the church. And so when I left, there was some excitement to remember who I am again and to, you know, and Debbie says, so interesting. I was born into the church, but I can so relate to. So whether you joined and are going back to something that you once remember or whether you were always there, but you're still kind of reclaiming this aspect of who am I? That's a wonderful process, I think, of this whole kind of identity work that we're all immersed in.

1:04:09 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. Victoria wrote something a little bit above. Natasha, Margie, do you want to read this above?

1:04:16 Margi Dehlin For a long time I needed to be on my own and that helped me. I needed to figure out who I am and what I want on my own. It might not work for everyone, but it did for me. Lots of yoga, reading, meditation, gardening, painting, and all kinds of things that made me feel good and invited stillness. I so relate. Victoria, really? Even with the things that worked for you to kind of invite stillness. Really beautiful.

1:04:43 John Dehlin Kristin writes. And yes, Victoria, you illustrate just the joy. It's like, try cooking, try yoga, try hiking, try skydiving, try, you know, the world is your oyster, try travel, try movies.

1:04:58 Margi Dehlin You know, and it's all designed. It's like whatever brings you back to yourself and whatever brings you, like a connection to sort of being alive, to being in the world, you know, and,

1:05:11 John Dehlin you know, Natasha is a sex therapist. How about Natasha, can you vouch that some people have found. Had a sexual awakening where they've discovered new pleasure and joy that they never thought possible? Can you validate that?

1:05:25 Natasha Helfer Yeah, well, I think. I mean, yeah, let's do a whole thing on that one. Because I think a faith transition, it just eventually will, if not be propelled by sensuality and sexuality. I mean, there's just no way those things can be separate.

1:05:42 John Dehlin Kristen writes, there's a need to have a replacement of beliefs as soon as possible. I wanted security and certainty in my life again. I realized over time the beauty and uncertainty and discovery, and that's. There's. That's profound. Kristen and I, you know, no, Roshetta and secular Buddhism is going to reflect that as well. That there's this real power and reality and just not knowing. And you can actually believe it or not, we found so much comfort in saying we knew everything that it becomes disorienting to not know anything. But you can reach a point, and Buddhism helps, where actually you're like, whoa. It's a huge relief and a comfort to just embrace the fact that you don't know anything and that life's a mystery and that, you know, you just be in the moment because you can't spend your time. You don't want to be fooled again. Having some other leader come up to you and tell you that they know the truth, and you start following that, only discover that that's not true either. And instead of always pursuing some absolute truth, you just relax into the present moment. And while you give up certainty, what you get is just this beautiful focus on what's right in front of you. Because really, that's the only thing you know for sure, is like, I'm here, I'm present today. I have today. And instead of worrying about the past or obsessing about the future, I'm just going to have joy today. And that becomes a really powerful trade that you make.

1:07:10 Natasha Helfer Well, and I think what we're talking about just to be, you know, just to bring about the stages, what we're really talking about now is we've kind of moved on from testing, and we're talking about acceptance, the acceptance stage of grief, which is, you know, that sense of really understanding that you're not going back, you're not in denial anymore. You're not ignoring the loss. You've done some testing and now you're in a space of like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have to get comfortable with ambiguity, you know, or I'm gonna practice that, you know. And it just. We're really starting to talk about this, the seventh step and a lot of these comments.

1:07:50 John Dehlin Yeah. And so we do end with acceptance. And that's just, I don't know. You know, if you guys remember, do you guys remember what the very first episode of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis was in the modern iteration? Do you guys remember what it was?

1:08:09 Natasha Helfer Wasn't it like the top 10 things or something?

1:08:12 John Dehlin No. Well, yeah, that was in the old version. It was sort of making peace. Making peace.

1:08:17 Margi Dehlin Oh, yeah.

1:08:17 Natasha Helfer Making peace. Peace with them.

1:08:19 John Dehlin And I think that's also part of what acceptance is. It's not just embracing everything in terms of the new life you're going to create. There's a real health in embracing the past. And there's a really good TED Talk that Anthony Miller recommended that we all listen to. I'm going to share it in the comments, but it's about a woman whose husband died and she realized that it was fallacious for her to think that she was ever gonna move beyond her deceased husband. She wasn't going to get over her ex husband. What she found is that she can move, move in a new direction, bringing her ex husband with her, because there's no way that she was ever going to escape him. He was always going to be a part of her life. He was always going to be in the child that they had together. He was always going to be in her memories, in her past. And in many ways he would, you know, her relationship with him would shape her future. Even though she got remarried and built a whole new life with a new partner, this idea of getting over Mormonism for many people ends up being just kind of fallacious. You really can't ever un Mormon yourself in some ways. And you're never gonna really sort of did. Even if you leave the church and resign and move to New Zealand

1:09:47 Margi Dehlin in

1:09:48 John Dehlin some way, Mormonism will always be a part of what shaped you and who you are, for better and for worse. And so I think part of the acceptance narrative isn't just embracing where you are, but it's also making peace with where you've come from. Acknowledging the good and the bad and just saying, just like you might wish for a partner you've divorced if you end up leaving the church, instead of being angry and furious and framing that Whole marriage as a huge mistake. If it ended, you just say, hey, I love you. We shared these moments together. We had this time together. I bless you. And now let's move in different directions, either together or separate. Together if you stay in the church, separate if you leave it, but just approaching it with peace and grace and acceptance and integration.

1:10:41 Margi Dehlin Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

1:10:43 John Dehlin Go ahead.

1:10:44 Margi Dehlin No. Okay. Yeah, I see it as well as this piece of where you're no longer putting energy into fighting reality. You're not fighting your story. You're not fighting. You've reframed where you could reframe and thought about things differently. And now you are this integrated being. But it is in a way that you've been very conscious and intentional about creating. And so, I don't know, that integration part I really, really love, where you've kind of gathered up your experiences or things that have happened to you. You, you know, have now decided what they all mean to you. You've decided now, you know, moving forward what you want your life to be about. That, to me, is sort of acceptance. It's a very emboldened place. It's a very peaceful place. It's an accepting place, but it's, you know, about not fighting reality.

1:11:48 John Dehlin Anything you want to add about acceptance, Natasha?

1:11:51 Natasha Helfer Well, I think that I really like the word integration. I don't like the words that we use oftentimes in our culture about recovering, healing from moving on. Because even, like, in the work I do around sexual trauma, it kind of like those words, like, kind of think that you're gonna somehow, you know, like you're saying, leave it behind and you're never gonna look back. It's never gonna affect you again. And I think all things in life affect us, you know, forever in many different ways, shapes and forms. And so this integration aspect is really a much more realistic way. And so that acceptance, in a way, acceptance also in a way, like, makes room for all the other stages of grief, because you will probably revisit stages of grief. And if you're really kind of in an acceptance stage state, you'll understand that and not be harsh with yourself or see yourself as somehow having failed in the healing process. Because you're revisiting a stage of grief, right? And so it's kind of this nice kind of play on words that you can kind of almost wrap all of those into an acceptance type of space of moving forward in ways that are integrative. Not that we're going to forget or that those things aren't going to, like I said, sting at times or come back and ruminate or come back or, you know, if something's happening in the news or in your family or even developmentally, like all of a sudden your child is going through a developmental phase that you went through at a certain time in your faith transition. And so we're going to remember, we're going to have body memories, we're going to have moments. That doesn't mean that we have failed in this process.

1:13:35 Margi Dehlin So important.

1:13:36 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

1:13:38 John Dehlin We have so much more to discuss. We're getting great comments from our listeners. Courtney reminds us of the story of the two arrows. The first arrow meaning pain, which is unavoidable in life. The second is suffering, which is all the discomfort and extra pain we add to our lives by not accepting the first arrow. That comes from Noah Rashada and the secular Buddhism stuff. Please check out Secular Buddhism. You'll love it. Thanks for the reminder, Courtney. Roger My dear friend Roger Hendricks. He writes, I've had bouts of depression during my lifetime. I'm surprised the depression did not visit me in my journey through Mormonism. I feel I've evolved. I've not lost a testimony. I've evolved. I am experimenting with new communities. Open Stories foundation is my Internet community. It's been comforting for me. Roger, thank you for sharing that. We're so glad you're a part of our community. And thanks for your good spiritedness about my naming your podcast on Mormon Stories in a way that you weren't totally comfortable. I was trying to get people to listen to it, but it didn't do you justice. And so check out Roger Hendricks ten and a half hour interview on Mormon Stories podcast. It's a brilliant interview, one of the most important ones we've ever done. Thanks Roger, for sharing. KJC says. Do you want to read that? Margie?

1:15:01 Margi Dehlin Sure. After a year of cancer treatment, I really learned that living in the moment was the optimum way to live. It's not easy to remember to do that as living in the past and future became a bad habit. But I seem to still be stuck in being so angry at the church for giving me all the answers only to find out they were not. Need to watch this from the beginning. I'd like some of this piece you're speaking of.

1:15:24 John Dehlin We welcome you kjc, to listen from the beginning. And we're gonna do some more next week so we'll have a lot more. This is a really important episode. Natasha, can you see Emily's comment there at the end?

1:15:36 Natasha Helfer Yes. I was just Thinking this morning that I wish I could go through Mormon dialysis and just filter our. All of our. All of the Mormon thoughts, feelings and history that are part of the me. I love the idea of integration. Instead, I can't pull out and replace those parts of myself. I just need to accept them. Thank you.

1:15:57 John Dehlin Well, thank you, Emily. And with that, we need to wrap up today, but we have so many questions and comments and stories from our listeners that we're going to have a part, I don't know, three or four of this episode that we continue next week. Same bat time, same bat channel, as we said growing up. But I just want to thank Margie. Thank you.

1:16:19 Natasha Helfer Thank you.

1:16:19 John Dehlin John and Natasha, thank you for being with us today.

1:16:23 Margi Dehlin We both thank you.

1:16:25 Natasha Helfer Thank you both for being with me. I always love these discussions. I always feel like, you know, when you said the comment that we don't want to trade one profit for another. I really hope that people understand that's not our intent here either. Right. And so I learned from everybody's comments and from both of you, as much as I hope to share some experiences that I hope that are helpful as well. So I really, really just benefit from this whole process. So thank you for including me on a regular basis.

1:16:53 John Dehlin Yeah. And thanks to all our listeners. We've had so many phenomenal comments, you know, in the live feed. If you guys just want some real wisdom, you know, go to, go to the feed and see just all the many deep and interesting stories and perspectives that have been shared. There've been over 97 comments on today's episode. That's a lot of comments and we really appreciate. Let's see. Yeah, 205 total comments. Lots of real wisdom there. Some of it we weren't able to get to, so. So please check out these comments. Listeners and viewers, thank you so much for being a part of this. You made this presentation better. And thank you for everyone who shares this, who promotes this, who likes our page, who gives us positive reviews, who shares it on their wall, all the ways that this site gets promoted, this podcast gets promoted. We want to thank everyone for doing that. Please share this with a loved one if you think it would be useful. Thanks to all our donors again that make this possible. If you want to support us, please go to MormonFaithCrisis.com and donate. And we just want to promise you that your donations will go to keep this podcast alive. And now that we're affiliating with the Open Stories foundation, your donations will also go to keeping the open storage foundation alive and to, you know, will also be tax deductible. So for all those reasons, thanks for the support. Please continue supporting us. We love you guys.

1:18:38 Margi Dehlin We appreciate you. Thank you.

1:18:39 John Dehlin And we'll see you guys soon. Next week for the continuation of this topic on the essential role of grief in a Mormon faith crisis. Thanks, Natasha.

1:18:49 Natasha Helfer Thank you, guys. Take care, everybody.

1:18:51 John Dehlin We'll see you soon.

Episode 26

0:19 John Dehlin Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. I am John Delin, one of your three regular co hosts. As always, I'm joined by the amazing, the thoughtful, the kind, the wise, the compassionate, Margaret Weber Delyn. Welcome. Margie.

0:41 Margi Dehlin Thank you.

0:43 John Dehlin It's good to have you.

0:43 Margi Dehlin Thank you. I appreciate it.

0:45 John Dehlin Why don't you introduce our Wichita co host?

0:48 Margi Dehlin Oh, my gosh. But you're like the adjective man.

0:50 John Dehlin Well, you can do it.

0:52 Natasha Helfer I believe.

0:52 Margi Dehlin Sasha, the amazing, thoughtful, insightful, lively, great laugh. Natasha.

1:01 Natasha Helfer Oh, my goodness. Thanks, you guys. I need to take another turn at this. I think I took a turn once.

1:07 Margi Dehlin You did. You were stellar.

1:10 John Dehlin You did great.

1:11 Natasha Helfer You guys are amazing and astounding and bright and savvy and witty. Make my day type of people.

