Episode 194: (Transcript) Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion, Oh My!
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener, Mackenzie Boring, for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on Substack.
CW: Hello, I'm Cynthia Winward. And I'm Susan Hinckley. And this is At Last She Said it. We are women of faith discussing complicated things and the title of this week's episode is Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion, Oh, My! If you've seen the Wizard of Oz, like most people have, then you know it's our version of “lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!” because I feel like we're hitting all these big topics right off the bat here, right in our title. So, Susan, if we are going to talk about mental health, then we're going to have our favorite therapist on, C.A. Larson, welcome.
CA: Thank you.
SH: Welcome, C. A. I have been waiting for this conversation this whole season. As soon as we decided we were going to talk about women's spirituality, I knew that I wanted to have a conversation with you. So we've saved the best for getting toward the end of our season and so excited.
CA: Thank you. I appreciate that.
CW: Do you want to say anything, C. A.? We probably have most of our listeners, longtime listeners now who know who you are, but feel free to just toss out some info about yourself and then we can jump in.
CA: Yeah, no, I think probably most people know me and know that I am speaking out of Arizona and I am a therapist here and I work with a lot of LDS population and so that shows up in my conversations with both of you. And I just am always happy to have this opportunity.
CW: Wonderful. Well, how about we jump right in? Let's just go straight to some definitions first,
C.A. Can you just kind of go through what is religion, spirituality? How are they different? Where do they overlap? Let's just start right there.
CA: Okay, that sounds good. So this is a little academic, but I think it's helpful.
For thousands of years, humanity has pursued truth with a capital T. The ultimate answers to life and the universe. Humans have been asking the questions of who am I? What is my purpose? Where did I come from and where am I going? What is my value? Religions came into existence to answer these questions.
They unite a group of people under the same values and principles and help to facilitate their collective and individual communication with a higher power and/or philosophy. A form of religion is often an objective experience. There is usually a greater focus on the externals. It's often directed to an external practice, object, or figurehead.
Religion is structured frequently, a rule-based construct, that to some degree governs the behavior of its members. Moral rules, laws, and doctrines, as well as specific codes and criteria, create the organized structure that contains the religion's specific belief system. It has helped give society a sense of certainty and helped guide and comfort those whose faith was lacking.
Adam Brady described it as religion being about faith. He describes it as believing in something based upon unconditional acceptance of the religion's teachings. Unlike the scientific worldview, religions don't require evidence to validate their claims. Through religion, you are taught to have faith in God or scriptures as being infallible and ultimate truth of reality. Acceptance and surrender to the divine are taught as the path that leads to ultimate salvation.
Okay, so those are some things about religion. Spirituality, on the other hand, leans more towards self-referral or the internalization of your awareness of your soul. Spirituality is an inward journey that involves a shift in awareness rather than some form of external activity.
Spirituality is more about inner understanding than outer worship. It is focused on your soul, higher self, or the divinity within. Spirituality doesn't diminish faith, however. It often leans more heavily on direct experience of the soul or divinity. Spiritual practices help you to know something because you have tasted the experience yourself and you have allowed it to resonate, as opposed to taking the word of another.
So, there's so many definitions out there of both religion and spirituality. So, I just, I picked some that probably were meaningful to me and hopefully will be to you and the listeners.
[00:05:00]
SH: Well, it feels to me like, I mean, to super simplify it, religion is something that seeks to explain God and spirituality is more something that–where we feel connected to God, the inner experience of God. So it's explaining versus experiencing.
CA: Yes, I like that. And I think over and over again, our talking today will be about that internal versus the external.
CW: That's what I got in your definition, C.A., is one sounded more external than the other. The other one, obviously, spirituality, sounded much more internal.
SH: Okay. But this is where the rubber hits the road for our listeners because, the whole reason we wanted to have this season talking about women's spirituality is that it seems like a lot of women, and I know that this is not unique to our church, have a really hard time separating–those two things.
CA: Yes. And I hope by the time we finish the conversation today, maybe that will be a little bit easier. That, that definitely is the hope. I–it was interesting. We talked about the overlap a little bit, and I thought that was interesting because this was a little bit helpful to me. And I read something that said, “If you're interested in geometry, you can say that spirituality is a rectangle while religion is a square.” This is because spirituality exists in religion, but religious beliefs may not exist inside the boundaries of spirituality.
And, I've also seen a diagram of this where it's a circle within a circle. So the outer–the bigger circle being spirituality and the smaller circle being religion. So one, it can be circumscribed in the other. So, religion's meant to enhance spirituality, it doesn't always work that way, but I do believe that is the intent.
SH: Right. Right, but I think sometimes that circle gets flipped, and people think that spirituality is like a dimension of religion, but religion is meant to be the big circle.
CA: Yes.
SH:That gets emphasized.
CW: I know that resonates with me, Susan, like, just as C.A. was describing those circles, I thought, okay, in my first half of life, I would say the outer circle was religion and spirituality was a smaller circle within, and now it's reversed. Now I consider myself a spiritual person and my religion, you know, choosing to practice within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, is a smaller circle within spirituality. An important one–but within it. So, isn't that funny how…
CA: Yes. How things changes, that whole second half of life thing, right?
SH: Yeah.
CW: Yes. It's been so real for me. So real.
CA: So real. And I don't think it minimizes religion to see it circumscribed that way. I think that maybe, the people might push back a little bit, you know, like, wait a minute, religion is the all important.
But, I think that if you really look at spirituality as the– in kind of the internal growth and manifestation of what you take in from religion and other places, then it makes more sense that it's more expansive, that it's the bigger entity.
SH: Well, and it's also been really helpful to me to begin to see religion as one tool in my toolbox. Instead, I felt like I had to operate within–like religion had me within confines, right? So my relationship with God had to fit within these confines, or any spiritual life that I might have had to fit within that. Whereas now, I feel like I have more control over my spiritual life and religion is one of the vehicles that I can use to explore that.
CA: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. I think one of the questions and I think this kind of leads us down the path of what the differences are between religion and spirituality is how they relate to our connection with our authentic self or whether in our inner self. And I think, that's kind of what you're explaining, Susan, is that becomes a whole, separate part of who you are, that authentic self and that place that holds your spirituality versus the religion, which is just a place where maybe you practice that spirituality or you take in things that might be meaningful and add to that spirituality.
CW: Yeah.
CA: I love that there is a statement that religion is the belief in someone else's experience, where spirituality is having your own experience. That religion follows the messenger and spirituality follows the message. So…
CW: Oh boy, C. A.! That's good, but I could, can you imagine reading that from the pulpit or something like, I mean, you–I don't know if you would read that from the pulpit, but if I did, I would probably get sweaty in my armpits for…while I was saying that, because I know I would be playing with a little bit of fire.
[00:10:00]
SH: Well, I mean, it's pretty hard to argue with though, right? (chuckles)
CA: It is hard to argue.
SH: It's just true!
