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The Mormon Therapist

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Health, Fitness and Religion

2018-12-13T21:45:11-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Witnessing for our Kiwi Mormon – Page 3

Last updated on: December 13, 2018 at 9:45 pm By Natasha Helfer

Continued…

The following are the “witnesses” that have been written in behalf of Gina Colvin, who is being summoned to a disciplinary court on December 20, 2018. If you’re interested in submitting a witness… please share with me at [email protected]. I will continue to update… or create further posts as I receive them. I will keep blog posts to about 1500 words… that’s why there will be more than one “page.”

My first contact with Gina was when I was serving as bishop of the Bracknell Ward (UK) from 2011 to 2016. Towards the middle of my tenure, I started to struggle with my own faith. This was partly due to several members of my Ward asking me appropriate questions regarding Church history. As I looked into ways of supporting them I discovered much of what they had told me was indeed correct. At one point feeling I’d had enough, I began discussing a potential release with my stake president. Gina gave me the insight and support to stay until I completed 5 years and a few months of service as bishop. My stake president could not quite give the support needed, whereas Gina did. Without her support, a bishop would have been lost. I still hold a temple recommend, being active and involved in my ward and stake. I hope you are able to reconsider holding the disciplinary council for Gina. Or if you still feel the need to hold it that there will be found no action required so that Gina, along with her family, may remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Many thanks,

Neil Loffhagen

Anyone who even remotely knows Gina Colvin understands this is not about convincing Church leaders that she is a deeply spiritual person, seeker of truth insofar as that is knowable, a member dedicated to improving the faith experience for herself and other Mormons through examination of those elements which do not exemplify Christ. My heart is with her, my Mother’s arms protect her.

But I refuse to lend credence to this circus, this muscle-flexing sideshow they have created to press the point that they have the apparent power to excommunicate. Truth is, I don’t believe they do. And I know they have no desire to be convinced otherwise or they wouldn’t have had the temerity to accuse her. This is a witch hunt, that’s all. Unrighteous dominion (assuming they ever had the authority to misuse in the first place.) Perhaps the broader question is, “What is going on in the LDS faith, that a woman is left to hunger, to seek truths, ritual and comfort she couldn’t find on her own? How to make the LDS church a safe, faithful place- expansive enough to grow a soul rather than stifle it?”I have come to believe this church has walked so far off the path of God that I decided to walk away from it myself. They are lucky she stuck it out as long as she did.

Kimberly Fitzpatrick Lewis

Bishop Shaw,
I write to call upon you to follow your own witness of Gina. There is nothing hidden, nothing deceptive, nothing disrespectful in all the evidence you’ve been asked to gather. I’m familiar with the pressures of appearing certain and unmoved in the letter of the regulations and policies (not commandments or invitations from Jesus). But I encourage you use the formula set forth by Joseph to know truth: engage your best critical thinking including weighing logic and facts within context and add not just emotional reactions but ponder the actual messages, teachings and comments of Gina. Within you’ll experience a familiarity and safety even though the words might unsettle what you want settled. Gina speaks clearly, calmly and in search of greater relationship with personal and embodied divinity. She seeks God and heavenly union, nothing more. She is the first to kneel before the savior fully willing to follow where his spirit calls. You know this. You can’t deny your resonance and draw to Gina’s vulnerability before heaven and courage of conviction, one that circles in LDS truths. As Alma encourages, experiment upon The Word and her words. Let them paint the portrait of her as divine supplicant not institutional rebel.

Gina will not contest your judgment. She will not retaliate or disinvite you and your family from her table: a table set with spiritual and temporal food. Your reward, if simple functional and dutiful discipline is your declaration, will be not one of lasting satisfaction but a stone hanging on your sense of being, a siren dismissing your blamelessness before god, Gina and the community of seekers.

Gina is good. Gina is a sinner like all of us. Gina is your neighbor not enemy. There is little love or justification for either formal disciplinary option. She’s not left the course, or mortally sinned so turning back again (repentance) is not required. You know this- this rings truer than the alternate outcome labeling her apostate and lost.