1:22 John Dehlin Well, we are back for another episode and we could not be more excited. Our discussion that we began last week on the essential role of grief and grieving and emotional processing in a Mormon faith crisis. I think it's one of our most important episodes ever. And as I talked to some coaching clients, I immediately found myself referring them to the episode because so many people in a faith crisis just don't understand the role of emotions and grieving. So I'm really happy about this and I'm excited to be here with you guys to continue it really quickly before we dive in. As always, we have a few ways we like to start. Let's start by reading our mission. So. So, Natasha, would you mind reading our mission?

2:29 Natasha Helfer No, I do not mind reading our mission. Our mission is we are trying to provide positive, practical, and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis or belief crisis. There's lots of different words that people like to use or transition. Some people don't like the word crisis. Not everybody's always necessarily in crisis, but these are shifts or changes or things that we're noticing that are, you know, coming back around in a different way in our faith journeys. And we are also trying to make this a workable space for people who maybe aren't going through that necessarily themselves, but are the loved one, the spouse, the friend, the family member, the ecclesiastical leader of people who are and want better ideas on how to manage what's happening, understand and be able to empathize, be able to have tips and strategies for working in mixed faith relationships. So we're trying to make this a place for. For both sides of the. Of the bridge, I guess.

3:36 John Dehlin I love it. Thank you for that introduction and our message. Margie, what's our message?

3:44 Margi Dehlin So our message is you know, especially amidst kind of the tougher times, the, you know, harder emotions, that this can be a tremendous gift. And it is, you know, a key to creating a big, beautiful life.

4:02 John Dehlin And that's why our logo is a big bright yellow with the sunshine and a sprout, even though it can feel like the mud, the dirt underneath the sprout. With the right fertilizer, with the right sunshine, with the light, tools and resources, you can have an amazing, flourishing garden.

4:23 Margi Dehlin Yes, this can be a key component.

4:26 John Dehlin It's an essential component. So that's our message we have to announce. As we, I think, mentioned last week, we are excited to announce that the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast is joining the Open Stories foundation as one of its podcasts. And so that doesn't really mean anything to you directly in terms of the content you'll hear, but it means a lot to us. It means that we're able to co promote and market the podcast without any worries about conflicts of interest or complexities. So we can promote it on Mormon Stories, Mormon mental health podcast, etc. It also means that we can. There are a lot of efficiencies in terms of managing multiple podcasts with the same infrastructure. And the benefit to you is that you now get a tax deduction for your support of the podcast. However, that comes with an asterisk. If you're one of the people that has already been a donor, we need you to go to mormonfaithcrisis.com Sign up for the new donation stream, which goes to the Open Stories Foundation. That's the only way to get your tax deduction, and we will cancel your old donation. We've had several of you do that, but several of you have not. We've emailed you all. Please go to mormonfaithcrisis.com click on the Donate button, sign up for whatever monthly donation you're comfortable, and then email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com tell us you've done this and we will cancel your old recurring donation. That is just really important, so please do that again. You can find this podcast on YouTube under Gift of Mormon Faith Crisis. You can also find it under itunes and you can find it on Facebook Live. Lots of different ways to consume this podcast really quickly. You can also reach out to us for coaching. We do do coaching on the side separate from our nonprofit work. Natasha, tell us just quickly about your coaching.

6:36 Natasha Helfer Yeah, you can find everything@Natashaparker.org I run an online practice called Symmetry Solutions and everything about that and any other speaking engagements or things that I'm involved with, other podcasts, etc. You can find all of my projects

6:50 John Dehlin at natashaparker.org Margie, how do they find you?

6:56 Margi Dehlin So you can find me@beautyinthenow.org all my information is there. I've got a blog there and contact information.

7:03 John Dehlin You can reach me@johndelin.com coaching all right, so let's see. We do have one really, really important event coming up. It's officially not part of the Open Stories foundation, but it is a not for profit event. It's called Thrive. Thrive 2019. And I just have to say I don't think I've been as excited about something in quite some time. The event again is in Salt Lake City, June 7th through 9th. It's called Thrive. The subtitle is Finding Healing Joy Beyond Mormonism. It's for liberal progressive Mormons, unorthodox Mormons, and inactive Mormons and post Mormons. No negativity, no criticism of anything. Not even any dealing with truth claims. It is 100% dedicated to supporting people find healing and joy after orthodox Mormonism stopped working for them. We have just the most phenomenal lineup of speakers. You will not believe the speakers at this event. Natasha will be speaking. Margie will be speaking. I will be speaking. Julie de Azevedo Hanks, Christian Moore, Anthony Miller. Leah and Brinley Young are now coming from the amazing Young family. John Larson from Mormon Expression fame. David Bachavoy, Jenny Morrow, Zelf on the Shelf. Alan and Katie Mount from Marriage on a Tightrope. Steve Holbrooke. Now Crystal and Sean Escobar from Wannabe Balanced Mom. Shawn Escobar's very vulnerable and candid. Coming out about abuse. Just came out in the New York Times. Sean's gonna be there with Crystal, Carissa and Heath Hendrickson.

8:58 Margi Dehlin I saw that. Yay.

8:59 John Dehlin And Gary and Ernie Diploma Horstmanshop. I'm not good at pronouncing their name, but anyway, so many amazing people. It's only $75 for the entire weekend. No one's making any money. None of the speakers are getting paid. We will lose money on this event, but we want you to find community. We want you to find friends, we want you to have a good time, and we want you to get tools and resources that you need to heal. So this is 100% altruistic on our part, and it will be 100% joy and healing and growth on your part if you come. So go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com to register anything you want to add Natasha?

9:37 Natasha Helfer No, I'm just super excited to be part of the. Part of the plan, part of the group.

9:43 John Dehlin Yeah. And there's only like 70 spots left, literally. It has a capacity of 250 people. We sold out our 90 seat venue. Now we have a 250 seat venue. So

9:58 Margi Dehlin 180 people now.

9:59 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah. So we've got 180 people who signed up. We've got 70 slots left and they're gonna go fast. We have an early bird price for 75 bucks a person before May 25th. After May 25th, it goes up to 149 bucks a person. So sign up today or you risk paying double. And even at double, it's worth it. An entire weekend for the price of less than one hour of coaching, plus all the friendships and community, plus two lunches. It's a steal at any level. So join us at Thrive. All right, so let's see what's working. It's our section for what's working. Margie, what's working?

10:42 Margi Dehlin So my what's working kind of stemmed out of something that wasn't working for a while, and that was my work schedule. I found that I work three days a week for about six hours each day while my kids are at school. And I found that I was not able to write. I was always leaving out a link. I've got the podcast link writing and coaching, and I just was having a hard time juggling. So I did my reflect and edit that I kind of talk about on the blog, just reflecting on what wasn't working, and then made an edit change. And one of the edits I decided to make was I kind of made an intentional change to each day. So each day now represents a different facet to my job. So Tuesdays I focus on the podcast, Thursdays is an all coaching day, and Fridays is my writing day. And I think for me, that really works because I can kind of focus and I know what's coming and. And I'm able to honor kind of these three components to my work that I value. So that is something that is working for me now.

11:57 John Dehlin Natasha, something tells me that you and I could take a lesson from Margie a little bit.

12:02 Margi Dehlin I don't know. I don't know if it would work for everyone, but it did work for me.

12:06 John Dehlin I think a writing day sounds marvelous.

12:10 Natasha Helfer Yeah. My problem with writing days is that I have them on my calendar and then I pick around.

12:17 John Dehlin Exactly.

12:18 Natasha Helfer It's nice to be thinking about writing.

12:21 Margi Dehlin I'm gonna think about writing Today I'm

12:23 John Dehlin gonna fill my calendar up with lots of writing that I don't do. What's working for me. The first thing that's working for me is Endgame. I love. I've watched pretty much all of the 22 Avengers movies. This one was every bit that I anticipated and more. And it's got a heart. It's not just a superhero movie with action and special effects. There are themes around parenting. There are themes around self love, around perfectionism. There are themes around teams and family, personal growth and development. So many good themes. You cried. You cried during Avengers Endgame. I did, and I saw it twice, and I never see movies twice, and I loved it more the second time than the first. So Avengers Endgame is working for me. Go see it. This is not a paid endorsement. Marvel and Disney do not pay me. Marvel got a whole to recommend their movie. Again, we're just all about altruism today. Go see Avengers Endgame for you, not for any other reason. What's also working for me is trusting people. Sometimes, you know, it's just you work with people and sometimes it goes great and sometimes it doesn't. And a lot of the time it's your own fault. But it's easy sometimes, when relationships get hard, to just say, I want to walk away and never trust anyone again. And I've been trusting people lately, even though sometimes I'm scared, too. And I like getting back in the game of trusting people and giving them a chance to trust me, even when, you know, sometimes it's bumpy and hard.

14:18 Margi Dehlin Nice.

14:20 John Dehlin Natasha, what's working for you?

14:23 Natasha Helfer Well, you're all doing really good in this segment. I think what I'm going to say about what's working for me is that nothing is working for me. So I'm just kind of in one of these moments, I'm having one of those weeks where probably even this whole topic of grief, it's very apropos. Right? So it's just kind of one of those. It's actually been about three weeks now that I've just kind of been noticing a slump in my energy and my just, you know, how much you can sometimes handle. And I notice it mostly in energy, what I'm up for, how I take care of myself. And when I'm basically at my last hurrah and I'm basically only caring for my kids and, you know, the basics that have to get done, then I know that I'm in a space where things aren't necessarily working. So I guess what's working in Me saying this is that it's one of those times where I have to start what you talked about, Margie, which is the reflection piece, right? So I'm realizing I have to spend some time to work on just reflecting whether or not I need to get in and talk to somebody, whether or not I need to rework a few things in my life. So, yeah, that's what's working. Not working. Plus, I will just add that the Avenger movie. What is not working for me on the Avenger movie is anytime there's time travel. I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm like, I'm too. Like, how did that happen? And how.

16:02 John Dehlin Wait, are you saying. Are you saying the time travel wasn't realistic? Is that what you're saying?

16:07 Natasha Helfer I'm just saying anytime there's time travel and they tried to address it, right? They were like, so is it like back to the future and is it like this and is it like that? And I'm like, I don't care what it is. It messes with my mind. So I'm all messed up.

16:19 John Dehlin Yeah, totally.

16:20 Natasha Helfer Time travel scenario.

16:22 John Dehlin At least the movie's self aware enough to make fun of time travel as a plot line as it chooses. Time travel as a plot line.

16:30 Natasha Helfer That's right.

16:30 John Dehlin But how else are you gonna. How else are you gonna deal with Thanos, Natasha? How would you deal with Thanos?

16:37 Natasha Helfer I think that time travel was the deal. I just can't wrap my brain around it.

16:43 John Dehlin By the way, you just offered a spoiler to the movie.

16:46 Natasha Helfer Oh, I'm sorry.

16:49 John Dehlin Sorry, sorry. The viewers. Natasha, let us.

16:54 Natasha Helfer I'm ruining everything in my. What's not happening?

16:59 John Dehlin Hey, we love your vulnerability. Sometimes what's working is nothing.

17:03 Margi Dehlin Yep, it's true.

17:04 John Dehlin And then just owning that is a good step. Yeah, time travel boggles my mind too. Natasha, you are not alone. So Theresa's empathizing with you.

17:16 Margi Dehlin You're not alone in many, many ways, Natasha. Time travel, just being one, Just one of them.

17:22 John Dehlin Okay, Emily's giving us the crying smiley faces. Shout out to Kristen, Steven, Stacy, Laura, Teresa, Lindy, our partner in crime on thrive, Kara Thomas, Lisa, Fedra, Heike, Carolyn. Lots of listeners joining us today live. We love. We've been commenting on how wonderful the live comments and questions have been. So we just want to thank everyone for joining us live. You make our time together more meaningful, more real time, more interesting, more interactive. So we want to invite everyone to please share their questions or comments. Today. The topic is the essential role of grief in a Mormon faith. Crisis. It's a continuation of last week. So please just start barraging us with your comments and questions. Emily writes, I've written a book on time travel. I guess Natasha won't be reading it.

18:20 Natasha Helfer Oh, actually, see, this is the. I will be reading it and then I'll want a six hour discussion on it so that I can go through every single possible tiny little thing that I thought about. So, Emily, look out.