CW: Uhhh, nice, Susan. (chuckles)
CA: Yeah. Yeah, but we–it's so interesting you would say that, Cynthia, because even just today, as I was going over my notes and thinking about this, something came up for me. And that was–and maybe, I don't know–you guys are younger than I am, so maybe you don't remember this or maybe you've heard about it. But, there was an incident that happened back in 1984. Is this ringing a bell to anyone? Which I think is very interesting that it happened in 1984. Because if you've read George Orwell's book, 1984, you will see the parallel about it being that year and how it eerily reflects what happened with this incident in the church. Do either of you know about this?
SH: I mean, I had not drawn that connection, but I know where you're going, please continue.
CA: Yes. So, in that year, Elder Ronald Pullman gave a talk at General Conference. And in this talk, he suggested–kind of this theme we're talking about today. And that is how does religion teach us about the gospel and help us to discover our spirituality.
He talked about how the church is the delivery system for the message. And, he also said that church practices and culture are diverse and they're not part of the gospel itself.
CW: How dare he!
CA: And he implied that what was important is the gospel, the inner spirituality, and the church is here to facilitate that.
Not that the church is the gospel or that the church is God on earth. But, as you may well know, that talk was redacted almost immediately.
SH: Yeah.
CA: And you can hear both versions of it online, side by side, which is interesting.
CW: We have a link to both because I actually did that–earlier today. I went ahead and I had listened to both versions before the now official version on LDS.org and then his original version, which is like from somebody's VCR tape that of course now everything on people's old VCR tapes end up on YouTube. So, we will link to both because you're right, C.A., the contrast is so stark that—I want to say I'm surprised they would do that, but I'm not surprised that they would do that.
CA: Well, they want, they must have really worried about that message. That message that the church's purpose is to help us become more spiritual because then, down the road, maybe we won't need the church anymore when we have fully embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, so their reduction was basically about making sure that the organization is the focus of our worship and that the church is the kingdom of God and that the leaders are standing basically in place for God and not the message, which I thought was a really beautiful message that he gave.
SH: Right.
CA: It really resonated with me that the message he gave that they didn't like so much. But it's interesting in the re-recording, you can see it's re-recorded because, in the original version, there's an audience you see in the background and there's flowers on the pulpit, and the redacted is just him at the pulpit. You can even tell the difference in the sound because there's not an audience there absorbing the sound. So…
CW: Yeah.
CA: I mean, I don't know if they were trying to, to make it be real. But, anyway…
CW: I'm gonna guess were trying to make it be real, and also, in 1984, there was no internet. And they had no idea that someday this will come back to haunt them because everybody in these fringy Mormon spaces know about the Ronald Pullman talk. So…
SH: I'd love to know what was going on in his head as he was re-recording that. Um…
CW: Yeah.
CA: Me, too.
SH: Yeah, that would be interesting. But I–it's so itchy for me that the church wants to control people's spirituality in addition to their religious practice. But, I mean, I can't draw any other conclusion than that! And, I think that it becomes a real problem because–what we've–this is where worthiness gets tangled up in all of it.
Because in order to feel the spirit in our church, we talk a lot about if you're going to have the Holy Ghost, if you're going to feel the spirit, then you have to be worthy–of that. And so anything that exists outside that worthiness experience, outside the LDS brand of spirituality, using air quotes, anything outside of that isn't real spirituality.
CA: Yes, because if you–but if you don't do that, Susan, if you don't emphasize the worthiness, then everyone can just have their own brand of spirituality, right?
SH: It’s pandemonium.
[00:15:00]
CA: You lose–it's pandemonium. And you lose the structure. You lose the need for, the checkboxes, right? The ordinances, the–all the things that hold it, hold the structure together.
SH: Okay, but a spiritual life can be so—it's so hard for me to think that I spent my life thinking that something that is so huge, beyond the bounds of anything I could really get my head around, something that I should spend a lifetime trying to pursue should be smaller.
CW: Yeah.
SH: That is…
CW: That’s a good way to put it.
SH: That's just painful. It's just painful to me.
CA: It is painful.
SH: It's making the whole thing–well, people talk about putting God in a box and I mean, this is the same. This is another version of the same thing. But we're putting ourselves in a box, really, and our experience of God in a box.
CA: Yeah, absolutely.
SH: That's wounding to me. That’s really hard for me.
CA: Yeah. Yeah. A box is a good way of looking. I always think of it as a mold. I think I'll refer to that where we have to fit into this certain mold.
CW: Oh, there's definitely a worthiness mold. I definitely think that we have pretty strict parameters of what is within–the bounds that makes you worthy and what is outside those bounds that makes a person unworthy. So, yeah. There's no question there for me that there's a mold.
CA: Well, on that I think part of my work with LDS clients oftentimes has to do with the uncoupling, the unpairing of worthiness and spirituality. Because once you tie those two together, you run into all kinds of problems of how people see themselves in their spirituality.
SH: Right.
CA: But, it's always kind of been that way.
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CA: So spirituality has the ability to break free from the restrictions in this rigid structure that we're talking about, which is often associated with traditional religion. It puts us more on a pathless path of self-discovery, not following a set of external rules, but our inner call to the spirit.
Sometimes it feels like a rebellious act of going solo and leaving the tribe. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” I think though, the quote that most resonates with me about this is the one by Joseph Campbell: “If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.”
CW: That is the second time this season we've heard that.
CA: Really? Okay.
CW: Yes. And we need to say it many, many more. ‘Cause yes, if it's laid out before you, it ain't your path.
CA: It's probably not yours. And we really, we’ve–in my faith journey group, we spend a lot of time talking about that because that is so much our experience is just always follow that path, follow that path. That's the right way, you know, so to think that it's not your path–I said in my notes–it's both terrifying and electrifying–because I feel equal measures of both when I think about that.
SH: I think I've experienced both.
CW: I bet that's really helpful, C.A., for a client of yours to actually hear that from a professional that it's terrifying and…sorry, what was the other word?
CA: Electrifying.
CW: Terrifying and electrifying, yeah. “Oh, okay! She's giving me permission that I can feel both of those things at the very same time.”
CA: Yeah. And it's scary.
CW: And it's scary. Yeah. We'll just keep adding on more adjectives onto that.
CA: For sure.
CW: When you talk about spirituality breaking free from the rigidity of religion, it reminded me of an “on being” interview where Barbara Brown Taylor was interviewed and it's about a year old now, but it immediately brought it to mind, and I went back and looked up in the transcript and Barbara said this, she said, “I've been offended by the category of the ‘nones’, the N O N E S –because it sounds like a null set–the whole way for many years that people who were embedded in church communities dismissed the spiritual, but not religious, was being frivolous, non-committed individualists who just wanted to design their own religion.”Gosh, this sounds familiar.
And now, lo and behold, it turns out they're really part of an evolution we're in the middle of. And I hope we find a better word than ‘nones’ to describe them. Not only because they're now 30 percent of the U. S. population.
CA: Yes.
