There are two kinds of spiritual death. One is when an individual becomes overwhelmed to the point that they “allow despair to overcome [their] spirit.” In this first case, the sufferor wishes to overcome their pain.
The second form of spiritual death is when an individual has allowed their love for God to diminish to the point that they no longer believe in that which was precious to them (or their ancestors) in the past. In this second case, the afflicted person may not even wish to overcome their alienation, seeing themselves instead as having overcome the superstitions of the past.[ref]In this I am influenced by Notre Dame’s recent National Study of Youth and Religion, indicating a majority of those who leave their youthful faith tradition for unbelief are raised in homes where the parents are casual in their belief, homes where the young people themselves report that they have not had significant spiritual experiences. This is also influenced by the Pew Research findings that Mormons who leave their faith tradition are unusually likely to abandon religious belief entirely.[/ref]
The four therapeutic skill sets used to treat those in emotional pain are:
- Learning to tolerate distress
- Learning to regulate emotions
- Learning to live in the present (versus obsessing about the past or angsting about the future), and
- Learning to be effective in interpersonal interactions.
Whether concerned with our own possible spiritual death or attempting to cope with the spiritual death of a loved one, these same skills can help us as we move forward.
A Brief History of Psychotherapy leading up to the good stuff, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT)[ref]I first tumbled across DBT a few months ago and was fascinated by its applicability to the angst recently expressed by the “bloggernacle.” If you are interested in learning more on the internet, I recommend the DBT Self Help website. If you prefer to read books, I particularly recommend The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook.[/ref]
In the late 1800s, Sigmund Freud pioneered the field of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. The suffering patient would speak their stream of consciousness thoughts, enabling the doctor to understand the complex psychic interactions causing symptoms, such as depression. Traditional psychoanalysis was more effective than the hypnotism that had been used previously, but it was not unknown for an individual to spend years in therapy with no significant relief.
By the 1970s those who preferred direct treatment of the thought patterns (cognition) and behaviors associated with suffering became prominent. This Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT viewed disorders such as depression as an avoidance response to feared stimulus (think if Pavlov had beaten his dogs instead of feeding them). The key was to determine the linkage and help the patient think in ways that changed a person’s behavior. CBT was effective in treating numerous disorders that had proven resistant to traditional psychoanalysis.
The problem with simple CBT is that it didn’t help people who risked killing themselves. Dialectical behavior therapy was developed for chronically suicidal individuals, but has proven to be effective with any situation where emotional distress is a factor, as in anxiety, grief, and depression.
Why Might Mormons be currently experiencing Anxiety, Grief, Depression, or a desire to Leave the Church?
The past five years have been unusually challenging. Let me recap some of the challenges that might cause individual members more pain than they anticipated.
Death of the Traditional Family. The vast majority of couples continue to be heterosexual, but legalization of same gender marriage by judicial fiat has taken many by surprise. Perhaps more grieving has been the painful distance between the Church’s stance on family (that it remains a heterosexual, conjugal-based institution in the eyes of God) and the prevalent view of the Western World that marriage and sexual activity should include same gender instances, as well as the possibility of polyamory. On an individual level, it is the urge to be sexual with someone of the same gender or having a same-gender attracted friend or family member come out as sexually active that provokes the most pain. Then there is the general lack of understanding regarding why God might want marriage to remain a conjugal institution.
Female “Disenfranchisement.” Kate Kelly’s campaign to wrest priesthood for women by exerting political pressure has caused pain for those who do not understand why God might be quiet regarding the oppression and exclusion some women infer from their Church experience.
Joseph Smith openly proclaimed a practicing polygamist on a grand scale, with underage brides and wives of other men. It was one thing for thousands of random people to haunt all LDS-themed stories for the chance to fling their anti-Mormon tweets. It was another for all major media outlets to proclaim that Joseph had as many as 40 wives, as indicated in a footnote in one of the 2014 LDS.org essays on polygamy. Mormons, of all modern people, are unequipped to understand why such extensive “sexuality” with additional wives might be anything other than sexual predation.
John Dehlin excommunicated “merely” for asking questions. I don’t know that many people actually experienced great pain just because of Dehlin’s excommunication. However the thousands who had invested themselves in Dehlin’s premise that Mormonism represents a morally and spiritually bankrupt religious tradition were disconcerted to realize such proactive disdain was not going to be tolerated in one claiming to be a faithful member of record.
The Economic Downturn. Though the 2008 market implosion did not affect the Church as negatively as the 1837 economic collapse affected the Church in Kirtland, individual members have experienced pain as the expectation of perpetual affluence has been challenged.
The Priesthood Ban. There is nothing new about the fact of the 1850-1978 restriction excluding Black members from holding priesthood or receiving temple ordinances. But due to the discussion surrounding Kate Kelly’s effort to win priesthood for women and John Dehlin’s attempt to prove the Church was fraudulent, the issue received renewed exposure. Few have invested in understanding why God might have permitted such a discriminatory ban.
Translation means looking at a stone in a hat? Historical geeks have long known that the happy pictures showing Joseph Smith “translating” using scholarly methods were inconsistent with the historical record. But for some reason, certain individuals have experienced great pain to realize that those paintings were incorrect. The only current pictoral representations of the translation process were produced by individuals attempting to highlight how disturbing the process is to modern people in the era past full decoding of the Rosetta Stone (e.g., post 1850).
Onset and death of the Mormon Moment. The Book of Mormon Musical and the fuss related to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns has caused pain to some who thought Mormons were accepted by society. To misquote Sally Field, “The first time we didn’t feel it, but this time we feel it—and we can’t deny the fact that you dislike Mormons, right now, you dislike Mormons!”