18:33 John Dehlin Well, Emily is your woman for that. Okay, so last week we did a deep dive into the essential role of grief in a Mormon faith crisis. And what we did is we posted this image of an extended Kubler Ross model for grief, which included things like what, shock, denial, bargaining, bargaining, testing, depression, and ultimately acceptance. And what we did is we spent time on each one of those different items and there was so much content that we had, plus so much interaction from our live viewers that we didn't get a chance to comment on or answer questions or comments that were given to us already from people who posted stuff on Facebook in preparation for the interview. And so with that, we have just a huge list of comments and questions from you, our listeners, that we're going to be talking about today. But the first thing that I want to do before we do any of that is sort of just give a little story to help illustrate why I think this interview is so important and so essential. And by the way, it was Margie's idea to do this topic. I put her on the spot during a walk and she's like, let's do grieving. And I'm like, okay. I had a client last week, the wife of someone who lost their faith. She comes to me in coaching in a mixed faith marriage scenario. I've coached her husband a little bit who was serving as bishop and lost his faith as bishop, actually left the church as bishop just this year. Again, is in a mixed faith marriage with the kid on a mission. And the wife now, as a believer is, you know, she's come to a couple workshops and retreats. She loves her husband, she supports her husband. She chooses her husband in her marriage over, you know, the original contract of the marriage. She is in a great spot. However, she came to me for coaching because she said that, you know, even though intellectually she is very supportive, she's very even excited about the opportunity this faith crisis presents. Their mixed faith marriage. She knows all the right answers. They're on the same page. She finds herself breaking down with some level of frequency, let's just say once a month and to the point where she has to, like, go into a dark room and sob uncontrollably. And she sometimes loses her temper with her husband.

21:36 Margi Dehlin She.

21:36 John Dehlin She sometimes loses her temper with her kids. And she just came to me saying, I want you to help me get this thing under control. I want you to help me stop these moments of total emotional meltdowns. And so, of course, as a coach or as a therapist, I want to just take that burden away from her. But we had just done our episode on grieving on this podcast last week, and what occurred to me, and this is something that, this is something that I also have already run by Margie, what occurred to me in the moment to tell her is to ask her the question, what if you are supposed to be having meltdowns right now? What if that's exactly what you should be doing in your grieving process? What if your entire marriage has been turned on its head? What if your total life has been turned upside down, the whole foundation of your family has been upheaved? What if now your identity, you've lived as the faithful, dutiful spouse and wife and mother, and all of a sudden all of that has been turned on its head? And what if that is going to be incredibly disorienting, distressing, sad? And what if it's going to take you time to grieve? And what if your role is not to press and stamp and stomp down these emotions, the sadness, the anger, the frustration, the sense of loss. What if your job isn't to stop that and to stamp it down, but instead, what if your very job is to embrace the fact that you will be having these emotional meltdowns? And the sooner that you accept that and embrace it and lean into it and even tell your kids, hey, kids, I'm having emotional breakdowns. Because all of this faith crisis stuff has been so hard and challenging. What if you're going to be actually modeling healthy emotional acceptance and processing for your children in this process? And I felt a little bit like it was a little risky for me to say that because it almost felt like a cop out. Like, oh, as a therapist, shouldn't I be able to fix her emotional problems, right? But my understanding of Buddhism, of secular Buddhism, of acceptance, commitment therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, is that that was probably the best move for her. Now, Margie and then Natasha, was I crazy? Was that a cop out or was that wisdom? Cop out or wisdom? Which one? Cop out or wisdom?

24:46 Natasha Helfer This isn't black and white at all, right?

24:49 John Dehlin What?

24:50 Natasha Helfer This isn't a black and white approach at all, right?

24:53 Margi Dehlin Love binaries, don't we? No, I love what you said. I do feel like acceptance is a huge piece to grief, meeting ourselves where we are. I also feel like in that time of feeling awash with emotions and there is a natural instability to it all. And one thing I've noticed in my grief times, right, So I notice I'm shorter with people I love. I notice that have a lot of kind of sadness is I tend to create space for that in my, like, literally in my routine, I would wake up and after I meditated or before I meditated, if I felt it, I would on purpose do a grief meditation or I would just go there for myself and I would listen to music that made me cry, or I would write and do sort of stream of consciousness writing. But I would provide a release for myself and I usually put a time to it. So I'd say, okay, for 10 minutes a day, I'm gonna, you know, write or, you know, do this in a way that works for you. But providing an actual space for grief and especially if it's coming up every day can be tremendously helpful. So that's one thing that has worked for me. So that it's not just an awash experience of feeling, but allowing for movement, allowing for outlet. And then it's less apt to kind of come out in those moments of relationship or, you know, really blindside you at times when you're like, wait, what's going on? Or you kind of allow for a little popping of the balloon every day and a space for it. And it was a lot easier. It's not about fixing it. It's more about. It was a lot easier for me to have the energy to move through the day after I provided myself some space to kind of go there and acknowledge where I was. So that's just something that comes to me. But yes, I do think, you know, in a sense acknowledging there is loss in life, we're all going to be doing this. And it's not just transitions, you know,

27:19 John Dehlin it's not just religious transitions.

27:20 Margi Dehlin Yeah, religious transitions. They're life transitions all the time. Like having your children leave home or illness or loss of people we love or, you know, a loss of a job. Loss of a job or moving or this is inherent to our being alive. So learning this landscape and learning how we grieve is just incredible information to have. Natasha, I'm throwing it to you.

27:45 John Dehlin Wait, before you do that, Natasha. And I'll just say, when in this grieving you're talking about happened after your father died, After Margie's dad died. Right.

27:57 Margi Dehlin And some marital.

27:59 John Dehlin Right. And some of the stuff that we had six or seven years ago and

28:03 Margi Dehlin some children, things that have happened to our children.

28:06 John Dehlin You've done that. Yeah. Okay.

28:08 Margi Dehlin With regard to Maya, who's come out about her sexual assault. So it's come up numerous times in my life. And so the good thing is once you learn how you grieve, you intentionally

28:21 John Dehlin grieve through all those things.

28:22 Margi Dehlin I intentionally grieve through all of those things. I had to set aside time. And I still do. I still will set aside, set aside time for grief, meditation for my father or for things that I, you know, I can tell they're sticking somewhere or.

28:39 John Dehlin And I just want to say when I remember, and I didn't realize you had done that for those other things, intentional grieving, but I do remember you doing it for your. For your dad. And every morning she would get up and meditate and start crying. And I'm like, why are you crying, sweetie? And she's like, I'm just grieving my dad. And I'm like, because we tend to be emotionally enmeshed as a family and sometimes a little bit codependent. I was always very uncomfortable with you being sad. And I remember thinking, stop doing this to yourself. Where every morning you're intentionally grieving and then crying and then I'm sad that you're sad. But that just goes to show you why we need therapists or coaches or psychologists. Because you were doing exactly what you said. You were letting the pressure out of the balloon each day intentionally so that the pressure wouldn't build up and break you. And it was hard for me. I had to practice self emotional regulation and comfort to be okay with you being sad. And I think that's a sign of a healthy family is a family that can allow. Allow each other to have their emotions and not feel like we have to fix it, to not make people feel like they need to stop it, you know, stop your grieving. Because it's making me uncomfortable. I think it's just all really important stuff.

30:10 Margi Dehlin Absolutely.

30:12 John Dehlin So. All right. So, Natasha, sorry about that. Can you please.

30:17 Natasha Helfer That's fine.

30:19 John Dehlin Jump in. What do you think?

30:21 Natasha Helfer I think I have a lot of thoughts and it's not any. I'm just kind of adding, I think, to the conversation. There's nothing that any of you have said that I don't completely agree with. I think first thought I have is just kind of knowing the. Yes and right. The balancing act. Like, at what point do we all understand that Some grief and some sadness is a part of life. And, and I think generally as a culture where we're kind of, the narrative is to be happy, happy, happy and productive, Productive, productive. We don't make a lot of room, I think in the United States in general as a culture for these types of grieving rituals or just spaces to be down and out. And at the same time, when does it cross the line to clinical depression, where now it's interfering really in significant ways with your day to day life and your relationships. And so that's a really hard place to know. When am I in this space that I should be in? Like you said to this woman, maybe you should be having a meltdown. Maybe there's so many things going on in your life that this is a natural response to your world turning upside down. And I think that's actually a very wise thing to think about it that way. I just got a text from my beautiful daughter this morning. Like, I think, you know, I've not been doing a good job with my anxiety. And I gave her a list of like six major things she's dealt with just in the last five days. Right? I mean, like, there's been significant car issues, test at school, relational thing, a work issue. I mean, there was like five significant things that happened in her life just this last week. And she's feeling badly about herself that, you know, she's having an anxious response. And I'm like, I think the anxious response is probably warranted, right? So it's telling you that there's some things to be anxious about. But at what point does that then turn into something that I really probably need to look at a little bit more in depth? Like it's taking too much space out of my life. You know, it's, it's really, it's got me in bed for weeks on end or I'm in a funk. And this is kind of where I think modern, you know, kind of Eastern or Western medicine and Eastern, you know, secular Buddhism and all that kind of come together in ways that can feel like tensions or maybe they come together in ways that can really be useful of knowing when to have accepting stances, when to get professional clinical help. So that's one thought I had. The other thought I had is, you know, I really, as you talk about your practice, Margie, that you developed of intentional grieving, it just reminds me of first of all how that's a skill and that's something that you've been intentional about that usually doesn't. I think for some People, maybe it comes more naturally. I think that you're kind of a contemplative soul in general, Margie. So you're just kind of this. You have a beautiful kind of space to you that just kind of comes naturally. But I also know it doesn't come naturally to the point that, voila, you're just doing it. You've taken time and energy and study to lean into that part of you that maybe has some natural aspects. I have zero natural aspect towards leaning towards that. Right. Like I know it intellectually. I've done the study part with you, but I have zero natural inclination towards sitting with my grief. I'm more of a distractor. I will deal with things by distracting myself.

33:55 John Dehlin Me, too.

33:56 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

33:57 John Dehlin Poking me, saying, you, too?

33:59 Natasha Helfer Yeah, you do. And both of those are legitimate. I mean, there are times when distracting yourself can be very useful, you know, so if you're down and out grabbing some friends and going to see a funny movie or, you know, eating a good meal with somebody you love or, you know, playing a video game for half an hour or those are ways we can distract ourselves away from discomfort and pain and anxiety. And sometimes, you know, you just move along from there. On the other hand, distractions can become kind of like unhealthy coping mechanisms, and so they can become things that you lean on too much and never really delve into the pain. So what Margay is describing that we know a lot from mental health theories, is that when you, you know, and I always heard about it, talked about more like a wave in the ocean. You know, if you've ever swam in the ocean and you're fighting the waves, you're probably going to lose. You're probably going to lose, and it's probably. It's really going to suck you in. Whereas if you surrender to the wave and let the ocean move you under the wave, which is the scariest thing to do when you feel like, you know, you could lose your life to that wave, it usually will pop you up, you know, on the other side of that wave in ways that you can then swim and survive that. So leaning into that pain and sitting with it, I think is a very wise thing. And so what you're saying is times. I love the times. 10, 20 minutes, I'm going to do this, put a timer on it, then create a little ritual to snap yourself out of it. So I'm going to be in this and then go to the bathroom and splash water in my face, or I'm going to light a candle and blow it out or something that kind of ends that time frame. And then I have this thought that this is spiritual practice to too. It's not just mental health practice. And there's great wisdom in spiritual practice that helps our mental health. And this is where I get a little sad about just where we come from. Because, you know, the Mormon girl in me did not do spiritual practice because I felt like it was going to be mentally healthy for me. I did spiritual practice like reading my scriptures and praying in the mornings as this way to prove myself worthy and to somehow gain that benefits from this God that would give me little chips of, you know, like, reward systems and really missing the whole point that if I really want to reframe that all together now, and I don't even, you know, you don't need a literal belief in God. But a lot of these spiritual practices of taking time to read or contemplate or journal or pray or to sit our mindful techniques gone horribly awry in our perfectionistic culture that we often grow up on, that becomes a checklist instead of a moment to recalibrate.

37:04 Margi Dehlin I love that. I love that balance too. And I will, I would say too, amidst those times when you are feeling like you're in the wave. And for those times when I honestly, I did feel like I needed a grief practice of sorts, another key is to connect with pleasure. So I, during those times would comfort and really consciously soothe as well, so that I wasn't just, you know, and those two things worked pretty well for me. Creating space and then also providing some comfort and soothing for myself. I had more massages, for example. I had like a massage every month during that time that I budgeted for or. And that pairing. But it can be really, you know, basic, I think pleasure too, but just kind of allowing yourself to. To feel, you know, comforted amidst that time.

38:04 Natasha Helfer I love that you bring up the word pleasure just because it's one of my favorite words. But I think a lot of times when we're going through the grief cycle, especially those beginning stages of, you know, pain and depression and anger, and I think there's guilt if there is pleasure. You know, like, I shouldn't have any pleasure in my life at this point. I shouldn't. If somebody's died or if you're going through a really hard transition, like a faith transition, I shouldn't. I shouldn't be enjoying parts of my life. And there's almost guilt to having pleasure. So I think that's a really important thing to give ourselves permission to experience pleasure amidst grief.

