Strategies for Handling Church-Induced Anxiety

In my previous post, I wrote about how I was experiencing anxiety attacks whenever I had to discuss church-related topics with my family or ward members. I went to a therapist yesterday to get some advice about how to handle an attack when it occurs and also some long-term solutions for dealing with family members. The session was helpful, so I thought I'd pass on some of the guidance here.

How to Handle Anxiety Attacks

The first key is to recognize when an anxiety attack is occurring. As you pay better attention to your body, you'll start to see patterns in the situations that cause the anxiety to occur. You'll also begin to notice which symptoms you first experience when the anxiety attack is setting in. For me, it's a rapid heartbeat and I start to feel the first sensations of stress hormones.

When you start to feel the anxiety attack beginning, you need to take steps to resolve it as soon as possible. The longer an anxiety attack keeps going, the more it will spiral further downward into negativity---kind of like the snowball effect.

The first thing you need to do to resolve the anxiety attack is to consciously breathe in and out and slow your breathing down. You need to remind your body what relaxation feels like. Breathing is a cue to your body to cool down and not get upset. It helps your body's rhythms slow down and not get caught up in an intense rhythm. (It's harder for adrenaline to spread through your body when your heartbeat is down, for example.) Closing your eyes could also help.

The second thing is to get your mind focused on the present by noticing your environment. Anxiety attacks are basically caused by fears about the future that gradually crescendo and build until they become more and more extreme. So, by distracting yourself and thinking about the present, you don't allow your mind to develop fears that are centered in the future. So, look around your environment and pay attention to the tiny details of the room. Focus on the colors of the leaves of your houseplant or the patterns on the fabric of the chair you're sitting in or things like that. Live in the present. Another thing you can do is squeeze your fingers. Hold your thumb with your opposite hand and count to 5 or 10 and do that with all your other fingers until you feel better. (This works great for kids who have woken up from a nightmare too.) Take as much time as you need to be in this state.

After you've calmed down, take some time to reflect on the root cause of the anxiety. You don't have to do this right away. You can wait a few days. But when you are ready, ask yourself: what are you really afraid of? Is it based on a rational fear or an irrational fear? Think about it in terms of probabilities. For example, is it fairly probable that my father is going to disown me and never speak to me again. (No.) Is it fairly probable that he won't love me any more? (No.) And just keep talking yourself down from there until you find the border between your rational fears and your irrational ones. We spent a lot of the session talking about my irrational vs. rational fears.

Long-Term Solutions for Dealing With Family Members

I felt kind of proud of myself for realizing I needed to set boundaries before coming to the therapy session, but it was helpful to talk with the therapist about how to actually do it anyway.

The basic principle to keep in mind is to set a firm boundary but to show kindness and love at the same time. Decide what that boundary is and express it without any equivocation. Then follow it up with an expression of love. She also recommended writing this down in a letter since that is an easier way to communicate bad news to family members.

So, for example, my panic attack earlier this week was prompted by a phone call from my dad setting up a lunch appointment, which almost always means he wants to lecture me about the church. This has happened somewhat frequently since I announced to him I was having problems with the church. I need these anxiety-inducing discussions to stop.

The basic idea I need to communicate to him is: I am inactive from the church and that is non-negotiable; I don't want to discuss it. But I still love you and I want a relationship with you. (That way I have set a clear, firm boundary but am expressing kindness and empathy at the same time.)

That being said, you need to be cautious about over-empathizing with your parents. My therapist said that you shouldn't let their anxieties cause you to surrender your boundaries. You need to still protect your own sense of self.

She said that I need to be aware that when people hear bad news like this, they will likely go through 2 or more of the Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief. You may not always see them experiencing these stages, but it is likely to happen. (On the bright side, I can totally empathize with them since I experienced a lot of the stages of grief when I was going through my faith crisis.)

It's painful to know that you will disappoint someone, to know that you will cause them grief. But is it more important to make your parents happy or to do what you need to do in order to be happy? Obviously, you need to do what is best for your own mental health and well-being. You can't remain in a state of stress and anxiety just to please other people. And that might mean that you will cause some pain for the people you care about. But eventually, both you and they will reach a state of acceptance.

Redrawing Boundaries

My journey out of Mormonism has sometimes been a mixed bag, bringing both positive and negative changes to my life. One of the unfortunate negative changes is that I occasionally experience anxiety attacks whenever I have to talk to someone in my ward or when someone in my family tries to talk to me about the church. It's especially worse when someone stops by my house unannounced from my ward to talk with me.

I recognize on an intellectual level that the anxiety I experience is somewhat irrational. Nearly all of the time, these meetings turn out to be no big deal and are fairly harmless. The people I interact with usually have a genuine concern for my well-being and are not out to attack me. Nevertheless, I still experience sensations like a rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, mild sweatiness, and my body flushes with stress/attack hormones every time I have one of these encounters. My thoughts become intensely negative when someone from the ward sets up an appointment with me. My mind immediately jumps to the worst possible conclusions about their purpose for meeting with me and how the meeting will go. I always anticipate the worst. For this reason, I make an effort to avoid my ward members as much as I can and I try to dodge any inquiries my family makes about the church.