I wish you inspiration and struggle with your growth as you witness Gina before your congregation and church leadership.
I love Gina’s voice inviting a deeper introspective and intellectually honest Sainthood. So do you. Don’t succumb to fear and obligation but embrace with compassion knowing love doesn’t discard, it embraces and integrates. Randy Moss Ph.D.

To whom it may concern…

My heart hurts as I write this. My spirit groans under the weight of this burden. I don’t think you’ll listen. I don’t think you’ll care. I believe you’ve already made your decisions and now devote your energy and mental stamina justifying your conclusions and piling up all those mental darts you’ve collected over the years from the church and it’s never ending mission to worship itself more devoutly.

But…here it is anyway. I am a life long member. My husband is a life long member. We both come from generations of members and were raised by very active and faithful parents. I have struggled to reconcile LDS teachings with my very innate sense of right and wrong, light and dark since my early teen years. I am married in the temple. I no longer attend the temple because I choose not to. There are too many things I just don’t believe in anymore to find value there. My husband does. My daughter is 13 and just started doing baptisms. I have two other children ages 10 and 8. My children have all been baptized. My husband and I are struggling mightily to honor each others beliefs and individual truth seeking. It is HARD. It is heartbreaking and difficult to navigate marriage and family when beliefs change and grow in ways that don’t exactly match up.

Gina and others like her have been Godsends to our family. This church needs her. It needs you to respect and honor her agency, her ability to discern, her quest for further light and knowledge…honor her journey. We need her honesty, her bravery, her intelligence, her humor, her irreverence, her guts and her diligent search for greater spiritual understanding. She is a treasure and an asset. Don’t do it. Stop this barbaric and violent act of excommunication. It’s wrong. It’s cruel. The church will be weaker and have less integrity without her. Don’t do this to Gina. Don’t do this to Nathan and their children…and don’t do this to yourselves.

Chelan Clason

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org and runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association and runs a sex education program, Sex Talk with Natasha. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.

2018-11-15T01:39:01-05:00

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Deseret News’ Comprehensive Article on Missionary Mental Health

Last updated on: November 15, 2018 at 1:39 am By Natasha Helfer

Image found on bing.com – free to share and use page.

I thought that for Deseret News, this was a well done piece. It’s very comprehensive in nature and it’s addressing an important conversation that is often not spoken of. It’s complicated by the very strong messaging we find in LDS culture regarding the expectations, importance of and social placement status generated by missions. I hope you all take the time to read it. My colleague, friend and MMHA board member, Randy Moss is featured as one of the clinicians offering his opinion.

I did a podcast back in 2015 with Dr. Holly Welker (writer, critical analyst and past missionary) and Daniel Lancaster (clinical social worker and past missionary) addressing missionary trauma. It is also worth the listen:

https://www.mormonmentalhealth.org/075-mormon-missionary-trauma-part1/

https://www.mormonmentalhealth.org/076-mormon-missionary-trauma-part-2/

Reaching out to Dr. Welker she had the following critique in regards to some of the messages within the recent article which I second:

“‘In addition to misunderstanding grace, some missionaries “have a very unrealistic understanding of success,” said Gibson. He worked with missionaries who believed in the “sin model,” a cultural — not doctrinal — belief that a lack of convert baptisms or even feelings of discouragement are due to insufficient prayer, scripture study or faith.’

If missionaries misunderstand grace, it’s because the church’s teachings on it are so rotten. Also, the ‘belief that a lack of convert baptisms or even feelings of discouragement are due to insufficient prayer, scripture study or faith’ might be cultural rather than doctrinal, but official church texts contribute substantially to that belief.

In other words, this is still victim-blaming in some ways; this is still the church failing to acknowledge how its teachings and expectations contribute to missions being so bloody hard.”