SH: Wow.
CA: Isn't that amazing? And that's so funny because my very next note was about the SBNRs, which are the spiritual but not religious, which maybe that's a better, that's a better an acronym than nones, right?
CW: That is! That's better than none, because, yeah.
[00:20:00]
CA: And again, those things always, I don't know, within the context of our religion, I always found those two things to be so paired together, spiritual and religious. To tease that apart and think about the fact that there's people who are deeper–deeply religious–and not just our religion. I see people of other, especially highly orthodox, high-demand religions that are deeply, devoutly religious, but not necessarily deeply spiritual. And, so, I think if that can be true, the opposite can be true.
CW: Exactly. Exactly. It reminds me of that Richard Rohr quote where he says, “Religion is maybe the best place to hide from God?”
CA: Oh yeah, I like that.
CW: I mean, and that kind of sounds familiar to me because I think for most of my life, I was deeply religious and–yet I felt like a lot of it wasn't chosen by me from within. And so, looking back, I can see ooh, I was a really good rule keeper, hustler, and maybe didn't have a whole lot of inner viewing, which is okay when you're young, but you know, it worked until it didn't.
CA: No, that's a good way to look at it. Instead of beating yourself up for not seeing it sooner or not, having that context for it. I think some things just come from living our lives and having experiences.
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CA: Let's just talk a little bit about fear, shall we?
SH: Let's talk about how terrifying–let's talk about the terrifying part. (chuckles)
CW: Let's talk about the terrifying part. (chuckles)
CA: Let's just go there.
CW: Okay.
CA: All right.
SH: Because my religious life has felt terrifying. I'm not gonna lie. I've had more fear centered in probably the religious part of my life than anywhere else. And I'm a pretty fearful person, so that's a strong statement coming from me.
CA: That is strong. So I think, despite the best of intentions, religions, especially high-demand religions, contain an undercurrent of fear woven into their teachings and requirements for full membership. Original sin, God's wrath, eternal punishment can create an environment burdened in worry and anxiety about retribution in this life and the next. There's a lot of anxiety around worthiness and whether our actions will result in retribution or punishment. What will happen to me in the afterlife? There's a lot of talk about who will reside in the highest degrees of glory and whether there will be empty seats at the table. I have known a number of individuals who fear death because they don't think they have been good enough, even though they're incredible people. And, I think this is a topic that you've probably already discussed on numerous episodes, so, tell me about the connection to that.
CW: Well, just hearing you talk about that, I would say for us, maybe we don't have the concept of original sin necessarily, but I think we have a concept of, I'm just going to go straight to what we call in LDS culture, doctrine, whatever, of worthiness, right? And we've already touched on worthiness and how that the whole worthiness thing can lead to so much fear, like Susan was just alluding to, and maybe like you were saying, C.A., like a fear of death because you feel like you just never quite worthied up, I don't know. I love that every time we have an episode about grace, we just get so much correspondence from women because–and one of our first episodes might've been our second or third actually was episode 41 and we called it grace as the antidote, because I really do believe that grace is the fix to all of that worthiness talk and, cause I really think that's the shadow side of religion. I'm talking all religions here, not just ours, is that we dangle that carrot in front of people and say, “You have to do this to be worthy of God's love, worthy of his grace, worthy of whatever, anything good in your life.” And so, I just think we need to apply a heavy dose of grace to those wounds. And, at least personally speaking, it fixed almost everything, if not everything.
CA: Well, and I think we don't so much focus on original sin, but I think the natural man is an enemy to God is one of our versions of we're–we are not good. Right. Instead of, I believe that each soul is perfect and loved and that sure we, we make mistakes and we do things, but it isn't because we're inherently bad.
[00:25:00]
SH: I'll admit that in, in your notes I had a laugh out loud moment. There's a line in here where it talks about a subtle undercurrent of fear is sometimes woven into religions’ teachings. And, I mean, that just has not felt subtle to me in my religious experience. That has felt like a lot of the whole thing.
And that, and I don't say that because my religion has made me so afraid, right? I did not, I'm not a scrupulosity kind of person. I don't–I didn't have, those kind of problems with it, but like I said, I'm a really fearful person or have been at earlier times in my life. And so I know fear when I see it. I know it when I see it and I could just sense it all the time in so many things. They were asking me to be afraid and so that was really, really hard for me. And then it gets more complicated because an acronym for fear that I saw Anne Lamott allude to the other day in an article is “Fear expressed allows relief.” And I thought, that is the thing, man! I was never allowed to say–anything. I was never allowed to say anything and so it's this double fear whammy in our church because there are all these teachings that I think encourage you to perhaps be fearful about some things and then you're not allowed to say anything out loud about the things that actually do make you–cause you distress, of any kind or discomfort. And then, also it gets compounded. And this is what was crazy making for me–by the fact that we have this message that if you're doing this all right, you shall not fear.
CA: Yes. (chuckles)
SH: And this is how I became a defective Mormon in my own mind. My whole life is I just could not figure out this weird tangle of fear messages and feelings. And I mean, I think people use the term gaslighting way too often, but it sort of felt like me or felt like that to me sometimes when they're telling me, if you're doing this right, you won't be afraid. And also here are all the reasons that you should be afraid.
CA: It's so contradictory. And of course it feels gaslighting.
SH: It’s just this self perpetuating fear cycle that what–that's really been a hard thing to break free of for myself.
CA: Yeah. Well, I think an important piece of that that you're saying, too, is the not having space to have that relief like Anne Lamott said.
CW: Right.
SH: Right. You just never get it.
CA: The not having space for so many things I hear over and over again. There is nowhere to talk about this. There is nowhere to feel this. There's no place for that.
SH: For decades, for some women, for literal decades and decades and decades. There is no pressure relief valve.
CA: Nope.
CW: And I bet you're hearing that a lot, C.A., in your faith journey group? How long has that been going on now?
CA: Yeah, we finished up my first group. We went for about three, a little over three months, three and a half months. Finished up as we were heading into summer. And, so I'll probably start a new one in the fall. But it was amazing, but, yes. And, that's probably the reason it was amazing is to hold that space, that sacred space for people to talk about the fears, everything, anything–anything that's going on and give them a place to be able to express that.
CW: Yeah, a little thing, but a huge thing.
SH: Oh, so huge. The relief can be incredible when you finally get to set something down that you've been carrying for so long.
CW: Yeah. So let's go to spirituality? Should we talk a little bit more–now that we've now that we've gotten the hairiness of religion out of the way.
CA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CW: Let's go to…
CA: Yeah, I think, I mean, the thing about spirituality is that it discards the vestiges of fear and worry in favor of a more loving, compassionate approach. It embraces a consciousness-based worldview that supports all human beings on their path to unconditional love and kindness.
So, basically, we get to kind of make our own choices and we aren't so held back by fear of punishment. And, so, we can turn our focus to love and kindness and trying to create a better world for everyone. And I think that is really the beauty and the amazing place that spirituality is.