Obviously this stuff isn't good for my mental or physical health and it's not possible to avoid all of these encounters. For that reason, I'd like to learn how to better manage these anxiety attacks. One thing I've been doing is engaging in some self-reflection in order to understand what is at the root of this anxiety. I'm sure there's lots of different reasons why I experience anxiety: my propensity for pessimism, perhaps some mild social anxiety, and a fear of not being in full control of the situation (since I have a strong need to feel in control). But I recently had an epiphany that a big part of it comes from the concept of boundaries.

Most healthy people recognize the value of creating reasonable boundaries for themselves. They set boundaries for what they will and will not share about themselves with other people until there is a certain level of trust and intimacy in the relationship. They recognize that there are some things which are public and some things which are private. They set boundaries for what they will and will not do in certain social situations. Healthy people learn how to communicate to other people about those boundaries in ways that will hopefully not make other people defensive. It's a balancing act between being honest and showing respect. It's about being assertive and having a good sense of one's self in relation to other people. Lastly, healthy people also show respect for other people's boundaries. When someone tells them what their boundary is, they try not to cross it. They know that no means no.

I've realized that when I was a Mormon, I had no sense of how to create healthy boundaries for myself. That's partly because there's potentially a thin line between keeping some things private and lying. I definitely think that it's wrong to deliberately deceive or mislead people, particularly when withholding the truth will do harm to others. But I've also learned that there are times when it is fully appropriate not to disclose information about yourself unless you feel comfortable doing so. There are just some things that are really nobody's business until they've earned your trust---especially things like your private religious beliefs and practices. My experience in Mormonism might be different from others, but I internalized that it was dishonest and immoral to keep things about myself private, especially my beliefs. That's partly because Mormonism strongly emphasizes the public declaration of your private beliefs in church settings such as testimony meetings. Missionaries boldly knock on doors declaring their testimonies to anyone who will listen. You're also expected to fully disclose private beliefs or practices in counsels with bishops and other religious leaders with whom you may or may not have a personal relationship. To refuse to be fully candid with a religious leader would be looked upon as a sign of guilt, of having something to hide.

There might be an element of gender training at work here too, but I also internalized that it was wrong to say no if someone asked you to do something. In Mormonism, you are strongly encouraged to say yes to every calling that is extended to you. You are expected to help out whenever you are asked to serve and to do so without any complaint. You covenant in LDS temples to consecrate anything and everything that the church asks from you with no exceptions. If you are a woman, you are taught regularly that it's your job to sacrifice and give service to your children and your husband, putting their needs ahead of your own. In other words, there's not very many times when it's appropriate to say no in church culture. It's seen as rude, rebellious, or selfish to set boundaries for what you will or will not do. When people ask, you give. No boundaries. No exceptions. No personal customization. No negotiations.

I'm sure there are some fully active, believing Mormons out there who have figured out how to set healthy boundaries for themselves in spite of church culture. But somehow I wasn't one of them. Only now do I understand that it is healthy and reasonable to know your limitations and communicate them to others. Only now do I realize that it is healthy and normal to keep some things private. But I only understand it on an intellectual level; my emotions haven't quite caught up yet. I still feel anxiety, stress, guilt and shame when I set and enforce my personal boundaries. It still feels wrong to me on a gut level. It's probably going to take a while to de-program myself. But hopefully I will get there eventually.

What Happens If There Are Any Opposed?

I was fascinated to read this post on the Ex-Mormon Subbreddit by a user named JohnBrownsBody yesterday. I have no reason to suspect it's a fabrication, but I suppose it's possible. Either way, it makes for an interesting story.

Here's What Happened

The basic gist of the story is that this 17-year-old boy is an atheist whose parents still strongly believe in Mormonism. The boy's family traveled to Utah for Spring Break to see General Conference last week and brought the 17-year-old along for the Saturday afternoon session at the Conference Center.

Of course, during the Saturday afternoon session, the officers of the church are sustained by the congregation. When Uchtdorf read the names of the prophet and apostles and asked if there were any opposed, this 17-year-old raised his hand. After the sustaining votes were completed, two security guards motioned to the boy that he needed to come speak with them.

He followed them into a private room where they asked him for his name, his full address, the name of his ward, and the name of his bishop. They wrote all of this information down on a notepad. They interviewed the 17-year-old and asked him why he raised his hand to oppose the sustaining votes. He replied that he did not think that Thomas S. Monson and the apostles were prophets, seers, and revelators and so he raised his hand to indicate such. They asked him whether he came to the Conference for the purpose of voting in opposition. He explained that he came because his parents brought him.

The two security guards bore their testimony that they thought Thomas S. Monson was a great man and that they sustain him fully. They also had a discussion about what his parents must feel about him at this moment. According to the boy, the security guards listened to his response and then said: "Well, it looks like you're going through some hard times, I hope you get over it. We aren't trying to intimidate you or force you to believe something, but I hope you change your mind." The 17-year-old basically told them that probably wasn't going to happen.

The security guards frowned and then one of them silently took him out of the room. As they were leaving, the other guard stated: "We'll be in touch."

My Response

I'll give the security guards the benefit of doubt to say they were just doing their job, enforcing a policy that has been laid out for them by the organization they work for. To be fair, the security guards mentioned that this doesn't happen to them very often, so they were probably surprised and inadequately trained about how they were supposed to respond. And, oddly enough, on one level it's even nice to have all those rumors validated: if you raise your hand to oppose a leader, someone will actually take a moment to listen to you in confidence (which is undoubtedly supposed to be the intention behind that policy).