38:46 John Dehlin Yeah, Love it. We have a lot of great comments coming in from our listeners, Kara. Kara is a mental health professional in St. George. Glad you're joining us, Kara. Kara writes, I always tell my clients with grief, the more we resist the emotion, the more it will persist. End quote. You know, that reminds me of Eckhart Tolle, you know, who always wrote, that which you fight, you strengthen. That which you resist persists. And I love both those quotes. And I think when it comes to emotions and emotion regulation, I think that's totally true. So, Kara, we're really glad you're with us. Feel free to post your contact information. Kara, for people in St. George who may want to get ahold of you. Rochelle writes, love this conversation. It's so easy just to just push away all the sadness. Accepting these emotions as part of the process has been huge for me. Kelly and Emily are both asking us to do a workshop in Chicago. We will do that. And Natasha lives semi close to Chicago and I'd fly out, too. The biggest problem we have is just finding enough people who are willing to attend to, you know, to pay for the expense of the event. So Kelly and Emily or anyone, if anyone wants to bring Natasha or me or both to your city, you just need to reach out to us and volunteer to help us organize and plan it. And we would love to do that. So thanks for Kelly and Emily expressing that concern. Kathy writes, worth listening to hear your process. I think she's talking about Margie's process. She writes, I will enjoy providing myself space, too. Teresa is saying we need to do meditation as a topic on this podcast. I think that's a great idea. So we'll do that. Kelly writes, I have recently left the church and I know these meltdowns too well. I struggle with removing my name from church records, and that should be its own episode, too. Just the process of deciding whether or not to resign from the church. There are different people who take different approaches there, and that would be a great topic. But Kelly, thanks for acknowledging the meltdowns. Beverly writes, I've had meltdowns the last few days, even though I thought I had gotten through all of that. And that's something that we try to cover last time, that grieving comes in waves. And you know, the wave will come and it'll hit you and then it'll be calm and you'll think you're kind of past it and then another wave can come again and hit you. So thanks for helping to illustrate that, Beverly. Emily writes, my husband left a year before I Did I grieve the loss of an eternal marriage after my own faith crisis? I still grieve for it sometimes. Emily's still grieving the loss of the eternal marriage, and that is real.

41:49 Natasha Helfer And I love that even though, like, intellectually she's no longer there, she's really talking about that emotional process. It's still an emotional thing. I had the same experience with a family member who resigned. Like, I'm super supportive of people who resign. And I still had like a mini meltdown when this family member resigned. And that was so. It was so interesting to me intellectually to notice what that was all about for me, you know, that on an intellectual process, I was like, of course that's their choice, and I totally honor that. And that's what's healthy for them. And yet I was having this grieving reaction to it that was not tied to my intellect.

42:29 Margi Dehlin Yes.

42:30 Natasha Helfer So, and Emily Holyoake says my dad passed last month and my immune system was attacked. So strep throat, stomach bug and bronchitis. But I was able to get my self care in. I got my hair done even when not feeling like it. I love that. That's a pleasure thing. And I think this really does. We don't talk about this often enough that there are physics. These aren't just mental health ramifications. There are physical health ramifications. All the research in the last 15 to 20 years has been very proactive about showing the intersection between mental and physical health.

43:04 John Dehlin And so often the physical health is manifested in things like we call them autoimmune diseases, you know, Epstein Barr, chronic fatigue. That's often, you know, some of the ways that I, that I hear and see some of these things manifesting. Not, not to, not to act like I'm a medical professional. Professional, obviously. But anyway, it's important stuff. So just realize everybody, that this has physical ramifications, not just emotional ones. All right, well, we have a lot of comments and questions that have been sent into us through Facebook. Some of the stuff we will have covered and some of the stuff we won't have covered. And we're going to still take comments and questions from you, our listeners. Emily writes my post, Mormonism Self Care is Sunday brunch and Meditation. I love it.

44:06 Natasha Helfer Beautiful, solid, great, great stuff.

44:11 John Dehlin All right, so let's get to some of the questions and tips and comments, and we'll just address them one by one. The first is from Kathy. And this touches on something we've already touched on. How does a truth crisis. How does truth crisis grief Compare to grief of losing a loved one.

44:30 Margi Dehlin We all. I feel like we all could speak to that.

44:34 John Dehlin Why don't you start?

44:36 Margi Dehlin Why don't I start?

44:38 John Dehlin Hmm.

44:40 Margi Dehlin So similar in that I think there are clearly similarities and differences. Right. So I would love to make this a conversation with all of us. What are like the similarities that you all have seen? The truth crisis versus losing the loss of a loved one.

45:03 Natasha Helfer Well, and I think this is a tricky question, right, Because. And I think this is where we get. I like to stay away from trauma Competition. That's a new term I'm coming up with, I guess.

45:13 John Dehlin I love it. Yeah, we talked about that last week. Yeah.

45:17 Natasha Helfer It's kind of like this idea that when I work a lot with sexual assault survivors, for example, they'll even do this to themselves. It's like, well, this didn't happen, so I can't be having as bad of a response as somebody who's been through this other type of thing. Right. So loss is tricky because it can affect everybody differently. For some people, they may have a stronger response, stronger grief cycle response to a faith transition than they would a loved one. And even losing loved ones can be very different. You know, it can be very different to lose, for example, a young child, you know, versus losing an elderly grandparent, you know, or. So loss is complex, and it shows up in different ways for different people. But I think what ties it all together, the reason why there are similarities, is that when there's something that's significant in your life that is lost, that will no longer return to being the same, when you have to create this new normal per se, that's where we see these intersections of the grief cycle turn up. And a faith transition is one of those things that, you know, kind of like we've. We've shown a lot, we've used the symbolism of the Garden of Eden a lot, you know, like the loss of innocence, the loss of framing things in a certain way once you reframe them, you can't really go back to not knowing something the way you know it now. You know, this is part of growing up. Lots of metaphors for, you know, being children, to growing up to adults. Things that you kind of saw a certain way you now see differently, and you can't go back to seeing it the same way. So there's an identity loss, right? There's belief loss, there's ritual loss. You know, there's all kinds of things that. Community loss sometimes. Right. Or certain types of. You may still have it in a relationship with your extended Family or your spouse. But it's the loss of a certain type of relationship with those people that now you have to recreate, do differently. So it's. It's a lot to lose and to naturally have a grief cycle around, around. At the same time, we don't want to say, oh, it's just as bad as losing somebody that's died or not as bad or not as bad. Like, that's really up to people to decide how bad those things are in their own lives, depending on the context.

47:41 Margi Dehlin Such an important point.

47:42 John Dehlin Love it.

47:43 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

47:45 John Dehlin You want to add anything?

47:50 Margi Dehlin I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts come up for me with regard to, you know, the. What I will say is where you've loved something deeply, normally you. The sense of loss is something you feel deeply. And so that is something that I find is. Can be similar, is that, you know, and I do feel like, yeah, there are a lot of things that come up for me, honestly. What's coming up for you?

48:27 John Dehlin Nothing profound. Other than that there are. Structurally, I think grieving is grieving no matter what. And so a lot of these points, you know, there's a listener who asked, does one move through the grief cycle sort of sequentially, or is it up and down through the levels? And something that I know for sure is, in my opinion, it doesn't matter what the grieving is, whether it's being fired from a job, a death, a faith crisis. Is that the, you know, things? We've already said that the stages of grief are not linear, they're not sequential. You can have them simultaneously. You can experience, you know, depression and shock or, you know, bargaining at the same time. Any of those steps you can experience simultaneously, independently, out of sequence, and that you never are through it. They come back and hit you at different times in different ways. Unexpectedly, you think you're past the anger, and then all of a sudden, a year later, you'll be angry. You think you're out of the depression, and then the depression can come back in a wave and just that it's not fun. But also, again, universally, it's by leaning into the. It's by accepting wherever you are in the faces that hit you and leaning into them, that you process what you're experiencing, that you learn from it and that you heal and move to a better place.

50:03 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I love that. One thing that I would like to point out is Natasha and John and myself, I believe, have done an episode on the loss of a loved one. We did that right after my father passed. It's part of the Mormon Transitions Podcast. And so if that is something that you're experiencing, that may be helpful for you to go ahead and go back and listen to that podcast in particular about the lot, you know, when you lose someone that you love.

50:35 John Dehlin And actually you don't have to go to Mormon Transitions Podcast because Cody, our producer, just added those as episodes 24 and 25 on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. So he's at Just so listeners know, we've been adding some of those old Mormon Transitions episodes back into the Mormon Faith Crisis feed so that everything's integrated. So we've got communicating with children during a faith transition. We've got the essential role of grief in a Mormon Faith crisis, and we'll be adding other ones about death and others into the feed as we go.

51:12 Natasha Helfer One thing that I want to just add to that goes along with this comment that I believe it's Kathy talked about. She says, is it part of the grief cycle to be going along fine acceptance and then get a tsunami of emotions even years later? Like I go months without thinking of my deceased mother and then bam. It seems out of nowhere I'm in tears wanting to talk to her. How does this correlate to being inactive, not thinking about church and then going to a meeting and the cycle seems to start up all over again. Are there different levels of acceptance? And I do think we talked about this a little bit last week where you know you're probably going to revisit acceptance several times. And like we said, this is more of a cyclical process. Two things that I just want to mention that I think we just need to be aware of as we go forward in life is that our bodies have what we call body memories. Like I lived in Spain until I was 7 or 8 years old. I don't remember a lot of it, but I remember when I went so I visited Argentina when I was 17 and all of a sudden I remember going down the street and there was a smell that just like bam. Like it just hit me. Like all these little tiny memories of something that I could see myself as a 7 year old child in Spain, right? So I'm guessing there was some European dish that I had eaten or smelled a lot in Spain. Then I was revisiting through olfactory memory in Argentina, you know, like 10, 15 years later. And it really kind of created this physiological and mental kind of response in me that affected memory. So if you haven't gone to church for 10 years, let's say, and all of a sudden you go for, I don't know, a baby blessing and all of a sudden you hear a hymn or you hear a prayer said in a certain way or certain language is used. Absolutely. You may have kind of a full blown response to some type of body memory that you remember, you know, from having been exposed to that type of environment. So just triggers, you know, and I'm not saying triggers are necessarily bad. Like to me, the experience in Argentina, it wasn't a bad experience. It was very interesting experience. I was like, whoa, you know, I got access to a lot of things I had kind of forgotten. The other thing I would say is developmental. Developmental stages are also times that that may happen. So if you leave the church or have a faith transition, let's say in your early 30s and now all of a sudden you're in your 60s, but your children are in their early 30s. Right. So you're kind of revisiting that developmental phase through your children. You may have some interesting, you know, reactions to that or, or just developmental phases that you're going through yourself or stages like weddings and rituals and funerals. You may find yourself in those moments being more vulnerable to having some of these revisiting of grief cycles. And to know that that's very normal, like that's, that's a normal thing of life to revisit things that we've been through.

54:29 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

54:30 John Dehlin Love it. Jennifer writes Huge loss of certainty, loss of structure, loss of identity, loss of trust in church and trust from family and friends. And sometimes you even lose trust in yourself and your own ability to determine what's true or what's right. Those are all really important losses. Losses, Jennifer. So thank you for sharing. Kara writes, this may have already. You want to read, Kara.

55:00 Margi Dehlin This may have already been mentioned, but I think a commonality of grief amongst various losses is that it's lifelong. I love the amount I've learned from the state. I love the amount I've learned from the stages of grief. But it makes it seem so linear. It's more fluid. And while we may accept loss at one point, the next week we may be in anger again. But if we work through the emotions, they become less painful with time.

55:26 John Dehlin That's so good. And Kara, I listened to a TED talk about grief about a woman who had lost her husband and I mentioned this last week. There was this expectation when she going to get over her dead husband. And the point that she made was, you don't ever get over it. You bring it with you, you bring your losses with you. And that's why you never really can leave Mormonism behind. As panicky as that may make people feel as frustrated or as outraged as that may make people feel, for most of us that were Mormons, our whole lives or for a long, For a large portion of our lives, we're never really going to get rid of the Mormon, especially if we have family and friends still in it, or especially if we're surrounded by it. And so the goal isn't to extricate all Mormon from our identity, from our thoughts, from our lives. Most people who try to do that, they're just running away from themselves. And it can even become a form of self loathing because so much of who we are can be Mormon. And so if you hate all things Mormon, in some ways, you're hating yourself. So instead, the idea is to make peace with it and bring it with you along with the new life that you build. It's not to shed it and get rid of it. And so thank you, Kara, for sharing that. Tamara writes, losing my family to death and going through a faith crisis happened simultaneously. And our heart goes out to you, Tamara, because that is what we call a double whammy. Right?