CW: Why does that definition sound so healthy to me? Just as you're reading it, C.A., I'm thinking that just makes my shoulders relax a little bit more, and–I'm a person who chooses to remain engaged in religion, right? But, like I was just saying a few minutes ago about grace being the antidote. Like I felt like once I allowed grace to really envelop me and become my main mode of spirituality, then everything that you just said, C.A., seemed to just fall into place. Like, the fear was gone. The worry was gone. Love and compassion moved in. The love for all human beings that I wanted on their path. Like, that's what grace has done for me was that freedom, that it sounds like you're defining in that definition of spirituality. It's beautiful.
CA: No, I love, I love pairing that up with grace.
[00:30:00]
SH: Well, it's really kind of been the same for me. It's leaning into my own spirituality and sort of, I don't know the right way to describe it. I've never stopped being active in the church, so I've not, I've by no means given up my religion, but I had to set it aside for a minute, sort of intellectually, I had to sort of set it aside and lean into spirituality for a while because it felt like the first restful thing that I'd ever found.
Discovering I could be a spiritual person and have this larger spiritual life than I had ever understood I could have, and that was valid, and that I could find connection to God, whereas I had struggled to find that, you know, at earlier times in my life. Learning all that about myself gave me a place to rest and sort of repackage things and sort through things.
And the most surprising thing for me, personally, that I discovered when I did that is that I actually really love religion. I dig religion! And, particularly my own, because, it's my people, it's my stuff, it's all my stuff. But I love religion generally. I'm really interested in the ways that people make meaning out of things and, the ways that that meaning is expressed. That's just something that really interests me about human beings.
So, I love religion and that's important to me. I don't want a spiritual life where I'm just sort of out in the wilderness by myself. I really do like engaging within a framework of something, and so that allowed me to pick or turn back toward my religion–I guess I'll say I was gonna say pick it back up, but I never really set it down. I just sort of had to set it aside and taking it up more actively and reengaging with it. I was able to do that, but my motivations at that point had completely changed. And that changed my experience of it because I had to learn connecting to God first, someplace else, unfortunately. My religion had not really gotten me there. And it's not because I hadn't tried. I had done all the things for all the years, but I didn't really get the spark there. Once I had the spark, I was able to go back and sort of infuse my religious practice with the things that I could bring to it myself now.
CA: So did that change your engagement with it, Susan?
SH: It actually did because I sometimes am able to feel a little bit more like an observer. Like, I can appreciate that–this–as something that I'm observing. This is one way of approaching God. This is something that's been–a framework that's been developed by human beings looking for a connection with God. And I can appreciate it from that perspective, even if it's–even when things happen that are not my way. It's just sort of made more space. It's almost like there's less pressure riding on it somehow. And it also changed the way that my motivations–for the ways that I interact with people generally, I have to say, and that actually has helped. I feel more loving to other people now that I understand how God loves me and that extends to my brothers and sisters in my ward. Even though some of them are crazy. I'm not gonna lie. Arizona got some crazy people, C. A.
CA: Yeah, you are right. (chuckles)
CW: But they're your crazy people, Susan.
SH: They are my crazy people.
CA: Special kind of craziness.
SH: Exactly, but I've learned more about love, and learning more about love has helped me learn how to Mormon better, honestly. It really has. Yeah. That's how it's worked for me.
CA: It's interesting that you–your journey was that you found other places to connect with God and then you could bring God back with you to your religion. Which is again, I think the important thing about that no religion owns God, so we can take him wherever we go or we can find him at other places and bring him with us. And so, I like that connection.
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CA: There was a quote I read when preparing for this that really struck me and I think it was partially because of some of my relationship with the church and it was that a religious person will do what he is told no matter what is right, whereas a spiritual person will do what is right no matter what he is told.
And, I think I've had a push-pull relationship with the church around some of those things, especially some of the policies and things in the church that didn't resonate with me, and that I couldn't hold and support in the way that maybe some people thought I should, or that, the judgment piece or whatnot.
And, so, it really, that really helped me to let go of a burden of not doing things that you have been told. So are you in the wrong because someone else believes that's what you should be doing versus following your heart and doing what you think is right. So, again, hard because we don't really give space for that, veering off the path a little bit or even just making choices that feel right for you.
[00:35:00]
And, I think that what that made me realize is just how spiritual–spirituality is personal. And that even with the exact same teachings, we can all interpret things individually through our own lens, our own filter, and that we have our own concept of the divine, even within the same religion. And I hear those things all the time on your podcast. I hear people talking and I think, “Huh, that's interesting way of looking at that. That's not exactly how I see it.” But, I love hearing other people's ways that they interact with their beliefs and their religion and the divine. One of the things that it made me think of was kind of a personal family story.
I think I made reference once before on the podcast about the fact that my husband, while he was a missionary in Argentina, he and his companion were kidnapped and held by terrorists, and while he…
SH: I want to know more. I wanted to know more then. Now I really want to know more.
CA: I mean, it's a really long story, so we'll have to get together and tell it sometime, but it has some just amazing pieces to it, and one of them is about the man who actually saved their lives. And his name was Abel. And he was a devout Catholic, and he had been hired with a group of local men to guard my husband's companion, who they'd put in a pit in the jungle. And so, he was one of the guards and he was going through his daily ritual of his rosary and his Catholic things. And later, because we luckily got to meet and know him later on in life, he says that as he was doing that, he had a vision. And in that vision, an angel came and stood before him and told him that he couldn't–he could not go along with what they were doing and holding these prisoners and that he needed to go and tell the authorities. But his angel was an angel with wings.
And I've always loved that part of the story that his vision was an angel with wings holding a double edged sword, telling him that I will protect you, but this is what you need to do, right? And so for me, that is a beautiful example of how we experience spirituality, how we experience the divine, how we experience these religious experiences based on what our foundational pieces are in religion and our beliefs, right?
So, it wasn't the Mormon angel that came to him, right? They don't have wings. So it was the Catholic angel that came to him, right?
SH: I love that story so much.
CA: But, I just thought that was such a wonderful thing that I thought of that and other things that people have told me about their experiences with spirituality and inspiration and dreams and visions and whatnot, and all of them come in the framework of their beliefs, and even within the same religion, I think people can have such varied experiences. But then when you go from religion to religion, there's even more so.
SH: Right, huge.
CA: So, I learned something from that. And, it makes me realize that in my own life that I get to have responsibility and authority for my own life. And I get to listen and follow and find that truth within myself. Marcel Proust said, “We do not receive wisdom. We must discover it for ourselves. After a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.” So, I love the idea of taking that personal responsibility.
CW: Yeah, it sounds common sensey, C.A., and yet for some of us, it's the hardest thing we have ever done. Owning my own spirituality has probably been one of the hardest things I have ever, ever done because I had to, well, Susan, like a few minutes ago, you said you had to intellectually set aside, kind of the organization of the church, maybe you still were going every Sunday, but intellectually, you had to set it aside for a little bit. And that just rings so true to me, and...