That being said, it's really difficult not to see the power dynamics underlying this entire exchange. Although the security guards emphasized that they were not trying to intimidate the boy, the entire context of the exchange suggests exactly the opposite. When a 17-old-boy is being ushered into a private room (with no parental consent or supervision, mind you) by a pair of older, male security guards---complete with suits and earpieces, how can that situation be interpreted as anything but intimidating? It evokes the imagery of a terrorist or suspected criminal being interrogated by the authorities. This is no heart-to-heart discussion with a personable ecclesiastical authority about genuine doubts and concerns that a young teenage boy is experiencing. This is a power play made by people in positions of authority against someone who has very little power in comparison. The fact that they took down his name, address, and ward information and said, "We'll be in touch" sends that message very clearly. I applaud the boy for his youthful chutzpah, but most other ordinary individuals would have felt fairly shamed and demoralized after such an experience. (Which is the whole point, right?)

The whole situation just speaks to what I've said earlier on this blog about the church failing to provide a healthy environment for independent thought. The fact that the church asks the question "Are there any opposed?" when officers are sustained superficially suggests that there is room to disagree with the sustaining out of good conscience. But we’ve all been in a meeting where a forgetful counselor neglects to ask if there are any opposed---for the very reason that no one really expects anyone to oppose it. Church members are habituated and socially pressured into voting unanimously in favor of what the leaders have proposed---which means that the possibility for dissent is ultimately only an illusion. [1] Then, when a 17-year-old calls them on their bluff, the fact that he is treated with suspicion and intimidation (as opposed to mutual respect and the open exchange of ideas) is rather telling, in my opinion.

The last thing I want to say about this is that if I worked for Kirton and McConkie (the Church's law firm), I would immediately advise the church to change their policy about how to treat dissenting votes in General Conference. I recognize that after the Cody Judy incident, the church needs a security team on hand to ensure the safety of the General Authorities. That being said, these issues need to be handled without violating the civil rights of suspects. Although I doubt this boy's parents will press charges, these security guards should have been accompanied by a lawyer who was getting this boy's parents to sign a ton of waivers for privacy, detainment, and future silence in order to avoid a lawsuit. That's because this is not only a clear example of how the church has little tolerance for criticism and dissent, but a potential violation of the boy's civil rights.

Footnotes

[1] If I'm not mistaken, from a strictly legal perspective, church members are not actually official members of the church anyway. Although the church retains membership records, the members don't actually have any voting rights in the organization/corporation like they do in other organized religions. (At least that's what I remember from the Mormon Stories interview conducted with Daymon Smith.) So, the whole voting thing is fairly farcical to begin with.

On Maltheism from Wondermark

I really enjoyed this series about maltheism from the comic strip Wondermark, so I thought I would re-post them here. (This re-post is done with permission, by the way.) It's an interesting thought experiment, especially after my previous post about God. (Incidentally, I've been emailing back and forth with a friend about that post for the last three months. It's been an interesting discussion.)

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the strip!

You've Been Charged With Hypocrisy: How Do You Plead?

As a New Order Mormon (a Mormon who does not believe in the church but still attends), I get a lot of ex-Mormons and other Mormons who don't really understand why my husband and I are still attending church. Sometimes they argue that we're being hypocritical by continuing to attend church and support an organization that we no longer intellectually affiliate with.

That's a fair charge. And you know what? I plead guilty. I do often feel like a hypocrite and I experience a great deal of stress and cognitive dissonance every time I interact with the church in any kind of official capacity or whenever I interact with TBMs (which is fairly regularly).

So, you might be asking things like how can I sleep with myself at night? Well, the reason is that right now I prioritize other things over my personal integrity and the consistency of my public appearance. Right now, I'm placing a higher priority on my relationship with my family, friends, and neighbors than my personal integrity. Personal integrity is of course important to me, but right now it's being placed on the back burner next to weightier matters such as my relationships with other people.

Let me state up front that we intend to ask for releases from our callings and gradually slide into inactivity between the months of April to July. It's all part of the plan, so don't get too worried.

Allow me to explain our past and current reasons for continuing to attend church as they've evolved over time:

1. We wanted to give our family members time to get acclimated to the idea that we would eventually leave the church. The whole time we were struggling with our faith crisis, we kept it strictly between ourselves. We didn't tell our bishop or our family members because we wanted to work through the whole thing on our own. If we ended up continuing to believe the church was true, then no harm would have been done. If we ended up losing our faith, then we wouldn't hurt anyone else in the process. (Going through a faith crisis is incredibly painful and I don't feel that I have the right to foist that upon anyone else. If someone is already in a faith crisis, I'll be happy to help them work through it---and I have no personal commitment to whatever the outcome of their faith crisis is. Everyone has to decide whether their life is better inside or outside of the church for themselves---and I'm not going to judge them either way.)

After we had concluded that we had officially lost our faith in Mormonism and were going to leave the church, we didn't want to scare our family by just suddenly leaving the church. Our faith crisis had happened over the course of a year and had involved long, intense moments of deep introspection. But to an outsider, it would appear as though we had made a very sudden and rash decision. We knew that would confuse and hurt our family members. And since they are very important to us, we wanted to gradually get them used to the idea that we might leave the church. We hoped this would subtly communicate that we had not made this decision in haste and that we had given the church a fair chance (notwithstanding the 30+ years of giving the church a fair chance prior to our faith crisis). Now that more than a year has passed since we first clued our parents into the situation, the time is ripening for our departure.