57:01 Margi Dehlin Compounded grief.

57:03 John Dehlin And she says that I ended up feeling like I lost so much of my past and support.

57:07 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

57:08 John Dehlin And honestly, there are other people that don't lose their family to death, but they lose their family as a support system because mom and dad and siblings were super loving and supportive when everyone was on the same page with regards to belief. But as soon as you lose your faith, there are some or many orthodox Mormons that will not. There are not in a place where they're able to be that support, that emotional support, or even that temporal support that you relied upon. And so you end up losing family even though they don't die, which is extra tragic. So, Tamara, our heart goes out to you. Lindsay writes, after I got pregnant. Oh, wait, no, that's. That was a silly comment. We're getting a few trolls today, so we're having to filter through some, some lame comments, but we are. We will proceed on

58:14 Natasha Helfer unfettered.

58:15 John Dehlin Unfettered, unvanquished, unwavering. Okay, Andrew, you want to read Andrew's comment, Natasha?

58:23 Natasha Helfer Yes. He says the loss of opportunity, grieving, the opportunity to develop my own ethos and theology therapy has given me that lost opportunity. So healing, maybe this is a podcast we could do all on its own as well, is what I call the what if syndrome. Although maybe that's shamey for me to call it that, but I think that this, the regret. Part of a transition is a huge, huge aspect of this. I know we've touched on it, but maybe it needs its own.

58:54 Margi Dehlin Mm, space.

58:56 Natasha Helfer Like, what do we do with all of that? What if. What if I hadn't bought into this system or been born in this system or, you know, how could things have turned out? And that can be. That's a big part of the grieving process, and it leads to anger oftentimes. And although I think it's an important space to think about, it's also one we have very little control over. So how much time do we want to spend? You know, that's a balancing act again, as well.

Episode 27

0:20 John Dehlin Valerie asks, can you get stuck in a particular grief cycle stage? And I think stereotypically the stage that can be sticky that many associate with post Mormons and stickiness is the stage of anger. What do you think, Margie? Can you get stuck in a. In a stage? And if so, how do you get out of it? And what do you think? What do you think the causes are of getting stuck in a stage? If you could attribute it to a specific set of behaviors that might contribute to stuckness?

0:53 Margi Dehlin Sure. Okay. Well, some thoughts that come to mind would be, yes, I absolutely do feel like you can get stuck or feel stagnant, kind of stagnate in a stage. Some things that come to mind for me around that can be that you have a lot that you're trying to process at once that is particular, can be particularly distressing or. And you may need some support in order to kind of make your way through all that's going on. And that reminds me a little bit of compounded loss. There's a nature to loss sometimes where, you know, it kind of trickles down and it's like a nerve where it starts, you know, and it starts one place. But what you end up having is all these reminders of past losses. And so that is something that happens in process. And you may need extra support in the way of kind of talking to a therapist or someone who's really trained to kind of help you work through that. So, yes, I do feel like you can get, you know, kind of stuck in a particular stage. And that's a good sign to kind of seek support, have a little extra care for yourself in that. Did I miss anything else?

2:19 John Dehlin Natasha, what do you think about getting stuck?

2:22 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I have some mixed feelings about it too, because none of us are probably going to complain about being stuck in the acceptance phase, right? So there's certain things it's kind of like.

2:36 John Dehlin And some people want to get stuck in the, in the, in the testing. Not the testing phase, but the experimentation phase. Like, oh, exploration, exploration phase. Some people don't want to ever stop exploring again. And so for them, exploring can be a lifelong endeavor. Instead of feeling like you've got everything figured out now, life is just a lifelong journey with no ground but. But limitless possibilities. Anyway, keep going. Natasha. I'm sorry.

3:06 Natasha Helfer No, I think that's. That's an interesting take too. I think how we use language is oftentimes it's interesting. I mean, I see this a lot in the sex field, right. It's like we use problematic language for things that tend to be more taboo or again, uncomfortable. Instead of, like, nobody says that they're addicted to vanilla missionary position sex, even though that's what most people do all the time. Right. But nobody's saying that they're addicted to that. So. So it's just kind of interesting to see our language. I think I am a little hesitant because like you've said, Margie, most people think about that in the anger or depression phases. I think the whole idea of the grief cycle is that it's normalizing, that you're going to go through these phases to begin with. And so the amount of time. And so most of us are going to be uncomfortable with the anger or depression phases, even if they last a week or three weeks or a year. And it's also not fair to say that you're in full anger mode for an entire year. You know, I mean, most people, they may have an anger kind of energy that's brewing, but, you know, they're still laughing and telling jokes. I mean, you know, we're not like, again, super binary creatures. We're more complex than that. And at the same time, I will say, if you feel like you're in a negative relationship with one of these stages, maybe get a second opinion, have somebody you can talk to about it. What. What is making you feel or what. A lot of times it's not you. It's your spouse or your adult child or somebody who will be like, you know, geez, you know, you've been difficult lately. Right. Or you've been hard to live with. So you're getting kind of clues from other people around you that you might be quote, unquote stuck or they're telling you that you seem stuck or angry all the time.

4:57 Margi Dehlin Right.

4:57 John Dehlin And that can just be their impatience or their discomfort or unhealthy, like I said, emotional codependency.

5:04 Natasha Helfer Right, Right. So is that, Is that accurate or, you know, is there something to that message or is it their own things that they need to work through because they're not used to there being anything awry in this particular way, you know, in your life together. So it's. It's complicated. I guess I would say the simple answer is yes, but be careful to not, you know, we're so quick to pathologize each other or ourselves when maybe these are just normal processes, but we do have to be intentional about them. I mean, I often use the metaphor of going to the gym. I'm not gonna lose weight or get stronger by sitting around and thinking about it. I'm Gonna have to go and do something about it and exercise and eat a certain way if I want results to be different than the results I get of sitting around on my couch.

5:55 Margi Dehlin Yep.

5:55 John Dehlin Love it. Amy. Hey, Amy, we love you. Amy says, I heard it takes on average three to seven years after a faith crisis to make a new normal. I've also heard like for every 10 years you were in the church, it takes at least a year to kind of grieve and rebuild. I'm sure we would all agree these are estimates and just, you know, folk wisdom. But what do you guys think about a multi year process? I'd say I'm on year 19.

6:30 Margi Dehlin I think we're always in process.

6:32 Natasha Helfer We're always in process.

6:34 Margi Dehlin I think that happens until we're not here anymore.

6:41 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I would agree with that. I think it's, I think what those types of timelines talk about is the normalcy of. Yes, this is, you know, it's even when I do marriage therapy, for example, and people are coming in with a problem that they've been dealing with for 25 years. You know, I kind of tell them, you know, I can't put the magic wand or the fortune, you know, kind of bulb and say, oh, if you do this, you'll for sure be done with your marital work by, you know, April 2nd, two years from now. But I can say it's going to be longer than three months to turn around a 25 year old process. Right. Or to shift something that you've been engaging in for a long period of time. So, yes, these are the ways we grew up. For many of us, these are the things that have really played a role in how we're wired and how we problem solve and how we think about the world. And so when you're shifting all of that, yes, it's going to be a multi year process like you're saying, Margie, maybe never ending in the sense that there's always opportunities for it to come up in some way or another. Doesn't mean that you're in full blown crisis mode the rest of your life. It just means there'll be opportunities to revisit it.

7:55 John Dehlin Margie wants to read a comment from our wonderful friend Erin.

7:59 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Erin writes, there also seems to be a panicky aspect to grief. Every so often I get flashes of panic with the unknown. Feeling like I used to have answers for everything and now I don't. My new normal is not knowing and feeling at peace with it. I really love that groundlessness.

8:20 John Dehlin What do you mean by groundlessness?

8:21 Margi Dehlin Shout out to Noah Rochetta. Yeah, just this idea of, you know, making peace with this sense of mystery that we all kind of live with and learning to kind of navigate good coping amidst that, I think. So I just relate to it. I relate to that comment.

8:47 John Dehlin Yeah. Just to let people know what we're talking about. Noah Rashida has a podcast called Secular Buddhism Podcast. You can find it. I think it's secularbuddhism.com but the episode is 93, stepping into groundlessness. And I know that just recently I was really needing to feel better about some things I was struggling with. And so as part of what I do at nights when I'm really having a hard time, I turn on Secular Buddhism podcasts when I can't sleep. And I listen to it. And he's got this whole episode about how. And it comes straight from Buddhism. But control is an illusion. When we. We thought as orthodox Mormons that we had everything under control, that everything was stable, that everything was solid, that everything was sure, that everything was reliable. And it may feel that way, but it's a myth. It's an illusion. People die randomly. Life has suffering. People get sick. Kids that you raise, totally orthodox, can leave the church or even, you know, really struggle. There is no way to control away, you know, the pain and suffering of life. Now, of course, you can add extra pain and suffering to the guaranteed pain that life is going to provide. So it's not that we're saying yeah or yeah, decisions matter, but absolutely, the more you try and control life to prevent that, you'll experience any pain. It's called the happiness trap. The more you're likely guaranteeing you extra pain and suffering on top of whatever pain life is going to just offer. And so even though Mormons or orthodox Mormons sometimes have this false sense of security that everything's great and that you're protected, there's no such thing as absolute protection, and there's no such thing as absolute certainty. And so what Noah encourages us to do in his Secular Buddhism podcast is to learn to get comfortable with discomfort, to get comfortable with uncertainty, to get comfortable with groundlessness, as he calls it. And that pays really, really important dividends later on. And so I am going to. I am going to provide a link to that episode in the comments of this section. And I just want to tell you, you cannot listen to this Episode enough, episode 93 of Secular Buddhism Podcast. It is so incredibly powerful. So go support Noah Rashetta in his podcast.

11:36 Margi Dehlin And thank you, Aaron, for your.

11:40 John Dehlin Yeah, Natasha, anything you want to add

11:42 Natasha Helfer to that No, I thought that was great. I love Noah's work.

11:46 John Dehlin Okay. Kara again writes, I think anger is such. Do you want to read Kara's comment,

11:50 Natasha Helfer Natasha, on the Facebook Live?

11:53 John Dehlin Yeah. It starts out, I think anger, it's a little bit up.

11:59 Natasha Helfer I think anger is such an easy stage to get stuck in because it often is a secondary emotion. Below anger oftentimes is sadness, fear, et cetera. Emotions that often are more painful to deal with. And anger, such an easy emotion to go to. Not saying that anger is bad, but easy to be stuck in. Yeah, And I agree with that. We talked about that last week too, with this idea of there's usually something underlying the anger. And so when we. And I oftentimes invite people to kind of have. If you can. Anger is so hard to deal with because it's part of that flight, flight, freeze. Flight fight, freeze. Response. Sorry. And so. And that happens in nanoseconds. Right. There's this book, it's called the Reptile Brain. It's kind of funny because we turn into very quickly creatures, that lower iq, lower ability to kind of reason in the moments when we kind of most need it, which is so interesting. We haven't evolved to our main danger being logical thought processes. We're still running away from saber tooth tigers and our ways of dealing with this. So most of us are needing our intellect to deal with our current status of being upset, and yet our body is still getting us to climb a tree. Right. So climbing trees isn't that useful today. At least not in most of our lives.

13:27 Margi Dehlin But that.

13:28 Natasha Helfer And so I usually invite people that if you can't, in those moments when you feel anger, can you take a second, if you at all can, to just notice where that's showing up in your body? And I've actually gotten pretty good at this over the years, so I now know that it shows up in my jaw and it shows up kind of in my upper neck, gets very tight, and it shows up in what my husband calls my ragey eyes. So my eyes get all squinty, you know. Of course I was saying, what do you mean, my ragey eyes? I don't have ragey eyes. Then I was like, oh, I guess I do. It's taken me some years to just tune into what my physiology does when it's angry. And when you get better at that, then the next step is, oh, yeah, that's what my body's clueing me into. Then you can be more adept into asking those secondary questions, what's this really about? What's under this anger, for me, tuning in to, you know, the sadness, that's usually easier to empathize with. And that's the problem with a lot of couple communication or even, like friendships or, you know, parent, child, is that we both get caught in this anger, you know, diatribe where we're both defensive posture instead of like going, you know, and so if you're the one in that. In that position where you're like, whoa, what, what's mom? Or what's my husband? Or what's my wife? Where's this coming from? If in that moment you can remember to good, like, what's this about? Or what's going on with you? You know, just asking an empathic, curious question instead of engaging in that defensive posture, sometimes it can help us get to those, you know, those primary emotions that Kara is talking about.

15:18 Margi Dehlin Yes. Yeah.

15:19 Natasha Helfer Which is where a lot more of the work is to be done.