Called to serve, not called to suffer: Hope for early returned missionaries

In January 2018 I did a podcast with Randy Moss and Braxton Duxton (both mental health clinicians) on some of the issues we saw with the new missionary questions in regards to mental and spiritual health.

https://www.mormonmentalhealth.org/122-mental-health-professionals-discuss-the-new-missionary-questions/

2018-02-14T23:05:28-05:00

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Support for Wards Affected by School Shootings

Last updated on: February 14, 2018 at 11:05 pm By Natasha Helfer

Several of us from the Mormon Mental Health Association are trying to gather some resources in case any wards/stakes affected by today’s school shooting in Florida could use some extra support. There are many resources already available and we will link to a lot of those. At the same time, there may be some particular suggestions from a Mormon lens that might also be helpful. Thank you Randy Moss, Ethan Bratt and Robert Allred for contributing your thoughts and resources to this list.

1. Importance of grief and allowing for the process of grieving – which will look different for every single person. Talk of forgiveness is usually premature and can wait until people have had a chance to recover. Some will want to talk and share feelings… others will become quite and introverted. Don’t encourage the suppression of anger. Find appropriate ways to be angry at everybody including God. We don’t want to censor people’s feelings. It is ok for some people to be angry with the perpetrator, for others to be compassionate, and for others to not want to think about the perpetrator at all. While striving to reach a Christlike place with those who do evil is always the goal, no one is wrong for where they are at right now. We all have our own path to walk towards that ideal.
2. Creating ongoing spaces for people to gather and be able to share or just be in community (both within the ward bounds and also in the larger community). The church grounds can be made available for candle vigils by local leaders.
3. Clear understanding of who is positioned in which callings to be able to help in which specific ways. Having some emergency meetings to organize roles is usually time well spent. Most wards already have emergency plans in place.
4. Educational meetings for parents with information about kids at all developmental ages. Things they may expect while kids deal with trauma is information they are going to want access to.
5. Group support meetings for the high school and middle school aged kids. They are all in the YM/YW program after all… so they will know each other.
6. Vet official talks from main leaders over the pulpit by mental health professionals who are trained in trauma to make sure they are trauma-informed. We don’t want to unintentionally hurt with things that are said that we may not realize are inappropriate at certain times.
7. Having local resources you can refer to and ask for help from that work with trauma services. Although LDS Services may have local providers… in these situations we want to opt for providers who specialize in trauma care.
8. Tap into national resources – including a national hotline for these kinds of disasters (some linked to here).
9. Possibly creating a ward Facebook page that will share resources and information.
10. Trauma informed training to men who will be giving blessings… again just to help them have language resources.
11. Education in regards to platitudes not being generally helpful in these situations and what some common ones are in Mormon language. (i.e. They are in a better place. Heavenly Father needed them on the other side). Let the people who are grieving decide what doctrinal truths are helpful to them. Instead, be a listening ear and resist the temptation to “make things better.” Listening and grieving with someone is the best thing you can do.
12. Some MMHA members are willing to offer trauma-informed consultations if anyone is interested in contacting us.
13. Offer self-care tips for those who will be helping. Watch for compassion fatigue that leaders and helpers may be experiencing.
14. Assessing for costs and making sure that people are taking advantage of federal/state funding – I’ve noticed that sometimes church leaders don’t always think about these. Helping victims fill out paperwork and access resources can be very helpful and something that a compassionate service leader or the Relief Society counselor in charge of literacy can help with.
15. Making sure that people are donating to sources that are legitimate.

16. Offer support to educators who may work in the school system affected. They often feel lots of responsibility for the kids in their care and are at risk for survivors guilt.
17. Be aware of what survivors guilt looks like and offer education for the teens.

18. Since elementary school kids and middle school kids are also usually put on lockdown… they need trauma support as well.