SH: Well, and I think there would be many members, probably, there would be many members, probably, who would be saying to us right now, I didn't experience that at all. I always felt like I had permission. I, you know…
CW: Cool!
SH: Yeah. I always felt encouraged to develop my own spiritual life and all of these things. And I'm thrilled if our church delivered that for some people, but my experience of it was not that. So I'm willing to make room for the idea that the church even intended for us to develop that kind of spiritual autonomy. But for some reason, the message didn't get to me.
[00:40:00]
CA: You and a lot of others, because I get the opportunity to talk to people frequently about that, and about us kind of giving that autonomy to another source. To–we outsource it, we outsource. And I think there–I agree with you, Susan, that there are probably people who have felt that all along and have walked their own path. I know some of them, but I think there's a great deal of people that have said to me, I had no idea who I was on the inside, who my core self was, where am I–what my spirituality was. I'd never really thought I had permission to explore that, or I just was never guided to explore that until something. Right? Something happens. So…
CW: Until something brings you to your knees at least for me you know when you're praying to the god of the bathroom floor, at least for me. That's when I was like, “I am so broken. I have got to do something differently.” So, I mean, for some people it might just be natural. And then for others, they–we have to fall and break apart before we are willing to do things differently.
CA: Yeah. I think that's often what brings us to that moment.
CW: Probably.
CA: We run into a wall or we break down and then we have to think of things differently or do things differently. So…
And I think part of that, part of the problem is that I really know that I believed when I was growing up that my–if I was not perfect in my practice of my religion, which included the checklist and obedience, that I was not spiritual. Because for me, spirituality equaled righteousness. So I've asked a lot of people that question and for–not everyone says, “Oh, absolutely.” But a lot of people, a lot of people say, yeah, those two are absolutely inseparable.
CW: For sure!
CA: That's where that mold comes in. Like when I was trying so hard to fit into that perfect model of an LDS woman, doing all the right things, all the ordinances, all the callings, all the awards, I felt more and more disconnected from my core self and my true spirituality.
CW: That resonates for me that the spirituality equals righteousness thing because–dang it, I could righteous out my little heart. Like, I could just be the most righteousest of righteous and yet, I felt like, and we said this, I love that we're talking about women's spirituality this season, ‘cause I think we kicked off within our first couple of episodes, Susan, this season, with me saying even in my own church, I didn't feel spiritual, like no matter what I did. I kept trying to figure out what–what was defective about me that I didn't feel spiritual. And, recently I confessed, I'll tell you this story, C.A., and I guess all our listeners, like I was texting Susan and I said in the late nineties, I had read an article in the Ensign that talked about, if we aren't having many spiritual experiences, or if we're not feeling the spirit influencing our life, look at your life and see what those barriers are. Like media. And so I remember I had just started watching–so funny! I just started watching the popular television show, Friends. And there's a lot of sexual content in that show, right? And so I thought, well, this must be it. This must be part of it. And so I stopped watching that show. And so to this day, when everyone talks about, Friends, cause now it's nostalgia, I have no idea what they're talking about, because I was like, I need to ramp up my righteousness and that will solve my spirituality problem. So, absolutely C.A.! Spirituality equals righteousness. For me, hands down. Math formula. That's what I was hustling for, for sure.
CA: Yeah, me too. I didn't give up Friends, though. (chuckles)
CW: Well, I didn't give up Seinfeld, but I think Seinfeld went over my head, because that's my favorite. So who knows? I don't–I was grasping at straws here. We'll see.
CA: But so many other things, like, I must not know the scriptures well enough. I must not pray long enough. I must not pray intently. I must not–I must have kissed my boyfriend too long. I must have, you know, I mean, there's, there was always something. There were always so many things that I could point out that this is keeping me from being really spiritual.
CW: You and me. Well, maybe Susan too. (chuckles)
SH: Well, yeah, I mean, we are, you and I have already talked about it this season, Cynthia, the way that that was sort of the same for us, but also different, because I felt faith deficient as a Mormon, I really felt defective, like I said already earlier in this episode I just did.
And that–when that happens for you, then it's pretty hard to have any trust in your own spirituality or anything you experience. I can't be doing this right, obviously. I'm defective, right? And then, it's pretty hard to make any kind of really soul-feeding connection with anything I would describe as a loving God. So, I was like missing all the good news. I was missing all the juicy good fruit parts of my religious life or what it could have been because I started with this bottom line assumption that I'm faith defective somehow.
CA: Do you know where that came from, Susan?
SH: I think it came from the fact that I was so afraid in my life all the time, even though I was trying to do everything right. And if you do everything right, you shall not fear. That was a really foundational…
CW: Sounds like it…
[00:45:00]
SH: …part of my life from the time I was a very young child. That there were things in my life that I couldn't get rid of–hard things I couldn't get rid of, no matter how good I was. So I must not be doing it right. And also, I struggled to fit the mold. And, so, why was it so hard for me to fit the mold, right? I must not be doing it right. Even though I was doing all the things they were telling me, something about it must not be right. It's like you were just saying, C. A., maybe if I read the scriptures longer, maybe if I prayed longer. I didn't know what I was doing wrong, specifically. There was nothing I could identify. I only knew that my outcome was not what everyone else seemed to be having or what the ideal was presented to me as. And so therefore, the problem had to be with me.
CA: It's hard when it just feels embedded and you can't even identify, “What could I do differently and this would change?” But, I think all of us have a little bit of the experience of we couldn't really identify what it was that we needed to do to make that different except for somehow under the cloak of being righteous, right?
SH: Right.
CW: Well, that's a never ending list. The list to be righteous. There is no end to that. There's always something more we could be doing. And that's why I have a problem with the scripture. After all we can do, it's like, who the heckety heck does everything after–who does all we can do? Nobody. We're human, nobody. So then you just, like Susan was saying, you start looking inward. It must be me, it must be me.
CA: Yeah. And I think, it is no wonder that our church has a high degree of people with scrupulosity and religion, religiosity, because those are, that's the-exactly what you're describing, Cynthia, is what creates that environment to move into that, like , “I'm going to be hyper-focused and do all these things because then maybe, maybe I'll be good enough. Maybe I'll be righteous enough.”
____________________
CA: Okay. So, I think we can sometimes go a step further and talk about how spirituality can break us free from restrictions and rigid structure that is sometimes associated with traditional religion, often associated with traditional religion. And that religion can be a vehicle, but it's not the destination.
And what we only–we are on is a path of self-discovery. And so there's no external rules. But only our inner call to ourselves and what we really believe and what resonates with our souls.
SH: Now, this just has me thinking. This has me thinking. I mean, I never want to ascribe nefarious sort of, motives to church things. I don't like to do that. I like to be very generous in my assumptions. But I feel like as an LDS woman, in particular, there is no path of self-discovery. So my question is, has the church designed it this way specifically? I can't help but thinking.
CW: That's a whole other show.