15:22 John Dehlin We can't remind people of that enough. We did cover it last week. But if you can just. Every time things get heated with a spouse or a child or a loved one, if you can just develop the habit of noticing that there's anger and then immediately making that move to say, I'm getting angry or you're getting angry, let's move to the primary emotion. How do you feel? Are you sad? Are you hurt? Are you scared? I feel sad. I feel hurt. I feel scared. And if you can move that conversation to each of you expressing what you're sad about, what you're scared about, immediately the conversation moves from combative, where you're hurting each other to emotionally connecting, where you're drawing closer to each other as you each express and articulate in a caring, loving, sensitive way what you're afraid of, what you're sad about, what you're grieving, and what you're mourning. So another huge thanks to Kara for,

16:29 Margi Dehlin I might add, with that too. Don't hesitate to take some space too. You know, sometimes in anger, it can take a little. You may need some discharge time to be able to come back to vulnerability. And so don't hesitate to take a little bit of a break.

16:50 John Dehlin Lindy, our dear friend Lindy. Why don't you read Lindy's comment?

16:55 Margi Dehlin I feel like no matter how far I am into the acceptance phase because of life, it's easy to slide back to anger or depression. Announcements in the church, like the reversal of the 2015 policy or things family members say of friends who leave you out, etc.

17:13 John Dehlin So how easy it is to get triggered or slide back into the phases. What do you think about that, Natasha?

17:20 Natasha Helfer Yeah, life doesn't stop, right, because we've gone through these things and even if we try to set up some boundaries, you're not going to be able to control what's on the news or what's happening in the church office building. Right. Or what's happening maybe in some extended family circles or so those are real things that continue to trigger and I think one of the reasons why, you know, if anybody who's more on the believing spectrum is listening. One of the things that bothers transitioners the most is this idea that, oh, these, you know, angry post Mormons, they just can't leave Mormonism alone, right? That's, that's something that a lot of times more believing people will say or that's one of the ways that believing people will explain this kind of sadness or angst that they feel from transitioning Mormons or post Mormons is a lot of this is that people feel like, well, it's not that I can't leave Mormonism alone, it's that there's things happening within Mormonism that still affect me whether I associate or go to church or not. And those things still cause these emotional responses in me. And so yes, I respond, I'm not a robot, right. I respond to these things that the church or the community may not find triggering in of its, you know, within, if you're within the tribe, but that are very upsetting if you're out or nuanced or transitioning. So that's, that's a really interesting kind of dynamic that when we're all still in relationship with one another, we will have many opportunities to feel these kinds of feels and learn from them and hopefully, you know, find ways to be more productive or effective, I guess, in dealing with these things.

19:09 John Dehlin Yeah, I love it. Aaron writes, for me, the endless possibilities of not knowing this is going back to the groundlessness conversation. The endless possibilities of not knowing can bring excitement and fear at the same time. That is totally true. That's that for me that, that ties into this theme of the gift of the Mormon faith crisis is it can feel scary to not know everything and to not have and to lose the certainty and the sense of superiority or whatever may have come with your, your feelings of Mormon orthodoxy. But what you can trade for that again is the excitement of endless possibilities in life if you're willing to go on a journey and go on an adventure. And Andrew adds, Ashley and I just spent a week in Vegas indulging some of those what ifs? It was perhaps more bonding than our wedding day. So Andrew is talking about how he and Ashley are finding that it's. It's deepening and strengthening their marriage to have this ability to explore new possibilities, new ideas, new activities, new behaviors, whatever it is, as a way to strengthen and grow and enjoy new things together. And that's just. I think that can be a positive side effect of, you know, of going through a faith transition. And then Andrew adds, my love for her is a direct result of giving up Mormonism. Go figure. So, and again, I had breakfast this morning with a man who he and his wife, after 35 years, got divorced. It was super sad and tragic because they were in a mixed faith marriage, and it was just a bridge too far for their relationship. But he was sharing with me how he's found a new partner to date and just how marvelous and lovely that experience has been for him to find someone who he feels is a lot more compatible with him. And again, that can be one of the joyful outgrowths of a faith transition that people experience.

21:29 Natasha Helfer I always feel like I'm the one that brings up Mormon stuff, and maybe I shouldn't do that as much. But one of the things that I really love about. I've always loved about Elise, symbolically, is this idea that we have, even in just Mormon doctrine and understanding and how we talk about it, that joy and pain are inextricably interwoven, you know, that we can't experience joy without experiencing pain. And even that goes back to the whole Garden of Eden story, you know, about. Like, to know means you're gonna have to experience stuff, you know, and so I think that there's something really beautiful in that sense, symbology, that, again, I feel like we culturally don't practice very well, but that is there in our Mormon roots that we can. Then maybe that's one of the things we take with us. You know, Carolyn Pearson. I love Carolyn Pearson's pioneer poem where she talks about, you know, sometimes you have to, like, stop the wagon, reload it, pack it only with the precious things and move on. Right? And so that's a lot of how I have felt throughout my Mormon transition is what do I want to still keep? Even if it's symbolic in nature or beautiful for me in my own framings, it doesn't have to be literal. And I love that some of the ideas that I grew up learning about joy and pain being interwoven. And sometimes I think, you know, especially with this topic of divorce and marriage, there's so many people that make mixed faith marriages work in beautiful, complex ways. There are people who divorce. I really don't like it when we see one of those as success or failure. You know, we oftentimes have the narrative that divorce is a failure. We even talk about failed marriages in our, you know, in our narrative in our country. So I think that it's so much more complex than that. There's beauty and pain either way. You stay married, you're gonna have pain, and you're gonna have joy. You get a divorce, you're gonna have pain, and you're gonna have joy. Your kids are going to have pain and joy either way. And so making decisions not based on trying to avoid pain, but making decisions on how, you know, what's in our inability to know everything, which we don't. How do we assess risk and benefit the best we can and move forward in those spaces.

23:54 Margi Dehlin I love that. I love that insight. And I also love this idea of, you know, in the acceptance that pain is part of the experience and intrinsically woven. Interwoven with joy is this idea that we gain a sense of, like, assuredness, that we can navigate pain, that we. That fear starts to lessen in its ability to kind of control us or we can. Elizabeth Gilbert always speaks about it like, you know, fear has a place. It has a seat in my minivan, but it never, ever touches the wheel, meaning it will never, you know, impact what I decide or to go. And I really love that idea, and it's been really helpful for me, I think. And that's part of what I loved about the groundlessness episode is this idea that, you know, we can get more comfortable in learning to navigate through these different terrains of life that, you know, in many ways, we're really young, we're very inexperienced at doing, but we can gain confidence. And there's tremendous freedom, I think, in feeling like, you know, you're less afraid if you. If you have to go there, it's like, well, I've been there before. It's not my favorite place to go, but I can do it.

25:21 Natasha Helfer That reminds me, there was an NPR article that somebody just. I think it was Amy Heffernan just put on Facebook that talked about dealing with anxiety with kids and how oftentimes we want to help them with their anxiety by, like, taking care of them. Like, you know, if they're scared at night, it's like, well, climb into bed with me, honey. You know, whatever. And not that you can't ever do that, but at the same time, they were talking about how it's really helping parents reinforce confidence in their children. That's going to be the most helpful. So it's like, you got this, you can do this. And even if it's in like 5 minute increments for a while or 10 minute increments with a small child. And so what you were talking about kind of reminded me of that. Even with ourselves, it's like we got this at some level. And somebody mentioned Brene Brown's embraces suck. It's like we can embrace the what?

26:14 Margi Dehlin Embrace the suck.

26:14 Natasha Helfer Embrace the suck.

26:15 John Dehlin Meaning what? Suck.

26:16 Natasha Helfer What Shelly Nazer says.

26:18 John Dehlin Yes.

26:18 Natasha Helfer Like Brene Brown says, embrace the suck. Like life sucks, sucks, or this thing sucks. And so. Yeah, and so she. And so it's like, I think there's that whole idea of embracing pain and embracing discomfort, embracing ambiguity, all part of this grief cycle we've been talking about. And along with that, opens up confidence that we can do it, we can survive discomfort, we can survive anxiety, we can survive grief.

26:57 John Dehlin Love it. All right, so here's a really good question that we've touched on in different ways, but let's hit it just really directly. How do we support others or ourselves going through a grief cycle? So, Marg, you've talked about pleasure, is that right?

27:17 Margi Dehlin Pleasure, comfort, talking about comfort and acceptance.

27:22 John Dehlin What do you think, Natasha? What are some ways we can support others or ourselves? Let's just say others we notice someone's going through a grieving process and, you know, believers grieve too. So as some of us celebrate, you know, our departure from the church, in some instances, we still have to acknowledge that our parents or our siblings or extended family or even our spouse may be grieving. So what can we do to support someone who's grieving?

27:56 Natasha Helfer Well, let me start with thinking about it individually first and then maybe we can go to support others. You know, this is where I just kind of go back to my classic training of biopsychosocial. If, you know, it's like always remembering those three biopsychosocial. So what's going on in my body, what's going on in my mind and what's going on in my community, right? And where in those things are there places to improve or are there opportunities to fill holes like you like to say, John? So biology is like, how am I taking care of my body, right? Are there medicines I'm on or need to be on or my diet, my exercise, my sleep? All of these things that kind of just affect how I manage my body. And some of those can be clinical things, and some of those can be more holistic things that we do for ourselves. Psycho is, of course, my mental health. So reframing, making sure I have cognitive ways of looking at this, mindfulness, you know, distractions, all of these things that we've talked about, coping mechanisms, you know, healthy ways to mentally function. How would I grade myself in that department? And then socially, how? Well, you know, what are my networks? Like, we know so much now that so much of our bio and psycho is affected by our social right. So even when it comes to, like, substance dependence and all that, like, number one thing that we're finding is that when you can connect with other people and you can feel part of a community and you can feel safe and validated and celebrated, whether you're LGBT or faith transitioning or whatever, you know, all these group support groups, like grief groups, you know, they all exist for a reason, you know, as far as really giving people a place to belong. So where am I at in that department? Have I found? And that can be a big one in faith transition because a lot of times we lose community. So then, you know, when we then, okay, think about supporting other people in there when we see them grieving, it can be helpful to kind of see other people through those three lenses. You know, how are they taking care of their body? And not that it's my job to tell somebody how to take care of their body, right? But how might I have some empathy if I see somebody who has little sleep, you know, stressed out at a job dealing with my faith transition? You know, like, how can I have some empathy for right now? They're maybe in a spot where they're not able to take care of their body as well as they'd like, or, you know, maybe just had a baby or whatever. How are they doing in the psychology aspect? And how are they doing socially? And of course, socially is where we can have the most impact in another person's life, is how do I create a space where I can be part of their support network? Or if I can't for some reason, like, there's just too many divides, how do I lovingly bow out or create some boundaries so that I'm not hurting this process more in the process, you know, than I should, maybe with my anger rants, right. Or my Facebook comments or there's so many ways where we hurt each other. I think, you know, when I think about how I. What I. What I've been bluesy about, not that it's the whole thing, but I think the comment Sections and several things that I've been a part of in these last few weeks have definitely not helped my bluesy aura. We are just so awful to each other in comment sections of blogs and articles and Twitter. Twitter, the BYU graduates, you know, just things about general Conference, you know, and since I write a blog and since I do things, I'm always, you know, aware of comments. And it's just so hard. So sometimes maybe we can just bow out instead of feeling like we've got to teach everybody our way. And that's hard to do sometimes as transitioners because we feel so marginalized to begin with. It's hard not to want to get in there and say, hey, you know, this isn't right how you guys are doing this. But I think it's a big part of self care and it's also part of other cares, maybe to bow out sometimes.

32:05 Margi Dehlin Yeah. That circle of influence a little bit. It also kind of reminds me of Brene Brown. She has a. Have you read this part, Natasha? Where it's the list where she has you write down your people who are kind of there for you, who love you unconditionally, who, when you fall down, they're the ones that kind of pick you back up and tell you. But they also tell you hard things. They're the ones that also will kind of. And she always, I think she says you should maybe have two to five people. It's not a very long list for people. And when you get.

32:40 John Dehlin You're allowed to care about what they

32:42 Margi Dehlin think about you, particularly in the ring. And the other thing is, you know, these people have to be in the ring with you. We don't take feedback from people who aren't in the ring doing the work. Equally vulnerable.

32:53 Natasha Helfer Equally.

32:54 Margi Dehlin But if with all that in common, you know, it's essentially being able to say to people who are, you know, criticizing you or saying really that you can say, you're not on my list. Emotionally, you're not on my list. You know, I won't. This will not penetrate because. And I think that's very healthy paradigm to have in these days where social media, it can be treacherous, it can be merciless with people. Yeah. Who are really in the ring trying to do. Not perfect because no one is. So they're in the ring kind of getting messy, trying to do some good out there. Yeah.