19. Don’t use mental health labels like PTSD prematurely.
20. After initial few days, don’t stop normal events or activities (parties, dances, etc). Don’t turn everything into protracted mourning or shooting oriented remembrance. Include the families affected as to what types of remembrances would be most helpful for them.

https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/disaster-distress-helpline

https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/KEN01-0093R/KEN01-0093R.pdf

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=597D351C3EC5A484!1000&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AH35kTX8WlsJH7Q

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=597D351C3EC5A484!999&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AOd3IAZlWisd_u0

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=597D351C3EC5A484!1001&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AMWIgIYuBJdwAUc

Mukilteo gathers to mourn deaths of three Kamiak grads

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine, is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association and runs a sex education program, Sex Talk with Natasha. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.

2018-01-11T10:06:14-05:00

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No Ram in the Thicket

Last updated on: January 11, 2018 at 10:06 am By Natasha Helfer

Image found on bing.com – free to share and use page.

I heard of another transgender youth who died by suicide in a small community of Utah. Is the church not aware of the damage they are doing? How can we make a difference as members?

Keeping the conversation of LGBT+ suicide rates within the LDS population front and center is something I am completely devoted to. Dr. Randy Moss does an excellent job of using this powerful scriptural story to draw a parallel to the human sacrifices we are very much still putting on the altar. Neither I nor Dr. Moss are trying to be sensational. This is real. This is happening amongst our midst. Too often. Unnecessarily. Tragically. This is what it is.

It’s difficult to create a grass roots influence… but not impossible. It’s how many things have shifted in church policy over the years. A few thoughts. Talk to your local leaders about your concerns. Share the Family Acceptance Project pamphlet I link to below. Wear a rainbow pin to church so that LGBT+ youth know who their allies are. Love and accept them when they approach you. Have access to national suicide hotlines in your smart phones that you can share. Be LGBT+ inclusive in your language as you engage in your callings. Find facebook support networks to get ideas from others: see link to Mormon Spectrum below.

Today’s guest post is written by Dr. Randy K. Moss. Opinions shared on guest posts may not completely reflect the positions of the blog’s author.

Dr. Moss received his PhD from BYU in Counseling Psychology in 1996 and has been working in the behavioral health field since 1985 with emphasis on co-occurring and complex disorders. He trains and consults nationally on trauma and trauma-informed care, Feedback Informed treatment, implementation science and system transformation. He is married with four children and three grandkids, is a generational Mormon within a mixed faith marriage. He describes his faith transition in the following way: Intellectual transition of twenty years, emotional separation of ten, spiritual release of three.

The classic painting “The Sacrifice of Isaac” (Caravaggio, (1603)) shows an angel arresting Abraham’s hand just prior to killing his son, Isaac, in pre-atonement obedience to god. Note the surprise on Abraham’s face and the calm on Isaac’s. The story, as told in Old Testament, is that a ram was caught in a thicket nearby allowing for the sacrificial story to complete. Modern Christians and particularly Mormons, have long moved beyond human sacrifice to appease God and have packaged this story as metaphor and symbol. But have we really moved beyond human sacrifice without the angel and convenient ram as mediators to our blindness? I propose no!

Recently statistics reveal a sick trend in deaths by suicide for youth in Utah. Utah, a stronghold of Mormon theology and admirers of Abraham, is very anti same-sex orientation. Analysis of the stats exposed some reasons for this nation leading phenomenon: social rejection. Are all these LGBTQ youth sacrificed on the altar of obedience recklessly devoid of possible angels and rams? Have the stones building the altar (church and God first, misunderstanding of salvation, archaic ideas about identity and choice, etc.) formed a platform of Baal death? Parental malpractice driven by theological proof-texting and institutional power sophistry is killing our LGBTQ youth and even those just questioning. There is no angel to stay the hand of parental alienation and shaming as different identities show forth.* There is simply a reverting to symbolic bloodletting to preserve assumed rewards in a promised hereafter; a sacrifice of children to a ruthless God for reward! Such atonement denial and selfishness. No grace or acceptance. Unlike the twists in the Isaac narrative where he voluntarily accompanies and submits to an old man he could subdue, our LGBTQ youth fight, scream out in a pain deeper than cuts. They look to chagrined parents and hardened leaders for understanding, receiving judgment and condemnation. Many cannot overtake the old man holding the knife. Messages of ruining eternal families, of bringing disgrace on earthly joy and plans, and being infested with viruses of evil soak their ground with sulfurous toxins. The pulpit balm and doctrinal reassurances are poor substitutes for the angel and ram; they lack power to save and replace.