General Spiritual Apathy. The world is a place that aggressively offers non-religious solutions to all our wants and needs (usually for a pretty price that enhances someone’s bottom line). It is less common for us to claim spiritual abundance, whether because we actually are that distracted by our electronics or because we don’t wish to “offend” our non-Mormon neighbors.
Tolerating the Distress
The first step in dealing with any pain we are feeling is to learn to tolerate the pain. Before we react in ways that harm ourselves or others, we need to find ways to tolerate the distress enough to choose to act well.
The first subset of skills related to distress tolerance are focused on distracting ourselves from the pain long enough to remain rational. The second subset of skills are focused on soothing ourselves.
Distract: Radical Acceptance. The serenity prayer has covered this for ages: “God grant me the ability to accept the things I cannot change.” As another pithy saying goes, “The past is history, the future mystery. Today is a gift, and that’s why it’s called the present.” No matter how much we rail, we cannot change the past.
Distract: Re-think and find Meaning. I’m deviating from the traditional DBT phrase here, but I wish to emphasize our need to reflect on the core values and meaning we derived from our beliefs, rather than focusing on whatever is causing pain. An exercise I have benefited from is considering why My God would have permitted and even commanded certain aspects of the past. If I fail to find an answer, I consider that the failure is not in God but in my own imagination. [Luckily, I have a very good imagination.]
Distract: Replace Destructive Acts. A graphic example of how this works in therapy is someone who pulls out their hair to deal with pain. Rather than pulling out one’s own hair, the suggestion is to don a wig and pull hair from the wig. Or with cutting, to use a red pen and paint rather than actually cutting oneself with a knife. I don’t know what this looks like in your life, but I reflect on a time in my past when attending Church was painful. Rather that going inactive, I attended Church with a friend in another ward for several weeks.
Distract: Attend to Others. Sometimes our pain is specific to our own situation, such as feeling downtrodden because the LDS Church has yet to have a [insert category of person of which you are a member] as Church President and prophet. Focusing on others can reduce this distress.
Distract: Tasks and Chores. Speaking of focusing on others, there are any number of Church-related chores and tasks. Visiting and Home Teaching, fulfilling a calling, indexing, praying and thanking God. All of these can ease whatever pain you may be experiencing. For one woman I know, she often has handiwork with her to keep her hands busy in Church. Since some of us might feel such handiwork is against the rules, this can be a mild way to replace other acts that would actually be destructive.
Distract: Leave. Sometimes, however, you must leave to reduce the pain. Right now my autistic daughter is having great difficulty. When I turned to her today in Relief Society, her eyes were red and tears were starting to form in her eyes. So we left. We haven’t left forever, but today it was not going to be a good thing to remain in Relief Society.
Distract: Counting. This is an age-old technique for handling overwhelming emotion. I liked the suggestion one workbook put forward, of counting backward from 100 by 7s. When your mind is filled with moderately difficult math, it is hard to maintain the circular thoughts that are causing so much pain.
Sooth: Engaging your senses. Different things calm different people. It might be a pleasant smell on a handkerchief or card, a picture or mental image of something that brings us peace, listening to calming sounds or music, eating something calming, or soothing touch. I mentioned that today was hard for my daughter. She went outside and walked around the Church several times.
Sooth: Breathing. Taking deep breaths is a technique I particularly remember learning in relation to childbirth, an intensely painful “activity.” I used to do this to reduce my blood pressure (trying to get both systolic and diastolic under 100). Conversely, when it used to be a requirement for blood pressure to be higher than 50 to donate blood, I would ask for a “failing” test to be re-administered and make sure I breathed rapidly. It always worked like a charm.
Sooth: Meditation and/or Prayer. I know of many people who, distressed by some aspect of the Church’s past, went to God in prayer and received His calming comfort. Another possibility is to reflect on some past or future instance that is inspiring or calming.
Sooth: Express Thanks. I’m not sure if this shows up in any DBT books, per se, but I can remember two specific times when I was very upset and was calmed by a chance to express my thanks. The first was during college when I was raging at God. He gently asked if there were not something I was thankful for. As there had been an inversion that clouded the sky for two months prior to that night, I glanced up to see stars. Irritated at the requirement to produce something for which I could thank God, I spit out at Him that I was grateful for the stars. At that, I was flooded with joy and peace, as though my spiteful words of thanks were all He needed to be able to bless me. At another time, I was anxious and sad because my car had broken down on a business trip right after the death of my infant son. I was feeling powerfully sorry for myself when the radio came on with news of the Kobe earthquake. Perhaps it was just shadenfreude, but I knelt and prayed for those afflicted by the disaster and thanked God that my troubles were not as severe.
Later to talk about Emotional Regulation, Mindfulness, and Interpersonal Effectiveness
I just hit 2000 words, and it’s getting late. So I’ll mention other things in future posts.
Just a reminder that I am not a professional therapist. I’m just a woman who has lived many decades and has seen much woe and experienced great joy. I see so much written that expresses the pain of the writer, and it can’t be pleasant for them or those they love.
We cannot change the past. But as God lives and loves us, we can act in a way to improve our present and prepare for a glorious future. Modern therapies based on DBT have been demonstrated to help all manner of emotional distress, including the most intractable and destructive maladies.
For those of us who wish (no matter how faintly) to hold fast to God and His way, these therapies can help transform “white knuckling” and even failure into a delight and success.