33:34 Natasha Helfer I love Brene Brown's thoughts about support networks and knowing who to trust, who to be vulnerable with. You know, all those kinds of things that she has a lot of really great work around boundaries. I always recommend her stuff. Another theory, it's called ring theory, which kind of goes along with this a little bit, but it's also knowing where you are in the ring of trauma. So somebody's going through a loss, right? They're kind of in the middle, and so they're sharing that loss with you. You. You're kind of the first ring out, right? So you're in that ring of that trauma. The person, whoever's gone through the traumas is trusting you with their information. And it's not appropriate then to be the one who then goes back and makes that person have to deal with your stuff. So you have to find somebody outside of that ring because maybe now you're going through vicarious trauma. This is especially true. Like, think about sexual assault, right? You have a friend who tells you they've been raped. Right. But now in telling you, you're having a huge emotional reaction. You're crying and, oh, my gosh, how could this have happened to you? So this person who needs your help is now taking care of you, Right?

34:45 Margi Dehlin Right.

34:46 Natasha Helfer Because you are having vicarious trauma and knowing something of that significance has happened to your friend, which is a normal response. But we don't want to put that on the person who needs our support. So your job, that is to find somebody in the next ring down to find, you know, support your own support for that so that you can be a main support person for the person who's primary in the ring. So faith transitions are kind of like that. You know, who do you. Who do you tell? Who does that person then focus on? And I think this becomes a really big mess when the vicarious trauma is especially for the believer. Right. So if your person that you tell is your spouse who's a believer, well, now they're traumatized too, by this whole process, and they want to engage with you who's wounded and where. You get a lot of these dynamics where I hear people saying things like, why are you siding with the church? That's hurting me? Right. And believers like, wait, wait a minute, why are you. You know, and we get into these vicarious trauma kind of cycles that are not very helpful. So know where you're at in the ring.

35:57 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Self awareness. Yeah.

36:00 John Dehlin Shelly's a new listener. She writes, I'm new here, but can't we still believe we will be together in whatever comes next, meaning the afterlife? I think it doesn't have to be the Mormon definition, but maybe there is comfort in creating our own beliefs or maybe call them hope, but it could still be a possibility without all the rules and limitations. Maybe you don't need those and you can still be together forever. Isn't that sweet?

36:27 Margi Dehlin This is reclaiming.

36:29 John Dehlin And then Emily writes, shelley, it depends on where your faith crisis takes you. My husband and I believe more secularly. Now, putting aside the actual theology of this question, which in and of itself is a great one and an interesting one, I really love that Shelley is reinforcing something that occurs to me as being a tendency we have to add more grief than is necessary. What I mean by that is, you know, there are many things that we. And Natasha, you touched on this earlier today. There are many things that we are and did and believed as Mormons. And when we lose our faith or we stop going to church, sometimes all those things that we believed and thought and did become infected to where we kind of don't want anything to do with Mormonism, whether it's the beliefs or the practices or the people or whatever. And I think that can sometimes introduce unnecessary suffering. And so, like you, Natasha, one of my first pieces of advice to progressive and post Mormons is keep the good. Which means if God's working for you, keep God. If attending church is working for you, keep church. If the word of wisdom or, you know, avoiding alcohol and drugs or being monogamous, if that's working for you, keep it. You don't have to throw it away. And if the belief in an afterlife is working for you, why in the heck would you want to get rid of that? Keep it. And so what Shelly, I think, is reminding us of is that we don't have to throw everything out. We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are many, many, many, many, many believers or, sorry, many, many, many non believers or post Mormons, who I tell if church is working for you, keep going to church. If it's a great social support for you, if it's working for your spouse, if you think it provides good structure for your kids, if you've got friends there, if it helps you be a better person, by all means. Why would you stop going, keep going to church? Now, of course, there are many people that just can't do that over time, but I think what Shelley's saying in an abstract way is why can't we just keep all the good and not throw away unnecessarily the things that are working for us? To live in the gray, to live in a multicolored, spectral world, and to make your life your own, which might include keeping some or much of your prior beliefs or practices or behaviors, if they work for you.

39:05 Margi Dehlin Yeah, I love it. I love it. This is the. This, to me, is kind of the joy part, because this is where you're. You're actually creating a new paradigm, whether that be beliefs or values or. And the truth is, is they'll be as, you know, different as we are. They'll look very different from one another. And the key part is just that it reflects you, that, you know, in the end, this is actually an intentional conscious process and that you are now internal. You're doing the work from the inside to determine who you are and, you know, what you believe or what your values are now to have it reflect you. So it's really beautiful.

39:58 Natasha Helfer The word that comes to mind for me, that's kind of a mental health term is integration with what she is saying. And we talk a lot about this with, like, LGBTQ individuals, you know, some members who are in the church, but maybe want to, you know, want to remain members of the church and want to nuance the their belief system in a way that's healthy for them if they're going to identify and integrate their orientation into their religious structure. And so when we talk about integration, it's kind of like you can't stay in these black and white boxes. You know, you can't be like, it's all this or it's all that, because then it requires you to sell short a huge aspect of yourself. And so where I see this really mattering for faith transitioners is that most of us transitioning or we're rethinking or we're reworking things because there's a part of our experience that doesn't totally fit into the boxes provided. And so then that's work that we're doing is having to integrate, reintegrate our belief system. And this actually is part of, like, research that's been done around religious people that they talk about this reinterpretation of religious teachings as a form of moving towards health integration if you're going to stay involved with a religious community. So the people who do that in a healthy way don't tend to have black and white literal types of relationships with their faith structure. So I think what. I forget the name of the person who commented, but what she's exemplifying right in her comment is that ability to do that for herself that she's exemplifying. I'm gonna rethink about this. I'm gonna maybe abstract it a little bit. I'm not gonna be as rigid. It's still useful to me. I love this idea of being able to be together forever. I agree. I love that idea too. You know, that brings me a lot of comfort personally for some people. Doesn't for me it does. And so how do you reclaim those things and reintegrate them in a way that also makes room for your lived experience? And some people can do that within the church and some people can't because the integration requires spirituality outside of what the Mormon Church can provide. So that's fine too. That's another way to reintegrate yourself.

42:25 Margi Dehlin Absolutely.

42:26 John Dehlin And Natasha, will you read while you're at it? Millie's most recent comment we got a great comment from Millie.

42:33 Natasha Helfer I can relate in so many ways. Keep the good My faith transition is from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism. It is like leaving a culture and we are keeping so many of our beliefs, but not the ritual. I appreciate Yalls videos.

42:48 John Dehlin How cool is it that we have a faith transitioner from Catholicism to Protestantism that listens to the gift of the Mormon faith crisis?

42:56 Natasha Helfer These are not unique processes, people. I keep trying to people, this is not a Mormon problem. We definitely have our own unique niches and Mormonism. But there are plenty of faith transitions going around in all different kinds of communities.

43:16 John Dehlin But still. Shout out to Millie. Millie, you're awesome. I want to interview you for Mormon Stories Podcast, which is another cool podcast, because it'd be fun to talk, to learn about your transition. All right, so we are just struggling to get to we have so many questions and comments. One person writes, how does Richard Rohr's Order Disorder and reorder fit into this framework? And I love that someone is doing a shout out to Richard Rohr. I'm not by any means a Richard Rohr expert. We would call on Dan Witherspoon or Janice Spengler or Gina Colvin or others. Maybe we should have them on to talk about Richard Rohr. Maybe we should try and get a hold of Richard Rohr himself. What I will say is I've read his book Falling Upward and he does this. You know, reframing is probably a really relevant concept for this notion of grieving. And basically Richard Rohrer has this concept and I believe I talked about this last week of first half of life and second half of life that I

44:23 Margi Dehlin think

44:25 John Dehlin provides a lot of meaning to a faith crisis that almost makes it sound and feel like it's exactly the thing that we should be doing in our life. And basically, to try and summarize what Richard Rohr says is the first half of your life you spend building up who you are, your personality, your resources, your education, you know, your ego strength. And it's almost as if you're building a container for the wisdom and the depth and all the personal insight and beliefs that you can spend your life pursuing. But the first half of your life is spent following a belief system that's been handed to you, that prepares you for the maturity level and the wisdom level to then be able to go on your own exploration. It's kind of like you wouldn't want to go on a safari as a 2 year old or as a 1 year old, but once you're 20 or 30, you may be strong enough, fast enough, healthy enough, wise enough to go on that journey. And Richard Rohr basically says no matter what faith tradition you're raised in, and that includes Catholicism, because Richard Rohr believe is a Franciscan monk. Richard Rohr says no matter what faith tradition you were raised in, it will ultimately prove inadequate to you and you will have a faith crisis, even if it's atheism or agnosticism or secularism. You know, how cliche is it for Mormon missionaries to convert people who are raised in secular households because they didn't get the meaning and the fulfillment and the structure in the community that they needed to feel fully happy and healthy? So even if you're raised in a secular household or Catholic or Mormon or whatever, you're going to inevitably have a faith crisis. That's how it's meant to be. And once you start that second half of life, you've got this amazing resource of your ego, yourself having been built, your education, your socioeconomic status, your friendships, your community, etc. You now have the ability, the strength, the resources, much like a 30 or 40 year old would have over a 2 year old. You now have the strength and the wisdom and the resources to spend the rest of your life filling that vessel with wisdom and joy and meaning and purpose and strength and identity. And I just think Richard Rohrer, even though he borrows a lot on Christian scripture, on Christian story, on Christian metaphor, he provides us with a lot of wisdom to help reframe a faith crisis again, from some tragedy to simply maturation to maturity, to sort of a passageway to depth and meaning that was intended all the way along somehow by some great designer in the sky. Male or female or non gendered. That is my response. Anything you guys want to add about Richard Rohr?

47:42 Margi Dehlin No.

47:43 Natasha Helfer Natasha, I love to say that I think faith transitions are just inevitable. I've been saying that for A long time even. I think sometimes we think of faith transition. The only outcome is you leave the church. That is definitely one big faith transition. It's a huge one. It's a lot of what we deal with here at Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. At the same time, anytime you think of a believer and I have had these experiences where I was in the temple or I was listening to a conference address or a talk or listening to a hymn and you have a new aha moment, a moment where you feel like enlightened in a new way or you have an experience that you never thought of it. That's in essence a little tiny faith transition that's relooking at your framing in a new way. And this is supposed to happen over and over and over again. And I think what Richard Rohr is doing with this order, reorder, order disorder, reorder is really looking at it through a developmental lens that is so much about what we're doing in our 30s, 40s, 50s, and that's each one of those decades has its own developmental process where we are supposed to be rethinking things. We're not supposed to be on autopilot. Autopilot is not a good long term strategy. It can help us during stressful times. It's probably a healthy place to be, like late 20s, early 30s when you're raising littles, but it's not a space where you're supposed to stay.

49:20 Margi Dehlin Mm, love that. A couple comments that I see here that have really stood out to me. Judy writes, this is such a powerful experience. I have vivid memories of my processing. Thankfully now able to move forward peacefully. It is essential to take time to go through the stages, back and forth if needed. Take all the time you need. For me, my personal therapy during this time and even now included journaling, talking to my husband, crying, drinking too much at times, and then sobbing. I also used exercise time alone, screaming in my car on occasion, and writing burning letters to whomever, Joseph Smith, my stake president, etc. It was a powerful, soul wrenching, growing experience. In the end, I decided to trust myself instead of the church. So a comment from Judy, another one, Bri, writes, I've learned to lean into whatever stage I'm feeling, label the feeling that I have and carefully observe it while it's there rather than trying to push it away or talk myself out of it. Things tend to ebb and flow rather than overwhelm me this way. And I feel peace even when I'm feeling furious.

50:34 Natasha Helfer I love that I'm going to continue to read a few of these because I just think it's nice to have peace people's experiences. Emily says the point about a TBM so a true believing Mormon going through grief after a loved one leaves is very accurate. When my husband left five years before me, I definitely went through every phase of grief. I felt like I was mourning a dream that had been crushed. I felt betrayed by both my husband and God. Understanding that loved ones are also hurting can hopefully help those exiting the church to have more components compassion and empathy for the ones we're leaving that are still in and Lindy writes, I feel like the depression stage lasted the longest for me, especially after I had my baby a year ago with all my other kids. I would feed and rock my babies and sing primary songs. I'm a child of God. I love to see the Temple Child's Prayer. With my youngest, I found myself out of habit wanting to sing those same songs and finding myself just in tears mourning the loss of the knowledge I had, all the uncertainty and fear of not knowing. Now I am past that stage and well into acceptance and moving forward. But that experience is still very triggering. And I rock and feed my baby to sleep three times a day still. So, you know, you can see some of the intersection there with, you know, baby making. I mean, postpartum depression, just the hormonal surges even, just even if you don't necessarily qualify for postpartum depression, but the hormonal surges of having a baby, breastfeeding, having small children, being exhausted in the small children phase, if you're going through a faith transition during that time, that's a very interesting intersection in of itself.