Complicity in self-destruction is ubiquitous. Being LGBTQ is not new or abnormal. Fear stoked by religious intolerance and personal insecurity is so powerful that even the divine bond between parent and child is offered up to blinded obedience and social pressure. If your personal reward in a Maybe is nurture by the blood of innocents and confirmed by sermon nonsense, then Christ is not in you or your institution. HIS table is reserved for the marginalized, those rejected by exactly who this unsettling and tragic trend of suicides prove we’ve always been. Don’t dare deflect collective guilt by claiming choice in identity formation or in the act of death of the youth. Don’t be brazened and waxed cold in pretending that abstinence and withholding relationship is the price of sainthood. None promoting this are asked to do the same. Such pabulum.

The painting shows gratitude and surprise in rescue for a story of faith. The modern brushes outlining our scene includes our surprise at the outcome when, instead of angel and ram, we bury our children as sacrifices to a modern idol of constructed purity and homogeneity. Sad.

*As Randy and I discussed this piece after publishing it… we wanted to add this asterisk recognizing that all players in this problem are part of a larger system. We share frustration for parents and family members that shun their LGBT+ youth by the many ways we often hear about in our offices (i.e. being thrown out of their homes as minors, being enrolled in reparative therapies, having college support immediately terminated after a “coming out,” etc.). At the same time, we understand that parents and other supporting actors, even when acting in non-healthy ways, usually do so in accordance to the resources and understandings they have available to them. We do not want to add to the shame or pain of any parent who might be dealing with very complex issues. We do want to educate and point to other options. And we definitely want to challenge a system (the larger Church entity) that has the responsibility to educate itself and its members in order to offer life and health sustaining options to all of its congregants. We mourn for all who have lost a child, a friend, or a family member to suicide. We are trying to help avoid those hurts with future families. And not all youth suicides are from families pushing away – in fact many are completed in face of the opposite: much love. Cry and mourn for all — but let’s help change the platform that contributes to some of these deaths.

The allegory is powerful in that, as Randy’s wife reminded us — we, as the general membership, need to act as the “angel” …and be the providers of the “ram” – unconditional love. I love that!

Family Education Project

Mormon Spectrum LGBTQ Resources

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org and runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine, is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association and runs a sex education program, Sex Talk with Natasha. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.

2017-10-26T13:09:06-05:00

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And They Shall Become as One…Except We Are Still Two

Last updated on: October 26, 2017 at 1:09 pm By Natasha Helfer

Image found on bing.com – free to use and share page.

I struggle to know how to manage the differences in marriage. On the one hand I want to compromise and work as a team. But other times I feel like I’m losing myself. Especially now that we seem to have some differences in how we approach our beliefs and church membership. How do we know how to strike the right balance?

Great question… you’re addressing the inescapable tension between “me” and “we” that all relationships have to dance and wrestle with. In one word, the answer is “differentiation”… which we spent an entire semester studying in my marriage and family therapy training. The ability to stay connected while still being apart. Boundaries. Negotiations. Realistic expectations. Self soothing. Tolerating the differences our partners are bound to present. There isn’t a super easy answer to this so I will turn to the words of my colleague, Dr. Randy Moss who does a beautiful job of at least contemplating this concept poetically.

Today’s guest post is written by Dr. Randy K. Moss. Opinions shared on guest posts may not completely reflect the positions of the blog’s author.

…and they shall become as one flesh…..So goes the expectation of marriage.

Often we hear two refrains about relationships- ‘growing together’ and ‘growing apart.’

The common interpretation fails to encompass the profundity and essential elements of embedded understanding. I want to sharpen a vision of what they mean when presented in couples therapy and across pulpits.