SH: Yeah, to sort of keep us from going down that path.
CA: I think so. I mean, just because and I don't think it may not be nefarious. It may be more in keeping with what we talked about at the beginning of needing structure and needing people to follow because otherwise how could–things quickly crumble if everyone's kind of on their own journey of self-discovery and there was no coming together with common goals and things to learn and grow together. That it might just be the reason they redacted Ronald Pullman's talk is because he was leading us down that pathway of self-discovery.
CW: And, also just even as you've used that phrase self-discovery, I thought there cannot be a more ‘woo woo’ phrase for us as Latter-day Saints, because I have never in my entire churchy career heard that phrase self-discovery. That is not something that we talk about. And I think that's why that is actually so applicable to why we have been wanting to talk about women's spirituality this season. Because, like Susan, I don't think it's nefarious. I just think when you have one type of demographic in charge–white men of a certain generation–they are going to teach all of us this is the one way. And for those of us who just don't fit that demographic, then it feels like we're being rebellious when really it's just self-discovery.
SH: I feel like it's even clamped down tighter on women than on men, though, because our roles are so assigned, we don't even get to explore all of our educational opportunities or career opportunities in the ways that we might.
CW: Hands down, Susan.
SH: If, right. So, I mean, I just feel like we start shutting that down–avenues of self-discovery–we shut that idea down pretty young for girls in the church.
CA: Yeah, we do because of what you just said.
[00:50:00]
SH: Well, ouch! I don't like that. I don't want to be right, friends. I don't want to be right.
CA: Yeah.
SH: Whether that happens by design or whether it's just, you know, an effect of the culture that has–that develops within a religion, I don't know. So, I'm not sure anyone ever planned it that way, but I see that that very much is the effect in girls’ lives.
CA: Well, and I do think there's–they feel like there's danger maybe in women exploring too much and going too far because maybe what you find will be that there is a career that is calling you or there are things that you feel that are outside the molds that you really should be exploring and learning and doing and I think that's–that rocks the boat.
SH: Right.
SH: Yeah, no, looking at you, Heavenly Mother, because, yes. I mean, this really leads to large things when you start thinking about women venturing off on their own.
CA: Yes, definitely.
SH: So much to think about there.
CA: So much to think about there. And, just to add a little bit of a spiritual note to it too, it also made me think about who Christ was when he was in his ministry and it wasn't about these external things. He was pretty anti-establishment. He was pretty against the leaders of the day. And, he always put people above rules. He was about the message and not the messenger. He was about the internal, so much less about the external, and above all, he was about love. And I think he supported, you know, those principles, I think, support this idea of internal and finding ourselves in self-discovery.
SH: Yeah. Well, the kingdom of God is within you. It can't really be more explicit than that, right, in his message.
CA: Right.
SH: Right. But that's, it hasn't felt that way to me.
CA: And I think this maybe leads a little bit into a segue into the mental health component of what we're talking about today. And, that is that, without that, we don't have a lot of means to take care of the wounding that we all have as we go through life.
Because if we don't have a rich internal experience to fall back on, to help us, to heal, to help us stay the course when we're walking through difficult experiences so that we have those–that inner strength to walk through the storm and know that we'll come out on the other side and be okay. And, that that's the only way that we build our internal resources is by being able to know and go there and have that strength. And, I see that is lacking because we have not been encouraged to do that.
CW: I'm just kind of having a moment here, though, as I'm thinking about–to be mentally healthy, we have to consider spirituality. And of course, like we've been talking about this whole episode, that can be done in a religion. It can be done outside of a religion. Maybe it doesn't matter too much. It's up to the individual. I don't know. But just that spirituality. How essential that is for our mental health.
And I think it's interesting because if you think about AA, right, Alcoholics Anonymous, they talk about a higher power. They don't necessarily define higher power, but I mean, I remember Brene Brown once saying that for her dad, his higher power was fishing, and I thought, boy, that just proves how different we all are because I hate fishing. I grew up fishing my entire life. My parents dragged us all over the state of California and Southern Utah fishing, and I hated it. And so, I just think that would not be my higher power.
And, obviously, as a Latter day Saint podcast, we tend to define higher power, as our heavenly parents. And so, I just think how individual even defining what a spiritual, spiritually healthy person is can be so different for each of us. And there's overlap, probably a lot of overlap for us in the LDS community, but not necessarily, like, we all get to define our higher power how we choose to. For the angel that appeared, right, in your story earlier, C.A., that angel had wings. So, it's all different for each of us.
CA: Well, I think it shows how much more expansive–going back to the diagram of spirituality and religion–how much more expansive spirituality is because it does take in our connection with nature, our connection with other people, our connections–to all those things. Not just our relationship with God or what we see as our higher power.
[00:55:00]
SH: It gets really tender for me when we get into the area of mental health, because you know I'm a person who's had some significant mental health challenges throughout my life. And, so, when I see a sentence like you have in your notes here if one is religious, but not spiritual, it will not enhance mental health.
And I think of myself as a Latter day Saint woman who was sort of spiritually stunted, really, within my religion. I mean, I really do feel like it stunted my growth. I wasn't encouraged to grow in those ways, or I didn't find that kind of growth within the Mormonism that I lived as I–or that I had experienced. It's really tender for me to start to consider where that has tied into my mental health, and I really don't have those answers. But, I know that there are connections to be drawn there. And I do have to sort of mourn that a little bit and I handle it very carefully. I handle it carefully. Those are knots that I'm unpicking really slowly and with great care in my own life.
CW: Yeah. I think you're handling it really gracefully, Susan, ‘cause I'm your friend. So, I hear a few things on the–off the mic about this, and I'm always impressed how gracefully you seem to be untying those knots. That's hard work.
SH: It's sad. It's sort of a grieving process. Honestly, it's like a grieving process. Because sometimes I come across things where I think, “Oh, oh. This explains something to me, right?” Something that I had ascribed to a different cause, I now see another possible cause here. And, that is–that's really,really hard.
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CA: Just to–kind of a side note about mental health and spirituality, there's a lot of studies that have been done, but most of them–I read a lot a lot of studies, but most of them were not within the last few years and a lot of them combine religion and spirituality as one entity.
SH: Right.
CA: And so, you know, of course, it comes out positive. Religion and spirituality comes out positive in reflection of mental health because of things like providing community and making meaning in life and having support during difficult times and answers to philosophical questions, a place to practice caring for others, rituals, places to gather and worship, add structure to one's life. And, there was a lot. Those are ones I just kind of picked up on.
SH: And, I mean, that’s all good, right?
CA: That’s all good!
SH: I mean I can see why it comes out on the plus side, right?
CA: ‘Cause those are all good. But I think the interesting thing is that we are just starting to talk more about separating religion and spirituality and talking about high-demand religions and how people fare with their mental health in those religions.