2. We wanted to build a social network outside of the church. One time when I was in the middle of my faith crisis, I took a look at the statistics of my social network using Facebook. At the time, 82% of my social network was LDS. And of the 50 or so individuals who comprised the other 18%, only 1 or 2 of those were very intimate, close relationships. (I plan to do a longer blog entry discussing the unique social network of Mormonism, so stay tuned!) This was a bit of a problem for me because that meant that if I were to suddenly leave the church, I would be jumping into a new world with almost no social support. I'm an introvert so I suppose it wouldn't have been that bad; nevertheless, it didn't seem very healthy to me. We wanted to make sure we had some good friends outside of the church before we left it completely. Nowadays, I'm happy to report that we have established some very good relationships with ex-Mormons and never-Mormons that are richer and more meaningful than our relationships with people inside the church. Again, the atmosphere for our departure is getting better.

3. We want our departure from our ward to be a quiet one. I must admit, I do see the appeal of this particular approach to leaving the church:

But setting aside the sheer coolness factor behind leaving the church in a noisy (and speedy) way, the "live out loud" approach advocated by John Larsen (and others) is just too costly for me.

We like our house and we don't want to move. Nearly all of our neighbors are members of the church and we don't want to burn any bridges with any of them. If we are seen as being full-blown apostates to our neighbors, we will begin to be treated differently by them because we'll be viewed as a threat. We won't be able to maintain our relationships of respect and trust with them. Our kids might not be allowed to form friendships with the other kids in our neighborhood. And worst of all: we'll lose all of our baby-sitters.

We think it's better to be viewed by our neighbors and ward members as inactive. If they want to conjecture that we stopped attending church because we were lazy or something, I'll be fine with that. I'll know in my heart that it isn't the truth and that's enough for me. I'm happy to sacrifice my control over my public reputation in order to maintain peace and good will with my neighbors. (Besides, I think it's silly to imagine that I ever had full control over the way I am perceived by others to begin with.)

4. I prefer to keep my religious beliefs private so that I don't hurt the people I love and so that I can keep myself from being hurt. I've come to find profound meaning in Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." The poem is about a pair of farmers who go about repairing the wall that marks the boundary between their property. The narrator of the poem says, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." On one level, he thinks it is silly to build and maintain the walls that separate their farms---especially in places where the wall is unnecessary, such as in their orchards. I agree with the narrator's perspective. I think honesty (the removal of walls) is preferable. I wish we could all just be real with each other, that we could all live without facades. Then we could realize that we are all pretty normal human beings and that we're not so different from one another. We could work through our issues together and reach a mutually agreeable understanding about our differences.

Last weekend, I was talking with a non-traditional Mormon who had just discovered earlier that week that her younger brother hadn't believed in the church for nearly 4 years, but had kept it to himself the whole time. That's the cost of building walls: you can't help each other in moments of pain and dissonance because you're too busy hiding from one another.

But, at the same time, I see the wisdom behind the narrator's neighbor too. The narrator's neighbor simply states: "Good fences make good neighbors." He has a good point. I've been burned quite a bit by being honest with my parents about my faith crisis. We've had some intense exchanges that have resulted in tears and have caused week-long spells of deep depression for me. I've realized that I can't be fully honest with TBMs because it hurts both them and me in really painful, almost unbearable ways. I would love it if only they could understand me, but I think there is some futility in trying to force that understanding prematurely. I think that some day, when we're ready and our relationship is in the right place, I'll be able to be honest. I'll continue to hope and have patience for that day---and if it never comes, I'm resigned to that possibility. But for now, I'm building a few walls to keep both my family, friends and myself safe from pain. I've set some boundaries about what I will and will not share about my personal life. And that's because I want to minimize the collateral damage associated with my departure.

Right now I just focus on expressing myself in forums like this blog or on Mormon Expression or private Facebook groups. And that's good enough for me. I don't think it's unreasonable to keep some aspects of your life private from some of the people around you. That's how all healthy human relationships usually work: you wait to reveal intensely personal things about yourself until you have developed a certain level of intimacy and trust in your relationships. You can still maintain a healthy, casual relationship with people without telling your neighbors, or your co-workers, or your former college roommates everything about your personal religious beliefs.

5. It's hard to reset your life to zero all at once. It should be noted that up until 2 years ago, I had fully bought into Mormonism for most of my life. I sincerely believed in it. I kept all of its rules. I was heavily active in the church because I loved it. It was a very big part of my life.

When something is an integral part of your life, you can't just press the "erase" button and expect it all to go away without a hitch. It has taken quite a while to de-program Mormonism out of our lives. For example, we kept praying over our food long after we stopped believing in prayer because it was a life-long habit. Eventually, the only way we could get ourselves out of that habit was to replace it with a new habit: the Japanese ritual of saying "Itadakimasu" before eating. And that was something as silly as what to do before eating---let alone bigger issues like drinking and what not.

We started by dipping our toes in the waters of ex-Mormonism, and now we're taking gradually wading into the deep end as opposed to jumping head-first into the water all at once. We're getting experienced enough now to where we can probably get rid of the flotation device and start swimming on our own now.