The partner’s tearful avowal suggests a permanent fusion of flesh. “We were to grow together;” entangled, single trunk, one mixed jumble of branches and leaf. A family unit that has dissolved its hosts, lost its separate roots and pretends a singularity is less stable, less healthy and less flexible. Growing together does contain shared elements but is deeper. It indicates a covenant between two – necessitating effort, struggle, expansion, and change.

Basic growth is the opposite of stagnation, of remaining fixed. I hear the anguish when a partner finds that the growth has led to different branching and flowering. The hurt fails to acknowledge the first covenant in its plainness. The partner accuses the other of fraud, deceit, or subterfuge. This is especially powerful in religious context where one grows beyond or outside the initial garden box of beliefs. Such surprise leading to distress and, in some cases, repugnance, is telling of the emptiness of the shared growing. Together became an assumption of givens – not the real expression of connection and understanding. The seed planted together didn’t know the shape of the tree – just that it would grow and be a tree. There was no fraud. The other was not deceived. The other was blinded by the false expectation of ‘grow together’ meaning mirrored entities.

Growing apart is not the same as reaching different heights while being faithful to the original covenant. Growing apart is a pattern of growth that has two major factors.

Component one is the most devastating; neglect. Assumption, prescribed expectation and misaligned loyalty are the henchmen of neglect. The loyalty to an attachment object wrapped in theology or doctrine blinds the other to marriage between two fleshes and not an ethereal idea. Neglect fails the partners. One is labeled, the other left bereft of real growth. The ceremony was idealist seeds promising to create a family, a third entity, by becoming one flesh in making children but covenanting to individual and collective growth.
The second component of growing apart is sunlight hogging. Growing outside the shade deflecting rays of light filtered is anger, rejection and more light hogging. Straight grains of wood result from the growth together. All the light, all the resources make for twisted trunk and less secure roots. I am saddened when one party will forego their marriage to the person when the content of her/his growth is outside the garden box of youth. The covenant was to grow together, not fuse or abandon the forest. Does the love of time and shared experience evaporate like summer sprinkles in the face of change in attitude toward the garden box. Maybe the fraud is that the marriage ceremony was to an ideology not a person, to an interpretative lens instead of the values of honesty, love, respect, and commitment. The deceit might fall on the neglecting, light-hogging partner who might be ready to eject the flesh for an idea.

The wood of such a tree is knotted, ornamental but lacks strength and integrity.

Ultimately I believe the answer we are getting at is the simultaneous reaching towards acceptance of self and acceptance of other. The better able a couple is at striking this balance, the better differentiated they are. I would encourage the reading of the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman.

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org and runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine and is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mormontherapist/search/randy+moss#duqCT5fxO6iBby6I.99

Boundaries

Faith Crisis/Faith Transition

2018-04-08T00:08:16-05:00

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A Millstone Loosed

Last updated on: April 8, 2018 at 12:08 am By Natasha Helfer

Given the current things that are coming to light finally within our church and how it has handled sexual assault allegations, I think this is a very timely piece.

Today’s guest post is written by Dr. Randy K. Moss. Opinions shared on guest posts may not completely reflect the positions of the blog’s author.

A Millstone Loosed

On the axis of wood and tethered to plodding beasts, millstones crush rough husk, freeing the germ, the finest part of nutrition and sustenance. Grains of all types, big and small, surrender to the persistent and relentless action of this simple carved stone. A rudimentary tool, the millstone provides both the grinding needs of the hungry human family but also the burden of guilty pretenders or arrogant actors. Recently, the proverbial millstone broke loose from the axis of truth and is grinding, pulverizing and releasing both the essential germ of truth and weighty anchor to drown the hurtful and their protectors. Information, made light in the most unholy and unhealthy way, revealed the abuses of men and institution, the hurting children and vulnerable demanding the necked millstone. The rumble of the heaving millstones shaking the ground, rattling nearby structures, and dragging screeching resisting jots, pebbles, and rocks intermixed in the grains from the bread of life. All will submit, the powder to be blown in the wind of change and purification.