52:12 Margi Dehlin Absolutely. And that uncertainty and fear, especially for little ones, that you're worried about having this new baby that you so want to protect and offer think some sense

52:24 Natasha Helfer of grounding and structure too. And then Sydney says, oh, sorry, I'll say one more and then I'll let.

52:31 Margi Dehlin That was the one I was gonna read.

52:33 Natasha Helfer Go ahead then, Margaret. No, you go ahead. Sydney says. For me, it seemed like I jumped all around the stages of the grief chart. Just when I thought I was done with the anger stage, it would rear its ugly head again and I would be back in the middle of the anger stage again. I guess my tip would be to not expect a follow each stage and then think, well, I felt that emotion now, so I can check it off and you can bounce all around that chart and it's okay. I would get so down to myself and think I should be moving and healing past that particular stage once I felt that emotion. Remember to be kind and patient with yourself. And this is where I love to tease us as Mormons, like we are. We're doers. We're list makers. We're bees in the hive. We're, you know, give me a list and I'll make sure and go through. And so let's. Let's watch our d. Our Mormon DNA. You know, kind of like our tendencies, right? To take a list like the grief cycle and say, I've got it. I'm going to listen to this podcast and Margie, Natasha, and John, they gave me some good tips, and now I'm going to go get this done.

53:36 Margi Dehlin So true.

53:37 Natasha Helfer The opposite approach is probably what's needed.

53:41 Margi Dehlin So true.

53:43 John Dehlin Matt writes something really valuable. He writes somewhere in there, we need to find our role in it, a way to see our part, let it go and forgive. Our enemies, need our forgiveness. We can forgive and love even if we don't like them. Lots of fear. Dealing with dogma and doctrine. I have faith in a higher power that looks a lot different than the one I grew up with. So really quickly, two things that I think may be misunderstood or that others may struggle with a little bit that Matt talks about, number one is finding our role in it. It is so common for us who have felt hurt by the church or deceived by the church or damaged by the church to be angry at the church and to feel like we're victims, right? To feel like we've been victimized by the church. So what in the world could Matt mean by our role, finding our role in it? Do we have a role or are we victims or both?

54:51 Margi Dehlin Binary you.

54:54 John Dehlin So to Natasha and Margie, how could we have had a role in this faith crisis?

55:04 Natasha Helfer Well, I guess I know I'm trying to kind of understand the question maybe a little bit, but I think. I'm not sure if it's. I mean, I think we all have a role in our faith crisis in the sense that it's our mind and it's our body that's going through the experience. At the same time, we don't have the role in the sense of, I think, necessarily choosing what our mind decides to think about. Right? So we have this weird interplay between thoughts and information that kind of comes at us, and there's not a lot of choice in that. But then we do play a role in how we manage that information, how we go forward. And some of that even can feel like you don't have a lot of choice. I Don't think most people would say I chose to have a faith transition, you know, just like I didn't choose to all of a sudden not believe in Santa Claus. It's like new information came, and all of a sudden I had to deal with a new reality. But now I do have to look at my role in moving forward in that new reality. And I think that's where we go from victims to survivors. You know, when you think about, like, trauma work, you know, a lot of sexual assault survivors, for example, don't want to be seen as victims. Or maybe sometimes they do. Like, no, I. I was a victim. Like, that's a serious thing, and I was a victim. And at some point, however, I want to claim my survivor status. So even again, depending on the person you talk to will have different relationships with those words of being a victim or being a survivor. I think that what this gentleman is inviting us to think about is how do we move forward in health? What role do we have in that? What areas of control do we have? And I think that is, in a sense, what we're inviting everybody to think about through these podcasts is where. Where do we have control going forward? Not that we're gonna have control over which phase we're in necessarily, but when we recognize we do have control, some control about self awareness, just by being willing, we have some control about behavior, we have some control in regards to communication with other people, self care, and so what role do we wanna play? And then if he mentioned forgiveness, we do talk about this, and I think we talked about this maybe in that first episode, John, that you mentioned last time too, is that how do we at some point be willing to enter into a space of gratitude for where we come from? And that, I do think is playing a role towards maturity, emotional maturity, spiritual maturity. And also maybe what we can talk a little bit more about in a what if episode, because it's very easy to just get angry at this system, this organization, but it lacks a face a little bit. It's so complex, it's so systemic, and it's so true of so many systems. You know, like the woman who grew up Catholic and now considers herself a Protestant, she also was a product of her environment, of her system. So at some point we have to, like, move forward, and I think gracious ways, and I think that's a role that we can all consider.

58:25 Margi Dehlin Yeah, it's a great response. What she said, what Natasha said, don't know about that.

58:33 John Dehlin A lot of times this idea of forgiveness is also hard because I think forgiveness can be really hard. And it's especially hard because in the case of the church, they're not asking for forgiveness. They're, in fact, they. They've said, we neither give nor seek apologies. Right. And so that, for some, that may make it more complicated because, you know, there are abusers who. Who don't ever apologize, but then there's abusers that apologize. But. But how do you forgive in this case, an institution that isn't even caring about whether you forgive them or not? Is that more difficult?

59:19 Margi Dehlin I feel like the forgiveness is more for you, you know?

59:23 Natasha Helfer Yeah. I have a very, like, hate love relationship with the word forgiveness.

59:28 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Yeah.

59:29 Natasha Helfer I think it comes with a lot of baggage, especially from religious communities. It comes with a lot of expectation, and I think it's the number one reason why people have poor boundaries is because they feel like they need to be forgiving without realizing that healthy forgiveness includes a lot of boundaries, meaning you may not have a relationship with somebody who abuses you again, and you can still be in a space of forgiveness. I think a lot of times, forgiveness to a lot of people means, I am now okay with you hurting me. I need to continue to still let you be in my life.

1:00:04 Margi Dehlin Yep.

1:00:05 Natasha Helfer And that's a really unhealthy definition of forgiveness.

1:00:08 Margi Dehlin Yes.

1:00:09 Natasha Helfer So for me, forgiveness, if you want to use that word or reconciliation or whatever it's about, I will no longer give you the power to have the narrative about my relationship with you, and I will have grace for your existence because things exist that hurt us, and I will not allow that to have a say in how I move forward.

1:00:34 Margi Dehlin That's right. I love that.

1:00:37 Natasha Helfer When it comes to Mormonism, I think, you know, it's a big train we were on. I think all of us are on it. Sure, I can be mad at Nelson or Oakes or nitpick about things that they say and continue to hurt people at the same time. They're products of the train as well. Mormonism is much bigger than any one person or thing. Even Joseph Smith. It's much bigger than that because it's a conglomerate of community, and we were all part of that community, whether through conversion or through being born into a system that had it. And that's what I'm making peace with. The fact that all of us are born into something imperfect, something that will inevitably betray and harm us. I don't know of any system that exists in the world that does. Now, some systems do it poorer or worse than others, so there is that. And Mormonism is a bit more on the rigid spectrum of things. But I think that's what I'm talking about when I talk about forgiveness. It's recognizing kind of like we do with our parents, you know, like, at some level, you stop thinking of your parents the way you did when you. You were eight, it's like, okay, yeah. You know, then you go through, like, the teenage phase where you're like, at 8, you think, oh, my gosh, my parents are amazing. At 15, you're like, my parents are idiots. Who the hell do they think they are? Then hopefully, by the time you're 27, having kids of your own, you're like, I see you. I see where you had weaknesses. I see where you struggled. I see where you let me down. And I recognize I do a lot of those things too, too. And I have a lot of room to grow, and I'm going to build my relationship from there. It's a much more gracious space, I think.

1:02:22 Margi Dehlin Yeah. Beautiful. Beautifully said, Natasha.

1:02:27 Natasha Helfer Well, thank you, Margie. I love you too. John. Just go away. Me and Margie are going to talk.

1:02:35 John Dehlin Yeah, I'm not really needed here. That's okay. No, that's beautiful. Lots of listeners wrote really beautiful comments and suggestions, and we're just not gonna have time to get to them all today. And, you know, we're kind of. We're kind of running out of time, so I just want to say there's so much I will read. One suggestion from Lindy, she writes. Other than listening to podcasts that were truly helpful during my faith crisis, the best thing that I did for myself was attend a faith crisis workshop. It was honestly the first time throughout my entire transition that I felt validated, normal, and loved for what I had gone through. Finding a support system from people who went through the same thing I did was so cathartic and helpful. I am so grateful for people like Natasha and John who dedicate their time to helping others get through the most difficult thing that most people will ever go through. So huge thanks to Lyndee. And Lindy didn't just sort of stop and feel that way. She said, hey, John, I want to work with you to help make these workshops and retreats possible. And Lindy, along with a few other people, have been the backbones of this thrive event that's coming up in June. So Lindy's putting her money, so to speak, where her mouth is, and she's donating to help make this workshop available. And I just want to second that as we're coming to the close of this episode. These workshops and retreats are transformative. And the things that are shared by people like Margie, me and Natasha and all the other speakers, what they share is only a small part of what you're going to get. What you're going to get from these events is validation. You're going to feel less crazy, you're going to feel less alone, you're going to find friends, sometimes lifelong friends, and you're going to find community and you're going to have all sorts of emotional side benefits to attending these events and that's why we do them. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of stress, it's a lot of pain. And in the case of this event, there's literally no financial gain. But we just know they help people. And so again, if you haven't checked out thrivebeyondmormonism.com There are about 70 slots left for anyone who wants to come. And we really want to encourage you, take advantage of that and we think you will find it transformative as we have. Anything else, Natasha, you want to say about grief or grieving?

1:05:30 Natasha Helfer No, I just. It's a part of life does suck sometimes. Embrace the suck. And, you know, hopefully we can, through knowing each other and participating in venues like this, we can be part of our support systems that we all need to move forward in healthy, productive ways that include discomfort, vulnerability, ambiguity, and not always being happy. Happy, happy. Yeah, absolutely.

1:05:59 John Dehlin What do you want to add, Margie?

1:06:01 Margi Dehlin I'm feeling very at peace with the episode.

1:06:06 John Dehlin Beautiful. We have several people requesting workshops in their area. Rachelle's requesting something in Washington. Others are wanting things in Arizona. Nevada is a place we often go. Idaho, you know, there are several places in Utah if you want to have a workshop or a retreat in your area, you just need to do as Lindy did. Step up. Email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com and say, I'm willing to help you organize and recruit for this event. And if you can do that, we will do our part to make them possible.

1:06:43 Margi Dehlin And Chicago, you kind of need a small.

1:06:45 John Dehlin We need at least 20 people to make these events possible. Chicago, we want to come there lots of different places. So just help us make it possible and we'll do it. All right, Is that it for today?

1:07:00 Natasha Helfer I think that's it.

1:07:01 John Dehlin Well, we want to give a huge shout out of thanks to our listeners, everyone who's joined us live, you guys, your comments and questions make everything possible. Everyone who wrote in, thank you so much for your comments and tips. We Wish we had time to read everything you guys shared. There's so many things, good things that people share. We appreciate everyone who makes this possible. Thanks to the Open Stories Foundation. Thanks to Cody Layton, who does our post production. Couldn't do it without you. Thanks to all the donors who make Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis and the Open Stories foundation possible. We couldn't do without you. If you value this content, please consider becoming a monthly donor. Go to mormonfaithcrisis.com Click on the Donate button. 10, 20, 50, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. It will go towards making these podcasts affordable so that we can keep providing them and know that you won't just be helping people now, your contributions will be. Will go towards helping people in the future. So it's a way to pay forward what you're getting from this content. So please consider supporting us financially. And now, because we're part of the Open Stories foundation, your donations are tax deductible. If you already a donor, make sure and sign up for the new donations to the Open Stories foundation, we'll cancel your past donations, and that way you can make sure and get your tax credit for supporting what we do. So, yeah, and if you have, there are lots of other ways you can support us as well. You can like us on Facebook. You can. You can subscribe to us on YouTube. You can give us positive reviews on Facebook or on itunes. You can share these episodes with other people. You know, there are just lots of ways that you can support us. So thanks everyone who supports us, and please tune in again soon for another episode of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. Margie, you're awesome. I love you.

1:09:06 Margi Dehlin Love you. Thank you, Joan. Thank you, Natasha.

1:09:08 John Dehlin Natasha, you're brilliant.

1:09:10 Margi Dehlin Until next time.

1:09:11 Natasha Helfer As always, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for everything.

1:09:14 John Dehlin We'll see you next week.

1:09:15 Margi Dehlin Thank you.

1:09:17 John Dehlin All right, take care, everybody. Thanks so much.