6. I don't want to burn any bridges permanently. One thing that's important to keep in mind about my faith crisis is that it has resulted in being pretty comfortable with uncertainty. I've realized in a very profound way that it's possible for me to be wrong---dead wrong---about really important things. It's a very humbling experience. But I've come to feel okay with it because I've realized that I'm making the best decisions and reaching the most reasonable conclusions with all of the imperfect information that I currently have available to me. I believe it's important that I never keep myself from feeling too certain my current position is right because I've learned that my sense of certainty is almost always misplaced. I want to make sure that I'm always questioning myself and that I never stop searching for truth and more information. I'm comfortable with remaining flexible, with a willingness to update my perspectives in the future as more evidence becomes available. As the famous economist John Maynard Keynes once said when he was accused of hypocrisy: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Maybe things will change in the future as more information becomes available to me or as my life circumstances change. Maybe I'll move on to a Fowler Stage 5 and become one of those Mormon Stories/Mormon Matters people. Or maybe I won't. Either way, I want to be humble enough to give myself room to change my mind in the future. So, I don't want to burn my bridges with the church in the process.

***

At the end of the day, I've reached a place where I love myself and I love everyone else---no matter where they're at in their own personal faith journey or where they stand on the spectrum of Mormonism. I believe that everyone is making the right choices for themselves based on their own personal circumstances. I respect their right to decide the path for themselves in their own way and on their own timetable. I just hope that other people will extend me the same courtesy.

Fostering a Good Environment for Independent Thought (and Why the Church Fails to Do It)

I liked a blog entry posted by A Mormon in the Cheap Seats on the Doves and Serpents blog not too long ago. It flowcharted the epistemology (e.g. method for discovering whether something is true or not) that is taught in a traditional Sunday School.

I've modified the flowchart a little bit to discuss why I don't think the church fosters a very healthy level of independent thought---meaning that the church doesn't provide a safe environment in which its members are free to reach their own conclusions on important matters. The key feature of independent thought is being able to question authority figures or express ambivalence, skepticism, or dissent.

I like the way the Jesse Tahrili expressed the value of independent thought in his Growing Up With Scientist Mom comic strip:

Being told how to do something can be great. To bypass that initial struggle for information, to instantly understand that fire is hot without having to burn yourself. Today, you could learn more about gravity in one day than Isaac Newton learned in an entire lifetime! This method of passing down information to younger generations is something that has allowed humanity to thrive and progress for centuries. But this reliance on second-hand information is also one of our greatest downfalls. We live in an imperfect world, and to blindly trust everything we're told can be dangerous. Falsities, especially ones that we'd really like to believe, can infect our collective knowledge and proliferate like a virus. We must constantly question ourselves and seek to ensure that what we believe as truth always has a firm grounding in reality.

With that in mind, let's talk about how the church tells us to do in response to what authority figures within the church say. This is the classical epistemological model of Mormonism, as based on Doctrine and Covenants section 8 and 9:

That all seems pretty straightforward, right?

In its ideal form, I don't have too many qualms with this model of verifying whether our leaders are speaking truthfully or not. Although I don't really think that one should rely solely on emotional instinct to determine the veracity of a particular statement, it's not a bad place to start the process of critical inquiry. I also like that this model places the locus of control within the individual rather than in the authority figure; it's ultimately the responsibility of the individual to seek for and verify truth. This ideal model also suggests a fairly healthy system of “checks and balances” within church government, if you will. Every church member is taught that they have a right and a responsibility to ask the Lord whether our leaders are inspired and that they are entitled to an answer through personal revelation.

The problem is: this flowchart doesn't actually describe the process of revelation in the lived reality of most Mormons' experience. Here's the way the process of personal revelation actually works for most members of the church:

If it isn't immediately obvious, there are a number of problems with this model. The central problem is that there is only one possible conclusion: what the leader has stated is true. Although this process may superficially appear to open up the possibility for dissent and doubt, it ultimately denies it in the end. The only possible outcome is that what the leader has said is true. And if that is the only option, then it negates the possibility that this is a system in which independent thought can be cultivated in healthy ways.

This has a host of negative consequences. A few that I can think of are:

• Sexism. This is a big one for me. If only males are in positions of power (e.g. they make the bulk of the decisions for the organization and interpret church doctrine) and if these male leaders can never be in the wrong or can never be questioned or criticized, then that's deeply unfair to women in the church. It makes it impossible for women to have any kind of real influence or power within the church, which has serious consequences for women's mental health and for the overall health of the organization in general.
• Lack of accountability. When leaders cannot be questioned or criticized without fear of negative consequences, that creates a system in which there is no process for people to address grievances, to express valid concerns, or to enact necessary change. When people in an organization feel that they have no control or no voice in how the organization is run, it has the potential to create psychological problems.
• Low self-esteem or depression. In the flowchart above, you'll notice that the only possible explanation for why you can't seem to agree with your leaders is that there is something flawed with you as an individual. I bristle at the arrogant idea that the church organization and its leaders are somehow above reproach and that all of its problems lie in its inherently weak members. It's reminiscent of abusive relationships in which one person always gives and the other only takes. A relationship in which one party is always right and the other party is always wrong is NOT a healthy relationship.
• Intolerance. Most importantly, it creates a lack of support for people who do not fit the standard model in their beliefs, behavior or lifestyle. It promotes conformity to the group at the expense of the individual. It creates rigid, inflexible systems that do not adapt well to changing conditions and environments.