The love of Christ is being polluted with the dross of mis-gathered articles of faith and the attempt to cheat the measure of flour for the widow and vulnerable. Institutional quality control is designed for protection instead of honesty. Too many buyers have succumbed to the sloganeering of the captains of the field and the marketers of the flour; a brand that touts faithfulness to the ingredients so listed on the label. Pure love of Christ includes an asterisk stating “the product is sold by weight!” The inspiration meant to reassure the product safety fails. The all-seeing and benevolent doesn’t hide from the claimers of revelation unless there is only silence and the weight, not only fudged with rock and inedible substitutes, is guessed at for motives obscured in the advertisements. But the millstone is loosed, rolling unfettered, destroying ornamental as well as dangerous obstacles. Ground to fine powder are the hurt, vulnerable, and brave as well as reputations, faith, public relations and trust in the safety of trust. The millstone’s growling song dictates each person must weigh their own measure, become their own quality assurance inspectors. The claimed ‘enriched flour’ is missing essential nutrients and combinations of minerals to resist the veil of tears without the poisoning by the waiters of the Lord’s Supper. Many good men and women succor the widow, the vulnerable with a bread made with integrity and honor. But the company claim of knowing the bad gatherers, the field hands with harmful intent or evil design is misdirection and disingenuous.

Much will be said about the necklace of millstones applied to individuals while the product labeling and the inspection process remains unchanged. It is consumer beware. Trust your own measurements, your own intuitions. Blind trust in the corporate interests are rife with human defenses, intention about brand above health. The millstone will continue to grind the husk and germ. It will inevitably traverse your house, your granary of faith and doubt. There will be calls to stop the millstone, some will attempt to deflect, destroy, or distance from this simple tool. But fail they will. The germ of truth has been freed from its hard shell of “trust us.” The heart of the flour is your own vigilance, your own responsibility to nurture your life and your family and the community. The loosed millstone is rolling from the eternal hills but not packaged as promoted. The flour of the bread of life is ‘woke:’ open eyed, eared and minded. Let’s make sure the boulder rolled from the empty tomb isn’t a millstone to those hurt and may the burden and depths of the sea welcome those that embrace, as jewelry and adornment, the millstone of deception.

Woman sues the LDS Church, says she was raped by Missionary Training Center president

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org and runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine, is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association and runs a sex education program, Sex Talk with Natasha. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.

2017-07-13T21:32:51-05:00

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Faith Transition Seen Through the Lens of Trauma

Last updated on: July 13, 2017 at 9:32 pm By Natasha Helfer

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Why do faith transitions hurt so badly? Many of my non-Mormon friends don’t seem to understand why a shift in my beliefs is leaving me so depressed and broken? What is wrong with me? Is it normal to take what I feel like is a huge, painful betrayal so hard?

This is absolutely normal. It can affect everything from your identity, to your most precious relationships, to your life choices, to pretty much every aspect of your life. Especially in a religion such as ours where the daily markers are ever present. A colleague of mine has written a poetic and profound piece on the difficulty of such transitions and I’d like to share it as part of the response to your painful questions.

Today’s guest post is written by Dr. Randy K. Moss. Opinions shared on guest posts may not completely reflect the positions of the blog’s author.

Transitioning is a provocative topic. Ripe with formless prospect and embryonic yearning yet burdened with life’s bruises and clawing relationships, this stepping across (L-trans-), as it is so described, is compound. For most, it is anything other than a twinkling of an eye. More a slog through all swamps and backwaters of existence. It is excruciating. Long, grueling, personal, lonely, dangerous, dark, yet compelling — unrelentingly it beckons. The spectrum of faith transitions, to greater or different or uncategorized stages or types of faith, are comprised of the same ingredients: call to your truth, drive for real freedom, need for congruent selves, and integral grounding. Moving and growing within is always hard. Moving on and beyond herculean. Such is the meditation this early morning about my journey from a Zion of flashcard words and flannel board stories to an unpolished, unfinished world filled with souls each trying to make their way — each needing the same air — nobody exempt from the given madness that is life. This waking up as a faith statement — a truth claim borne in the metronome pacing counted in heart beats.