And, I think a lot of those things that we have kind of put in that whole blanket together, start to fall apart a little bit because there's just things that are uniquely challenging when it comes to maintaining emotional health when you are in a religion that requires a lot of specific things from you and, like, we were talking about the woman's roles and, like, looking at it like things like temple, and that what it requires to go to the temple what it requires to be a fully active, engaged member of the church and the stakes are pretty high. And so if it doesn't work in one area, then that starts to crumble and take a toll on individuals’ mental health, because there's just a lot of things that kind of separate them from themselves.
CW: I have a question for you, C.A.. I love that you're saying that we're starting to make a distinction now between like high-demand religion, as opposed to, I don't know, generic religion where you just show up a few times a year, I don't know.
CA: Yeah, yeah.
CW: And so my question for you as a mental health therapist is, I know you see a lot of clients that are LDS, but I know you also see other clients that are from other high-demand religions. And so I'm wondering for the people who are not part of a high-demand religion–and maybe religion doesn't ever come up because maybe it doesn't factor into their mental health or the reason they're even coming to see you. But I guess my question sort of is, do you–can you really see that difference between clients who come from a high-demand religion versus those who were just a few times a year, or maybe even just one hour a Sunday, but they didn't have to do much else. I–it's kind of a weird question, but…
[01:00:00]
CA: No, yes, absolutely. And I would say though, that I always feel like spirituality in whatever form a person resonates with that, that that's a part of healing. So it almost always is a part of the work we do. It's about exploring where they find meaning and how what their resources are to help them if they're going through a grieving process or a difficult life experience. And so, it almost always comes up. And yes, I do see a difference between those in high-demand religions where they, again, it's that whole thing about not being enough. It's the whole righteousness equals spirituality equation of never feeling good enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not this enough or whatever, because there are so many specific things, not just, “Hey, show up on Christmas and Easter,” or even ones that attend every week. But just, it's just to the–I think to them, it's more, they go and they get something, a message or whatever, and then they take that and they go out and live their life. Whereas these high-demand religions, everything about their life is circumscribed by the religion.
CW: Oh, yeah. That makes sense. But I love that you, when with clients, it sounds like you really try to help them tap into whatever spirituality they have, that's been a foundation maybe in their life that maybe you can work from, because it sounds like that's really what you're saying is how connected our mental health and spirituality really are. So, however that resonates for them, maybe it's fishing, right? Maybe it's, God. Maybe it’s…
CA: Yeah, for sure.
CW: You know, whatever.
CA: But–and that I think brings us to also where the pathway of spirituality and self-discovery meet. Because I think in trying to identify what brings meaning to their lives and what their–maybe belief system is it also is a big part of them knowing themselves and what's important to them and what matters and how they're living their lives.
So, I think that that's where that self-discovery piece is so important in connection with the spirituality. So the thing about high-demand religion or religion itself–cause it isn't just high-demand–I mean, you think about all the horrible things that have happened in our world in the name of religion and some of those are high-demand religion, but some of them are just people using that as an excuse to hurt other people, right? Or to conquer or to, you know–and so there are so many ways where religion has played a role in doing damage in people's lives. You know, whether it's those big things or it's individual experiences.
And, we have talked about having another opportunity to talk about those things, so I'm not going to go into those in great detail, but instead, I would like to just say a few things that I think that I see affect daily mental health. So I'm going to, I'm going to separate the kind of trauma and abuse things from just daily mental health.
CW: Okay.
CA: One of the first things that came to mind was we did two episodes together on guilt and shame, and I don't think it's too difficult to make the correlation between how these things don't support good mental health.
So, reflecting back on that, I think that guilt and shame show up a lot when we're working on struggles with mental health. I hear a lot of stories about where someone listened to an authority rather than to themselves and it didn't go very well. I hear people have the belief I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy to be healed from physical illness or mental illness that I struggle with.
I hear people talk about how they feel like people have used religion as a way to be better than other people. About people praying for an answer, but if it isn't the one that is supported by leaders in the church, then it's wrong. And that leads to not trusting oneself and one's own relationship to God.
And women will say,”I'm only as good as my husband and my children are because I'm responsible for getting them to the highest degree of heaven.” And women feel like they're responsible for everyone. Right?
SH: We've come to the lie down part of the episode.
CA: Yes!
SH: That’s what I was going to say. This is it, right here. (chuckles)
CA: This is it.
SH: Oh, man. This is it.
[01:05:00]
CA: The next one I call the social media effect. It's the one where everyone around you looks so good. Their children are so perfect. They serve constantly. They have important colleagues. Comparison is truly the thief of joy, not to mention the thief of being emotionally healthy. Women are to be seen or not seen or heard, and that suppression can lead to a lot of internal struggles.
Now, I'm going to give a nod to the men. Because the men, I know most of your listeners are women, but, men also have mental health challenges when it comes to religion and spirituality. They feel pressure to be successful. They feel pressure to provide. And, most importantly, they feel pressure to have the important callings. And that there are only a few alpha males in the church who will rise to the very top.
The prosperity gospel. I know we sometimes don't like to think that that's a thing, but it is a thing. And it really, really causes a lot of stress for people and a lot of anxiety. People sometimes feel like they're second-tier Mormons. They don't have the right pedigree, the right connections, the right children, the right marriage.
So they're always feeling like they're not good enough. Missions. Missions are so stressful. I see so much anxiety and depression coming out of missions. And the safety issues that I feel like we're hearing more and more about, and I always believed existed but were not talked about. And, seeing a lot of people that come out of those experiences with PTSD, another mental health challenge.
And this one is probably maybe one that we don't also really look at or see and that is, what is it like to be an introvert in a church that really supports extroversion? What is it like to be in a church where…
SH: I wonder… (chuckles)
CA: Yeah! Can you think about that?
CW: Susan wonders!
CA: A play–in a place where we're expected to speak out and we're expected to talk and we're expected to give prayers. We're expected to go into other people's homes!
SH: So many things.
CA: That seems like just a no big deal, right? Because we do that all the time. But that is not easy for introverts to put themselves out there that way. And to not just be appreciated for the amazing people they are because they don't fit again into that mold that has been prescribed.
So, again, I don't want to just focus on the negative, but I do think that we headed into this saying that we would talk about what the challenges are with mental health. So, before I flip that around and talk a little bit about positive, is there anything you want to say about that long list I just read?
SH: Just wow. Just wow.
CW: Well, Susan's lying down by now, so I'll…(chuckles)
SH: No, on the introvert thing, though, when you said that, I hadn't really thought about it, but when you asked me why was that earlier that I felt like I was defective, one–that's one of the reasons I internalized that because church was so hard for me on every level. Everything they asked me to do was hard and I thought, man, if I were doing this right, if I were a good person–if I were a good person–this would not be so hard for me. Never occurred to me that there were just some basic personality differences there. And, yeah. I wish someone had explained that to me when I was about three.
CA: I know.
SH: That would have helped a lot.
CA: Yeah. That's when you wish you'd read the book Quiet by Susan Cain much earlier in life.
SH: Exactly. Yep. Exactly.