That's just a brief laundry list off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more potential negative outcomes that I may not have thought of. But, of course, one of the most serious consequences is that this model shuts down independent thought, moving the locus of control away from the individual members and onto the leader---who is prone to fallibility, short-sightedness, and possible corruption (even when his intentions are good).

The majority of members don't even bother to go through the classical process of asking the Lord whether the things their leader has said are true. Since it's obvious you'll end up in the same place anyway (the leader was right), why attempt to ask God directly in the first place? You might as well just save yourself the pain and skip over the whole critical thinking and evaluation process in the first place. But this is not a good option because critical inquiry and research has been the primary means through which human civilization has been advanced. Organizations which create environments that are anathema to critical inquiry are an impediment this kind of progress on a macro and micro level. This has extremely far-reaching moral implications. As painful and messy as open dialogue and skepticism can be, nearly every individual or society is much better and more healthy after having gone through the crucible of argumentation.

Now, to be fair, I want to point out that nearly all human institutions (governments, businesses, universities, families) have the potential to create environments that are not conducive to independent thought. It's probably an inevitable part of any human organization. But the fact that the church is prone to the same kinds of problems that are exhibited in other "worldly" institutions is probably yet another piece of evidence that it's just another flawed human construction---no more special or divine than any of the rest.

To the Souls of All Those Who Drink: That They May Have This Spirit to Be With Them

Last weekend my husband and I took a very big step in our journey away from Mormonism: we tried alcohol for the first time. From a purely academic perspective, I had stopped believing in the Word of Wisdom a long time ago (especially the version of the Word of Wisdom as interpreted by the contemporary church). But doubting the Word of Wisdom on an intellectual level is fairly different from experiencing it first-hand. I tried tea for the first time on my anniversary trip to Las Vegas last August. (I know, I know... It's pretty lame to go all the way to Las Vegas just to try an iced tea.) And I had tried coffee for the first time during Conference Weekend last October. Neither tea nor coffee had felt like that big of a deal. But alcohol? That was taking it to a new level.

So, last weekend we gave it a shot (pun intended). Read on if you want to see how the whole experience turned out and what I learned as a result.


The Context
By now, my husband Chris and I have been in a few different social situations where people were drinking and where we could have joined in if we had wanted to. There was a dinner party back in July with Chris's coworkers and I felt acutely awkward being the only couple who weren't drinking. Ever since then, I had thought a lot about if, when, and how I would try alcohol for the first time.

I hate to admit it, but fear was the driving motivation behind choosing to abstain from alcohol for so long. It's a very scary thing to try alcohol for the first time when you've been programmed your whole life to view alcohol as something evil and sinful---a slippery slope into Satan's open arms.

Last week I was was chatting online with my friend Brad (a long time ex-Mormon) about alcohol. I mentioned that for most never-Mormons, your first alcoholic drink is probably fairly unremarkable. On one level, it's a rite of passage. But on another level, it's also kind of mundane and ordinary---the sort of thing everyone does, so it's ultimately not that that big of a deal.

It's anything but ordinary for a Mormon. For a Mormon, it is the psychological equivalent of losing your virginity---with nearly all of the same psychosocial ramifications (only to the nth degree). When I mentioned this, Brad fully agreed. He said that having his first drink felt much scarier than having sex for the first time: it was taking your status outside of the church to a whole new level.

My conversation with Brad eventually drifted over to how Chris and I were probably going to try alcohol soon at a future dinner party this month. Brad started giving me some advice about what to try first and what things to avoid, how to drink appropriately, etc. But the more he was talking about the finer details of alcohol, the more I started to feel overwhelmed by the entire prospect.

Since it became apparent that it was going to be a psychologically difficult thing to do, I began to realize that I wanted my first experience with alcohol to be under ideal conditions. For me, that meant:

• It needed to be in a social or psuedo-social situation. Alcohol's main function is to be a social lubricant, so it wouldn't make sense to try it in total social isolation.
• But it needed to be a safe social situation. I didn't know how I would respond to alcohol in my system. Would I be friendly and sociable under the influence of alcohol? Or would I be really embarrassing or annoying? I needed someone who wouldn't judge me either way.
• At the same time, I felt I needed to be introduced to alcohol by someone who came from Mormonism---someone who would understand if I wanted to take it slow because they knew what a big step it was emotionally. I needed someone who wouldn't get mad if I decided to chicken out. And someone who wouldn't get upset if I took a sip of $60 wine and said, "That's disgusting!"
• Lastly, I needed someone who could humor my husband's need for scientific experimentation. I definitely wouldn't be doing any drinking unless my husband Chris was with me, but he had always insisted he wanted his first experiment with alcohol to be under controlled conditions in which he could closely monitor the effects it had on him. In other words: he needed it to appeal to his intellectual side (which is where he feels most comfortable and safe).

As I thought more about it, I came to the conclusion that I needed my friend Brad to help introduce me and my husband into the world of alcohol. He was the perfect one to do it: he and I had been friends for more than a decade, he was an ex-Mormon and had supported me during my entire faith crisis, he was a connoissuer of fine wines, and he was spontaneous enough to be willing to fly over to Utah to share my first drink with me and my husband. When I mentioned it to him, he was totally excited about it and booked the next weekend flight out from California.