We all arrive into this life bearing certain expectations and mandates: a worldview. We are not blank slates, empty vessels awaiting the world. Biology and evolution have outfitted us with demands and instincts, from the first breath, providing optimum human survival and thriving. When these basic and relatively natural conditions aren’t met, this built in worldview takes a hit. It gets dented. If not restored, it sustains trauma. What does this have to do with my morning musings? Because, as a psychologist who walks with trauma, adversity and souls tattered and wounded by life, I see these dynamics at play. In a favorite book by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman called “Shattered Assumptions” she posits that children hold three basic assumptions:

the world is safe,
I am worthy,
I am powerful.

When children are abused, traumatized, oppressed or subjected to distortion, these assumptions are shattered leaving the children with the fractured worldview –

the world is scary and unsafe,
I am weak and vulnerable, and
I am unworthy and broken.

These are not just constructs projected out onto the world, but the building blocks by which construction of self, relationship, and life are made. Trauma is injurious, damaging the very essence of being and becoming. This shattering is also not limited to traumatic events in childhood. Oppression, hurts, injuries at any time, splinters these worldviews, leaving fixed fundamentals questioned and chaotic vigilance where composure once resided. The unraveling and halting can be abrupt, insidious or fleeting even in adulthood.

Dr. Randy K. Moss

Faith Transition is such a trauma….it is a life trajectory foisted upon most by a series of externals inconsistent with the above three childhood assumptions and the ingredients of healthy being. From the onlooker, it appears voluntary. But it is not. To find the born in safety demand, the worth crowned by existence and the power granted by intelligence and intuition, seeking congruence and respectful freedom is not voluntary. It is a result of psychological disparity and irreconcilable telestial controls done in the name of celestial causes. The questioning – doubt – planned obfuscation – unsafe history discovery fractures trust. Errors, differences, normal behaviors and such were shamed with authority lorded over you grading your worthiness damaging the germ of god within. One noted that for all the might, prayer, and faithful effort one couldn’t forestall suffering, bad health, and tragedy. The illusion of misplaced righteous omnipotence and inability to subjugate the flesh as the pulpit admonishment might lift, left Lerner’s Just World View in ruin. The power endowed was illusion, the price paid into the wrong coffer. The transitioner is sometimes jettisoned and other times GPS’d away from a Faith’s long sculpted assumptions purposeful with meanings meant to safely contain and control but not release one safely. Kauffman, in his edited book “Loss of the Assumptive World” cites authors who lay out what transition from trauma means:

loss of fixed meanings,
scramble for different moral grounding,
mourning for lost potentials,
forgiving unnecessary ascetics,
mastering positive expression of new found freedoms and clarity,
de-compartmentalizing ourselves and the world,
and embracing life shadowed by death without compensation or annihilation.

When one leaves an assumptive world, like a church tradition, an institution that inserts itself into the parental roles from birth and can perpetrate direct and indirect violence against the core of beings, you leave the known for the undetermined. Not just the family and friends that mask and glove around you as if you are contagious, but the very elements of how your world is constructed are disassembled.

This morning I was thinking about my elements undone and now being reassembled. I mused about the myriad of me(s), the set of selves thrust into the world that I am moved to make. The operative word is MOVED and the possessive is I. Fellow faith travelers, your original assumptive worlds are fractured, shattered. You’ve been injured, wounded, and bruised. Realization, embracing, and integrating this realization is the dangerous opportunity of radical conversion. You are not alone.

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org and runs an online practice, Symmetry Solutions, which focuses on helping families and individuals with faith concerns, sexuality and mental health. She hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine and is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association. She has over 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.

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