CA: It explains so much.
SH: Should have been my bedtime story.
CW: The Church of Jesus Christ of Extroverted Saints. That’s really, we…
SH: Yeah.
CA: Yes! It is!
CW: We cater so well to extroverts. And I really think that's why, for me, the church worked fabulously until I was 40, because I am the extrovert who's like, “Ooh, visiting teaching! More friends! I get to go and make more friends!”
And, anyway, there are just so many ways the church has just been nothing but a blessing in my life, but probably more so because I'm wired that way. And it kind of broke my heart when I finally realized that. And I looked around at people like my husband and others who I love who are introverts, and I could see like sometimes even when my husband makes a comment in church, his hands are shaking.
SH: Hmmmm…
CW: And I think, wow, this is really hard for so many of us.
SH: Are you telling me you don't shake when you make a comment at church? Is that what you're saying to me right now? Are there some people out there having that experience? Come on! What kind of privilege are you living with? (chuckles)
CW: Only if I'm being really racy in my comments, Susan. But no, for the most part…
CA: Then you shake!
CW: Exactly. Yeah. So, I can totally see how being an introvert in an extrovert church could affect your mental health because once again, you would say, “It's me. It’s me. It's too hard to do my visiting teaching, my home teaching, my calling, giving a talk, a lesson…”
CA: So many things.
CW: Calling people to see if they did their visiting teaching or, these are past programs, but the list goes on.
SH: Oh yeah. The worst nightmare job, the phone call job.
CA: The phone call jobs are the worst.
SH: Wait, I just got a calling! I think we talked about that. That ended–I didn't realize it–but it ended up being a phone call job. And it was the first time in my life that I had already accepted the calling, but I had to call back and say, you know what? I can't do it. Yeah, I can't do it. That's not for me. Yeah.
CA: No. Luckily, we have texts now because those are way better, aren't they?
SH: Much better.
CA: If I can text someone then it's like, oh yeah, I'm going to do that.
SH: Much better.
[01:10:00]
CA: Yeah. Avoid the phone call. So, I think we've covered a little bit about what the positive things about religion are, and so–and how they enhance mental health. But I think, just a quick statement of like, a lot of those things when we talk about community, those are helpful in mental health issues with releasing anxiety and providing some stability and having some clarity of thoughts and emotions when you have people that you can sit with and talk about things that you're struggling with.
Rituals and practices, those actually have been proven to calm down the nervous system. Therefore, that eliminates stress. And feeling loved and supported by a community–that definitely can help us feel more peaceful and calm. It can help with loneliness. I see, people who live alone and the only interaction they have with other people is their weekly trip to church, maybe to the grocery store, but that can be really important. And, especially if they feel like they're there with people who care about them and with like-minded people. So, it doesn’t work for everyone, but it does work for some people and even feedback from other people–people who don't have a community, don't have an opportunity to get feedback in any form and a place where we practice, right? We practice service. We practice understanding. We practice patience. There's a place–there's things that are helpful and do benefit our mental health that we find there. So, I wanted to make sure I gave a nod to that.
SH: It’s part of why we're here.
CA: Yeah. So I guess the last question was –that I posed was just like, in order to heal, do we have to reject our faith system? And I think, we've probably addressed that, but I just want to say again, that sometimes it's true. Sometimes we do, sometimes we have to do what Susan said and just set it aside, or put it over here for a little bit while we sort through some things. And for other people, they need to totally deconstruct. They need to take it apart piece by piece. And oftentimes I've sat with someone who has done that and we kind of look around at the rubble and then they–and I say, are there any pieces that you want to pick back up? Are there any pieces that you want to use in your reconstruction? And sometimes the answer is, “Nope, I don't think so. I think I need to start over from scratch.” But often–often there's something. There’s something that like, this is one thing I loved. And so I'm going to take that and I'm going to put that in the new foundation of what I'm rebuilding.
CW: Beautiful.
SH: Love it.
CW: Yeah.
CA: Yeah, so I don't think religion sets out to be inherently harmful or that it will absolutely result in trauma or other mental health issues. I think there's all these positive things that come from it, but I think there is the risk and there is harm that is prevalent, especially as we talk about high-demand religions. So we'll talk about that another day.
SH: Looking forward to it, kind of. (chuckles)
CW: Kind of.
SH: Looking forward to that conversation, kind of.
CW: Do you have any last words for us, C.A. before we turn off the mics?
CA: Well, I had some things because oftentimes I think what women–LDS women will say, like, how do I begin a spiritual practice? How do I develop that? And because it's such an inner thing, it's really hard to give a checklist of the formula. We're so good. We're so good at wanting those, like, “Don't you have a manual for me? Don't you have a manual that you could give me that I can check off how to go on this journey of self-discovery and develop my spirituality?” But, I think we've hit on some of the things that are important. And again, I think it's about looking around and saying, “What are the things that are meaningful to me? And how do I then incorporate those in this journey that I'm on in self-discovery?” And, just a final quote, Marianne Williamson said, “The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourself and others is the meaning of life.” It's a good way to start our journey.
CW: Thank you! Thank you!
SH: Thanks, C.A. Yeah, of course.
End of official episode.
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[01:15:00]
VOICEMAIL 1: Two years ago, I was in a stake leadership training. The meeting was full of PowerPoint presentations about the numbers, and the stake president kept going on about how it isn't about the numbers, but of course everything that followed was numbers. He was putting charts and data and everything was about the Melchizedek Priesthood holders, potential elders, and not a single equivalent list of how to track the sisters.
So, even though I was in the Relief Society presidency and my focus should have been on the women, I was being asked to track the men and how can we make them more involved. The thing that made me most angry was when he said that our job as women was to secure our families and get young men on missions.
And he explicitly said that our success as good women of Christ would be measured by our children's activity in the gospel. My eyes immediately darted to one of the counselors in the Stake Relief Society presidency. I knew her well, and none of her children are active. I wanted to stand up and yell at him that only Christ can save us, not the moms, and that agency is one of the most important pieces of God's plan.
But to my utter shame, I sat silently in that awkwardness, and I watched my friend's head drop to her chest as she quietly cried.
No more. Thank you for being amazing examples of the power of saying things at last.
VOICEMAIL 2: Loveliest of ladies, I love your show. It has been a lifeline, a spiritual lifeline to me as I've been going through my faith transition. I read your list of books that you recommend, and I have two more that I would like to recommend to you, especially because you've been talking about the scriptures and women in scriptures.
The first one is Women in a Patriarchal World, 25 Empowering Stories from the Bible. There are 11 from the Old Testament and 14 from the New Testament. And this is by Elaine Storkey. I cannot recommend it enough.
The other one that I can totally recommend is the Women's Bible Commentary, Expanded Edition with the Apocrypha, by Carol A. Newsom. And Sharon, I'm thinking it's Ring? Iit also is just really amazing. So I just thought I'd pass that on and hope that you will find them as inspiring as I do.
CLOSING CREDITS