I felt enthusiastic about the decision at the time, but that enthusiasm quickly started to wane and turn into anxiety in the 48 hours leading up to our little alcohol party. Visions of disapproving parents danced through my head. ("You'll become an alcoholic after just one drink! It's in your genes!") I started seeing the signs that I was getting stressed: my muscles tensed up, I started getting migraines, and I began yelling at my kids more frequently. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go through with it.

The next afternoon (Saturday), Brad showed up on my doorstep with more alcohol than I had ever seen in my life: two cardboard boxes and 6 grocery bags worth of beers, wines, and liqueurs. The alcohol he brought filled up my entire kitchen counter. There wasn't room in the fridge for much else after putting away all the alcohol that needed to be chilled. I was awestruck by how much cold, hard cash Brad had invested in my first experience with alcohol. (THANK YOU, BRAD! That truly was a beau geste.) And while it was thrilling to see all that alcohol, it was emotionally overwhelming at the same time. (Incidentally, Brad didn't intend for us to drink all of it: just to experiment with the full range of alcohol to see what we liked. See: I told you he understood my husband's scientific mind.) Eventually, I couldn't put it off any longer, and it was time to begin...


What We Tried and What We Liked/Hated
We started drinking around 7:00 after our kids went to bed. Chris had made an elaborate Japanese dish called Nabe that is eaten over the course of an hour. We ate dinner and sampled a few different wines from the gamut of white to red, light to strong. I wrote down that we tried:

• Frog's Leap - a classic Chardonnay (white wine)
• A to Z - an unsoaked Chardonnay from Oregon (white)
• Ridge - a Sonoma County (Geyserville) Zinfadel (white)
• Riesling
• Caymus - an expensive Cabernet Sauvignon (a strong red wine; this was Brad's drink of choice for the rest of the night)

Chris hated all of them. The smell and taste of the alcohol was just too strong for him. For me, the taste was just fine. That's probably because I've always had a very open palette. (I absolutely loved sushi the first time I tried it, for example.) For Chris, some of the wines caused an intense burning sensation going down. I didn't really experience that. I had a light burning sensation, but it was much lighter than the burning sensation I get from drinking something like Coke (which I drink on a fairly regular basis). The only drawback was that since the wines were young, they had a really strong finish. This made it so that the wine tasted stronger (and therefore not quite as enjoyable) with each sip for me.

Later in the evening (like around 9:00 and going as late as 1:00), we moved on to hard liquors. We tried:

• Amaretto Sour (Amaretto with Sweet and Sour mix; had a sweet taste)
• Buttery Nipple shots (Buttershots liqueur with Irish cream; had a butterscotch taste)
• Red-Headed Sluts (cranberry juice and Jagermeister; a drink that tasted like black licorice)
• Long Island Iced Tea (a variety of alcohols in this one such as tequila and gin; imitates the taste of tea)
• Caribou Lou (pineapple juice, coconut rum and 151 proof alcohol; had a tropical taste)
• Lime Ricki (we did it with grape-infused vodka, lime juice, etc.; had a sweet taste)

As for me, the Amaretto Sour was my favorite drink of the night, but I appreciated the taste of all of them (for the most part). The Long Island Iced Tea was a little too much for me because the gin was too strong. Since I have a sweet tooth, I probably would have liked the Lime Ricki a lot better if we had used regular Sprite instead of Sprite Zero.

Chris ended up having a sensitivity to the taste of alcohol and didn't enjoy any of the drinks. He preferred shots because they were over quickly. The Caribou Lou was his favorite drink of the night because, although the 151 was (obviously) a very high proof, it wasn't as noticeable since the alcohol ratio was fairly low compared to the pineapple juice.

We never got around to trying any of the beers Brad brought, so I'll have to report on those later when we get around to opening them.


How We Acted While Under the Influence
Brad talked about the different levels of intoxication. Here's how he defined it:

1. Sober: Little to no alcohol in your system
2. Buzzed: You can start to feel the effects (such as a slight buzz), but they will be fairly light
3. Well-lubricated: You can't concentrate as well and the effects become stronger
4. Drunk: You'll have trouble with coordination and the effects will be fairly strong
5. Blitzed: Your brain won't be in control of your body very much (for example, you'll want to walk one direction and go the other)

Chris and I floated between level 2-3 for most of the night. Brad broke some of his personal rules and floated between 3-4 for most of the night.

It had surprised me how easily and how quickly you could increase your level of intoxication---and also how subtle the differences were from one level to the next. In that moment, it made a lot more sense why alcohol could potentially be abused if you were not trying to deliberately remain in control of your rate of consumption. That being said, I didn't think it was that difficult for me to drink smart and responsibly. I think I will be able to maintain control of my alcohol consumption as long as I make the decision beforehand how far I will and won't go in general.

Going into the evening, I was very nervous about what kind of drunk I'd be. I was really hoping that I would be a happy drunk as opposed to being a quiet drunk, an angry drunk or a sad drunk. Although I'm sure that I might act differently in a different social context, I was pleased to discover that both Chris and I were happy, sociable drunks. I became a lot chattier, I laughed at jokes more easily, and I just generally became more relaxed and laid back. That was fairly pleasant.

After dinner, we played karaoke until 2am. I have a lot of fun playing karaoke when I'm sober, but I would say that alcohol probably made it 10-20% more enjoyable. (The highlight of the night was the hilarious trio while singing Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long.") I noticed that I paid significantly less attention to the scores I was getting on karaoke (I'm normally very competitive), but I was still able to sing pretty well. Strangely enough, I had a much easier time sustaining the really long notes without running out of breath (or even getting remotely close to running out of breath). That probably means I was singing with my diaphragm a lot more (which makes sense since it's natural to sing with your diaphragm but somehow we get unconsciously socially programmed out of doing it). That was pretty awesome.

One thing that surprised me was that even though I could feel the effects of alcohol on my body, I didn't feel like I wasn't me. I felt mostly normal and able to concentrate (for the most part). My whole life I had thought that being drunk was like this:

Since I had never aspired to be Homer Simpson, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't really like that. At the same time, I found that what Brad had said was right: it was much easier to see how alcohol was changing the people around me than it was to see it in myself. I could see how that aspect of feeling mostly normal while intoxicated (when you really weren't) could also lead to potential alcohol abuse or to poor decision-making even though you feel as though you're fully in control. But again, I think if you exercise self-discipline and try to remain self-aware, it wouldn't be that difficult to keep your behavior in check. Better yet: ask your friends to help you remain self-aware.

My social inhibitions were definitely reduced while drinking. Chris looked way more attractive to me---and something that surprised me was that I also perceived myself as being more attractive when I looked in the mirror (during my many trips to the bathroom during the night). Maybe it was that slight flush in my cheeks---I don't know. I also became a lot more open to the idea of having sex and I consequently became more openly affectionate with Chris, which is probably something I wouldn't normally do in the presence of friends while sober (or at least not to that degree). I think for that reason, it's important to make decisions beforehand about what kinds of behaviors you will or will not do while you're intoxicated. It would be slightly harder to make good decisions in the heat of the moment. (But only slightly harder.)


Reactions from the Following Day
Even though we drank a fairly substantial amount, I didn't have a hangover the next morning. That's because, per Brad's advice, we kept ourselves well-hydrated with lots of water (hence the many trips I had to make to the bathroom). We also spread out our drinks over a long period of time which gave our body enough time to metabolize it at a reasonable rate. So, physically there were no problems.

I wasn't really in the best mood the following day, but I'm not certain whether that was a direct result of the alcohol or because I was running on a meager 4 hours of sleep. (The kids got up at 6:30am, the little angels!) Also, in the morning I didn't feel like I was fully able to concentrate yet, but I was well enough to be functional.

The only really negative aspect of it all was that I hadn't been able to find a substitute teacher for my Primary class. I was in a pretty sour mood just by virtue of having to be at church (which generally bugs me anyway) and I didn't have much patience with the kids. It didn't help that I felt pretty hypocritical sitting in church when I had been drinking the night before. Now, when I use the word hypocritical, I'm not using that term to imply that I was experiencing guilt or regret---I didn't feel any of that. It's more like I just felt really lame that I was still stuck in church performing Mormonism and keeping up appearances. I wanted to stop living a double life, to just be out and be done with it. (For the record, we've resolved to leave officially some time between April and July, depending on the circumstances.)

But more importantly, I felt like I had reached a new plateau in my journey out of Mormonism the night before. I felt like I was genuinely not a Mormon any more. It was like an anti-baptism, in some ways. (Heh, heh... Baptism by spirits.) In a certain sense, drinking alcohol for the first time seemed like a symbolic action on par with a religious ritual---entering into a different way of life with different expectations for myself.

I also felt very empowered. I felt like I could exercise constraint and good judgment despite what my mother believes. (Her first accusation upon discovering I wasn't wearing my garments was that I must have started drinking and was on the verge of becoming an alcoholic.) I felt that I no longer had to be motivated to avoid alcohol because of fear or shame, but that I could control my alcohol consumption through self-knowledge and experience. It made me feel a little bit more mature.

The fear of becoming an alcoholic is still in the back of my mind, but it's not a very serious threat to me any more. The only reason it's on my radar at all is because I pretty much enjoyed the taste of alcohol and liked the effect that it had on me socially. But I think that I have the self-discipline to keep from drinking excessively. One reason I think I'll be okay is because I was older than 25 before I started drinking and so my brain is fully mature and more averse to risk-taking than a teenager's brain is. Another reason is that Chris honestly doesn't have a desire to do very much drinking since he strongly disliked the taste of alcohol. So, I won't have very much pressure from him to drink---and he'll be a pretty good watchdog. Mostly I just think the occasional alcoholic drink will help me loosen me up at large parties when I'm in the company of new people---since I tend to be fairly slow to warm up in new social situations. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

The biggest surprise for me was that alcohol is really no big deal. It does help life seem a little bit nicer when you're intoxicated, but it's not like it's a life-changing, mind-altering level of pleasure. It was just nice. And it's not all that horrible and evil as I had been led to believe most of my life. If anything, the effects of alcohol were underwhelming. This weekend I saw first-hand that the church fetishizes alcohol, over-exaggerating its negative effects and making it more important than it needs to be. (A problematic mindset that can actually make you more prone to alcoholism, in my opinion.)

All in all, my first experience with alcohol was a positive one. To be honest, it's how I would want my kids to be introduced to alcohol when they're older, if I could choose the perfect world for them. Thanks again, Brad, for a great weekend!

Now the real question is: where will we hide all the leftover alcohol when my mother-in-law comes to visit in two weeks?